Moments in classic cartoons that scared you as a kid

[Brandon Panther]

I know we've discussed this before, but hey we have new members don't we? Also, I was partially inspired by this exchange from an interview with Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman:

PORTMAN: [laughs] I remember as a kid being really scared of the Smurfs.

GYLLENHAAL: The Smurfs?

PORTMAN: Because that bad guy, Gargamel, was so terrifying. I was scared of a lot of cartoons. I’m kind of wussy like that.
Poor Natalie. :p

Anyway, as a kid, Hitler's appearance at the end of "Daffy the Commando" freaked me out. Perhaps that was appropriate, even if I didn't really understand who the guy was at the time. But, I have vague memories of shutting off the VCR before the ending gag came up.

Of course nowadays I find the ending gag hilarious.

[LooneyFan]

Im pretty sure everybody can agree with me on this one--The devil scene in "Fantasia". That just goes without saying. Alot of "Fantasia" scared me...

I sort of had a creeped out feeling for the "Scooby-Doo Where Are You?" episode "Haunted House Hang Up"...yeah, you can stop laughing now:rolleyes:...but it is also my favorite S-D episode too.

[jonmayo15]

The monsters at the beginning of "Have You Got Any Castles?" freaked me out. But it's still one of my all-time favorite shorts.

[Boy Wonder]

The lion that opened up anything MGM, doesn't matter which lion it was. Terrified my little soul :(

[Ray Pointer]

The animated opening to THE HONEYMOONERS with Jackie Gleason's leering face in the moon terrified me. I would turn and bury my face in a chair cushion until it passed by. Then I could endure the rest. I was also slightly traumatized by ink being spilled and flying into the air in the OUT OF THE INKWELL films. So much so that I dreamed about stepping through the television screen into the black and white world of Max Fleischer in his office. While visiting him, he set me up on his lap and showed me his drawing instruments, including his celluloid triangle, T-Square, crow quill pen, and a large ink bottle. He worked the stopper off and KO-KO popped out, looked around, and seeing me, ducked down inside with a little splash. Wanting to see KO-KO, I reached for the ink bottle and tipped it over with a big splash of black ink, resulting in Max dropping me from his lap out of reflex. For years, I had a hatred/phobia of black ink, and felt a life long obligation to make amends for upsetting Mr. Fleischer's famous inkwell. And it wasn't until I was in high school that I made the connection to the hatred of the ink while doing hand lettering exercises aside from the fact that the India Ink smelled like rotten eggs.

[larriva9/11]

Just thinking of the Chow Hound discussion in another thread. (Now, the ending to that one...)

[Paul Penna]

Lessee... we got TV in late '52, so I'd just turned 6, and I probably started watching cartoons immediately, and from then on whenever I could, but I honestly can't remember ever once being frightened by one. I could tell when there were things or situations that were supposed to be scary, but I think I just found them interesting. It wasn't that I was immune to TV or movie scariness in general, because seeing The Werewolf in a theater around 1956 scared the ever-living crap out of me.

[J. J. Hunsecker]

When I was pre-school age I was frightened by the sight of Bugs Bunny imitating the Frankenstien monster from What's Cookin' Doc? The thought that Bugs could transform himself into a monster at will was upsetting to me.

[Thad]

The Hyde Tweety in Hyde and Go Tweet. Especially that scene where he's coming down the hallway and Sylvester's trying to get into the elevator. Eventually I came to enjoy it for the truly horrifying and great cartoon it is. Kaa in The Jungle Book used to creep me out too, but now that whole film is more boring (but fun) than scary.

Personally those mop-head martians on Sesame Street scared the piss out of me more than any cartoon did. I actually hid behind the couch whenever they showed up.

[kaseykockroach]

Hyde and Go Tweet, Pluto's Judgement Day, the ending to Two Mousketeers, all of Heavenly Puss and and the devil in Satan's Waitin all gave me goosebumps as a child (the first two especially).
Yeah, I'm a wuss. :D

[oceansoul]

Smurfs is much scarier as an adult. A blatant communist propaganda, and I now realized how much I (and all the other kids) was brainwashed by this. Bah.

