Downright Creepy kids movies

[D-Man]

I remember a BAD movie that was marketed towards kids mainly, called "Baby: Secret of The Lost Legend", made in 1985.  It had Sean Young, of all people, and William Katt as scientists who discover a family of fake-looking brontosaurs in Africa.  They rescue the baby from a typical evil scientist type, and go on a quest to rescue its mother. 

One thing this film had was some pretty edgy material for a "kids" movie...there's a scene where an African man advocates wife-beating, and some sexual material too, apparently.  All I really remember is that I was 5 when I saw it, and I was sad when they killed the father brontosaur.  My late father actually lied to me by the end, and said the father brontosaur was really all right...but I was a dumb kid anyway, hehe, and I forgive him now.  Serves me right for getting worked up over a bad movie anyway.   

[MeanStreaka4337]

The Michael Jackson movie: Moonwalker. MJ having to "Save" kids form a Drug Dealer? Sorry but anything with MJ and Kids is creepy on general principle.

[HappyGilmore]

Moonwalker rocks.

Horrible.  But it rocks.

[Allhallowsday]

What is animal farm about? Ive always heard that it was messed up and I know that there was a cartoon made out of it, but Ive never been able to find it.

Short answer: It's about animals, led by some pigs, who rise up against their human oppressors and take control of a farm. The book is an allegory for Soviet totalitarianism.

There are a few young people's books that opened my eyes and hurt to read.  Books like To Kill A Mockingbird or The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear and The Outsiders... maybe Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno... but Animal Farm... that's a very special book.  I was very young when I first read it and I cried.  It's a terrible truth revealed that is not for cry-babies.  The ending has that stunning hideous moment when betrayal is even irrelevant:
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

KYGOTC: read this book, ANIMAL FARM by GEORGE ORWELL...it is short and easy, enjoyable, engrossing, and will change your life.  This book will teach you about motivation, trust, and betrayal.  I guarantee you it will change you.  One of the greatest books ever written.  VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!    

[LilCerberus]

What is animal farm about? Ive always heard that it was messed up and I know that there was a cartoon made out of it, but Ive never been able to find it.

Short answer: It's about animals, led by some pigs, who rise up against their human oppressors and take control of a farm. The book is an allegory for Soviet totalitarianism.

There are a few young people's books that opened my eyes and hurt to read.  Books like To Kill A Mockingbird or The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear and The Outsiders... maybe Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno... but Animal Farm... that's a very special book.  I was very young when I first read it and I cried.  It's a terrible truth revealed that is not for cry-babies.  The ending has that stunning hideous moment when betrayal is even irrelevant:
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

KYGOTC: read this book, ANIMAL FARM by GEORGE ORWELL...it is short and easy, enjoyable, engrossing, and will change your life.  This book will teach you about motivation, trust, and betrayal.  I guarantee you it will change you.  One of the greatest books ever written.  VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!    

I read the book in high school, at a point in my life when I was pretty much cynical about everything.
Then our teacher showed us the movie. Everything that made the book interesting was horribly sugared over.
I found a copy in those $1 DVDs at Wal-Mart about a year ago, but I haven't watched it yet.

[zombie no.one]

Pee Wee's Big Adventure, definitely...


"There are things about me you dont wanna know...

things you couldn't know...

things you shouldn't know"

Biker #4: I say we scalp him!
Biker Gang: [shouts] Yeah!
Biker #4: Then we tattoo him!
Biker Gang: [shouts] Yeah!
Biker #4: Then we hang him!
Biker Gang: [shouts] Yeah!
Biker #4: And then we kill him!
Biker Gang: [shouts] Yeah!

And when they pulled the driver's body..

from the twisted,

burning wreck...

It looked like this...



etc, etc...

[BTM]

Pee Wee's Big Adventure, definitely...

Speaking of that show, one thing I've always wonder.. what does that character DO for a living?  I mean, even Ernest had a series of jobs...

[zombie no.one]

I don't know man, Paul Reubens the actor that played pee wee probably lives off the royalties from the 2 pee wee films plus all the series of pee wee's playhouse he did (of which there was many). merchandise would probably count for a fair bit, plus I think he does a lot of voice-over work...good question though, I couldn't really say for sure.

[KYGOTC]

Yea, I forgot how much Large Marge creeped me out when I was little. Plus the whole Evil clown scene is a little odd.

