there is an old saying, where hollywood seems to believe that kids can handle anything, as long as they give it a happy ending, and some kind of moral at the end.

note; this thread is sure to have a lot of spoilers from random things, so be sure to use spoiler tags.

But, that anything, can be pretty dark, and twisted sometimes. Like, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which while, not really meant for a kids, it was definitely marketed as a kid’s film. But for a movie that was marketed towards kids, (even if it was pg 13.) it sure had it’s share of dark elements. like, Samuel L Jackson,

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and his minions, tearing hunting down children with super powers, to kill them, by tearing out their eyeballs, and eating them.

this is something that actually happens a few times within the film.

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or the necromancer kid, and his army of skeletons, or creating living dolls out of dead babies, then having them fight to the death, for his own amusment, or the dead child he uses as a puppet.

or, the

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boat filled with dead bodies.

then there is the BFG; (speaking of the 89 animated movie, not the spielberg version. as this isn’t in the newer version.)

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with the giants eating an entire home filled with kids. and leaving their bones in a pile. which pretty much implies that not only were they eaten alive, but they were also stripped of their flesh as well.

for kids!

then there is; Once Upon a Time; which is an animated film, from the 70s, which opens with a character being introduced as; “this is Mr. Bottle, he loves his Daughter, he loves his dog,

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but, most of all, he loves his bottle.” then he goes and hides behind a sheet.

then there is Charlotte’s Web; either version. the plot of this movie is

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a father having a 10 year old girl raising a pig as if it was her own baby, then selling said pig to his brother, who then plans to feed that pig back to her, at christmas.

and the one with Dakota Fanning, where i am pretty sure her father is a serial killer, and made up for his lack of christmas ham, by eating her.

there is the Nutcracker with Elle Fanning, with nazi rats, and the holocaust.

There is the Madeline animated movie; the one where she is lost in Paris, where she is

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sold into slavery by her uncle.

or, do not even need to go that far into madeline, to realize there are some pretty messed up things going on. like the episode where she falls into the river off the bridge, and the dog saves her, the way the animation is animated,

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it actually looks like Miss Clavel, PUSHED her off the ledge! and then the police are called in, and everybody basically just watches as they barely attempt to rescue her, as she sinks beneath the water. it looks like they want to save her, but they do not wish to get wet in the process. so, they don’t. the DOG has to do it all.

then there is that Rainbow Brite movie, where the plot is an princess wants to steal the source of light for the entire universe, all for herself, by wrapping a net around it, ensuring that the entire universe freezes to death, including herself. and then

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Rainbow Brite kills her, as said princess tries to destroy all the light in the universe by ramming her spaceship into it. KILLS her in a big giant rainbow beam of death.

Superman 3;

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superman leaves all the villains to die in a pile of rubble. not to mention the scene where he gets drunk. or the scene where he strangles himself.

Return to Oz; the entire film. but, especially those wheelers.

Willie Wonka and the Chocolate factory, the whole movie pretty much implies that the umpa lumpas are slaves. That tunnel of nightmares.

Dark Crystal; the podlings who get their

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life force drained, Kira too, and then Kira is stabbed to death at the end, after rescuing the crystal, but Jen gets all the credit.

Watership Down; the entire film.

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996); which is about a priest who wants to force Esmeralda to marry him, because he blames her, for making himself attractive to her.

All Dogs Go to Heaven; forget the Hell dream, which is pretty messed up, but the plot is about a selfish con artist dog, who breaks out of prison, and seeks revenge against his former partner. Who then DIES, and comes back, in order to seek MORE revenge. Uses a little girl for his own personal gain, and then plans to toss her out as soon as he’s had said revenge. You’d think that by the end of the movie that Charlie would have learned a lesson, but no, he actually doesn’t.

The Wizard of Oz; the whole song about how wonderful it is somebody died.

in the Chronicles of Narnia; you have the mostly naked goatman, who plans to kill Lucy, but only doesn’t, because he likes her at little too much.

there are the carebear movies, which are pretty damn messed up if you think about it too. and this really isn’t just limited to Hollywood, as i have seen this time of stuff in comic books, and video games meant for kids as well. like I believe one issue of Power Pack, the yellow one gets tortured. and the in the Golden Compass, if you lose while playing the bear, it is strongly implied that Lyra gets eaten alive by wolves.

Forget your horror films of today; There is more nightmare fuel in Return To Oz, than most horror films, for ADULTS, rated R, these days. if you want to get some true horror, just watch some films meant for kids! LOL especially from the 80s. a lot of messed up things were filmed for kids in the 80s.

