A friend of mine took her 6 year old granddaughter to see Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole 3D yesterday. She was rather shaken from the experience.
The movie seems harmless enough. However, Susan told me that her granddaughter spent the entire movie cringing in fear because of the violence. At least a third of the film had the different owl armies doing battle. Battle in 3D is much more dramatic than plain old normal fighting. Susan said talons and beaks were everywhere.
Our conversation then shifted to children’s films we had grown up with. Snow White had a wicked witch and a looming forest that scared one dinner partner. The Wizard of Oz has flying monkeys that terrified my husband as a very young boy. I recall being petrified of that witch on the bike after Toto. The other diner talked about some of the scary parts of Peter Pan with evil pirates making people walk the plank.
What is the difference between those films and a movie like the Owl movie? Degrees. A couple of scary scenes is one thing. Clearly a third of a film being violent is another matter. The Legend of the Guardians looks like a good film. I might take an older grandson to it. I won’t take the 4 year old, however. That is the point. Just because it says Disney nowadays doesn’t make it a safe film for all kids. Just because it is animated doesn’t mean it is age appropriate for all children.
Perhaps those who want to keep their children safe should insist that family friendly movies carry a more advanced warning system. Perhaps such a notice needs to include descriptions of violence and lurking evil so parents can evaluate if a film is age-appropriate for their child. I remember when Lion King first came out. Parents were hauling out little kids shrieking and screaming in terror. They had no warning that the film would scare the living hell out of their 4 year old.
We have been reading a great deal this week about people wanting to protect their children. Good. Children should be protected by adults. That’s our job. But lets pick the right boogeyman. Let’s start with not dropping kids off at the mall or turning them loose on the Internet without supervision. More evil lurks on the Internet than you can shake a stick at. In fact, don’t turn your kids loose anywhere.
People worried about KK Temptations forget that probably 10 people on the sex offender registry live in the area. Which poses a greater threat, the fact that a kid might peek in the windows of KK Temptations or they might encounter a sex offender? Let’s not expose our kids to age inappropriate children’s films. Demand that producers of children’s films label films more carefully. Demand that they give parents more information. And meanwhile, realize that not everyone shares the same boogey men.
What movies scared the B-jabbers out of our contributors as kids?
I sneaked into a double-feature of Ghost Ship and Phantasm with a buddy when I was a kid. First and last time I did that. Scared me pretty good. Ghost Ship has been remade, but Phantasm is still the classic with the “tall man”, Angus Scrimm.
Was it a film for kids or did you sneak into an adult film?
Adult film. Witch from Wizard of Oz was scary. That may be a universal.
The one on the bike was scariest to me….But my mind is blurred beween her being the town busybody and a witch. Not sure where the transition takes place.
I still remember people racing their kids out of Lion King. Little kids were just terrified. What year did that film come out? 1995?
I think I scabbed long to it with someone who had an older kid.
I remember seeing “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” as part of a birthday party celebration. Big mistake! The parents had a bunch of frightened kids on their hands – several of them boo-hooing. The movie that stands out though was “Horrors of the Black Museum”. My sister and I never got up to take so many bathroom breaks or candy bar breaks in our lives – anything to keep from watching the movie. Another spooky one was “Village of the Damned”. I think my parents just dropped us off at the Saturday matinee in order to get some of the brood off their hands for a couple hours.
Censored, did you see any of the typical kid films like Fantasia? That was scary also. I can’t even remember what was scary about it.
Of course kids our age were raised on violent cartoons and series. Cowboys and Indians, Davy Crockett, all those things had killing as a component. I will have to say though, there was always a reason for the killing…it wasn’t just a splatter film with senseless violence.
I remember a really great werewolf film but not the name of it. Definitely a classic. I think my very protestant mother sneaked the catholic mother’s verboten list or something because she was pretty persnickety about what I was allowed to see.
When I got older Peyton Place and Suddenly Last Summer were both forbidden. I was told she didn’t want me to ‘get any ideas.’
