I. Born in Arizona/Moved to Babylonia
I have a long-standing fascination with Egypt and mummies; my mother, understanding this, brought home a book about King Tut when I was in the ninth grade. One night, I decided to read it over a dinner of a nice, hearty beef stew. All was well, until I got to the part where the author described removing the brain by inserting a poker into your nasal cavity and then just kind of…scrambling things about.
Suddenly, those big chunks of beef? Yeah, all I could think of were BRAIIIIIIINS.
I still get a little queasy just LOOKING at beef stew, honestly…
II. The Tell-Tale Heart
When I was in the third grade, my mother told me not to read this mystery novel she’d brought home with her, which of course made it an object of UNUTTERABLE FASCINATION FOR ME. One time, when I was alone in the house/comfortable that my sister wouldn’t venture outside of her teenage lair, I—GASP!—picked up the book. I read the first few pages, in which the heroine was described as being so thin that you could see her heart pulsing through her chest. The image was so disturbing and compelling that I immediately went to touch my chest to make sure the same thing wasn’t true of me. Over the next few years, this became a nervous habit with me: I’d get anxious and scrape my knuckles across my sternum to make sure my heart wasn’t flying out of my body.
And then I grew boobs, and now I really have to dig to make sure the ol’ girl is still there and not pulsating unduly.
III. The Danger of Special FX
When I was six or seven, my parents sent me upstairs because they were tasteless and wanted to watch Total Recall. I wandered down into the living room to ask for a glass of water or something of that nature, and was confronted with THREE BOOBS. THREE BOOBS ON ONE TELEVISION SCREEN.
For months afterwards, I wondered how I would manage to one day grow not one, not two, but THREE WHOLE BOOBS.
IV. DROOL!!!!
Back in the late 1980s, my parents got their first VCR and were VERY EXCITED BY IT. So excited that they’d tape just about anything. As a little kid, this often worked out to my advantage: I had one tape full of The Wizard of Oz, the live action Peter Pan, Dumbo, and Mickey’s Christmas Carol. But other times, mommy and daddy’s taping system didn’t work so well, and you wound up with my six-year-old brother innocently putting in an unmarked VHS tape thinking it was cartoons. And then me walking in on the middle of Aliens at the ripe old age of four.
To this day, I hate A.) Roaches; and B.) Drool, and I think we can blame that on my parents’ NEGLIGENCE.
V. Muppet Murder, and Other Atrocities of Modern Life
I loved Labryinth as a small child, so my mother decided to let me watchThe Dark Crystal. Mom checked out that movie for me on numerous occasions under the mistaken impression that I liked it; I didn’t. I was horrified by it. Dude. DUDE. THEY TORTURE A MUPPET TO DEATH IN IT. WHAT RIGHT-THINKING SIX-YEAR-OLD WOULDN’T BE HORRIFIED BY THAT SHIT?
But I must have watched it like, 45 times because it made my mom SO HAPPY to think that I liked it. Sigh. I should have learned how to be hateful and selfish at a MUCH earlier age, y’all.
VI. Sharing Is Caring
Your turn! What books/movies destroyed your fragile psyche?
Damn, from the title of (I), you gave me the impression you were old like me. Who ELSE could remember the chorus to the wondrous one hit by Steve Martin and the Toot Uncommons?
Anyway, The Swarm. Not the 2004 novel, the 1974 novel, about killer bees invading the United States and everyone cowering in “bee shelters.” I was SURE we were all going to die.
Also, all the lite-rock songs that played on my parents’ radio the summer I read that novel still scare the fuck out of me. The Eagles in particular bring on anxiety attacks.
Oh, God. I hate it when they take everyday animals/objects and point out HOW THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU. It’s like, thanks. I’ll never sleep again. Here’s the bill for my ambien and ten years of therapy.
Piranha Part Two: The Spawning…….
“The scuba diving instructor of the local resort Anne Kimbrough breaks in the morgue with her acquaintance Tyler Sherman and finds that the bodies have been eaten in many parts. They have one night stand and Tyler tells her that he is a biochemist that have developed a specimen of genetically modified piranha capable of flying to be the ultimate weapon. Unfortunately they had lost a cylinder full of the new breed in the water.”
’nuff said.
Dear heavenly Jesus, are you sure this wasn’t an episode of MST3K?
