Are You Still Haunted By These (Surprisingly) Scary Films From Your Childhood?

Do you still get that nauseating clench in the pit of your stomach at the memory of the Willy Wonka boat scene? If you take the time to think about it, you'll realise that Gene Wilder hysterically screeching "There’s no way to know which way we’re rowing" is a wildly terrifying motif to throw into a supposedly child-friendly film. It may have been one of the most popular films of the mid '90s but it’ll still take some coaching to convince a few adults that it's safe to rewatch the original Jumanji. As for Return To Oz, that nightmare has left emotional scars and a deep mistrust of creatures on wheels (the Wheelers are just as terrifying as the flying monkeys of the first film, btw) in many of us.

These things stick. As a matter of fact, far too many films from our childhood had a sneaky tendency to lure us (and our seemingly misguided parents) into a false sense of security before throwing in a shit-the-bed curveball which, though we've half recovered from the suppressed memory of Child Catchers, puppets and Daleks, still ruins our adult ability to watch intentionally scary films. The fear is real, people! Laugh as you might (it is quite funny), but we're haunted by the most disproportionately terrifying films of our youth.

Granted, the response in the Refinery29 offices to this season's hotly anticipated horror, Midsommar, are unsurprising. Early reviews paint the Florence Pugh film as a rom-com meets plausible death cult thriller, orientated around a festival in Sweden. Watch the trailer and you'll see why we're shook. So while we evaluate whether or not we have the emotional resilience to watch what looks like an objectively stellar film, we'll be here revisiting all the surprisingly terrifying shows that tormented our younger years. Tell us which 'PG' flick still has you sweating as an adult in the comments below. Chances are, we're scared of yours too...