M-h, I remember seeing “Wizard of Oz” and “Peter Pan”. I don’t remember being afraid of any part of those. My sister and I boohooed when Davy Crockett died in “The Alamo” or whatever that film was called.
We weren’t discouraged from seeing anything at one particular theatre (our town had two regular theatres and a drive-in). The other theatre was verboten. My parents claimed it had rats but it may have just shown more adult films. The dreaded “rats” were enough to scare us away from further inquiry. The rodents didn’t seem to frighten my mother and father. Now that I think about it, my mother who is mortified by a mere mouse should have been terrified of the theatre. Because she attended films there, I’ll have to say that the films had adult subject matter.
@Moon-howler
The “Night on Bald Mountain” segment would be scary for kids re: Fantasia.
Why is it called that? @slow
@censored
rats? The theater had rats in it? LOL too funny. I guess that did it.
It’s all relative. Back in 1948 my 6-year old mother was taken to “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” and was apparently TRAUMATIZED. She was hiding under the chair and shaking before her parents decided to leave. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, she ADAMANTLY insisted that my brother and I not watch that movie when it came on TV.
As a joke, when I was 17 and the movie was on i asked her if it was okay to watch it now – she insisted that it was not. (I’d seen it 17 times already by then of course).
thanks for the heads up! When I took my son (age 6) to see Wallace and Gromit, the Legend of Ware Rabbit, he was terrified and that was rated G!
@Moon-howler
Moon, I have been told when I was about 3 or 4 years old my parents took me to a re-release of Fantasia and they had to leave the theater during the dinosaur fight because I was freaked out to no end…
I say “I have been told” because I honestly don’t remember that moment, and have been watching Fantasia at least once a year, every year since I got my fisrt VHS copy at 8 years old… (even wore it out eventually making Fantasia one of the first DVD’s I ever got).
Needless to say, the one movie that supposedly caused me to exit the theater is now one of my favorites.
“Pet Sematary” and it’s sequel are the scariest movies I ever saw… decomposing zombie pets with glowing white eyes seeking an oppertune time to rip up thier masters after being buried in a forbidden Native American grave site as part of a twisted reincarnation ritual…
zikes…it makes my flesh crawl just thinking about it… pair that up with all the other freaky, yet realistic side plots in the film and you can really scar a kid for life…
I think I was about 10 when I first watched that on HBO at a friends house while his parents were out (the reason why parental control was invented).
It did not help that his cat looked EXACTLY like “Church” from the movie…
Pet Cemetery is frightening for sure.
I am a real wuss about scary films. The Exorcist scared the living hell out of me. I had read the book 3 times before I saw the movie. The Stand was a terrifying book. The miniseries did not scare me.
Feller down in Alabama was working the second shift and got out of work about midnight. He had to walk home and usually took a shortcut through the local cemetery. What he did not know was that the cemetery workers had been digging a grave that day and had forgotten to put the cover of wooden boards over it before quitting work. So, this feller from the second shift is walking through the cemetery and fell right into the grave.
Well, sir, this feller tried everything he could to climb out of that hole But he was kind of short physically and the dirt on the walls of the grave was really slippery. He just couldn’t climb out. So he started to hollar for help. He hollared and hollared, but no one heard him. Finally, the feller decided that he would just have to wait until morning when the sexton came by. He sat down in a corner of the grave and fell asleep.
Some time later, a guy was kicked out of a local tavern for getting one too many up his snoot. He decided to find his way home and, upon reaching the cemetery, opted to take a shortcut. He staggered between the tombstones until he, too, fell into the same open grave. Well, sir, this feller tried to climb up the sides of the grave to get out, but he was too liquored up and the dirt on the walls of the grave was just too slippery to get a grip. So, the feller began to hollar and hollar, hoping to get someone to hear him.
Just as this feller was taking a deep breath to try another hollar, he felt a finger tap him on the shoulder and heard a voice say: “Hey, buddy, you ain’t never gonna get out of here.”
But, by golly, he sure did.