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6. The Care Bears Movie

Not an obvious choice. My daughter claimed this one to be scary, but she could get spooked by a stiff wind. And yet, as I polled adults for their scary kid movie picks, this one popped up. Why? Because a little boy turns into an evil magician, with red glowing eyes and everything. But who needs those limp attempts at scary when you have this:

That's all it takes to keep me up at night.

5. Little Monsters

Hey kids, let's validate your universal fear of monsters living under the bed. Not scary enough? What if said monsters looked and sound just like schtick-master Howie Mandel? AAAAHHHHHHH!

4. The Witches

Roald Dahl hits the list again, aided and abetted by Anjelica Huston vamping the wallpaper right off the walls. Dahl's original is pretty graphic, detailing a foul boy being transformed into a foul mouse. The film did that description justice. Oh, and when the two mice boys get revenge and turn Angelica Huston into a rat, it looks like this.

3. E.T.

Every good kid's movie has a scary element. Frights are the hooks that burrow a film into your young mind and make a childhood viewing unforgettable. Most movies build the fear factor into the cinematic heavy, but Steven Spielberg made his good guy the most terrifying thing you could imagine.  A generation of children learned that aliens can be friendly once you get past all the ear splitting shrieking and the fact they look like lions after being dipped in lava and having their head flattened with a lead pipe. That screeching little alien tap-danced his way into our hearts and wallets. It's hard to find a grown-up who doesn't have fond memories of E.T. and also remember it scaring the crap out of them.

2. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Yeah, I count this as a kid movie (sorry, fanboys). Face-melting Nazis aside, the Indiana Jones movies always aimed at nothing less than to appeal to every single breathing humanoid on the face of this planet; that puts Indy in the family-film category. All the Indy movies have their thrills and chills, but with Temple you'd think George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were planning to launch a line of rubber sheets for all the kids this movie would having pissing their beds for decades. It's like G.L. and S.S. had a pitch session just to dream up all the potential gross-out/freak-out factors.

"Alright Steve. One word: bugs."
"Mmm hmm. And let me add this, George. Two words: more bugs."
"Hold on now. We're both wrong. What is needed here is a CRAPLOAD of bugs!"
(Both) "Hear! Hear!"
"Ooh, and monkeys brains."
"Eyeball soup."
"Grotesquely caricatured ethnic stereotypes. Like a cute Asian kid with an accent so thick you could choke on it."
"Um, okay. How about a guy who tears your heart out?"
"And the heart bursts into flames."
"You're a mad genius."
"Did I mention bugs?"

1. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

Speaking of grossouts, know what's gross? An hour-and-a-half long '80s product tie-in. Yep, I'm talking about Transformers. Shame on you, Michael Bay, for making a film so unnecessary it only banked a half-billion dollars. Of course, Transformers really isn't so scary because you can never tell what's going on. The way Bay films it, Optimus Prime fighting Megatron looks like a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright homes wrestling. So, let's focus instead on another gross '80s commercial masquerading as a movie, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. First of all, I was a kid when the cards were popular and I never got the appeal. Supposedly kids go ga-ga for gross stuff, but I was the kind of kid who washed his hands fifteen times a day and asked my fellow chums to disinfect the seat after riding my bike. Maybe Garbage Pail Kids are before your time, or it's been so long you have a hazy recollection. Let me jog that memory.

 

Who wanted to see THAT brought to walking, talking life? This is what it looks like:

And guess what? They still sell the cards.

Many of the movies that made this ultimate list came in from you the readers, but such a short list couldn't possibly encompass every great scary kid movie. What movies do you think should have made the list?

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