11 ‘Family’ Movies That Utterly Destroyed Us

Do you prefer a “gloves off” approach to raising your offspring? Are you sick of modern entertainment mollycoddling kids? Here are 11 scenes from “family friendly” movies and TV shows that will help toughen the little blighters up. (Alternatively, if you’re an overprotective parent, here are eleven scenes that you absolutely must avoid at all costs.)

The Never Ending Story – Artax fails to float.

The demise of Artax the horse is easily one of the most distressing scenes in cinematic history. It actually caused one of my childhood friends to vomit from stress at the cinema. Adding to the heartbreak is a persistent rumour that the horse got caught in the submerged lift and actually drowned in real life. (Thankfully, this is just an urban legend – although the child actor was badly injured by the very same lift.)

Suur Tõll – the battle sequence.

Suur Tõll (AKA Toll the Great) is a heroic giant from Estonian folklore. In 1980, a Soviet film studio made an animated short about his exploits that shifts from grim, to trippy to shockingly blood-thirsty. Suur Tõll is badass. (The orgy of battlefield destruction kicks in at around the five-minute mark: but the whole thing is worth watching.)

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory – the boat ride.

Return To Oz – the screaming heads.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Dumbo – Pink Elephants On Parade.

Return To Oz

Coraline – Coraline meets her new parents.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit – Jessica Rabbit sings.

Okay, so it’s not strictly a kids film, but Roger Rabbit is rated PG and was aggressively marketed to families at the time of release (I’m pretty sure there was even a McDonald’s Happy Meal tie-in). When it comes to messed up moments, it’s hard to top the terrifying reveal of Judge Doom’s true identity. However, the sheer wrongness of Jessica Rabbit’s sexed up rendition of Why Don’t You Do Right? narrowly pipped it to the post. As a kid, I saw this flanked by my father and mother. Awkward doesn’t begin to cover it.

The Adventures of Mark Twain – Satan kills.

Gumby-style clamation is creepy enough without throwing Satan into the mix. Loosely based on Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger, this 1985 short follows a trio of the author’s most famous characters as they hang out with a mysterious robed figure with a penchant for play-dough genocide. The mayhem starts at 3:05.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – The Child Catcher.

Dark Crystal – Podling gets drained.

Watership Down – most of the movie.

Watership Down is based on a children’s book and stars a bunch of talking rabbits animated in the Disney style. And yet, you’d probably be better off showing your kids The Silence Of The Lambs. Seriously, this movie kills off more bunnies than myxomatosis, complete with gratuitous lashings of claret.

Which of the above sequences disturbed you most as a kid? Or is there something even more terrifying that we forgot to include? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

This story has been updated since its original publication.