15 Terrifying Moments From Kids Movies That Scarred Us for Life

Surely, we can all agree that Maleficent is one of Disney's best villains, and she earns that title in Sleeping Beauty with one moment that's so unexpectedly chilling it totally overshadows her transformation at the end of the movie. Just before Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger on the spinning wheel, Maleficent manifests in the fireplace, but for one bone-chilling moment the only thing we can see are her disembodied eyes staring back at us. That scene is why we still can't relax in front of roaring fire without feeling like someone is staring at us.

Pee-wee is always a little creepy, but his big adventure is mostly just fun. He goes on a quest to find his bicycle, meets a motorcycle gang, and encounters Large Marge. The minute Pee-wee hops into her truck, Marge begins regaling him with the story of the most horrific car accident she's ever witnessed. That alone is enough to unsettle us, but then she takes things up a notch by popping her eyes and tongue out of her head. It's a graphic and twisted detour that's tonally opposite from everything else in an otherwise sweet film.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory might be the most unintentionally creepy kids movie ever. There are several scenes that unnerve us in this tale of parents who are totally cool with a mad man showing their children around his death trap... er, "chocolate factory." But the one that always gets us is the boat scene, in which Wonka sings about impending doom as wild colours flash around him.

The entire sequence looks like something that was deemed too disturbing for a horror movie, and then somehow ended up in a kid-friendly feature instead.

The Santa scene in A Christmas Story is enough to make even the most ardent holiday fan give mall Santas some serious side-eye. The scene where Ralphie sits in the horrifying Santa's lap is shot in a way that makes us feel small and a little queasy. But things go from bad to worse when Father Christmas shoves Ralphie down the slide with his boot. That moment gave us the gift of a life-long Santa phobia.

Nothing screams quality content for kids like a big helping of existential dread. The villain in The NeverEnding Story is the absence of joy, imagination, life . . . everything, really. It's a cloud of darkness that leaves desolation in its wake, and in one particularly poignant and petrifying scene, Rock Biter sits and marvels at how his strength couldn't save his friends, before revealing that he's just going sit and wait for The Nothing to take him too. Our young minds had never been faced with the sense of hopelessness before that moment, but it's something we could never forget afterwards.

Rock-a-Doodle is a frankly silly movie in retrospect. It's basically Elvis, but as a rooster. What's not silly is when a completely normal human little boy has his room destroyed by a giant, animated owl named Duke. Duke not only somehow breaks the laws of reality to enter the real world, he drops a massive claw-shaped limb over the kid's bed and then turns him into an animated kitten while the little boy begs for his parents to help him. The rest of the movie proceeds as normal, but that mind-bending scene completely disillusioned us of the idea that animation was just pretend.

We know it's not Sid's toys' fault that they look like creatures from some dark underworld, but that doesn't make it any easier not to scream when they appear onscreen. Woody's introduction to Sid's creations is never going to stop giving us nightmares, because come on, there's nothing normal about a baby doll's head being attached to metal legs like some sort of Lovecraftian land octopus.

Medusa shows just how cruel she is when she forces little Penny down the well in The Rescuers. The moment is shocking because as a kid, we're supposed to be able to trust adults. Instead, we watch as one intentionally puts a child in harm's way, and sends her down into a cave complete with skeletons and a geyser that keeps threatening to drown her and her mouse companions.

FernGully: The Last Rainforest is designed to inspire a passion for the environment in kids. And while that's a commendable goal, we have to wonder if that mission statement really needed to include the villain Hexxus's tar-covered skeleton being on display as he sings about how evil humanity is. Hexxus's rendition of "Toxic Love" is scary on every level, from the visuals to the lyrical promise that Earth is doomed, and as a result, this entire sequence left us positive the apocalypse was coming at any second.

If fear had a face, we imagine it would look exactly like The Red Bull's. The unicorn chasing monster is a snarling beast that seems to emit flames from his entire body. He's terror incarnate, but he also happens to appear in The Last Unicorn. The animated fantasy is melancholy throughout, but whenever The Red Bull appears, things become a whole other level of dark.

My Girl teaches us about grief and the trials of puberty, but it also slips in a lesson on all-consuming fear. When Vada's ball rolls down the steps into her father's embalming room, Vada descends down into the basement to retrieve it, but Shelly passes by the door and closes it, accidentally trapping the young girl inside. Vada promptly freaks out, and her fear is so visceral that it still haunts us to this day.

Forget Snow White's evil stepmother, what we want to know is what is up with all the killer trees in the forest? Just moments after having her life spared, Snow White runs through the woods as limbs become eyes, logs turn into crocodiles, and every tree seems to have eyes. The forest scene was clearly Disney's way of warning us of all the trauma still to come from the studio.

Every movie about a flying car needs a random scene featuring a sinister man who lures children away with the promise of free sweets, right? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to us either, but at least we know where to trace our fear of ice cream trucks back to.

First, Dumbo breaks our hearts by separating the baby elephant from his mom. Then it offers up a psychedelic nightmare starring singing, dancing, and shape-shifting pink pachyderms. Honestly, the whole sequence is so unnerving we're not even sure what the context for it was anymore, but we know we will never forget the moment with the stretchy plaid elephant.

Kevin's traps are pretty intense in Home Alone, but they're so over the top that they're also funny. What's not funny is when the Wet Bandits finally catch Kevin and then threaten to cut off his fingers. That jarring moment always drives home just how precarious his situation truly is.