[Inyarear]

Well, people seem to be naming most of the movies I remember so far. What's interesting about a lot of the movies named is that I didn't usually see very much that was creepy about them when I first watched them as a child. When I was an adult and went back and saw them again, that's when I began to notice some of the creepier implications of the things that happen in them. In the case of Pee Wee Herman, though, the film was disturbing enough by itself even when I was a kid and the authorities hadn't busted the actor for anything yet. Even beyond those vicious bikers and the delirious driving sequence with the undead driver, I still remember Pee Wee's dream sequence about all the horrible things being done to his bike (which I think included some of those evil clowns you mentioned) as one of the most disturbing pieces I ever saw as a kid.

A more recent creepy movie I saw only as an adult, which I guess was at least directed at youth, if not really young children, was Powder. Even leaving aside the director's history as a sex offender, there were a bunch of scenes in there where I couldn't help thinking "Geez, that Donald Ripley guy looks like he's hitting on Powder!" It didn't help, either, that the whole movie was pushing an extremely heavy-handed politically correct message in my face about guns and violence (always bad) and tolerance and diversity (always good), or that Powder's combined albinism and glabrousness seemed almost fetishistic--you know, the kind of look to which Michael Jackson might aspire.

Then there's that kid flick I used in this board's captioning section not too long ago, The Great Land of Small. Sure, the fantastic Land of Small itself is kind of creepy with its rather psychedelic denizens, one of the wildest of which is the Slimo creature I use as my avatar picture on this board, but the people back in the real world in that movie are rather creepy too, especially the antagonist Flannigan. He and his trigger-happy drinking buddies look like trouble even before he gets his hands on the "goldy gold" a leprechaun gives him (don't ask) and starts using it to do some kind of unspecified magic.

In the scene I asked people to caption, showing Flannigan experimenting with his bag of goldy gold in front of a mirror in his daughter's room (again, don't ask), I kept thinking when I saw this as an adult, "What, is he snorting the stuff?" In every scene where he's using the powdery goldy gold, all he really does is stand there and laugh like a maniac while electronic stuff around him malfunctions and the tables and chairs rattle a bit. He also acts rather like a megalomaniac as he goes around ordering his drinking buddies to search the woods for--they're not sure what since he won't tell them, but he's hoping they'll find some more goldy gold for him, of course. By the time one of his henchmen casually asks another "Do you think the boss has flipped his lid?" I was saying "It's about time somebody asked that!"

In an otherwise innocent-looking kids' flick, in other words, we've got trigger-happy gunmen blazing away at anything that looks like a legitimate target (though they never actually hit anything), a madman and megalomaniac ordering these overgrown hoodlums around apparently on the strength of his intimidating personality, and a magical dust that smacks of (especially in the 1980s) cocaine, PCP, or (especially now) crystal meth, and a sequence involving a freaky magical land that looks like something out of an acid trip.

Now that is creepy.

[steve]

oh yeah, the Dark Crystal....

shivers,  muppets on crack, anyone!?

still, a masterpiece as far as I'm concerned.

[DistantJ]

That's a point, Moonwalker is actually pretty damn creepy! I'm sure I'm not the only one here who found the clay animation to be a bit unsettling too because of the judder.

[ghouck]

The Michael Jackson movie: Moonwalker. MJ having to "Save" kids form a Drug Dealer? Sorry but anything with MJ and Kids is creepy on general principle.

I'd rather leave my kid with the Drug dealer, probably safer. At least when he was younger, Now, at 15, I'd bet everything I own that my kid would tear that scawny little weasle in half in less than a minute. That guy just totally creeps me out.

[Automan2000]

That fairly recent remake attempt of The Little Rascals.

Young kids spewing sleazy pick-up lines is enough to creep anybody out. Its like they left out all the child-like charm of the original Our Gang and what was left was just downright creepy.

[CheezeFlixz]

KYGOTC: read this book, ANIMAL FARM by GEORGE ORWELL...it is short and easy, enjoyable, engrossing, and will change your life.  This book will teach you about motivation, trust, and betrayal.  I guarantee you it will change you.  One of the greatest books ever written.  VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!    

I thought this book in addition to '1984' was required High School reading. You may also want to check out BUNT which some claim Orwell got the idea of Animal Farm from. Albeit a bit difficult to find.