Jingus Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 I'm not finding a good clip from it so far, but the Garfield Halloween Special was a lot creepier than it should have been.There's any number of what-the-hell-bro moments (what was the DEAL with the "Orson Welles after a month in the grave" old man who told the pirate legend?), but skip to 4:42-4:52 for my personal favorite: 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MADCAP Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 Oh, when it came to nuclear war nightmares the BBC movie, Threads, left me sleepless for days. I remember sitting down for a group meeting before and after watching this at the home I lived in during my boarding school days. A lot of the kids were scared we were all gonna die: 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt McGirt Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 ^^^ That was rough, like really rough. Damn. I can't imagine how fucked up Threads is. EDIT: Do yourself a favor and never watch that, then think "I wonder what that sample from Discharge's "The Possibility of Life's Destruction" is?" and go look up the BBC docudrama The War Game. Just don't. Sometimes hearing something makes the visualization of it possibly worse; in this case I'm glad I didn't see what they shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 The Happy Days two parter where they face the mobster called the Candy Man had me freaking out. At the end of part one Richie is racing to Fonzie's garage to warn him but arrives just as the building explodes. I fucking started crying and my mom had to assure me that the Fonz was gonna be ok. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 7, 2015 Author Share Posted December 7, 2015 The actual nuclear strike is hard to watch but Threads speculates on life after the bomb and that is what fucks you up. The nihilism just weighs on you and the ending is the stomach punch of all stomach punches. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Comedian Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 What the fuck was wrong with Tex Avery??? This shit seriously creeped me out when I was young. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3R0XHZ07WM Like even as a kid the ending struck me as a sisyphean punishment... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 This scared the crap out of me back in the day, as well as its sequel. . . . http://youtu.be/_ItrHSLIZ5U Yep, that would be my buddy Michael Reaves that wrote that... Anytime that you run across an 80s or 90s animated show that seems particularly subversive or twisted, it's a pretty safe bet that Reaves is behind it. Hell, the man was able to make episodes of The Smurfs be actually disturbing, turn him loose on The Real Ghostbusters, Batman TAS, Blackstar, etc. and you were bound to get weirdass stuff including gratuitous mentions of Cthulhu or the Necronomicon. Centipede Press just put out a huge volume collecting every short story the man has written (and that's a lot over a thirty-year career), best investment of fifty bucks for entertainment that I can think of. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgundy LaRue Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 A quick look shows that Reaves co-wrote the story for Read My Lips, the B:TAS that introduced Ventriloquist/Scarface and has the dummy pointing a loaded gun towards a begging, in full psychotic meltdown mode Arnold Wesker. Yet another WTF moment for that show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.T. Posted December 7, 2015 Author Share Posted December 7, 2015 This scared the crap out of me back in the day, as well as its sequel. . . . http://youtu.be/_ItrHSLIZ5U Yep, that would be my buddy Michael Reaves that wrote that... Anytime that you run across an 80s or 90s animated show that seems particularly subversive or twisted, it's a pretty safe bet that Reaves is behind it. Hell, the man was able to make episodes of The Smurfs be actually disturbing, turn him loose on The Real Ghostbusters, Batman TAS, Blackstar, etc. and you were bound to get weirdass stuff including gratuitous mentions of Cthulhu or the Necronomicon. Centipede Press just put out a huge volume collecting every short story the man has written (and that's a lot over a thirty-year career), best investment of fifty bucks for entertainment that I can think of. So, OSJ. When my mortgage isn't kicking my ass so much and I finally take care of that thing for you, can you get my copy of The Shattered World autographed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Comedian Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 No surprise that Reaves also wrote for Dungeons & Dragons, most notably the moral dilemma episode "The Dragon's Graveyard", where the kids get sick of Venger's shit and decide to just figure out a way to kill his ass, only for Dungeon Master to browbeat them about committing premeditated murder. The scariest thing I remember from that show though was the zombie attack in "Prison Without Walls": Turns out this episode was written by comic legend Steve Gerber, which I guess explains why it's built around a Man-Thing analog... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 Gerber did a ton of cartoon stuff. He was resresponsible for the two-day mind fuck "There's No Place Like Springfield", wasn't he? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OSJ Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 This scared the crap out of me back in the day, as well as its sequel. . . . http://youtu.be/_ItrHSLIZ5U Yep, that would be my buddy Michael Reaves that wrote that... Anytime that you run across an 80s or 90s animated show that seems particularly subversive or twisted, it's a pretty safe bet that Reaves is behind it. Hell, the man was able to make episodes of The Smurfs be actually disturbing, turn him loose on The Real Ghostbusters, Batman TAS, Blackstar, etc. and you were bound to get weirdass stuff including gratuitous mentions of Cthulhu or the Necronomicon. Centipede Press just put out a huge volume collecting every short story the man has written (and that's a lot over a thirty-year career), best investment of fifty bucks for entertainment that I can think of. So, OSJ. When my mortgage isn't kicking my ass so much and I finally take care of that thing for you, can you get my copy of The Shattered World autographed? Don't see why not, although Michael's Parkinson's is pretty bad, last time we talked he was still able to sign books, just not do marathon sessions at conventions... You do know that there's a sequel to The Shattered World, right? Actually there's a third volume to make it a bonafide trilogy, but #3 exists only in outline form until some enterprising publisher coughs up the dinero to get Michael to finish it. The handling of the first two books ranks right up there with what was done to Richard Laymon to fuck up his carer in the States for over a decade. The Shattered World is very visually oriented and what's more, the author writes screenplays and has won Emmy Awards and such. So does the publisher promote the hell out of the thing or even do a reprint after Reaves hits the