The things that warped my childhood

Pennywise



That's right, there's a clown with a freakin New York accent in the sewer inviting little kids to come down and float with him. He lures them away and eats them. The best part about this is the King has admitted that he used his child's nightmare as inspiration for this book. Any bets on how stable that child is now?

"Yup, Billy. That's right. That monster inside your closet is real. It's waiting in there with a piece of piano wire to stick in your eye! Daddy loves you, Billy!"

Critters



My bedroom was in a basement, and my window was a window well. After watching this movie, I swear I saw a pair of glowing red eyes roll past my window one night, and I couldn't sleep for a month. They were vicious little bastards, and we were first introduced to the spines they shoot from their backs to immobilize people while they eat them. Why in the world was I watching this as a kid?

Raptors



Say what you will about the sequels, but this movie brought us the first thoughts of fast, nasty killing machines that were smart enough to open doors, hunted humans as humans were trying to hunt them, and could chew through anything. Those were some scary dinosaurs!

The kid at the window



I was VERY young when I watched this one. The eyes on the vampires scared the living hell out of me, but mostly, it was the little boy coming back after his brother, appearing at the window, floating...and then coming for his friend! I will admit without shame to having slept with a cross under my pillow for the next four or five years.

Gmork



Anyone who says that they were never scared by a giant puppet wolf that brings on the end of the world, hunts little boys, and appears with glowing eyes in a cave at the end of the universe to admit that the only thing he has left to do now is eat the main protagonist...is frickin lying!

Flying Monkeys



Though today, I think they just may come in handy every now and then, these little blue primates were scary as hell taking away poor Dorothy and ripping apart the scarecrow!

Wheelers



Watch them here.

The picture shows us the masks of course, but not the horribly elongated limbs that ended in wheels that made them definitely fast enough to catch poor Dorothy. At five, they looked so real, and they gave me my share of nightmares. Now...eh...not so much.

Jabberwocky



Maybe it was the hanging neck skin or the fact that everything suddenly got dark and foggy when you knew it was going to appear. In this particular mini-series version, you could practically see the sticks that propped it up, but this was the one that scared the living daylights out of me!

Skeksis



Just look at that thing! Now add on the fact that it was a race that was trying to capture the protagonist to suck out his essence...AND that it emitted a whine that would rival the best Jerry Seinfeld routine out there, and you've got one great childhood nightmare!

Firey's



These things took all of the pieces of their bodies off, played catch with them, and threw them into the fire. Then, when the main character's head didn't come off, they tried to take it off anyway, and chased her threw the woods, throwing random body parts after her. I was terrified!

Sharptooth



OK, it was a big mean meat eating dinosaur that stalked all the cute ones all through the entire movie trying to eat them and just wouldn't die! What kind of monster tries to eat something as cute as Duckie?

That's right, I'll admit it:

Little bunny rabbits



But you try watching them enslave and attack each other and still be able to look at those cute little fuzzy things in county fairs the same. I had no problem eating them after seeing this movie.

Super hybrid spiders



Anyone who has ever seen what a brown recluse can do...or has lived in certain places in Australia where you actually have to check your shoes and bed for certain nasty spiders can understand this fear.

I'm not afraid of spiders, actually, but as a kid, I was scared to death by this movie. I'd lived in a basement full of spiders that looked just like these and my parents had told me they weren't poisonous. All of the sudden I had cinematic proof that they were LIARS!

Ghoulies



They look like this, and they came out of a toilet. I can't really remember, but I'm farely sure that this movie was responsible for some sort of insistence upon peeing outside for a couple of days. Thank God I didn't have neighbors!

Darkness



OK, to be honest, the devil just seemed like a lovesick jerk in this one. It was his minions that scared me more. I bawled for hours after watching the unicorn die in this movie, and I couldn't imagine that devil being so evil that he'd make one of his little evil midgets do that!

Sick E.T.



It wasn't the actual alien. Who could be scared of a thing that knew nothing about anything on the planet and could barely even waddle? But when the mom walked into the bedroom, and I saw him lying there amonst the sick kids all white and half dead, I had nightmares for weeks!