How young is too young?

[ChunkyMunkey]

I was three when I started watching horror. I definitely came out a little bit stranger than most. I do wonder where that whole nature vs. nurture thing comes through.

Chuckie was the first monster I ever laid eyes on in a serious, spooky not goofy way. And he gave me nightmares because I treated all my dolls so horrible. I would dream that he was leading a rebellion against me. I packed up my dolls so fast after that first dream.

Chuckie taught me being violent to inanimate objects is just wrong. Only you can stop electrical appliance fires caused by children plugging barbie parts into toasters

[diamondwaspvenom]

I really hate to sound like a broken record when it comes to topics like this, but I believe that the right age to start watch horror films should be around thirteen or fourteen years.

However, age isn't always the prime factor to be concerned with when trying to introduce someone to horror. The main aspect of any human being to take into account is their emotional and mental condition. Do they know the difference between reality and fantasy? Is the person easily disturbed by gore or other forms of violence? Can the person be influenced negatively by violent entertainment?

I believe that horror movies, although I love 'em to death, should never be introduced to someone at an early age (i.e. anywhere between birth and eleven years of age.). Now, if the minor knows the difference between right and wrong, reality and fantasy, then perhaps one could take a chance, although I recommend with caution with what movie is being shown.

[Couchtr26]

Horror, I am unsure.  I know I watched it young at least before age 5 but I can't pinpoint a time.  I also saw quite a bit of other questionable movies for younger people.  Commando, Conan: The Barbarian, and First Blood being among them.  I never really thought about it. 

[Doggett]

I think it depends on the person.

Not everyone likes horror.
Its best just to drip feed horror to the little ones, Poltergiest is a good one to test kids on becuase it can be scary and gruesome but its also has that whole family thing which gives it a softer edge than most horror.

Halloween isn't gruesome but very scary and isn't that graphic and shouldn't leave any too horrific images for the little ones.

Anyway, those were the ones my mum watched with me as a child.

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

Yeah my first memory of seeing a REAL horror movie was NOTLD that my mom showed me on Halloween one afternoon when I came home from school, I was in grade four, so I was like 8 or 9. I am not the most well adjusted person but it's not because of horror movies.

I started out watching the B movies on WNEW 5's Creature Features and WPIX 11's Chiller Theatre when I was 5 back in 1969, and grew up watching TV horror films in the early 70's, my first real TV horror experience being Don't be AFraid Of The Dark.

I was 8 at the time.  For harder films, Night Of The Living Dead did it for me too. I was around 10 at the time. 

I grew up in the late 70's and early 80's seeing such things as Maniac and the mainline R-rated horror films at large, so I was around 14 or 15 when I first started to treat the genre seriously. 

So, I would say that's a good age, because while you're not really grown up,  you're also not a little kid either.. 

And, at that age you should have a good working of reality (provided you were raised right with the proper support) and the idea that the films aren't real is properly enforced.  It's a good start. 

[Nightowl]

I saw Nightmare On Elm Street 3 at a young age(as I mentioned in the Movies That Scared You thread) and child's play, I wouldnt say it damaged me for life it did make me a horror addict :)

[66Crush]

The first horror flicks I saw were the old black and white ones that ran every weekend when I was a kid. I was like 8 when I watched "Jaws" on ABC. I thought it was a big deal at the time. The first real gory movie I ever saw was the original "Friday the 13th" on VHS when I was 13. Then I started to get hooked. 

[RCMerchant]

I started VERY early. But the films I was watching-Creature Feature type stuff-were a far cry from the ultra gore that goes on nowadays. My kids watched FRANKENSTEIN,KING KONG-that sort of thing-at an early age. I would rather them watch an old B+W horror film that something like RAMBO where people are being shot,stabbed,and blown up every 5 seconds. As far as the real scary struff-I let them watch NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD on Halloween when Jed was about 8 and Eddie was 7. I explained to them it was just a movie...and the mechanics of the f/x. It scared them-(well-it is a horror film),but that kinda thing didn't scare them as much as a what was in the woods in back of the house,or the creepy old desereted house down the road. A kids imagination is much scarier than rubber monsters or screen zombies. I had all sorts of irrational fears as a kid-not a single one was derived from watching horror films.Monsters were my freinds!