NYT Best-seller list with his Star Wars stuff? Nope, pretty much just toss it out there and watch it sink. Timescape sure did a lot of really choice books, they just didn't do a very good job of promoting them. When your author list includes Gene Wolfe, Keith Laumer, Jack Vance, David Gerrold, Greg Benford, Michael Reaves, Nancy Springer, and even the Estate of Clark Ashton Smith and you have the hottest fantasy artists in the world at the time, (Rowena Morrill & Boris Vallejo) doing your covers and you even have the licensing deal for Star Trek and somehow manage to flush the whole enterprise (no pun intended) down the shitter in four years, you're demonstrating a level of incompetency I can't even begin to imagine... The sequel, The Burning Realm got the same sort of treatment that anything published by Baen that isn't military sf gets... In other words the same respectful and insightful handling that Vince McMahon reserves for women's wrestling. For some perverse reason Baen always manages to publish one or two books a year that don't fit their normal profile (probably so they can claim that they don't just do mil-sf), and the funny thing is that they're generally pretty damn good selections. However, since they don't fit the normal Baen profile, these books get little, if any marketing money and pretty much have to be chased down by the bookstore buyers as the sales reps aren't going to bother to add anything about oddball titles to their two-minute drill. But yeah, books by Jack Vance, Michael Shea, Ryk Spoor,and of course, Michael Reaves... All top-drawer fantasy titles that most publishers would kill for and Baen handles them with the same degree of enthusiasm as the McMahons had for a Daniel Bryan championship run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Comedian Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 Gerber did a ton of cartoon stuff. He was resresponsible for the two-day mind fuck "There's No Place Like Springfield", wasn't he? Yeah. Shit G.I. Joe had a lot of creepy stuff too now that you mention it. The "alternate universe where Cobra won" two-parter where they find their own skeletons in the remains of Joe HQ, The Lovecraftian shit from the episode where Lady Jay finds out she's related to Destro... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 Oh god. I completely forgot "Worlds Without End" (the alternate universe episode). Steeler in the desert, hallucinating because he was bitten by a poisonous insect, and finding his own corpse was INCREDIBLY hardcore when I was 9. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AxB Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 For everyone talking about Threads, that movie was actually on the national curriculum in the 80s. For some reason the education secretary back then thought it was important to teach British children about how to survive in the post apocalypse, so we all had to watch Threads and read When the Wind Blows. We all had writing assignments where you had to partner up and plan how the two of you would work together to survive a nuclear holocaust. I only remember that because I somehow got paired with the prettiest girl in the class and she legitimately suggested that our plan should be to "Go to bed and die happy". We were 13 years old at the time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Execproducer Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 She was way ahead of her time. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 I can't find a clean copy of the damn thing to post. And a verbal summation of its plot would totally fail to do justice to the sheer level of gut-punchery that it does to a small child seeing it for the first time. But, the Looney Tunes short "Fresh Airedale" is perhaps the most unfair thing that I'd ever seen in my young life. Decades later, I sadly realized that this mercilessly cynical cartoon was a pretty accurate description of how the world works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 The Czech Tom and Jerry cartoons 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Boricua Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 That Transformers episode where they first brought back Optimus Prime (only to apparently kill him off again) and they went to the Autobot mausoleum ship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig H Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 The actual nuclear strike is hard to watch but Threads speculates on life after the bomb and that is what fucks you up. The nihilism just weighs on you and the ending is the stomach punch of all stomach punches. I actually think that Threads and The Day After should be both be shown to kids in school so people stop forgetting the horrors of nuclear war and stop thinking something like a winnable nuclear war is possible or that launching a nuke at ISIS is about the dumbest idea ever for a multitude of reasons. Anyway, for me it was Doctor Who. After watching TGIF shows on ABC, I would turn on the Chicago PBS station we got here to watch Doctor Who. As kid, the score for Doctor Who, as well as the scenarios the Doctor would be involved in would freak me out. It was one of those "freaked out, but I can't stop watching" type of things. It was very unsettling. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 I hope you didnt see the deadly assassin when they tried to drown tom baker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLowe Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 I waited to post until I scrolled through the thread, and I think all of mine made it. Special Bulletin was pretty freaky, but The Day After shook me for days. The "Chicken on the Bus" episode of M*A*S*H also really upset me, and I still find it hard to watch. As for adulthood, the "Home" episode of X-Files. I still can't believe that was shown on broadcast television. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig H Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 I hope you didnt see the deadly assassin when they tried to drown tom baker. I actually don't remember. As a kid, I hated stuff in black and white, so I would wait until the ones in color started up again. The ones I remember the most are actually the Davison and McCoy runs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coletti Posted December 7, 2015 Share Posted December 7, 2015 I never ever post anymore but this thread caused me to remember this and goddamnit I did NOT need to remember this. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tbarrie Posted December 8, 2015 Share Posted December 8, 2015 I remember the an episode of the old super friends cartoon freaked me out when I was little. It was the one where the super friends are lured under the swamp and then imprisoned or some such. Then again I would have been about four or less at the time. . . . The super friends ep for me was the one when the legion of doom used Dr Natas' crystal to kill all the JLA. Yeah, that's the episode I came here to mention. Seeing Superman's coffin was pretty harsh at that age. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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