Aliens. <3
How could you, at age four, resist the charms of Michael Biehn? Swoon.
I was saving all my love for David Bowie’s enormous schlong.
You win.
In the book category, anything by Roald Dahl is included automatically. I mean, you CANNOT read “James and the Giant Peach” and tell me this guy didn’t have a warped sense of humor. I spent my formative years avoiding zoos because I was convinced my parents would get eaten by a rhino.
As far as movies go, there are a few that remain lodged in my subconscious:
* “Mysterious Skin” — It includes a scene where a firecracker blows up in a kid’s mouth, and the other kids responsible give him a hand job to make it better. ‘Nuff said.
* “It” — A bad, bad movie to see if you’re already afraid of clowns.
* “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer” — Voyeurism, plain and simple, is the reason this one still gives me nightmares. Putting us right in the middle of the murder/torture of an entire family is one way to ensure we’ll never, ever forget it.
M. Carter at the Movies
http://mcarteratthemovies.wordpress.com/
Yeah, Roald Dahl’s stuff is actually quite vindictive, when you think about it. I liked those books a lot as a child, but there was always this undercurrent of, “This is really kinda mean,” especially with Matilda. Can’t say I remember very much about James and the Giant Peach. It was never one of my favorites.
“Mysterious Skin” — It includes a scene where a firecracker blows up in a kid’s mouth, and the other kids responsible give him a hand job to make it better. ‘Nuff said.
…I think they just heard me scream clear across into West Virginia over that one, thanks.
Yeah! Roald Dahl’s short story “Pig” is VERY DISTURBING. The ending floats around in your head like a funky cloud.
I’ve never read that one, but I’m pretty sure my sixth grade English teacher made us read a story by him about a landlady who poisons her lodgers. And then stuffs them. I can’t remember what it’s called…
“and the other kids responsible give him a hand job to make it better.”
wouldn’t a blow job have been more appropriate considering the cause of the wound?
…ow.
I guess that’s how it feels to have one’s spirit broken…
I read the Old Testament twice — the Good News version when I was 7 or so, and the King James when I was 11. I didn’t really believe in God, deep down, and I felt guilty about that, so I tried to make up for it by reading.
The story of Abraham and Isaac didn’t instantly make me an atheist, but it was certainly a contributing factor. As was all the completely unwarranted smiting.
The religious training I received at school (long, highly unconstitutional story there — it was a public school) could never completely erase my impression that God was a petty, vindictive, childish jerk.
See, I remember going through my Children’s Bible in the third grade or so and just wondering why the hell God chose like, Jacob as his pet. Dude was a TOTAL DICK! And it just went on and on like that. One of my teachers tried to explain to me that God was just showing that ANYONE can be holy, but I didn’t buy it. Every average Joe on the street was better and kinder and nicer than that sister-marrying, brother-screwing, son-in-law-murdering jackass. Why didn’t God choose one of them instead of that total, total tool?
I’m still a Christian, but I maintain that Christianity largely by pretending that the Old Testament doesn’t exist.
Oh yeah, I forgot about Jacob. In any children’s book not based on the Bible, he would’ve been the villain.
He’d make a great patron saint for dishonest TV preachers.
Yeah, in a religious text full of improbable prophets, he was right up there. Skeezoid.
Speaking of the terrifying Mr. King, I had to read “Misery” for a college class, and the scene with her amputating his foot– well, I threw the book across the room (startling my roommate) and wouldn’t touch it for about 4 days. It just about made me physically ill. Finally I had to finished it (and watch the film–gaah) in order to finish the project. Scarred me for life.
Oh, man. See, I don’t think the book would have bothered me so much, but being forced to watch the movie? I would have raised HELL.
No one makes a Mankiller watch scary movies! NO ONE!
Feet. It has always bothered me that the movie watered that down.
Today’s movies don’t properly scare me, and I don’t want to develop a tolerance to The Shining.
Faces of Death. I was nine. If forget which one, but my grandfather let me watch this scene where four men in Africa were being put to death by firing squad. One man was shot in the head and the stark contrast of his black skin and ….
I couldn’t eat for a week. Dead. Honest.
Talk about negligence.
Yeah, gramps isn’t going to win any babysitting awards for THAT one. The hell? WHO THINKS THAT’S A GOOD IDEA?
“So the snotty kids think they’re gonna have a mentally balaced brat, eh? Well, I’ll show them!”
