DO you think it’s only fair that your kids should suffer through the films that traumatised you as a child? Try these disturbing classics:
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
The most frightening element is, of course, the Child Catcher, so obviously designed to play on children’s fears that he may as well have been called the Child Torturer. All the fun of being trapped in a vivid nightmare.
The Railway Children
Guess what, kids? Your father can be imprisoned at any moment on trumped-up charges of spying because Britain is a corrupt police state. Then imagine the piles of mangled, corpses caused by a rail disaster that can only be averted by your knickers. And years later watch An American Werewolf in London years later and feel like a paedo.
The Wizard of Oz
What child would not want to be cast into a terrifying alien world full of dangers and damaged individuals? Almost everything in the film is unsettling, from the winged monkey b*stards to the Tin Man. He may get a heart, but he is still doomed to live out his life as a grotesque metal freak.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Forget contemporary Disney’s well-crafted tales with a life-affirming message, let’s watch a weirdo recluse whittle down a group of children by having them sucked into industrial machinery. It’s okay, they broke rules they weren’t told about so deserve to be freaks for life.
Watership Down
Who doesn’t like to see rabbits suffer, fight and die? The Owsla – basically the rabbit Gestapo – will traumatise your kids with their predilection for sadistic maiming, while the sudden death of the nicest rabbit followed by Art Garfunkel’s heartbreaking song will stop them ever forming emotional bonds with anyone or anything.