[oceansoul]

Hyde and Go Tweet, Pluto's Judgement Day, the ending to Two Mousketeers, all of Heavenly Puss and and the devil in Satan's Waitin all gave me goosebumps as a child (the first two especially).
Yeah, I'm a wuss. :D

Yeah. Heavenly Puss and the ending of Two Mouseketeers definately scared me too. I was also scared by a lot of "bad" endings in the Tom and Jerry series, including Milky Waif, The Dog House, Love that Pup or Invisible Mouse.

[Sean Gaffney]

Tom and Jerry terrified me a lot as a very small child. So much of Heavenly Puss... the piano, the string of dead cats, the stairs with Hell beneath...

Also, the end of The Missing Mouse with Tom's foghorn 'DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT' scared the bejeezus out of me.

[Marty26]

Seeing Giovanni's physical appearance after The Hollywood Bowl collapsed on him in Long-Haired Hare. I thought the redish-brown hair color (he was blonde before then) was supposed to represent blood and near-death for the singer. Although now I know it's probably supposed to be dust and dirt from the ruins of the stage. And then Bugs "finishes him" with that last brick on the steel girder, at which I used to wonder if the singer was killed when it struck him. Watching it now, it isn't so bad (although you must wonder how gullible Giovanni must've been to continue following Bugs's lead even after an entire stage collapses on and injures him). But, back then, it gave me chills because Bugs seemed so evil/sadistic.

[nickramer]

The end of "Yankee Doodle Daffy" where Sleepy La Goon final auditions used to distrubs me as well as the end of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse", though to be fair it didn't disturbs me until after seeing it a couple of time.

[R.J. Smith]

The lion that opened up anything MGM, doesn't matter which lion it was. Terrified my little soul :(
That also scared the heck out of me! I was also afraid of the Bugs Bunny head at the beginning of WB cartoons.

I'm used to them as of today.

[Lee Glover]

I always found the pre-41 versions of the "Merrily We Roll Along" theme tune on the MM shorts to be a bit too "spooky" for my liking, so when I was young I tried either to skip the titles on TV or fast-forwarded them if was watching them on tape.

[frizfrelengfan]

The collection of bad guys in "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" scared me. Especially Neon Noodle.

[ThePeterNetwork]

While it may not be classic cartoon-related (Sorry :P ), it is animated, and it's the animated opening to Batman with Adam West ('66). As Batman & Robin ran towards the camera, I thought they were going to leap out of the TV and trample over me. I must have been about 5 years old then.

[Marty26]

I always found the pre-41 versions of the "Merrily We Roll Along" theme tune on the MM shorts to be a bit too "spooky" for my liking, so when I was young I tried either to skip the titles on TV or fast-forwarded them if was watching them on tape.

Yeah, I also used to find it spooky. It was even more spooky when I saw it superimposed over the 1945 Bugs In Drum ending in the syndicated versions of cartoons like The Up-Standing Sitter.

[CueBallCat79]

Donald's freakout in the "Mickey and the Beanstalk" section of Fun and Fancy Free used to really scare me as a kid. Especially that crazy look on his face right before he spots the axe.

Personally those mop-head martians on Sesame Street scared the piss out of me more than any cartoon did. I actually hid behind the couch whenever they showed up.

For some reason I was always scared when Ernie would pull off Bert's nose. Animal bursting out of a building after taking Bunsen Honeydew's Insta-Grow pills at the end of the Muppet Movie used to scare me too.

[R.J. Smith]

Donald's freakout in the "Mickey and the Beanstalk" section of Fun and Fancy Free used to really scare me as a kid. Especially that crazy look on his face right before he spots the axe.



For some reason I was always scared when Ernie would pull off Bert's nose. Animal bursting out of a building after taking Bunsen Honeydew's Insta-Grow pills at the end of the Muppet Movie used to scare me too.
I am also scared of the :donald: "POWER" scene from "Trombone Trouble"!

[Jack G.]

When the Headless Horseman is on screen in Icabod and Mr Toad.
I had to turn it off.

