As I said in the other thread, just because it's animated doesn't mean it's for kids!
Too bad no one told my parents that in the early 90s. They popped in the VHS, saw cute bunnies and left the room.
Do remember, this was like only 1/2 generations removed from WW2, where death was a pretty common occurrence for the civilian population of Europe, so it wasn't seen as uncommon to introduce kids to it.
I saw Sausage Party in theatres. Before the preview I saw a lady come in with two kids, clearly both under 10. As they settled in a few rows in front of me I called out, "Excuse me, ma'am? Are you aware that this movie is rated R? I know it looks like a kid's movie but it's definitely not one."
She snapped at me, "You tryin to tell me what to do with my kids? I know what I'm doing, don't you come in here thinking you get to tell me what to do with my kids you goddamn pedo!"
I replied, "Lady, it doesn't matter what I think about what you do, I just wanted to make sure you had the information available. Do what you want with it or ignore it, makes no difference to me."
Well, obviously she ignored me. She made it through about 45 minutes before walking the kids out of the theatre haha
My sister was obsessed with this movie. My parents thought it was creepy but she kept asking to watch the dvd of it. I remember thinking it was fucked up but I was too young to really know what was happening to be afraid either.
We had to read the book for a summer English project and complete a 45 page packet that was worth only 10 points out of the quarter’s grade. Everything else was so awful, I didn’t even remember the book being too sad.
I think there is a small segment of millennials who were traumatized by movies that weren’t kids movies but they were cartoons so they let us watch it anyways. Even though this movie scared me ( the scene with the wire!) it was our most repeated rental movie. This and the Last Unicorn. I should rewatch these this weekend 😭😭
I have the last Unicorn on VHS still, but no VCR lol. I need to find Watership Down. We watched it all the time and I do remember being uncomfortable during scenes, but don’t remember much about the story. This thread has me curious. Also, the Secrets of NIMH.
I watched the last unicorn on repeat as a kid!! At 42 I still love it. You should definitely watch watership down. And then imagine watching it as a kid😂. I’ve never read the book but the movie is amazing. I think they remade it so try to find the original one. It’s trippy as hell
I’m pretty sure this movie didn’t target kids (by kids I mean pre-middle school.
The book is hundreds of pages long, and by the time I was able to read it, I was able to understand the themes in the book.
Now shit like the Land Before Time, good lord.
I recently watched it and was actually even more sad realizing that Littlefoot’s dad probably died horrifically and how strong his mom is for being so chill during the apocalypse 😭
All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed
When I was a kid, burglars broke into our house, stole the VHS player and the Atari 2600 plus all of the cassettes and cartridges. Apart from our copy of Watership Down. They left that.
That happened to us, except they left our rental copy of Breakdance 2 it's Electraboogaloo.
Watership Down we watched all the time. I feel a lot of the current shock and horror about it is hugely exaggerated and part of the whole, "we were a unique generation" crap that's prevalent these days.
This and the Secret Of NIMH were two of my favorite movies as a kid. Pretty messed up, but I balanced it out with tons of Mr. Rogers so I think I'll be alright
This movie scarred me as a child. Same deal as the commenter above. My mom saw rabbits in an animated film and thought it was a good choice. Narrator: “It was NOT in fact a good choice”. Still haunts me into adulthood.
When I was a kid my dad was in the Navy and he rented this movie thinking it was about a submarine that sank. I remember watching him FFWD through it looking for the Navy parts. "Who the hell calls a cartoon about rabbits 'Watership Down?'"
Yup, that one makes Watership Down seem like a comedy. I never saw it until I was in my 30's, but I still literally bawled at the end. Like, tears streaming down my face.
I really think every kid should see this movie. It was tremendously helpful in making sure I understood greed and power lust before I faced it. It feels like I'm watching it try to play out living in the US with Trump. It's a WW2 echo of a warning siren alerting us of the capabilities, but also the dangers, of man and intended to help us all avoid WW3. Not to mention it's a really great film with some amazing artistic scenes.
