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Remember back when Disney used to rerelease their library of classic animated films to the cinema every 5-10 years?
It meant that as a young child, I got to see many of the Disney films from the "Golden Age" of the studio on the big screen. Which was a very good thing.
Still, those old films had their share of moments right out of a horror movie.
The transformation of the Evil Queen into the old Crone in Snow White definitely wasn't a jolly popcorn moment when I was a tot.
Or the heart-breaking scene where Dumbo's Mother goes on a rampage to protect him...then ends up in chains? Brutal.
Or, perhaps the most nightmarish of all, the moment in Pinnochio when Lampwick is gradually transforming into a donkey. That terrifying moment when he realizes what's happening...tries to call out for his mother...and then can't. I remember bolting out of my seat.
Or am I alone in this, and those old films were just about cute skunks and singing dwarves? Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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You're not alone. My mom used to fast-forward through Dumbo's Mother scene because when she didn't I would burst into tears. Because of that, I wasn't even allowed to watch Bambi till I was a bit older.
When Beast of Beauty and the Beast dies, that was a pretty harsh moment as well.
If they were all cute skunks and singing dwarves, I don't think they'd be the wonderful classics that they are. Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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And the Fox and the Hound isn't exactly a cute-skunk-singing-dwarf movie. I watched it about a month ago, while PMSing, and I cried the whole way through.
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The Fox and the Hound arguably holds the record for being the first Disney animated film without a happy ending. At best, it has a bittersweet one.
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Simba's father dying is my cried-for-the-rest-of-the-film moment. I've never forgotten seeing that moment on a very large screen.
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It might not be considered a classic yet, but in Finding Nemo, when Marlin finds his wife and all but one of his babies got eaten, I get all weepy.
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quote:Originally posted by dawnmaria: It might not be considered a classic yet, but in Finding Nemo, when Marlin finds his wife and all but one of his babies got eaten, I get all weepy.
That was so sad. Especially when he held the little cracked egg and said he wouldn't let anything happen to it. Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I cried the last time I saw the ending of Monsters Inc. It was a happy ending, but it was so beautifully understated, with Sulley putting the piece in the door, the light coming on, and just seeing his head coming through on the other side. So wonderful. Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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In which attraction is that montage of Disney movies, where during the Bambi and Snow White scenes you can hear grown adults and children alike sobbing in the audience?
Well, hear them above your own sobbing, anyway...
As far as The Lion King, once you have a child and he insists on watching that same movie six time a day for an entire year, it doesn't affect you as much anymore.
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I'd completely blocked out memory of those particular scenes in Dumbo and Pinnochio.
When Ursula dies in The Little Mermaid...that scene has always scared the daylights of me. Even now I'm getting goosebumps thinking about her getting rammed with the ship and her eyes bulging out. She's my favorite villian and her end is fitting...just also very creepy.
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quote:I actually have not shown Lion King to my kids.
Laura, my sister, gave me her copy and told me to keep it away from her kids because they were asking too many questions about death and she wasn't ready to answer them.
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Haha, pink elephants. bambi dying was the worst. But I don't remember a lot of the stories cause I was young watching them.
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Does Old Yeller count as a Disney classic? I couldn't stop whimpering and clutching desperately to my dog for weeks...
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The first time we took our kids to Pinnochio, they were so frightned when Stromboli first appeared that we had to leave the theater and take them home. The girls were probably 4 and six.
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quote:Laura, my sister, gave me her copy and told me to keep it away from her kids because they were asking too many questions about death and she wasn't ready to answer them.
quote:Laura, my sister, gave me her copy and told me to keep it away from her kids because they were asking too many questions about death and she wasn't ready to answer them.
You know, every time I've visited that domain it's involved someone screaming, loud music or colors worthy of an epileptic seizure. So... No.
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Finding Nemo had me panicked for most of the movie. There's nothing more terrifying than losing a child, and that movie had my heart racing every few minutes (Something was ALWAYS going wrong)
Nobody's mentioned The Incredibles, either. When the mom is screaming at the daughter to put a force field around the plane, the fear in their voices was just so real. Very scary.