[J Lee]

Let's see .. Pleasure Island and the transformation in "Pinnochio", of course, but that was supposed to terrify little kids. In the short subject area, there was a bunch of stuff, mainly (as I would learn later) from the Willard Bowsky unit at the Fleischer studios that was scary, starting with the cave scene from "Minnie the Moocher" to the cave scene in "Small Fry", to the headed-to-the-cave-with-the-loot scene from "Popeye Meets Ali Baba" to the (no cave involved at all) I'm-here-to-shoot-you final scene with Gabby and King Little in "King for A Day".

Also honorable mention to some of the Famous Studio Noveltoons, especially from the 1940s and 1950s (with Myron Waldman's "dead Ferdie" ending to "There's Good Boos Tonight" heading up that list. Too bad Ch. 5 in New York never ran "Chew Chew Baby" when I was a yute, or that would have no doubt been on there, too).

[Bobby Bickert]

The giant fly in the Road Runner segment of "Bugs Bunny's Bustin' Out All Over". (I was 11.)

[Ratso]

Not so much scary as really disturbing: Maybe it was a Harveytoon. An anthropomorphized round of cheese suspended from a rope screaming as he's lowered into a vat of hot mustard. That's how I remember it, anyway.

It bothered me in the same way that the prisoner inside the big bass drum did in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. Someone bangs the drum incessantly, and the torture victim's silhouette appears begging for freedom.

Of course, now I can't get excited without Dijon lube and a bongo record.

[Glowworm]

Oh man, where do I begin? Ah I know, I had a color-changing phobia as a child. In other words, if a cartoon character suddenly changed all different hues of the rainbow, I was terrified. Eventually I got over this fear. As a child I clearly used to freak out the most during "The Longed Haired Hare" when Giovanni Jones is forced to hold that extremely long opera note and his face changes many different hues while his pants fall down and he bangs on the ground relentlessly for air. I would run out of the room covering my ears. (I think this may be why I hated opera...because of the association of that cartoon with it.)Another much hated color changing scene was in "An Itch in Time" in which A.Flea is using a jackhammer on the dog and he not only changes different colors-but plaid and polkadots! That was just plain freaky! Now I love both of these cartoons immensely.

I was also quite terrified of "Catch as Cats Can" (which I actually only saw twice on Tv as a child-once all the way through) and it wasn't just because Sylvester changes various colors when he swallows the decoy soap canary.(the reason why I couldn't watch it all the way through the first time and begged my father to turn it off. The sequences with Sylvester placing a magnet in his mouth and catching practically everything but the canary looked very scary and painful-the same when the Sinatra canary hooks up Sylvester as a vaccum cleaner and Sylvester is forced to suck up everything in sight--including hot coals from the stove. I'm still not too kean on this one...

Pink Elephants on Parade from Dumbo-This sequence horrified me as a child--and it still disturbs me to this day--and it didn't help that I owned this on a Disney sing-along tape.Elephants should NOT be plaid or bubble gum pink.

I also was afraid of the "Hefflelumps and Woozles" sequence from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day for the same reasons as the Pink Elephants-a hallucination hell with black backgrounds and nightmarish characters and it was also on a sing along tape. Strangely enough I can handle this one now--but not Pink Elephants on Parade.

When I was five years old, my father was outside in the backyard while I watched some classic cartoons on TNT. One of them was "What's Buzzin' Buzzard?" I was traumatized by the two starving crazed vultures attempting to eat one another--especially the sequence in which Joe catches the Durante vulture in his mouth. I begged my father not to put that channel on anymore for me. I never saw the short again until sixth grade-and still found it disgusting. I now find it hillarious.:D It really is an awesome and very sick cartoon.


"Scentt of the Matterhorn" - a Pepe le Pew cartoon--the sequence in which the frog wanders off only to suddenly scream used to scare the crap out of me as a child. Ironically this is my avatar right now.:D

"Porky's Snooze Reel" The part where the jellyfish swallows the WWII mine--it looks so freaky with it in his mouth and since it was the colorized version it left out the part where he turned into seven flavors of jelly so I was even more traumatized when he exploded as a child. I'd try to close my eyes during that sequence...

