Warning: This will be spoilerific. If you’re one of two people in this country who missed any of these movies as a child, skip over what you haven’t seen. I’ve warned ye. Also, don’t get me wrong. I loved these movies — but they scared the crap outta me.

Since reaching adulthood I’ve come to suspect that the children’s animated movie industry has been witholding a deep, dark secret. They have a kind of S&M, a desire to terrify small children.

No, it’s true. Just think back on how often a children’s cartoon scared you so bad that for the next few weeks when you tried to close your eyes at night all you could see was a terrifying scene from that movie, burned onto the back of your eyelids.

There are specific movies that have haunted my mind even as an adult. Psychological scarring has a nasty habit of not letting go, even after you’ve grown. In researching my list watching some of these scenes again freaked me out a little. Of course I was home alone in the dark, so that didn’t help.

Think I’m being a big weenie? Just try to argue with me after witnessing the razor-toothed clowns of children’s movies.

All Dogs Go To Heaven: The hell dream

Aww… how cute. Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise voice two cuddly yet rebellious doggies caught in a web of gambling and running away from the afterlife. Charlie (Reynolds) is betrayed by his old boss, ending up drunk in a car that the boss’s goons push into the water. He drowns and goes to Heaven where, apparently, all dogs go.

Charlie doesn’t like the idea of an eternal existence of clouds and fluffy and happy floaty time. His shrewish pink doggie afterlife guide informs him that every dog has a timepiece that represents his/her life and stops when he/she dies. He find his watch and winds it back. This elicits horrified shrieks from Pinky. Her voice hauntingly calls after him that he can never come back.

One night soon after having reunited with his old buddy Scratchy (DeLuise), Charlie has a terrifyingly realistic dream that he’s in hell. It starts off with whatsherface’s chilling call that “You can neeeverrrr come baaaack.”

He’s dropped onto a barren wasteland and sucked into a wall of lightning. Managing to escape and run away he’s then chased by and dragged into a tornado emerging from a glowing red hole in the ground. Whimpering and clawing he’s pulled in and drops down toward a lake of fire. He lands on a boat made of bones piloted by some Grim Reaper meets pterodactyl skeleton.

In front of him the fire begins to rise up and form into a Satan-like dog being. I should stress that this ain’t the cutesy little Pluto Satan from the old Mickey Mouse cartoon. This guy’s not foolin’ around. Looking like part dog, part dragon, part bat and a whole lot of ugly, he spews fire and evil imps who chase Charlie and chew on his flesh while the boat begins to sink into the lava. Devilbatdog looks on and growls something unintelligible in his low, evil voice.

And if you still think I’m kidding about the writers being masochists, consider this: Charlie dies saving a little girl he befriended. During the film’s last five minutes, having lulled the kids into a false sense of security with a total lack of hellfire, Charlie comes back to say goodbye to his friends, his soul allowed to momentarily defer from his eternal torture in the underworld. That evil batdevildog returns, towering over the city. To their credit the filmakers have Charlie’s soul saved at the critical moment because of his valiant last act. But still, we have to watch the pained look on his face as he kneels by the bed and says his goodbyes, tears rolling down his face. All the while the mountainous hellbeast is right outside beckoning him in the chillingly low and growly voice up until Pinky destroys him and takes Charlie away.

Not convinced yet? Okay…

Sleeping Beauty: The dragon end boss

As a whole, this movie is much less nightmarish (and more boring) than All Dogs Go To Heaven. It also happens to contain the most violent and hideous scene I can recall in a Disney movie. Don’t let the cutesy fairies and romantic plot fool you. This movie will mar your soul.

Necessary backstory: The kingdom rejoices when the king and queen introduce their newborn baby girl Aurora. Unfortunately Maleficent, an evil witch with a chip on her shoulder (’cause really, what other kind is there?), places a curse on Aurora stating that on her 16th birthday she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall into an eternal slumber (read: totally gonna die). Impending teenage death has puts a damper on the celebrations. Luckily Merryweather the fairy casts a spell that changes the curse so that a kiss from her true love could awaken Aurora from her ageless slumber. Leaving nothing to chance the king orders all spinning wheels in the kingdom to be burned and puts his girl in the care of Merryweather and her cohorts Flora and Fauna.

Aurora (now codenamed “Briar Rose” *forehead smack*) grows up to be a beautiful young lady. On her 16th birthday she meets and falls in love with a handsome prince (’cause really, what other kind is there?) named Phillip. Maleficent gets quite miffed. She kidnaps double-P and tricks Aurora into pricking her finger on a spinning wheel she created in a secret wing of the castle. The green tinged scene where Aurora is hypnotized and slowly walks to her doom following a glowing green orb is eerie enough to give any kid chills.

