'80s Horror Movies That Traumatized Young Viewers

For Gen-X kids and Xennials who grew up in the '80s, childhood looked a lot different than it does today. From latch-key kids to those very real bike adventures depicted in Amblin movies and "Stranger Things," kids who grew up in the 1980s were often unsupervised, left to find their own fun after school in the pre-internet age. And for many, that meant watching whatever nightmare fuel happened to be playing on HBO — or even better, on a friend's VHS player.

While it seemed like great fun at the time to the unsupervised youths of the MTV era, plenty of '80s kids are still having Freddy-Krueger-shaped night terrors. But often, it wasn't the monsters or gory scenes from the Golden Age of slasher films that kept '80s kids up at night — it was subtler horror elements like a body transformed into something unrecognizable, or something seemingly mundane secretly harboring a hidden danger. Hang onto your emotional support Rubik's cube as we break down five '80s horror movies that traumatized young viewers.

Aside from the animated horror series "The Owl House," Disney isn't typically a brand that most folks associate with the horror genre. But in 1980, the studio came out with a live-action mystery horror film that left plenty of younger folks at the time permanently scarred despite its relatively slow-burning storyline.

Sort of a kid-accessible horror movie lite, "The Watcher in the Woods" was tame enough to be shown on many an elementary school projector screen. Starring Bette Davis as Mrs. Aylwood, the mother of a daughter who mysteriously disappeared decades prior to the events of the story, the film follows American sisters Jan (Lynn-Holly Johnson) and Ellie (Kyle Richards) after they move into a manor amid seemingly haunted woods.

The scares are more eerie than terrifying, making the movie more of a spooky Halloween watch than a full-blown fear fest. But the subtly unsettling atmosphere of the film and its paranormal plot twist left plenty of 1980s children with a lifelong fear of venturing into the woods long before the Blair Witch came along. "I was around 8 years old when I watched it and it still gets in my brain sometimes," confessed one Reddit user, adding, "I lived around a large woods and would often be quiet frightened to go into them, especially at night." Other Redditors chimed in their agreement, adding a fear of mirrors and Bette Davis in general to the list of lifelong traumas this film unlocked.

Mention Jeff Goldblum in the 2020s, and you're almost certain to generate wholesome memories among the Millennials who remember him best post-"Jurassic Park." But find yourself a few Gen-Xers whose parents were loose with the TV restrictions in the mid-1980s and you're sure to uncover at least one among them who still hasn't progressed past the soul-crushing body horror of the 1986 Goldblum-starring David Cronenberg remake of the classic sci-fi horror film "The Fly."

The movie stars Goldblum as teleportation pod-experimenting scientist Seth Brundle, who strikes up a relationship with science journalist Ronnie Quaife (Geena Davis). When the new lovers run into some trouble with Ronnie's ex, who also happens to be her boss, Brundle's eagerness to try out his new tech on living tissue gets ahead of his sense and he hops into the teleporter, accidentally splicing his genome with a fly in the process. Brundle begins a grisly transformation into a monstrous fly hybrid, one devoid of the human spark Ronnie fell in love with, and soon abandons his former science goals for a much more twisted Kafkaesque vision.

The film's bleak, tragic ending is grim enough alone to haunt viewers' dreams. But Brundlefly's twisted insect flesh and freaky fly mannerisms are still permanently stamped into many '80s kid brains. Remember to rewatch this one on an empty stomach. 

The first "Poltergeist" film may be the most well-known in the franchise, especially with all of the dark lore surrounding it from all the bizarre things that happened on the "Poltergeist" set. But for many kids watching from behind the couch in the 1980s, "Poltergeist II: The Other Side" is the movie that left a terrifying imprint on their trauma response, with 100% of the credit for that trauma going to the film's end times-preaching minister Reverend Henry Kane (Julian Beck).

Building on the story developed in the first film, "Poltergeist II" finds the Freeling family once more plagued by the spirit that chased them out of their Cuesta Verde home in the first film. After moving into the home of Diane Freeling's mother (Geraldine Fitzgerald), the Freelings find themselves stalked and harassed by the spirit of Kane, a 19th-century doomsday cult reverend who lured his flock in a cave to slowly die after his predicted expiration date passed with no horsemen. His almost inhumanly skeletal face, an artifact of actor Julian Beck's real-world cancer, accompanied by his eerie melodic refrain of "God is in His Holy Temple," haunted the nightmares of many a young mind.

Released in an era of TV televangelists and two converging public hysterias — "stranger danger" and the Satanic Panic — this film resonated with Gen-X children before they could utter the words "white van." As one Reddit user wrote on r/horror, "After I watched Poltergeist 2 as a kid I 1) wouldn't go out to play in the front of my house for the entire summer fearing the preacher would come walking up and 2) kept asking my mom if we could remove the screen door."

A 1982 horror-comedy anthology collaboration between Stephen King and zombie horror legend George A. Romero, "Creepshow" is one of those 1980s curiosities that bears revisiting from time to time — if only to remind yourself that the scary thing traumatizing you as a child is actually kind of corny. The film features five distinct stories, and marked Stephen King's first turn at screenwriting after Stanley Kubrick rejected his script for "The Shining." Its star-studded cast features the likes of Ted Danson, Leslie Nielson, and Ed Harris, not to mention a very young Joe Hill — the writer son of Stephen King responsible for "NOS4A2" and "Locke and Key."

While the film is considerably benign even by YouTube standards today, it left its share of children unable to sleep with the light off when it came out in the '80s. Revisiting "Creepshow" on r/movies, one Reddit user recalled being traumatized by the final story, "They're Creeping Up on You!", a segment that ends with cockroaches bursting from a character's flesh. Another user chimed in, "Creepshow horrified me as a kid and watching it again as an adult was like experiencing PTSD catharsis." Factor in the Stephen King-starring segment "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill," which centers on alien vegetation growing all over a farmer's body and home after an encounter with a meteor, and the beach drowning scene of "Something to Tide You Over," and you've got a recipe for top-tier kid-traumatizing psychological horror.

What 1980s child didn't absolutely fall in love with the idea of owning an adorable Mogwai like Gizmo after seeing "Gremlins," the ultimate object lesson in why adults give us rules for a reason? Of course, if you make the mistake of getting him wet, you get more Mogwai. Feed your Mogwai after midnight, and they turn from sweet, furry buddies into impish reptilian gremlins who will literally kill you for the fun of it.

When viewed through an adult lens, "Gremlins" is objectively silly, which is perfectly reasonable since it was written as a dark comedy-horror movie. With its cute little furry Mogwai, teenage protagonist, and PG rating, it makes sense for the time period that many 1980s parents let kids as young as four watch — only to realize the movie scared the living beans out of many child viewers. From those little balls springing from a creature's back to the nightmarish ways the gremlins would wantonly torture their victims just for giggles, this was pretty scary stuff for the elementary kids watching.

To adults prone to letting their kids loose with the cable box on autopilot, "Gremlins" served as a reminder that things that aren't necessarily scary for adults can sometimes be deeply disturbing for kids. In fact, the public backlash to nightmare fuel of this film and several other blockbusters of the era like "Jaws," "Poltergeist," and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" would partly lead to the creation of the MPAA rating PG-13. Case in point: the Facebook user who recalled, "I had to be dragged screaming from the theater after they blew that one up in the microwave."