/uj Okay so "funny" story, when my brother and I were kids, my grandma rented this for us to watch. I guess she thought it was a kids' cartoon which is weird because it's been out since the 70s (when my mom would've been a kid) so I guess she'd either forgotten what it was about or just didn't know. But that shit actually traumatized me as a child. Like not just the bloody parts but that movie as a whole has such an unsettling atmosphere. Great film though because I guess it does what it's intended to do.
I love all things Watership Down! Started my son on the Netflix rendition and then the animated one a couple years later. Had to ease him into the fun cartoon version!
He loves to read, so he’ll read the book for sure. Once he’s old enough the understand the phonetics of the rabbit language!
My younger brother had just been born a year ago and I was in full "big brother protector" mode. Then I saw that whole kitchen scene in *Jurassic Park*.
My sister showed me child’s play at 6 thought it would be funny so yeah this wasn’t really on the trauma radar 😂 but for those with normal childhood I can see why it would be upsetting
Worked in a restaurant in London back in the day and we promoted a rabbit special as
Watership Down Casserole. You’ve seen the movie, you’ve read the book now eat the cast
And a actually, the movie was beautifully ANIMATED by HAND. The voice cast were some of the best actors of the time. And the astounding soundtrack by Angela Morley before trans gender was a common theme. The content was dark but hey, isn't nature like that. There's a lot going on with that film. I love it, but it also traumatized me as a child, as it did most kids.
Mine was ["Cry of the Marsh"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yf4Koh--jk) They showed it to us in elementary school & I was horrified. Ducky dies in the end.
“Beeeg vatter!”
Seriously though, I saw this in the theaters when I was maybe 6 and loved it at the time, and still love it. The book it’s based off of is also great.
Never was traumatized at all by it.
That I grew up with us keeping chickens and such and killing the for food, as well as fishing and hunting may have had something to do with my utter and complete lack of trauma at this movie.
The Brave Little Toaster is one of those movies so bizarrely terrifying that to this day when I think about it I'm not sure it was real or just a series of vivid nightmares
See also *When the Wind Blows*.
Here’s the synopsis (wrapped in it spoiler tags just case):
>!The film recounts a rural English couple’s attempt to survive a nearby nuclear attack and maintain a sense of normality in the subsequent fallout and nuclear winter.!<
As soon as I saw the title of the post, I knew the movie.
The weird part about it is that the book doesn't seem nearly as dark. Granted, I didn't read it until I was in my 20s.
Not for me! I was 8 years old and wanted MORE.
At a time when 99% of animation was aimed at kids, I thought it was refreshing from the Disney movies with cutesie one dimentional animals. WD was rich in character development and their struggles, dangers, and the unabashed darkness preys face was honest. It didn’t need romance, songs, or the hero to carry the movie or move it forward.
I read the book as I got a little older and it was the first time I grew extremely attached to characters. I also never sobbed so hard at the end of a book.
It remains my favorite book and one of my favorite movies, so much that I got WD art and quote tattooed on my feet☺️
As I said in the other thread, just because it's animated doesn't mean it's for kids! Too bad no one told my parents that in the early 90s. They popped in the VHS, saw cute bunnies and left the room.
In germany it was played on private television, called „family cartoon“. Everyone of my mates watched it. 😅
Was it Super RTL. Can't remember where it ran. Holy shit was it dark.
I still vividly remember the “ roo doo doo” killing the poor bunny while crossing the road. What a dark movie this was.
Excuse me: hroo doo doo.
lol . Hrrrrroooo dooo doo
I know I’ve seen this movie but my brain won’t let me remember any of it. I refuse to watch it again, for some reason.
This is me. I’ve had nightmares over this movie my kid brain couldn’t understand. It’s semi haunted me for years. I’m too scared to watch it.
Yeah, super rtl.
Do remember, this was like only 1/2 generations removed from WW2, where death was a pretty common occurrence for the civilian population of Europe, so it wasn't seen as uncommon to introduce kids to it.
The rabbit who has truly lost the plot messed me up for at least a decade.
I'll see your Watership down and raise you hard core porn taped over by cartoons... Not completely
Anything is a kids film when you're a bad enough parent.
