Today, I’m asking you what is a non-scary moment in a film or TV show that scared you as a little kid.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
The other day, I was discussing The Electric Company with my wife, and she mentioned that there was a segment on the show that barely remembered except that it scared her as a little kid. It was a detective parody, and there was a sequence showing houses or something like that, and whatever it was, it seemed really eerie to her as a kid.
So that leads me to my current topic for you all – name a non-scary moment in a film or TV show that scared you as a little kid. And I mean a scene that was legit NOT meant to be scary, not even little kid scary. For instance, lots of people have memories about being scared about many scenes in The Scretss of NIMH, but The Secrets of NIMH was obviously SUPPOSED to scare you! The boat ride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Wonka gets all creepy as heck is MEANT to be scary. So those don’t count. I mean scenes that are not intended to be scary, but might appear that way to a little kid.
I’m going with the freaky multi-colored elephants in the Pink Elephants On Parade sequence in Dumbo. My wife argued that this scene was MEANT to be scary, but after rewatching it, nah, this is meant to be offbeat, not scary. It just seemed that way to many little kids who watched it, me included. So it’s my pick…
Okay, so that’s my pick. What’s yours?
Also, feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at my new, much shorter e-mail, brian@poprefs.com!
I was so deathly afraid of Pinocchio that when my first grade class watched “I’m No Fool”, an innocuous safety film strip with Jiminy Cricket, I screamed in terror. My teacher comforted me by telling me that when she was my age, she was afraid of Casper. I laughed, and I believed that cured my Pinocciophobia.
the main thing that comes to my mind is the Doctor Who opening titles/theme music in the early 1970s (Jon Pertwee era) – I’m not certain if it was meant to be scary but I was one of the many kids hiding behind the sofa when the music played
I was dead scared by pie fights in old silent movies, especially the aftermath, when the target were cleaning up their eyes and staring at the camera.