[Flick James]

Looking at all the input so far, and providing my own input, I think it's safe to say there are absolutely NO easy answers to this one. Overall I say let the little ones hold on to their innocence and naivete for a bit, but then what do they get exposed to that really removes that? I mean, is it better to see the kind of adult violence that regularly gets blasted on t.v., or is it better for them to see the kind of violence one sees in an old Warner Bros. cartoon. I have a 3-year-old and we recently watched some old Bugs Bunny movies, and while I grew up watching them completely unedited like they are now with certain violent acts removed, as a parent I can see the potential for a child of such a tender age reenacting what they see having no idea that hitting his younger brother with a baseball bat would cause permanent damage.

Again, there are no simple answers. There are all kinds of factors to consider, including but not limited to maturity, nature/nurture, types of violence, and parental input. After careful consideration I've come to the conclusion that nature and nurture are both unpredictable and uncertain, and both exist at the same time. My 3-year-old son is spelling 6-letter words with ease, and starting to write letters and numbers, and a 1st-grade teacher recently remarked that she was surprised what he was able to spell. Other parents have asked us what we do, assuming we must spend a lot of time with him for that to be so advanced. The fact is, we don't. We spend a little time with him, but mostly because he requests it and has always been eager to deal with letters and numbers and shapes. I would like to say we influenced this strength, but we really didn't. The same thing exists for behavior. He is also a very active child and prone to temper tantrums, leading us to suspect there may be some ADHD in there. Again, we don't have any control over that, there are genetics at work, but we must do our best so that his strengths are a benefit to him and any limitations he may have have minimal impact on him negatively. What else can we do? My youngest boy, on the other hand, is almost a polar opposite and is so easy going about everything and just wants to socialize. Again, that is his nature and we had nothing to do with that. Through those experiences I've arrived and the tenuous conclusion that nature wins over nurture, but that this DOES NOT make the nurture side unimportant. Parent still have to be parents. We're still responsible for them.

[JaseSF]

As a little kid, I was terrified when I watched "Salem's Lot" and the late 70s Dracula at around age 6-7 and for years was frightened of vampires creeping into my bedroom at night to bite my neck and suck my blood?! After that, my parents wouldn't let me watch any more horror films (I had begged to stay up and watch those) and I didn't after that until I was in my late teens although I did see films like Poltergeist and Predator at a friends and both also terrified me. I loved Sci-fi, horror and fantasy cartoon and TV shows though so naturally when I got older and actually took a chance on watching them again, they had no ill effect on me at all, not even the most gory of gory films.

[Archivist]

When I was about six or seven, I was terrified of vampire movies, but loved them when I got older.

My mother tells me that when I was very young, maybe about that same age or younger, I got a lot more violent when watching Starsky and Hutch.  They stopped me watching it and I settled down again.

I refused to watch 15+ movies for ages, but I still saw the violent and gory Revenge of the Ninja when I was 12 or 13, and From Beyond at 14.  (I loved them!)  I didn't see the uncut version of Robocop until I was 15 or 16, but even then the arm-blowing-off scene shocked me a bit.

I once told a friend about how my Dad used to show me Bruce Lee and Shaw Brothers movies when I was a kid, maybe about 8-12.  He would always tell me that it was 'just a movie' and draw my attention to how well the actors moved.  This unfortunately inspired my friend to show his four-year old son Blade with Wesley Snipes.  Not exactly the same situation!  His son became quite violent and tried to punch everyone!