 

There goes the sun, here comes the night, somebody turn on the light
Somebody tell me that fate has been kind
YOU can't go OUT you are OUT OF YOUR MIND!!!






The entirety of Brave Little Toaster. Even the lighter scenes involve stuff like a flower dying because it didn't realize it's reflection was just that.

 

yea... brave little toaster, is one messed up kids' film. the horror film song, the worthless song, the blender that gets butchered. if these things are all alive, than we humans are monsters. for kids!

 

Watched most of these older films in my youth and I turned out just fine. But than my real life was pretty fucked up so maybe the monsters under the bed never really scared me?

 

oh i wasn't referring to these things as being bad, but mostly that they are really awesome films and cartoons. I am pretty sure it is because of these elements that scare the hell out of us as kids, that makes them memorable to us today.

 

Well, in the 80's kids were stronger. j/k.

Hansel and Gretel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gretel kills the witch by pushing her in the oven. That's f'n grisly, man. and also before the 80's. Before the 70's even.

How about the horrible ways people die in Disney cartoons?
Gaston?
Scar?
Shan-Yu?
Syndrome?
Frollo?

 

Ah, okay, I see what you're getting at. That said I never really found these scary either.

 

they may die in horrible ways; but wow, did they also do some pretty fucked up things. like Scar turning the Hyenas into the nazis. or Gaston gathering a mob to go kill the beast, So he could marry Belle, who is pretty much a young teenager.

i am well aware that fairy tales were pretty messed up stories for kids. nightmare fuel. let's tell these stories to our kids while they try to sleep.

you might not find them scary; but i am sure you can still see how they are still pretty damn messed up kids films.

 

True enough, but I can't say they didn't get their 'just deserts' or the Hyenas got their desert in Scar's case...

 

but then it gets even more messed up in the sequel.

 

Don't forget first The Land Before Time movie. For a kid's movie, that's pretty dark with the death of Littlefoot's mother. There was also going to be an ending where they had all died and the Great Valley was actually heaven!

 

I'm pretty sure Courage the Cowardly Dog was the source of most of my nightmares.

 

This has been going on forever even in nursery rhymes. Ring around the Rosie is about the black plague. London Bridge is Falling Down and Rock-a-Bye-Baby have some pretty horrific implications too.

Disney has been doing or suggesting pretty horrific things from the jump too. Snow White's step-mother tried to have her killed (and the Huntsman was supposed to bring back her heart as proof), then she went to straight up poison her. Cinderella's step-mom abused her. Pinocchio has a bit with child slavery. Crulla De Vil wanted to make a coat out of the puppies. Dumbo was severely bullied and ripped away from his mother, then forced into humiliating performances in the circus. Bambi's mom got killed in front of him and his forest (his home, basically) caught on fire. Alice (from Alice in Wonderland) had self-esteem issues, and implied that she used box her own ears (basically hit herself in the head) when she thought she misbehaved.

 

Anyone remember Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future? Most of the human population has been "digitized" which is described as being worse than death. As early as the first episode, a character talks about wanting to commit suicide.

We didn't get it in this form at the time, but GoLion, the basis of the original lion force Voltron show, was dark, dark, dark. Not only did the show have tons of (human!) blood and dismemberment that were cut from the U.S. version, but it took things much further! The nobles of the Galra empire drink the blood of their slaves, force the slaves to practice cannibalism, and the show even hints more than once that characters have been raped. Oh, and Earth is basically destroyed in the first episode. It would be tempting to brush this off as one of many examples of Japan having different standards for what's acceptable in childrens' media (and the show was definitely still aimed at kids), but GoLion pushes the envelope far past that. Just a few years before, Go Nagai's anime and manga had drawn outrage from parent groups in Japan for being unacceptably violent. We're talking about a few sprays of blood when Getter Robo kills cyborg dinosaurs with a drill. If that was outrageous, then there's no way people getting cut in half, decapitated, eaten, and raped is anywhere near normal.

 

Yeah there's some pretty fucked up shit in family movies and TV. Let's see...