"Unnatural History" and "Circus Today" had a similar sequence which scared me. In UH-a chameleon is seen changing colors--but he flips out when he reaches a plaid screen and falls on the floor sobbing "I can't do it! I can't do it! Waah! I just can't do it!" It was the tantrum that frightened me. The same with "Circus Today" in which the elephant was about to sit upon the tamer's head-which in itself was pretty scary and then suddenly performs the same tantrum.

"Chowhound" disgusted me as a child-I haven't seen it in years. It has nothing to do with it being dark or the constant thrashing of the cat. It was the ending that terrified me-especially when the cat and mouse forcefed the dog gravy--it looked so gross. I really need to watch this one again in its entirety to truely see if I still loathe it.

[CueBallCat79]

I am also scared of the :donald: "POWER" scene from "Trombone Trouble"!

You were scared or you are scared?

The title of this thread is "Moments in classic cartoons that scared you as a kid". If you're discussing this topic in present day terms...well, that would explain a lot actually.

[wiley207]

Pink Elephants on Parade from Dumbo-This sequence horrified me as a child--and it still disturbs me to this day--and it didn't help that I owned this on a Disney sing-along tape.Elephants should NOT be plaid or bubble gum pink.

I also was afraid of the "Hefflelumps and Woozles" sequence from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day for the same reasons as the Pink Elephants-a hallucination hell with black backgrounds and nightmarish characters and it was also on a sing along tape. Strangely enough I can handle this one now--but not Pink Elephants on Parade.


And as if that weren't bad enough, "Lady and the Tramp" was going to have a nightmarish hallucination sequence right before Junior was born, with Lady seeing multicolored booties dancing around. Eventually the musical number would end with it fading from the booties in the nightmare to the real booties on the newborn baby's feet. Good thing they never got around to that! (Trusty was also supposed to be killed off near the end, but Walt nixed that idea due to the whole "Bambi" thing.)

[Paul Penna]

How old were you folks when you were scared by these things? Unlike most of you, TV wasn't even around during my earliest formative years - I was 6 before we got one, and maybe that's past the average threshold for being scared by things in cartoons. Like I said earlier, I don't recall it ever happening with me. I remember always loving watching cartoons, and laughing my ass off at them, but I never took them seriously, so to speak.

[Glowworm]

How old were you folks when you were scared by these things? Unlike most of you, TV wasn't even around during my earliest formative years - I was 6 before we got one, and maybe that's past the average threshold for being scared by things in cartoons. Like I said earlier, I don't recall it ever happening with me. I remember always loving watching cartoons, and laughing my ass off at them, but I never took them seriously, so to speak.
Most of what frightened me was when I was from 5-7 at least-although some other things scared me when I was older--but those weren't exactly classic...

[kaneda]

I can't remember the name of the cartoon but a mouse is giving a cat a hard time and converts him into a vacuum cleaner then uses him to hoover the fire from the grate so the cat now has a stomach full of burning coals.

The one episode of the Smurfs I found creepy was where they are all being taken over by some strange disease (as purple Smurfs? Been a long time since I last saw it).

[CueBallCat79]

I can't remember the name of the cartoon but a mouse is giving a cat a hard time and converts him into a vacuum cleaner then uses him to hoover the fire from the grate so the cat now has a stomach full of burning coals.

Sounds like Art Davis' "Catch as Cats Can" (1947).

[Glowworm]

I can't remember the name of the cartoon but a mouse is giving a cat a hard time and converts him into a vacuum cleaner then uses him to hoover the fire from the grate so the cat now has a stomach full of burning coals.

The one episode of the Smurfs I found creepy was where they are all being taken over by some strange disease (as purple Smurfs? Been a long time since I last saw it).
That's definately "Catch as Cats Can" and that also scared the crud out of me as a child. As for the Purple Smurfs-- it actually is called just that I think "Purple Smurfs"

[R.J. Smith]

You were scared or you are scared?

The title of this thread is "Moments in classic cartoons that scared you as a kid". If you're discussing this topic in present day terms...well, that would explain a lot actually.
I AM scared of it!

[Bobby Bickert]

Not so much scary as really disturbing: Maybe it was a Harveytoon. An anthropomorphized round of cheese suspended from a rope screaming as he's lowered into a vat of hot mustard. That's how I remember it, anyway.

That was one of Seymour Kneitel's made-for-TV Popeyes, "Hits and Missiles".

