Those impressionable years of growing up often bear the scars caused by movie scenes that became our personal nightmare fuel. For this month’s Mutant Roundtable, we asked the team about the movies and scenes that freaked them out the most when they were kids!

Heather: I adored watching scary/creepy things as a kid. I was (and still am) a big fan of horror films, and being scared. However, nothing made me feel the kind of pure, distilled terror — the kind you feel deep in your bowels — like Judge Doom’s transformation at the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That combo of Lloyd’s acting, his eyes turning to daggers, and his voice becoming a high-pitched squeal horrified me in ways I can still vividly remember at age 40. I always struggled to keep my eyes on the screen.

Kat: I remember being genuinely freaked out when watching Darkness Falls (2003). The “Tooth Fairy” that haunts these children is HORRIFYING. The scene that got me was right in the beginning, where the mom is dragged into her pitch-black room in front of her son. Suddenly, a dark figure with a white mask appears in the dark, shadowless hallway. This movie had me sleeping with a nightlight, hallway light, and my door swung all the way open for a good few months.

Justin: Can we all agree that The Neverending Story is a neverending parade of terrors for children? In a movie that’s full of frightful imagery and heightened emotions, the one part that always freaked me out the most was Atreyu’s walk between the Sphinxes. There’s so much tension in this part, and when he walks by the slaughtered knight and the visor opens up to reveal this bloody, charred face, I’d always lose it.

Drake: Gah. That’s an easy one. I saw the first Godzilla movie when I was seven. Now I’d seen Godzilla tromping around in other flicks, and it was kind of fun and goofy. But this one… this one was the original, in stark black-and-white that made it look like a documentary or a newsreel. The destruction was disturbing, not campy, and to make it even worse, I was getting the flu and didn’t realize it. So by the end of the movie I was nauseous, literally sweating, and spent the next few fever-wracked nights having horrifying nightmares, all in black-and-white.

Sitting Duck: I suppose I could go with a conventional response. For instance, the Garthim in The Dark Crystal were something I found quite terrifying while growing up. But the one entity that truly filled me with trepidation as a tyke (and this is a bit of a cheat here, as it involves a TV show) was Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on M*A*S*H. Now this wasn’t a “she’s a nurse who will give me a booster shot” fear. This induced full-on Monster in the Closet-type panic.

Anytime my dad watched M*A*S*H, I dreaded her appearing on the screen. And to this day, I have no idea why. Though on further thought, Hot Lips could make for a curious slasher villain, as she slaughters members of the 4077th with creative kills, like garroting Colonel Blake with one of his fishing lines and suffocating Klinger with nylons.