Bambi. I cried for a week. It’s child abuse to let a kid under ten see that evil movie.
By the way, brains don’t look anything like chunks of meat. They’re grayish and soft, mostly made of fat. Scrambled with eggs the’re quite delicious.
I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Since I’m largely vegetarian, I will probably be able to avoid the brains, yes.
And yeah, Bambi does count as child abuse.
I blame George Lucas for many things: my boot-fetish, my religion, my affinity for women with long dark hair, the fact I refer to myself as my co-author’s “big bad Corellian boyfriend.”
I blame Wild Wild West for my fascination with medieval torture devices. One episode featured a pendulum.
Night of the Living Dead. Nuff said.
Misery was pretty scarring. The foot not so much. The thumb…
The Day After was horrible. You see, I lived where they filmed it. I knew those locations. Some kids I knew were extras. Very scarring.
The Handmaid’s Tale gave me endless nightmares when I was pregnant.
…I am thinking that The Handmaid’s Tale is one of those things that they should just hide from pregnant women. Out of kindness and sensitivity and not getting a jug of milk thrown at your head.
A movie about Ghandi in World History class. (In tenth grade and everything, which you might think might be a little beyond being traumatised.) There was this horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE scene where this crowd of innocent men and women and children were trapped in a courtyard and soldiers were gunning them down as they ran frantically around trying to climb walls or jump down wells. It was absolutely horrific and I thought I was going to throw up I was so sickened by the callousness and the wholesale slaughter.
And then the best part, where after the scene ended some of my stupid asshole classmates LAUGHED. I could have strangled them.
I can actually beat that, unfortunately: we were watching the film of JFK’s assassination (the actual archival footage), and my classmates laughed and asked the teacher to play it again.
He actually did.
Wow. I don’t think anyone in even my family is that bad, but I do like the brother-sister reenactments in some Parker Posey movie. My sister found them disturbing and my liking them even more disturbing.
The Fly
I remember the scene where she’s giving birth to the Larva. I link this movie to why pregnancy terrifie me
That’d do it. I just saw The Miracle of Life once, and that was enough to put me off biological reproduction. And pubic hair, for that matter, since it was the first time I’d seen it on anyone besides myself.
I saw a scene (the one with the alien baby) from Eraserhead as a kid and oh my GOD, that stayed with me for years. Thought it might be a dream or some other weird false memory. Then I had to watch Eraserhead for a film class and there that scene was! I babbled something at my film teacher about how that scene had been haunting me all my life but I don’t think he quite got how cathartic it was.
Also, that song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away” makes me scared as shit. I can’t listen to it alone. When I first heard it I was little, and that crazy laughter is just……shudder I can hear it right now.
…someone let you listen to that song as a child?
EPIC FAIL, ADULT-UNITS.
Requiem for a Dream. They showed us some of the particularly disturbing scenes in a high school assembly on drugs and addiction. I had to leave to keep from throwing up.
Also when I was really little I remember a particular Muppet sketch that disturbed the hell out of me. They’re scary, scary puppets.
I personally liked the muppets, but you’re right: those motherfuckers can be seriously scary under the wrong circumstances.
“The Pearl”–not the Buck novel, but the Victorian porn collection, discovered at parents’ friends’ house when I was 14. Everything was going fine until the first couple actually got down to business and then all of a sudden it was a bloodbath. Because those people thought women are supposed to get injured by having sex if they are new to it. –And more of the same, not just there but in the supposedly factual books I got my hands on. That my body was going to get mutilated just to make it fit someone else’s. What with some other issues I was facing, that was the last straw. I felt like I’d been shot with a poisoned arrow thru the guts, and caught something going around and was out 3 weeks.
To this day I can’t stand to run into scenes like that in fiction–in fact won’t buy stuff that contains that–and if I run across some guide for the young that doesn’t tell them how to make sure it won’t hurt and they won’t bleed, I get on the authors’ case to set things right. If I can save someone else from either that or the fear of it, it might help me someday.
Ugh, I’m sorry. And yes: I am so tired of books that make it sound as though Your Precious First Time is going to be a massacre. Good on you for saying something to the authors about it.
HAHAH! That is exactly why McCoy watched the Dark Crystal–it made her parents happy and they thought she liked it. I truly DID love it; but then, I was the kind of kid who was both frightened and fascinated by a muppet being tortured.