[whitsbrain]

For reasons that I've never understood, the theme music to the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" show would instantly frighten me as a child. I suppose I was 6 to 8 years old. I was also creeped out whenever the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales" would deliver the punchline/funny moral of the story. But I always liked to watch both of these cartoons. It's all very strange.

Even today, if I so much as think of these two shows, it can cause me some anxiety and raise some goosebumps.

[Glowworm]

For reasons that I've never understood, the theme music to the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" show would instantly frighten me as a child. I suppose I was 6 to 8 years old. I was also creeped out whenever the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales" would deliver the punchline/funny moral of the story. But I always liked to watch both of these cartoons. It's all very strange.

Even today, if I so much as think of these two shows, it can cause me some anxiety and raise some goosebumps.

Some endings to Fractured Fairy Tales used to scare the crap out of me as a child. In particular I was not happy with the poor prince in "Snow White Meets Rapunzel" sorrowfully flying around her empty tower. (She had eloped with Prince Charming from a ladder while he was spending all that time learning how to fly) I also was creeped out with the ending of Puss and Boots #2 in which the young man starts jumping towards the cat--and looking rather devilish--then the poor cat is skinned!I didn't understand that the cat was skinned-but the sequence of the poor cat shivering even more than the beginning frightened me. I also didn't like the ending to the Little Tinker in which a near sighted hunter mistook the cobbler turned tinker for a turkey and shot him! I also was unhappy with the ending of "The Magic Chicken" in which the young farm lad is turned into a chicken in order to fetch a lock of ogre's hair(in order to fufill one of three tasks for his fiance-that last one being something brave), however once the task is complete ,the chicken has abandoned him and he must return to his love as he is--a chicken. She rejects him because he has failed his task--as the narrator explains "How can you be brave when you're chicken? "And the poor boy remained a dumb cluck for the rest of his life." How awful.:(

[doctoon]

The KFS POPEYE cartoons "Swee'pea Soup" and "Seeing Double" by Gene Deitch

[Don59]

I was terrified of the Gene Deitch KFS Popeye cartoon, "Matinee Idol Popeye" because I didn't like Olive Oyl's big eyes with fake eyelashes, and always turned my head away when they showed Popeye carrying a dummy of Olive with big round eyes. I would leave the room when this cartoon came on. There was another Deitch Popeye toon I vaguely remember that had something to do with the Sea Hag having a robot clone of Olive, but I don't remember much else about it, not even the name of the cartoon, except that this one scared me too.

[Bobby Bickert]

There was another Deitch Popeye toon I vaguely remember that had something to do with the Sea Hag having a robot clone of Olive, but I don't remember much else about it, not even the name of the cartoon, except that this one scared me too.

"Which is Witch?"

[sumnernor]

I assume I was 6 or 7 but in Snow White when the wicket Queen drank the potion and turned into the old woman with the apples. I was very scared with that bit.

[kaseykockroach]

I forgot to add Lampwick's transformation in Pinocchio. Unlike the other moments I listed, that one still gives me the creeps. :o

[Bobby Bickert]

I assume I was 6 or 7 but in Snow White when the wicket Queen drank the potion and turned into the old woman with the apples. I was very scared with that bit.

I remember reading somewhere that when Snow White was first released, this scene made kids wet their pants.

[Glowworm]

I remember that a Scooby Doo episode "The No Face Zombie Chase" used to frighten me as a child. I think it was because the "zombie" appeared to be kind of angry sounding and when it was revealed to be a robot-not a guy in a costume. I mean it was all smashed and stuff...

[Magpie]

Some of the Herman & Katnip cartoons used to freak me out (for obvious reasons).
As did some of the Out of the Inkwell cartoons...Koko being returned to the Inkwell was a little too scary and death-like. Even though he was "reborn" in the next cartoon.
Some of the bouncing ball sing-a-long cartoons were eerie to me...the vocals had a haunting quality.

Broom-Stick Bunny's ending used to frighten me...the genie in the mirror looked insane!:eek::bugs2:

[J. B. Warner]

For some reason, I seem to recall that anytime Bugs Bunny would talk with a mouth full of carrots, it would really creep me out. I don't know why, but as a kid, it kind of ruined cartoons like "Tortoise Beats Hare", "Elmer's Pet Rabbit", and "The Hare-Brained Hypnotist" for me.