[The Gravekeeper]

It all depends on the kid. Thrusting something like Hellraiser on a toddler is NEVER a good idea, but a darker children's movie like, say, "Secret of NIHM" is usually okay and can be used as a stepping stone to get them into horror and overall dark films. Gradually moving up the scale at a pace the child sets seems to be the best way to go about it. Of course, it's important to make sure that the kid understands that what they see characters doing in horror movies is just fantasy.

Myself? I watched horror intended for children when I was growing up. Stuff like "Goosebumps" and "Are You Afraid of the Dark" gradually gave way to my current taste in movies. I do think that by and large those shows are appropriate for kids as young as 5 (give or take depending on the kid in question) since the goriest it got was a little blood (which most kids see anyway, what with simple childhood accidents that get bragged about on the schoolyard once they stop hurting) and main characters rarely dying. Yes, there were some bad things that happened to characters, but they usually happened to characters with, well, bad karma. That last bit really tends to appeal to kids, since they like to see bad people get punished.

[oleg]

There are going to watch it anyway, no matter what you say. I watch my first horror movies in the 5th grade at sleep overs, or at my friends house after school, I think most of them are harmless by that age, a lot that kids would pick on their own of it is rather cartoon violence anyway, they would get from comics, or tv, or whatever.... But with kids access to the internet its even more hopeless, to control what they would see than it was in the 80s.

There were exceptions, I saw, cannibal ferox, faces of death, and most disturbing, a movie i dont remember about two twin dentists who had sexual relations (with a dental fetish streak) with their patients, one of who liked to have sex with her german shepherd. I havent seen it since, but i was too young to see that film, in the 5th or 6th grade. That scarred me.

 

[theedinburghbteam]

The earliest I watched properly violent films was when I was about 11 or 12, when I'd go round to my mates house and we'd steal his dads VHS copies of Predator, Universal Soldier, Commando, all those numbers. Those were pretty tame by todays standards though.

I was always scared of horror films when I was a kid, and never got into them as an early teen, till I was about 15 when I got my mum to buy me the Evil Dead Trilogy on DVD, and that blew me away.

I work in a film/cd retailer, and the number of kids (like 7 or 8 year old) we get coming up trying to buy Childs Play films (some parents seem to think they are kids movies) and various other violent horrors is crazy. Obviously its illegal to sell them, but even then the kids go on about how their mum lets them watch it.
I think ratings are there for a reason, and if the kid wants to see them before then, they have to use their own initiative to see them. My mum would never let me watch an 18 when I was younger, but I'd find ways of setting up the VCR or going round a mates house to watch them. If the kid ain't willing to do that then they don't want to see the film bad enough.

[Skull]

I'm not sure for myself. My mother told me a story when I was 2 she was impressed that I watching "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and actually understood that the creature was chasing the girl in the water.

I do remember seeing "Dont be Afraid of the Dark" as a kid, not sure how old. In second grade I slept over at a kid's house and watched "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant" though I believe my mom took me to show (with young sister) to see "Beyond the Door 1 & 2 [or such movie] and a head was bouncing off the stairs and it scared the crap out of both of us. I believe I was 6 or 7 but not actually sure (nor I'm actually sure of my mother's thinking).

I've Jaws, the Fog, Deliverance, Futureworld, Westworld, The Other, Escape from New York (show), Alien and the Thing (show) before I was 12 (not to mention almost every classic horror/hammer horror/Godzilla films shown on TV)... At 13 my father took me to see "Return of the Alien" since he thought it was "Return of the Jedi" and seen Halloween 3 at a friends house (13-14) at 15 I was renting horror films (Reanimator, Dawn of the Dead, etc.)

I've seen TCM for the first time at 16 (?) based on word of mouth and I wasnt impessed (It took 3 times to like the movie) I'm still not that impressed by the film. (Athough I've seen Eaten Alive for the first time a few years ago and was impressed)

Currently... our Little One has seen Harry Potter 1, 2 and 3... Labyrinth, Young Frankenstein, Sleeping Beauty (which we believe may have given her a nightmare)... She is almost 2 1/2, although she has seen Harry Potter 1 and 2 before her 2nd birthday...