Let me preface this by saying that I was probably the most easily frightened little girl on the face of the Earth.
It sounds so stupid now, but back when I was four and still in love with the NEW ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH, the song about Heffalumps and Woozles scared me shitless. I'm not sure if it was the bad-LSD-trip imagery, the unsettling music, or merely the idea that such creatures could exist in a realm as happy and friendly as Pooh's, but either way, I HATED that song and would cry and hide and beg my mother to fast-forward that section of the tape. Twenty years later, I still can't watch the whole thing.
I dug up an example on YouTube to share the pain:
Another thing that really bent me was one particular scene in an episode of STAR TREK–the series that had PATRICK STEWART in it. He'd been taken captive by some kind of enemies and they were going to turn him into some kind of cyborg thing. To do so it was apparently needful to drill through his eye. The spinning drill bit stopped just short of plunging into/piercing his cornea, before the scene cut away, but that image horrified me on some subconscious level. I to this day have an intense phobia of anything being near my eyes. ANYTHING, even soft things make me squirm, and metallic/sharp objects are right out.
Adding on to the eye thing, there's another Pooh episode that involved Rabbit being lost in some foggy forest, tormented by shadows and the croaking of frogs and crickets. It's implied that this is wearing on his sanity, as at one point his pupils spin and he screams and goes running blindly. Those fucking spinning eyes, combined with the raw terror in that scream, it frightened me to tears. I still haven't the nerve to look it up on YouTube and finally face it. Just remembering it makes me cold.
Also as another poster mentioned, that goddamned Judge from WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. I was SO not expecting the freaky face, the screams or the melting. Nightmare city.
Anyhow, I love the site and keep up the great work!
— Jen
At the risk of adding trauma to trauma, did you ever see the Pink Elephant sequence from Dumbo? It's on the same lines as the Woozles, but worse, much worse.
He was captured by the Borg, a "race" of cyborgs that assimilates other races. They all share a hive mind and are basically drones. Captain Picard was picked by the Borg to help convince humans to just submit to being assimilated.
Yes, I am a Trekkie geek.
You're not alone. My parents still laugh about the fact that I was terrified of the Heffalumps and Woozles.
Hey Jen –
If you ever feel like a new trip down the trauma lane check out the first minute or so of "Un chien Andalou".
http://www.zappinternet.com/video/danPvuMpaX/Un-chien-Andalou
I think it will knock that Picard memory right out of its socks.
jamisings,
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that completely freaked me out was the one where some race of creature would kidnap Enterprise crew in their sleep, cut them apart and piece them back together. When they awoke, they didn't even know they had been kidnapped, dissected and reassembled. Eventually, one of the medical staff saw that one of their bones was shifted a fraction of an inch and figured out what was happening. The creatures were hooded, had these claw like talons and clicked instead of speaking. Freaked me the hell out!
Well, since you don't like to see pointed objects near an eye you'll want to avoid one of the "Resident Evil" movies, I think it's "Extinction". It has a scene where Alice comes within a fraction of an inch of jabbing a medical tech in the eye with some pointed object. There is also a scene in "Saturn 3" where Farrah Fawcett's character has to have a robot remove a speck of rock from her eye. Oh, avoid the Japanese movie "Audition"!!!!
@BD – Oh yeah! I mean, they even were able to experiment on Data! DATA THE ANDROID! If you can do that to an android! *shudders*
Okay, held off as long as I could, but could you please close the centering tags in this post? It's messing up this page and all the posts under it.
Pretty please? Thank you!
I completely understand your fear of that Winnie the Pooh scene, and the Judge from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I understand the Star Trek scene too, just never saw it as a child, so I can't picture being traumatized by it. Unlike the Wiinie the Pooh scene, and the Judge from Who Framed, which I did see as a child, and do remember scaring me.
I never saw Star Trek or who Framed Roger Rabbit but the Heffalumps and woozles song scared the shit out of me as a kid and still does even though I am almost 36 yrs ol