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One of my mother's favorite stories about me is when she took me to see Bambi in the theater as a child. It was my first movie (which totally dates me, I know) and everyone was sitting there sniffling after Bambi's mom got shot. After a few seconds of hearing Bambi wail, "Mama! Mama!" I start wailing too, "Mama! Maaaaaaaama!" in the middle of the theater. Everyone cracked up evidently so I ruined the sad for all those poor folks.
My daughter (and my husband) adores The Lion King. For a while the soundtrack was the only thing she would let me listen to in the car. What disturbed me about the movie more than the death of Mufasa was the Nazi hyenas.
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There's a great clip they show at Disney MGM studios of the early animators discussing the emotional bits in Snow White. They were worried that audiences wouldn't react to drawings the same way they react to living actors. The emotion might just fall flat...
Now, it's like we take for granted that Disney cartoons (and others) can tug at our heart strings, but back in the early days, they were worried.
I wonder if that worry drove them to pack the scenes and situations with even more emotion than a normal movie might have. And it sort of set a successful pattern for them that they've stuck with ever since.
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I would have to guess yes. Considering there were deeper emotional plots in some of the original classics.
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quote:Laura, my sister, gave me her copy [of the Lion King] and told me to keep it away from her kids because they were asking too many questions about death and she wasn't ready to answer them.
I was eight when the film came out. You'd think that was fairly old, but I've always been a very sensitive film-goer. I'm not joking when I say I cried for most of the rest of the movie.
I think that what's worst about that scene is there's no dealing with anything. The fact Simba has to run away from everything he knows, pursued by the belief that he killed his father is really very, very dark. As a well read eight-year-old I was well acquainted with fictionalized death in all forms, but never in such a bleak, thorn-ridden form.
quote:"Disney scars another generation . . . "
I actually do wonder if I was deeply affected somehow by that movie- for various reasons that I shan't go into now, mostly because it's purely introspective wondering.
However, I don't remember applying it to real life at all- the fact that his father died in a wilderbeast stampede took the real-life application away (there are no wilderbeast in Essex, heh). I was never worried about the same thing happening to my parents!
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No one has mentioned Fantasia. Although it didn't have a storyline that ran throughout the film, little pieces scared the crap out of me. In fact, I can't even recall what exact scenes they were. Still though, I refuse to see that movie again, along with Pinnochio, which I haven't seen since I was 4, and never plan to see again.
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Fantasia the original: the dinosaurs. Watching them slowly die of thirst was always a little horrible.
The rest is harmless, although I do know a few people who found The Magicians Apprentice to be terrifying. However, I've now showed The Magicians Apprentice to a number of children ranging from 4 to 8 an none of them have particularly been any more than slightly worried and say things like "It's going to be okay, right?" to which I can say reassuring things. I think the brevity of the story helps- and Mickey Mouse.
I know it's not a Disney film, but allow me to expand this category to all animated film and include The Snowman as one of the few children's cartoons which still can invariably leave me weeping. If you haven't seen it, next Christmas you should track it down, if you can.
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I'd have to agree about Snow White - I had forgotten how scary that movie was until I started showing it to my kids. They were all terrified of the witch ... but even before that, when Snow White gets lost in the forest and the trees all start looking like monsters ... that was really scary to them. My FIL couldn't understand why I considered Snow White to be a scary movie.
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quote:You know, every time I've visited that domain it's involved someone screaming, loud music or colors worthy of an epileptic seizure. So... No.
I know that the internet can be a very, very scary place, but you may rest assured that, with that link, I have pledged allegiance only to the topic at hand, and not towards the hope of provoking a clonic twitch via sensory overload. For that, you have this.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: Fantasia the original: the dinosaurs. Watching them slowly die of thirst was always a little horrible.
The rest is harmless, although I do know a few people who found The Magicians Apprentice to be terrifying. However, I've now showed The Magicians Apprentice to a number of children ranging from 4 to 8 an none of them have particularly been any more than slightly worried and say things like "It's going to be okay, right?" to which I can say reassuring things. I think the brevity of the story helps- and Mickey Mouse.
I know it's not a Disney film, but allow me to expand this category to all animated film and include The Snowman as one of the few children's cartoons which still can invariably leave me weeping. If you haven't seen it, next Christmas you should track it down, if you can.
Gah! It's The Sorcerer's Apprentice! Please don't confuse one of my favorite movies of all time!
Reminds me of the re-release, when half the theater empties as soon as that part of the movie was over.