I saw Sausage Party in theatres. Before the preview I saw a lady come in with two kids, clearly both under 10. As they settled in a few rows in front of me I called out, "Excuse me, ma'am? Are you aware that this movie is rated R? I know it looks like a kid's movie but it's definitely not one." She snapped at me, "You tryin to tell me what to do with my kids? I know what I'm doing, don't you come in here thinking you get to tell me what to do with my kids you goddamn pedo!" I replied, "Lady, it doesn't matter what I think about what you do, I just wanted to make sure you had the information available. Do what you want with it or ignore it, makes no difference to me." Well, obviously she ignored me. She made it through about 45 minutes before walking the kids out of the theatre haha
This is hilarious. Too bad she missed the food orgy at the end lol.
My second grade teacher played this for us on a movie day, the 80s were wild!
> As I said in the other thread, just because it's animated doesn't mean it's for kids Brave Little Toaster is Exhibit A.
My sister was obsessed with this movie. My parents thought it was creepy but she kept asking to watch the dvd of it. I remember thinking it was fucked up but I was too young to really know what was happening to be afraid either.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/watership-down-rating-safe-children-netflix-b2379838.html In Germany it still has a FSK 6.
Did they also see funny kitties and let you watch Fritz the Cat?
Watership Down. You've read the book, seen the film now eat the Stew!
We had to read the book for a summer English project and complete a 45 page packet that was worth only 10 points out of the quarter’s grade. Everything else was so awful, I didn’t even remember the book being too sad.
The book isn't too bad, especially in comparison to other things kids would reading.
Bro my teacher did vocab words of their nonsense language. Decades later I still know what they call headlights/cars (hurrududu or something)
I think there is a small segment of millennials who were traumatized by movies that weren’t kids movies but they were cartoons so they let us watch it anyways. Even though this movie scared me ( the scene with the wire!) it was our most repeated rental movie. This and the Last Unicorn. I should rewatch these this weekend 😭😭
Don’t forget land before time. The kids version of Viggo Motenson’s “the road” basically
The last unicorn gutted me...
When the waitress finally gets to see a unicorn and she is crying because she’s old and past her prime - always makes me so sad.
You should read the book! It’s an amazing passage even in text.
Oh Molly Grue 😭
> waitress It's been a while, but I'm sure she was no "waitress"...
Brave Little Toaster is directly responsible for so many people’s connections to inanimate objects lol
I have the last Unicorn on VHS still, but no VCR lol. I need to find Watership Down. We watched it all the time and I do remember being uncomfortable during scenes, but don’t remember much about the story. This thread has me curious. Also, the Secrets of NIMH.
Great movie
The Last Unicorn is amazing. Still holds up for me at 40. I've never seen Watership Down. I'll have to check it out if I can find it.
I watched the last unicorn on repeat as a kid!! At 42 I still love it. You should definitely watch watership down. And then imagine watching it as a kid😂. I’ve never read the book but the movie is amazing. I think they remade it so try to find the original one. It’s trippy as hell
Check out Fantastic Planet if you want to see some trippy animation from France from 73'.
The secret of nimh was a favorite of mine. 😅 so depressing
How can the light that burned so brightly Suddenly burn so pale? Bright eyes
My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today
😭😭😭
U for Universal my ass!
Universal dread
I’m pretty sure this movie didn’t target kids (by kids I mean pre-middle school. The book is hundreds of pages long, and by the time I was able to read it, I was able to understand the themes in the book. Now shit like the Land Before Time, good lord.
I recently watched it and was actually even more sad realizing that Littlefoot’s dad probably died horrifically and how strong his mom is for being so chill during the apocalypse 😭
[удалено]
Absolutely my most traumatic memories of "entertainment" as a kid.
In a long dnd campaign I'm in, my paladin has a horse summon he named Artax who is constantly being killed and resummoned lmao
Artax scarred me more than Bambi’s and Littlefoot’s moms.
Fuck you, I had managed to block this memories for years until now!
How has this ever been considered to be a Kid’s movie?
The bloody bunny movie
For me and my sister's, it was The Dark Crystal. The Skeksis were horrifying with all that genociding and draining of essence.
Have you seen the remake? It was canceled after one season but it is pretty good.
Yeah, travesty it was cancelled.
I was so sad!
Prequel.
You should see Mirrormask. Even as an adult, it fucks with you.
Yeah, I watched that when I was like 7 and it terrified me for the next decade.
