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Original poster

What TV programmes scared you as a kid?

293 replies

Coffeeandcrumpets · 01/02/2021 20:26

Just as the title asks, what TV programmes scared you as a kid? I'll get the ball rolling. I'm an 80s child and I hated Doctor who. The music was terrifying and I had to leave the room. I also hated he-man. Especially when he shouts 'I have the power' in the opening credits. Bag puss also frightened me. A very large pink cat was unnatural!

OP posts:
ChequerBoard · 03/02/2021 12:41

A children's TV series called 'Come Back Lucy' where a young girl travelled back in time through a mirror in her elderly Aunt's house to the Victorian era where she meets Alice who is her own age.

I had so many nightmares about this programme but kind of loved it too..

http://www.thechestnut.com/lucy.htm

Notgoingouttoday · 03/02/2021 12:50

Dr Who
Maelstrom
and that old version of Jane Eyre someone mentioned put me off the Brontes completely.

sothisisit2021 · 03/02/2021 20:49

Christina - it was called First Born 😁

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TV
Toddlerteaplease · 03/02/2021 20:59

My mum
Loved hiding behind the sofa a Dr Who. My sister was terrified by Morgrim the wolf I the 80's adaptation of the Chronicles of Narnia.

QueenOfThorns · 03/02/2021 21:10

The most frightening thing I remember was the last episode of a series called Children of Green Knowe. I still get chills whenever I hear a peacock!

I also remember running out of the room and hiding from the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz.

Giggorata · 03/02/2021 21:11

Dr Who, especially the Daleks and the original whispering Cybermen. The modern stamping robotic ones aren't half as scary.

Quatermass.

Sapphire and Steel was very sinister, but we were all besotted with David McCallum after the Man from UNCLE.

I got to see some scary things that should have been for adults. The Turn of the Screw and the Uninvited freaked me right out, and there was a drama series whose name I can't remember but in one episode a man fell over and had some kind of fit in a rural outhouse. The awful noises made my blood run cold.

Elizabethtailor · 03/02/2021 21:57

Moondial!! That has haunted me forever.

Another really horrible scene of a sundial and a little girl in a garden at night. Could it be Tom’s Midnight Garden?

Staying up to watch Strange But True but being so petrified that my dressing gown on the back of my bedroom door was actually a headless monk I couldn’t sleep ever again...

HearMeSnore · 03/02/2021 22:32

Rupert. I was scared of Ragetty the little troll thing.

Later the spooky kids dramas already mentioned like Chocky, Moondial and Ghost in the Water.

Moonfleet. The scene with the graveyard where the boy is lowered down a well to find something hidden there. It gave me nightmares.

And I remember being bothered by Maelstrom too. I have no idea why I was watching it - it was clearly aimed at adults. But it properly freaked me out.

marypoppinsreturns · 03/02/2021 22:46

The Incredible Hulk - late 70's or very early 80's. Used to run up to my bed and put the covers over my head so I couldn't hear him roar.

deste · 03/02/2021 22:50

Quatermass and the pit.

deste · 03/02/2021 22:51

My son was terrified of the Triffids.

Nothing77 · 03/02/2021 23:01

The safety adverts with Charley in the 80s....just his face used to terrify me!

Davros · 03/02/2021 23:19

Children of the Stones has recently been serialised on Radio 4. I've downloaded it from Sounds

Alrassan · 04/02/2021 03:18

The sea devils in Dr Who, terrifying

HearMeSnore · 04/02/2021 10:29

The Water Babies. Billie Whitelaw's character absolutely terrified me.

DenisetheMenace · 04/02/2021 10:30

Captain Scarlett

“This is the voice of the Mysterons” 😱

Jeez, scared myself now.

Coralturquoise · 04/02/2021 10:30

The old fuzzy felt moomins, the hattifateners were terrifying. Also dr who in the 80s.

purpledagger · 04/02/2021 10:34

The Wizard of Oz 2.

The woman with the room full of heads and also those people who had wheels for arms.

CuddlyDudley71 · 04/02/2021 11:19

@BorderlineHappy
Ooh was that 'Armchair Thriller'?
Terrifying!

TimeIHadSomeTimeAlone · 04/02/2021 11:26

A scene from an adaptation of Tess of the d'Urbervilles with blood seeping through some sort of screen - that's literally all I remember. Played on my mind for ages.

The sound of Bill Sykes beating Nancy to death in Oliver (I think). Gave me an absolute horror of domestic violence before I even knew what that was.

The ED-209 in RoboCop - I wasn't even watching it but just listening from the other room. "You have 20 seconds to comply" and then gunfire and screaming.

And a TV programme that I'll probably never find out what it was - all I remember is a mountain, maybe with a cave system, a mass exodus of people, some sort of disease that disfigured faces and a dropped doll repeating some creepy phrase. I'd love to know what it was - scared the absolute crap out of me. Would have been early or mid 80s probably.

NotExactlyMrsCurrentAffairs · 04/02/2021 11:37

When I was in my mid teens, my much younger brother used to watch The Riddlers, the theme tune used to really freak me out. I have no idea why.

CleverCatty · 04/02/2021 11:59

The Snow Queen - she seemed to have a horrid face and the head covering etc reminded me of the long gap where my curtains joined up in the middle - I thought I could see her there as an 8 year old!

I recall being vaguely scared of Doctor Who Daleks as a child but most kids were!

Magic Roundabout etc - nah not scared.

CleverCatty · 04/02/2021 11:59

Films - saw it once and Watership Down scared me as a child and is even more scary and vivid as an adult!

CleverCatty · 04/02/2021 12:01

Also - not quite TV programmes but would see them on TV as adverts and at school, those public information adverts/films which showed children being run over by trains if they didn't cross properly at level crossings etc or on ice on a pond falling through.

They had the desired effect of scaring you but it seemed very graphic at the time as a kid!

StepOutOfLine · 04/02/2021 12:01

I think these were episodes of Armchair Thriller- one had a young Pauline Quirk who worked in a supermarket and turned into some sort of nutjob. The other which stayed with me for years was a couple in an isolated house with ginormous killer rats creeping up on them. They got through on the phone to the police and were giving their names, (Truscott) and the police couldn't hear them properly as the rats were chomping through the wires, and said "we're trying to help the Prescott family" and the people were yelling "Truscott, it's Truscott" as they sobbed and the rats advanced.