But that’s a romp through a field of dandelions compared to what follows.

The faeries help the prince escape and he charges to Aurora’s rescue. He’s stopped by Maleficent before he can reach her. Not content with mearly zapping him dead or creating some impassible barrier she transforms into a huge black-and-green dragon.

Blazing green, soulless eyes? Check. Terrifingly large form? Check. Rivers of fire spewing from a black and jagged maw? Check, indeed.

The ensuing battle and kill of the witch dragon lurked around the periphery of my dreams for much of my early childhood.

Still haven’t covered your eyes and called for mommy? Alrighty then…

An American Tail: The Giant Mouse of Minsk

Like most of this list, An American Tail (ohoho so cute) manages to keep the psyche-shredding material to a minimum. What it lacks in quantity it makes up in quality.

I don’t think there was any one particular thing in any movie I ever saw that made me fear sleep as much as the remembrance of the “Secret Weapon” at the end. I sincerely believe that the animators were on intense psychotropic drugs when they created the hideously deformed and unspeakable horror that is the Giant Mouse of Minsk.

Let me bring you up to speed. Sometime in the late 1800s, Fievel and the rest of his Russian family set off for America, “a land free of cats.” Or so they think. Tragedy ensues. and America turns not to be all roses and rainbows. Fievel is separated from his family and spends the entirety of the movie looking for them in earnest as he tries to keep from being killed by life in New York.

Meanwhile, he befriends two other young mice who help him out of trouble. All the mice of New York City are plagued by the cats and become dependent on a feline protection racket (run by Warren T. Rat who is, unbeknownst to the rodent community, a cat himself).

Fievel helps put a plan together to get rid of the cats using an unsettling folktale from his homeland about the Giant Mouse of Minsk. You can tell how utterly delighted the crew was with their ghastly creation. The dreadful thing was dangled in front of the audience like a nightmarish carrot. You know, like a carrot with… mold… and those black spots on it and all bendy and soft. Hideous! The audience sits in fear for a full minute and a half, the director teasing the fear factor by having the mice almost release the secret weapon by accident, then having to release it seconds later. In the meantime all we see is the innocent-looking trolly mechanism that the real nightmare fuel tops like a grisly Ritz cracker.

Sparks fly, colors light up the sky and all the cats quake in fear as something obviously really freaking bad attempts to burst forth from the locked warehouse doors in front of them. In less than one second your childhood self will lose all bowel control as the Giant Mouse of Minsk destroys the door and increases speed toward the camera, sure to devour you and all the sunshine in the world.

At least that’s how it came across to my five-year-old self.

I can not stress enough the awfulness of this creature. I’m surprised all the cats didn’t simultaneously die from heart attacks instead of managing to run and be chased into the sea.

You have nerves of adamantium if you’re going to go on after this…

The Secret of NIMH: Pretty much everything

For me it is the only thing in animation that could top the Giant Mouse of Minsk. The Secret of NIMH wins because practically the entire freaking movie is one funhouse of terror, each scene marginally more horrifying than the last.

Let’s see: There’s the terrifying shrew nanny/maid, Dragon the demonic cat, the great owl (with sickening glowing eyes) and his lair, the bloodthirsty guardian rat in the rosebushes, Nicodemus’s gnarled body and glowing eyes, basically everything about the rats in the rosebushes (who have soulless glowing eyes), the animal testing lab scene, the plow which threatens to chop up the protagonist’s ill son into little pieces of cat kibble… oh did I mention all the unsettling glowing eyes?

The plot’s simple enough: Mrs. Brisby the mouse goes on a quest to find a way to save her son’s life. He is sick with pneumonia and can’t get out of bed, which is really unfortunate because the plow’s come early this year and the Bisley homestead sits in the plow’s future path. Mrs. Bisley braves many dangers and risks her life to save her family.

I gotta give it to this movie for sheer determination in the nightmare fuel department. But I suppose who really should get the credit is Don Bluth, director of three of these movies. Congratulations, Don. You are 75% responsible for all that was wrong in my childhood.

Don Bluth is an ex-animator for Disney. I would blame him for a lot Disney’s creepiness it its movies. I would, but Disney has since gone on to murder countless of their protagonist’s parents, friends and family, raping their land for good measure.

I’m sticking with my S&M theory.

And speaking of Disney, honorable mention goes to Snow White for the wicked queen. She tried.

REALLY HARD.