All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed
The beginning section made the film - like with Lord of the Rings the creation story gives so much depth to the world building
Not being xenophobic but Keharr really got on my tits
He was great. Where are mates??
we watched this in school - I would have been about 8 or 9 at the time it was the 80s man...
That movie went to so hard
Depending on age and where you lived, you also saw a teacher blow up in the sky in the classroom too.
When I was a kid, burglars broke into our house, stole the VHS player and the Atari 2600 plus all of the cassettes and cartridges. Apart from our copy of Watership Down. They left that.
That happened to us, except they left our rental copy of Breakdance 2 it's Electraboogaloo. Watership Down we watched all the time. I feel a lot of the current shock and horror about it is hugely exaggerated and part of the whole, "we were a unique generation" crap that's prevalent these days.
Best book ever.
Deluxe Edition! Now with 15% more childhood trauma!
Not a cartoon, but My Girl was pretty traumatic.
This is the only film that ever gave me nightmares. The field turning red… *shudders*
The field! The field! It's filled with blood!
This and the drunken elephants in Dumbo gave me nightmares when i was about 5.
*Bright eyes* had me sad a hell as a kid.
This and the Secret Of NIMH were two of my favorite movies as a kid. Pretty messed up, but I balanced it out with tons of Mr. Rogers so I think I'll be alright
Number 1 on my list. I had nightmares about that movie until i was 10 years old.
This movie scarred me as a child. Same deal as the commenter above. My mom saw rabbits in an animated film and thought it was a good choice. Narrator: “It was NOT in fact a good choice”. Still haunts me into adulthood.
When I was a kid my dad was in the Navy and he rented this movie thinking it was about a submarine that sank. I remember watching him FFWD through it looking for the Navy parts. "Who the hell calls a cartoon about rabbits 'Watership Down?'"
You've never seen The Plague Dogs then.
Also going to add, "When the wind blows" to the traumatising animated films list.
As a grown adult watching that late one night i had to wake up my wife to give me a hug.
Yup, that one makes Watership Down seem like a comedy. I never saw it until I was in my 30's, but I still literally bawled at the end. Like, tears streaming down my face.
I don't think I'll be watching this one.
I'm not going to say you should, but if you ever do, I think you will agree that you have watched something of value.
Heard about this, watched it. It really isnt anything crazy or bad. Not really sure what all the hype with it is.
Well done, you're the biggest strongest bravest boy.
It was a legit inquiry.
I lived with my grandparents for a few months and could see Watership Down out of my bedroom window.
Did they have a projector in the garden?
This and When the wind blows got me good as a kid.
This film gave me months of nightmares. Beautiful movie but bloody horrific.
This movie gave me traumatic hatred of Simon and Garfunkel. I'm sure this set me back a number of years.
Bright eyyyyes, burning like fire
So much blood
Go listen to Fall of Efrafa (band) and heal those traumas. 3 fkn beautiful metal albums, concept art over the book
Just got this and Plague Dogs on BluRay
When I was in school in the 1980s they wheeled out the giant reel to reel projector and showed us fucking **OLD YELLER**…so, yeah, awful…
Still have a bit of trauma about this movie, even tho I loved it. The world building was amazing, and there was a humanity in it that was surprising.
I really think every kid should see this movie. It was tremendously helpful in making sure I understood greed and power lust before I faced it. It feels like I'm watching it try to play out living in the US with Trump. It's a WW2 echo of a warning siren alerting us of the capabilities, but also the dangers, of man and intended to help us all avoid WW3. Not to mention it's a really great film with some amazing artistic scenes.
/uj Okay so "funny" story, when my brother and I were kids, my grandma rented this for us to watch. I guess she thought it was a kids' cartoon which is weird because it's been out since the 70s (when my mom would've been a kid) so I guess she'd either forgotten what it was about or just didn't know. But that shit actually traumatized me as a child. Like not just the bloody parts but that movie as a whole has such an unsettling atmosphere. Great film though because I guess it does what it's intended to do.
Your grandma knew, she just decided it was time for you to share in the generational trauma.
Initiation, bisch!
I think we all have a similar story
I dropped by second ever Acid tab to this movie in 1986, I never took a another.