1. The toys nearly burning to death in hell in Toy Story 3, and simply holding hands when they realize they can't escape.
2. Mufasa getting killed by his own brother, who then convinces his own nephew it was his own fault.
3. A helluva lot of shit from Courage the Cowardly Dog.
4. The secret arc leading to the finale of Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated where a Lovecraftian horror lives up to 52 episodes of hype and devours the entire town including the gang's families alive. And an episode earlier where a teenage girl was gunned down.
5. Scooby Doo on Zombie Island featuring some of the most grisly zombies in family media, not to mention a backstory featuring serial killers, people getting eaten by alligators, flesh burning away, lots of fun stuff, and the gang running for their lives set to grungey metal.
6. Pleasure Island in Pinocchio. "MAMA!"
7. Bloodbending in Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Not even getting into shit like the Airbender genocide, Korra's poisoning and PTSD, or Ozai's child abuse.
8. Late 90's/Early 2000's Disney - featuring mass dehydration, several corpses, carnivores ripping chunks off of protagonists in Dinosaur; Frollo's lust and the threat of damnation in Hunchback of Notre Dame; a baby gorilla getting eaten alive and his parents being forced to listen, and later Clayton freaking hanging himself by accident in Tarzan.
9. The Brave Little Toaster - so much dark imagery, depressing scenes. The clown was really bad but I think the B Movie song scared me the most. It's certainly my favorite part, it's just so memorable and frightening and gloriously spooky and loving it. To me it feels like the darkest hour of the movie, before it's third act gets very, very real and drops many pretenses of being just a kids movie.
10. Pooh's Grand Adventure - the main villain is supposedly the Skullasaurus, an unseen monster who stalks the main characters as they venture into the unknown. It's actually pretty frightening, especially because you never see it - and really it turns out to be fake, because the actual main obstacle of the movie is the characters' own vices and insecurities.

 

Finding Nemo.

The whole premise is dark when you think about.

a neurotic reclusive father, whose wife was killed by a serial killer, tries to rescue his physically disabled son whose kidnapped and teams up with an amnesiac woman and they get eaten by a whale at one point.

It's probably why I love the movie so much.

Honestly almost all Pixar films could count.

I think the 86 Transformers movie would also count, I mean all your toys die onscreen.  

 

it's much worse than all your toys die on screen, it's all the characters that hasbro KNOWS the kids love. and they took them, and butchered them one after another. and it isn't enough that they did that. they had to linger on optimus prime dying. showing every moment of it. and then they butchered starscream, turning him into ash. transformers the movie may be one of the "darkest" kid's films ever, because of it.

and that trex, was quite terrifying too.

winnie the pooh is pretty screwed up if you think about it. considering it is all happening inside christopher robin's head.

I was watching some episode of Madeline, something i have not seen in quite a long time, i watched the Bad Hat episode, and the sequel, the horrible, mean bad hats or something like that.

and it isn't just that Pepito is a bad hat, he tortures animals, he builds guillotines, he harasses little girls, he lets animals at the zoo out of their cages, he traps any living thing he sees inside one big cage. Pepito, is not just a bad hat. He is a serial killer in the makings. LOL and when Madeline says Pablito, and his two brothers are worse, she is WAY wrong. as they are just pranksters, they are not torturing animals. but at the end of the episode, it still did not address the route of the problem, and that is that Pepito is being neglected by his parents.

then there is that episode where madeline and all her classmates, plus Pepito are snowed in at a cabin, and run out of food. there is the episode where the girls all run away from their Substitute teacher, who goes searching for them in the snow, but then the girls all return back to the house, after finding Miss Clavel, and go to bed. Leaving Mr. Grump out in the snow. to die. Well, until Madeline decides to go looking for him.

there is the episode where they take a boat to where it snows, aka the north pole. which is now apparently Ireland. and one of santa's elves is clearly a leprechaun.

Madeline is a lot more messed up than i remembered it being when i saw it as a kid.

Madeline also has multiple birthdays a year. and many christmases too. leaving me to believe that there is something sinister going on... lol

 

Winnie the Pooh never came off as some child's mental game or whatever. Yeah, they were his imaginary friends but it's not like it had some dark undercurrent like some people say Rugrats does.

 

yea... but if you think about it, he is the one "playing" with them, and he is the one making them say and do all the things that they do. and if you think about it, that means, he is never not there. it isn't like toy story. they are not a live. they are only alive inside HIS mind.

 

Watcher in the woods-the whole movie.
Making contact-the dummy(the darth vader cameo was neat however.)
Unico and the island of magic-the whole movie!
Pinocchio and the emperor of the night-the circus scenes.
Secret of nimh-the owl
Neverending story-the wolf
Monster squad-the whole movie.
Last unicorn-the bird at the circus.