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The end of the Original Fantasia with the great big gargoyle thing had me scared when I was little. I actually don't think I've watched it yet.
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Or is that Hary Pouter and the Philousoupher's Stoune? I can't really tell with those crazy Brits . . .
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quote:It's The Sorcerer's Apprentice! Please don't confuse one of my favorite movies of all time!
I know this. I know this. I know this.
quote:Could it have been different in England, like with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone?
Nope, I'm just dumb. Especially considering how many times I have watched that particular section (at Music Camp, you see. It's musical. Kids like it. We watch it a lot.) I think I'm confusing it with the Magician's Nephew. Heh.
quote:Or is that Hary Pouter and the Philousoupher's Stoune? I can't really tell with those crazy Brits . . .
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My little sister got scared watching Alice in Wonderland, when Alice got lost in the forest and it was all dark and she kept getting scared by all the forest creatures. (She's three years old, which does tend to make things scarier. When she was younger--one or early two--she could watch Jurassic Park without more than an "uh-oh" when the man was being eaten, but needless to say we're screening more now that she understands enough to be scared.) She liked the movie, but I think that scene could have been de-scarified fairly easily. (What is it with Disney and sweet, pretty main characters getting lost in scary dark forests?) We watched Alice's Adventures in Wonderland yesterday (it's a live-action musical from...1972 if I read the Roman numerals right) and she wasn't frightened at all throughout the whole thing. Then again, in this version Alice never got lost in a dark scary forest either.
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I was afraid of the flowers in Alice. That was yet another scene I had blocked out until my roommate at the time bought the new dvd.
What about the demon up on the mountain in Fantasia? And the skeletal riders? I used to watch that bit every year around Halloween to get in the mood.
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I can't believe I missed this thread, and I can't believe nobody mentions Sleeping Beauty. Pretty much any scene with Malefacent was scary. When she actually does horrible things like hypnotize Arora and lead her to her death/eternal sleep at the spinning wheel it was just so hard for me to watch.
The scariest part for me in Pinnochio is either the Lampwick turning into a donkey scene or when Pinnochio is in the cage and Stromboli explains what his job is and what will happen if people stop paying to see him, "You will become......FIREWOOD!" Strombolli hurls an axe into a stack of chopped up wodden puppets and then laughs hysterically, I just do not think Disney remembers how to make villains anymore.
My dad's favorite scene from Snow White is RIGHT after the queen turns into the witch, and she is walking down the stairs and see's a skeleton reaching between the bars of the cage for a vessel of water and the witch says, "Thirsty? hee hee HAVE A DRINK! HAHAHA!" As she kicks the pitcher into the skeleton and breaks it apart.
You are not alone Puffy Treat BELIEVE ME.
I think the movies that made me the most tense and yet felt the most rewarding though were The Land Before Time (only the first one for me) and An American Tale. I wanted to scream when Fifel literally walks on a wodden plank just above where his lost father and sister walked under moments earlier. I was SO mad at the movie makers for making me go through that. Little Foot, Cera, Ducky, and Spike finally getting to the Great Valley and the music that plays as the fog lifts was possibly the happiest moment in movie history for me as a kid.
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Again, not Disney, but I found The Wizard of Oz terrifying as a child. I still remember a night visiting relatives in Wisconsin when I was about 5 or 6 and freaking out when there was a tornado warning during a storm. I remember the others asking my parents something to the effect of "What's her problem?" and my mother saying, "Wizard of Oz."
I still don't like it, beloved children's classic though it may be. Or anything Alice in Wonderland related (book, films whatever). Bad drug trips, if you ask me.
As for Disney, I, too, remember crying in the theater as a little girl when Bambi's mom died. And the scary Sleeping Beauty stuff. But none of that freaked me out enough that I didn't still love Disney!
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My mother still gets weepy-eyed during the scene in Dumbo, where the caged mother elephant uses her trunk to cradle the poor scared Dumbo child, and rocks him to sleep, through the bars of her prison.
Brother Bear had a lot of difficult scenes. I mean the whole story--I killed your mother, and befriended you little boy. I mean, that like the oppisitte of Oedipus Complex. What would you call that?
Add chaninging your appearance from one heavilly ethnic, to one more generic, and it would have to be...
A Micheal Jackson Complex.
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