Now that I think of it, it was probably because Mel's throat would tighten up whenever he ate carrots, so Bugs didn't sound like he was supposed to, and it was a little unsettling.

[Alf]

Like so many youngsters, "Snow White" is one of the animated movies which scared me the most. At age 5 or 6 I was taken to watch it in a theater with my family. Having already read the comic book version of this Disney feature, I did know that the movie had its scary moments, like Snow White running through the haunted forest, or the Queen preparing the poisoned apple. I was horrified by knowing that I would watch such scenes on a big screen with full sound inside a dark thater. I begged my parents not to see it, but they insisted, believing that watching a 'scary' movie would help me grow up. Still, even after watching the movie, and despite overcoming my fears, I didn´t like it very much, and I didn´t appreciate it in its entirety until as an adult. Luckily, I never watched "Pinocchio" as a kid -having read the comic book adaptation as well, I was also afraid that my parents might take me to watch it theatrically sometime- and when I finally saw it as an adult, it became one of my all-time favorite Disney animated features.
As to shorts, a scene from Disney´s Silly Symphony "The Moth and the Flame" -which I saw as a Super 8 home movie at a birthday party also at age 5 or 6- which scared the h**l out of me was when the moth is on a smiling Greek mask. Then the flame burns the mask as the moth flies away, and as the mask is burnt its smiling face turns into a sad one. I found that scene really depressing.
Some people on this thread have commented that they were scared by the :tomcat: and :jerry: cartoon "Heavenly Puss". I saw it theatrically at age 7 or 8 and, oddly enough, it didn´t scare me at all. On the contrary, that bulldog devil yelling "Let me have it!" made me laugh. I still consider it one of the finest Tom & Jerries, and one which diverts from the usual cat-chases-mouse formula: at the end of the cartoon, as Tom kisses Jerry, it gives us the feeling that, after all, and despite their continuous fights, they are friends (those mediocre 1975 TV series and 1992 feature, which showed them as 'non-violent' buddies, were not necessary at all to prove so!).

[Magpie]

I just want to add that "The Disney Version" by Richard Schickel had a passage in which (if I'm remembering correctly) the proprietor of Radio City Music Hall in NYC admonished Walt Disney for including scenes that were terrifying for children. I think the film cited was Snow White...and the reason being for the number of times that the seats had to be reupholstered.:o:(

The Rain Makers: Heckle and Jeckle = Unsettling/Nightmare Inducing

Also, I wouldn't call it scary...but the Pink Panther cartoon in which he spoke at the end..."Why can't man be more like animals?" (Rex Harrison?) was startling!!!:thinkpink

[wiley207]

Also, I wouldn't call it scary...but the Pink Panther cartoon in which he spoke at the end..."Why can't man be more like animals?" (Rex Harrison?) was startling!!!:thinkpink

That was Rich Little voicing the Panther. I gotta admit, the nasally British-sounding voice he gave the Pink Panther in this short ("Sink Pink") and "Pink Ice" (both from 1965) seemed to fit somewhat with the character, but usually I just preferred the Panther being silent (maybe the reason why the Panther spoke in those two cartoons was due to how the antagonists talked too; I remember the villain in "Sink Pink" had a LOT of dialogue.)

[janiepooh34]

I was always afraid of those shoes that went on Porky's feet and made in dance in that one with the leprechaun's and the big old castle.

The name escapes me at the moment although I am quite sure someone will post it shortly.

[LooneyFan]

I was always afraid of those shoes that went on Porky's feet and made in dance in that one with the leprechaun's and the big old castle.

The name escapes me at the moment although I am quite sure someone will post it shortly.


That cartoon is "Wearing of the Grin" 1951, and can be found on the 1st Golden Collection, Disc 2.

The stuff that I mentioned earlier on this thread were scary, but also watchable. I think the only thing that was hard for me to watch when I was a kid was "Night on Bald Mountian" in Fantasia. There were times that when watching Fantasia, I tried my best to watch this whole sequence.