Gen X childhood TV and film moments that felt genuinely frightening

[Txutxioyigx]

Gen X scary things:
Noseybonk
Mr Bronson -‘kendalllllll’
Triffids
Chocky
Tripods
Worzel Gummidge when he changed heads
Daleks
The Wheelers in Return to Oz
Any others ?

Gosh so many great or scary memories mentioned. I used to watch invaders as a re rein from the 60s(?) where the aliens’ little fingers were crooked and they burnt up when killed and my goodness the music

I always thought that the music to Near and Far was haunting, even though the programme was just an educational geography programme

@MrsPapillon maybe that’s why GenX are a bit more robust than younger generations? I was also scared of all of those.

Raymond Briggs. One minute you're innocently flying around with a snowman and the next you are watching a sweet elderly couple slowly dying of radiation poisoning. When the Wind Blows was brilliant but definitely added to the terror of dying in a nuclear war, which seemed to be pretty inevitable at the time. The regular 'doomsday clock' on the News didn't help. The hand being moved closer to midnight and nuclear destruction. On the news!

Carry on Screaming and Oddbod.

Jason and the Argonauts - the giant bronze statue that comes to life and chases them. That moment when you hear metallic screeches and his head turns...

The Black Nun

That's the one. I showed my kids when they were at uni. Scary still. Mind yiu I won't go on a farm even now

Daleks late 60s early 70s
Nope I'm off to hide behind the settee.

Public info films 70s
Dark water being the spookiest
Kid running on sand dunes..about to step on jagged broken lemonade bottle.

Cyber men in Dr Who. Much scarier than Daleks.

Yep, I lost sleep for about 3 years after watching Ghost watch.

I was very young, and no one thought to tell me it wasn't real 😭

Tales of the unexpected left me with a very strong dislike of tarot cards.

All of these. Quicksand, so much quicksand.

The Enchanted Castle - the ugly wuglies 😱

My exasperated parents banned me from watching it & Tom Baker unnerved me for life…

😂 omg it was! I think I tried to explain rentaghost to my children once and they looked utterly baffled.

The public information film about being followed by a strange man was terrifying. I had an odd 70s childhood - like many - of benign neglect when it came to being left on my own for hours. My mum’s only safety advice was don’t talk to strangers and never eat sweets you might find. Finding sweets never happened anyway.

The witch in Lizzie Dripping used to scare me and I remember being upset about Kizzy

Also remembering the Singing Ringing Tree. Everything in it was a nightmare. I think it was made in 50s but it always seemed to be on the television when I was young in the 70s. I think it was made for children by someone who must have disliked them a lot

@SpareVanKeys was that Kizzie from The Diddakoi? Little gypsy/traveller girl? I remember her wonderful caravan being burned.

The writer was an interesting woman

Reading this thread and agreeing with all the comments! I’d forgotten about the poor pony in the quicksand! I was absolutely horse mad from birth. What was the film or series that came from please?
I see Hartley Hare has had a mention and with very good reason but something even worse for me was a talking cushion called Humphrey. In fact the whole programme, Pipkin I think it was called, traumatised me. I liked to believe that toys came to life but not ordinary inanimate objects.
Flowers in the Attic: totally agree! A friend aged nine who had teacher parents would bring Stephen King books to school and this series by Virginia Andrew’s. I read it on her recommendation….
I found everything about Rainbow very creepy indeed.

Hammer House of Horror.

My big brothers would let me watch them and swear me to secrecy! I remember watching the house that bled, but we didn't watch it to the end, so I was left believing the house was actually bleeding 😳 it was decades later that I found out the real ending.

I adored Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. I've also got the animation film on DVD, it's gorgeous and so atmospheric.

That’s the one! Everyone was horrible to her especially a girl at school 😢

All this talk of ponies and quicksand reminded me of a Mark Lester film (blond kid who also played Oliver Twist). He was mute but had to finally speak when his horse got stuck in a bog and he was frantically trying to pull him out. Run Wild Run Free apparently (having just googled). Who knew mud was such an issue back in the day? 😆

Yeah, it was so sad. The author was a deeply compassionate woman who understood people who lived lives out of the ordinary, and in her novels she often mentioned actual incidents that had happened in real life, however unlikely they seemed. She must have been a fascinating woman to talk to.

Hartley Hare was in Pipkins. Humphrey the Cushion was in Hickory House. I wasn't frightened by either as a kid but looking at them now, I can see what everyone is saying!

Apart from Apaches which we watched in the audiovisual room at primary school and scarred me for life (I grew up on a farm and my brother actually fell in the slurry pit, thankfully it was almost empty and so he was OK). The most scary thing I remember was a book about a girl and at one point in the novel a horse stepped on her foot, the description of the blood oozing out of her shoe made me feel so ill I couldn't finish the book.

Everything had a vague air of threat about it in the 70s 😂 I think it toughened us up. Those public info films are the reason why I'm so good at identifying hazards now.

These were good as well.

My friend brought a copy of The Rats by James Herbert to primary school and we sat on the wall at break time looking for the scary bits.