It was some terrifying stuff. The vision Fiver has. Holy crap. Even the intro with Frith and the animals…it was dark but epic. Young me was scared shitless, but older me kind of liked it (And was also scared shitless).

I was about to snark that parents that give a fuck can refer to a movie’s age rating but then I learnt that, until recently, it was classified in the UK as U (universal, suitable for all) because “Animation removes the realistic gory horror in the occasional scenes of violence and bloodshed”. That’s certainly a view. Good thing to know that I just have to animate all of the fucked-up shit in my head and that makes it okay to sell to children. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watership_Down_(film))

Edit: 6 and up in Germany. Cool. Cool cool cool.

I don’t know how but somehow I managed to avoid this one as a kid. I rented tons of videos and this one was square in the middle of them, but something about it made me avoid it like the plague. And this was long before internet, nor did any of my peers see it and tell me about it. Knowing how frail my mind was at that age, that was undoubtedly a good thing.

Pairs well with a brave little appliance

This movie about fireflies also looks cute, and it’s made by Studio Ghibli!

‘The Big Friendly Giant’ yeah fuck this shit. More like Giants eating kids while they sleep because they can smell their flesh.

• Watership down
• Grave of the fireflies
• The big fucking giant

Trifecta of nightmares

Kids going to watch the bunny movie and instead learning what happens when you accidentally put male and female hamsters in the same cage.

For a slice of US Gen X we can remember our parents having us all gather to watch this when it aired on TV. I was at a dinner party with like 20 kids total all under 13 years old. When the scene we all remember from this movie happened it was pure chaos for like 30 minutes. I remember my best friend’s dad, who was my priest, saying “Gee whiz! Why in the name of all that is holy would they put a bunny cartoon on prime time and kill the bunny without warning everyone!” Never heard a man say “Gee Whiz” with that much vitriol.

My mum did this. I made it to the first death (hawk) and ran crying into the kitchen where she was. I was 4.

Then my first husband did this! He got me the DVD and it is still unwatched in the plastic wrap.

My current husband downloaded plague dogs because it’s criterion and that rests unwatched on the hard drive because I cannot even watch anything by this director.

However, I did read the book Watership Down in college, and wasn’t traumatized. I also collect copies of the book Private Life of the Rabbit which Richard Adams used as a source book

I’m fuckin traumatized from this damn movie

Still to this day this is one of my favorite books. I was given it as a kid because I had a pet rabbit. Bigwig is badass.

Reminds me of something from the opposite end of the lifespan. When I was young, they didn’t clear the theater after a movie, and they sometimes had “double features” where they’d alternate between two movies and you could watch both for one ticket price. My dad’s aunt lived with us (she was probably in her 70s at this point), and one day a couple of her friends picked her up to go watch “a double features of animal movies” at the local theater. They dropped her off some hours later and her face was grey - she said it was horrible, and didn’t want to talk about it.

It turned out the double features was Day of the Animals and Night of the Grizzly, basically both horror movies. They didn’t think they were allowed to leave during the movie, so they stayed through both.

How has no one in the comments mentioned The Secret of NIMH yet?

Even worse, The Brave Frog (showa-era kids anime was seriously fucked up).