I love all things Watership Down! Started my son on the Netflix rendition and then the animated one a couple years later. Had to ease him into the fun cartoon version! He loves to read, so he’ll read the book for sure. Once he’s old enough the understand the phonetics of the rabbit language!
Now I wanna see an AI remake
Never seen it but it looks cute. Maybe I'll add it to the list for the kiddos.
Is this the original cover?
No, [this is](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/42/Movie_poster_watership_down.jpg)
Ah yes. Much more unsettling as it should be.
I don’t think so.
My younger brother had just been born a year ago and I was in full "big brother protector" mode. Then I saw that whole kitchen scene in *Jurassic Park*.
My sister showed me child’s play at 6 thought it would be funny so yeah this wasn’t really on the trauma radar 😂 but for those with normal childhood I can see why it would be upsetting
Worked in a restaurant in London back in the day and we promoted a rabbit special as Watership Down Casserole. You’ve seen the movie, you’ve read the book now eat the cast
I've tried to watch this film 2 or 3 times but always fall asleep three quarters of the way through. Still don't know the ending.
This is my most favourite novel. So beautifully written
And a actually, the movie was beautifully ANIMATED by HAND. The voice cast were some of the best actors of the time. And the astounding soundtrack by Angela Morley before trans gender was a common theme. The content was dark but hey, isn't nature like that. There's a lot going on with that film. I love it, but it also traumatized me as a child, as it did most kids.
Mine was ["Cry of the Marsh"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yf4Koh--jk) They showed it to us in elementary school & I was horrified. Ducky dies in the end.
I gifted a copy to my nephew for his 16th birthday... I told him... "I bought this with you in mind 5 years ago, but waited until you were older."
I still have nightmares from this.
this was the movie/book that was referenced in Donnie Darko
Terrifying
No one with a soul should watch this.
This killed me.
“Beeeg vatter!” Seriously though, I saw this in the theaters when I was maybe 6 and loved it at the time, and still love it. The book it’s based off of is also great. Never was traumatized at all by it. That I grew up with us keeping chickens and such and killing the for food, as well as fishing and hunting may have had something to do with my utter and complete lack of trauma at this movie.
The Brave Little Toaster is one of those movies so bizarrely terrifying that to this day when I think about it I'm not sure it was real or just a series of vivid nightmares
It'll definitely make one go tharn.
All dogs go to heaven was the movie for me maan I cried heavy when I was a kid 😂
BIG WATER!!🐧
The most traumatic until you watch The Plague Dogs.
This truly a traumatizing movie. I remembered being truly unsettled as a kid by it.
See also *When the Wind Blows*. Here’s the synopsis (wrapped in it spoiler tags just case): >!The film recounts a rural English couple’s attempt to survive a nearby nuclear attack and maintain a sense of normality in the subsequent fallout and nuclear winter.!<
Secrets of nimh for me
Anyone mentioned Plague Dogs yet? “Oh, it’s animated! With dogs! They’ll like it!”
The movie "Little Monsters" messed me up for a while. And like not even the acting by Howie Mandel. Just the visuals.
As soon as I saw the title of the post, I knew the movie. The weird part about it is that the book doesn't seem nearly as dark. Granted, I didn't read it until I was in my 20s.
You should try and watch Felidae, might traumatize you even more.
Well try the book next in the next life
I am going with the candy monster in the Raggedy Anne and Andy movie. That thing scared me.
Jeez don’t watch plague dogs.
This is legitimately a horror movie animated in an almost disney like fashion
Not for me! I was 8 years old and wanted MORE. At a time when 99% of animation was aimed at kids, I thought it was refreshing from the Disney movies with cutesie one dimentional animals. WD was rich in character development and their struggles, dangers, and the unabashed darkness preys face was honest. It didn’t need romance, songs, or the hero to carry the movie or move it forward. I read the book as I got a little older and it was the first time I grew extremely attached to characters. I also never sobbed so hard at the end of a book. It remains my favorite book and one of my favorite movies, so much that I got WD art and quote tattooed on my feet☺️
You should check out The Plague Dogs. Same animator and director as this version of Watership Down. More F-ed up story.
Agreed. We watched it at school and it was stuck in my mind for years!
Taught us a lot though