We editors at Collider.com could have written about some of the scariest kids movies, or the saddest kids movies, but thanks to a casual Slack conversation that ended up plumbing the depths of our childhood horror, we decided to go for a more personal take: what movies really freaked us out? Because most of them weren't intended to have that effect. Adults often forget that for little kids, something that appears seemingly innocuous can end up being terrifying. Or in other cases, you can watch The NeverEnding Story today and still cry over Artax (as I did just this past weekend). Fight the sadness!

Below, each of the editors have picked one movie that really messed us up as kids; basically, the movies or scenes we never forgot, even though we may have wanted to. These certainly aren't the only ones (and most of us agree with each others' picks as being similarly scary or affecting -- Return to Oz will haunt me to my grave), so enjoy this trip down memory lane, and let us know some of your picks in the comments. -- Allison Keene

Return to Oz

I honestly can’t recall what age I was when I first saw the demented Wizard of Oz sequel Return to Oz, but I’m fairly certain you can never be old enough to witness the horrors within this particular movie. I could work a VCR before I could talk and I frequented Blockbuster a lot as a youngster, so when I’d find myself browsing the aisles of Blockbuster on a Friday night, my decisions were based primarily on what image was on the box. Return to Oz caught my eye for two reasons: 1) It looks colorful and harmless enough—a young girl surrounded by fun-looking creatures! And 2) As a kid I had a weird obsession with sequels. For some reason I thought a sequel was a “new and improved” version of an original film, so as a result I saw way too many sequels before I actually saw the original films.

I certainly knew of The Wizard of Oz at this point—I was probably between the ages of 5 and 9 or so—but I can’t be certain I had seen the Judy Garland classic before I made the fateful decision to rent Return to Oz. If you’re lucky enough to be unfamiliar with Return to Oz, it’s a direct yet unofficial sequel to The Wizard of Oz that was released in 1985 and finds a young Dorothy returning to Oz, only to find the Emerald City in ruins and the Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion turned to stone.

The first thing Dorothy sees when she awakes is her chicken Billina (subbed for Toto), who can now talk. That right there should’ve been a warning sign, but then Dorothy is pursued by “Wheelers”, which are humans who have wheels instead of hands and feet, which full-on confirms that writer/director Walter Murch decided to turn his Wizard of Oz sequel into a body horror film.

Indeed, that’s what I remember the most about Return to Oz—seeing bodies contorted or defamed in ways that are unnatural. You know, the stuff that kids movies were made for. The most iconic/horrific sequence in the film finds Dorothy snooping around Princess Mombi’s palace, only to discover a room full of human heads in glass cases. She opens one case, which reveals Mombi’s head sitting there, alone, without a body. She reaches in to grab something, awakens the head, then all the heads start screaming as Dorothy runs for her life.

Return to Oz isn’t exactly a Halloween film, or even a horror film, but it scarred the minds of plenty of kids throughout the 80s and 90s. I, for one, remain traumatized, and I still don’t understand how in the world this movie got made, let alone released. — Adam Chitwood

The Great Muppet Caper

The most horrifying shot in cinematic history according to five-year-old Vinnie Mancuso is the moment Sweetums the goddamn Muppet runs toward the camera in the opening number of The Great Muppet Caper. Reader, I fled. Not the room, I fled the house. The appearance of eight-foot-tall puppet ogre beast Sweetums instilled such terror in me within one seconds of screen time I still consider that Muppet among the great horror monsters like Dracula, the Wolfman, and Kate Mara’s wig in Fantastic Four. Have you seen Sweetums? The Muppets’ most Lynchian creation looks like a bastard child between a regional theater Beauty and the Beast and a Party City Chewbacca. I fully believe repressed memories of Sweetums are the reason I didn’t want to see Solo in theaters. Sweetums is why I don’t trust dogs that weigh more than six pounds on a personal level. It took me over a decade to finally see the next two seconds of that scene, in which Sweetums comedically falls down a manhole. No, it did not make me feel better. It made me fear the image of a grime-covered Sweetums living amongst/feeding off of rats in the sewer. IT would be the scariest movie in horror history if it opened with Sweetums’ mutant bulldog-ass face peeping out of that sewer grate. Sweetums the Muppet saying “we all float down here” would break my mind like an ill-fated character in an H.P. Lovecraft story. I refuse to even imagine it. I refuse.

So yeah that Muppet song messed me up pretty good, is what I’m saying. — Vinnie Mancuso

The Brave Little Toaster

I wasn’t allowed to watch traditionally scary movies as a kid, but there are still plenty that absolutely terrified me, including The Secret of Nimh (see below) and the Jabberwocky from Through the Lookingglass (and others that were so sad I could never watch again, like Bambi!) But one that really informed my childhood and beyond was The Brave Little Toaster, which we had on VHS and I continued to watch over and over again, drawn to it like a moth to flame. There are several things that The Brave Little Toaster did to mess me up, including giving me a lifelong suspicion that inanimate objects have thoughts and feelings. I also had a crush on Lampy. There’s a lot to unpack here. But there are also the truly terrifying scenes like when the appliances are about to be crushed and cubed at the junkyard (I’ve avoided junkyards since then), as well as when the air conditioner explodes into an early grave because he’s so angry, not to mention the nightmare sequence when Rob (the human “master” of these appliances — yes, they all call him master), and Toaster are tortured by an evil smiling clown dressed as a firefighter (!).

The Brave Little Toaster is pretty much a nonstop horror about how these appliances are in constant danger of being destroyed, mangled, pulled-apart, or otherwise killed as they search desperately for their master. It’s a definite precursor to some of Toy Story’s most emotionally intense scenes, and is quite similarly a wonderfully traumatic romp that will have you apologizing to objects in your house forever. — Allison Keene

NeverEnding Story

When I think about what screwed me up most as a kid, it wasn’t the things that scared me. Sure, Anjelica Huston was a regular face in my nightmares after The Witches (fortunately my Addams Family obsession cured me of that particular affliction pretty quickly), but I was also captivated by the creepy imagery in films like Return to Oz and The Dark Crystal. The films and movie moments that floored me were always emotional. And man, kids movies are crazy emotional. There’s heartbreak and tragedy in almost all of the Disney greats (I’m still not over Mufasa). Films like Bridge to Teribithia and My Girl are a blunt lesson in mortality. But the one that really messed me up was the infamous Artax scene in The NeverEnding Story.

That’s because the sequence is straight up emotional warfare. It’s an assault. Look, a lot of The NeverEnding Story is a bummer, but Artax’s death is next level messed up. In case the scene wasn’t seared into your brain as a child, the moment in question finds the hero Atreyu leading his beloved horse Artax into the Swamp of Sadness; admittedly, a bad idea. When the horse gets stuck in the swamp, he slowly sinks into the black muck while Atreyu begs and pleads with him not to let himself die. And he fucking does. He just stands there and sinks in his own sadness while the hero weeps and begs. Honestly parents, what the hell? How is this a movie for kids? Anyway I’m crying now because of damn Artax again, and that my friends is easily the movie moment that messed me up for life. — Haleigh Foutch

Ernest Scared Stupid

To understand why this movie scared me as a child, you have to know that plot of Ernest Scared Stupid is surprisingly creepy despite the protagonist and hero, Ernest (Jim Varney), being laughably dumb. The film’s villain is a demonic troll who transforms children into wooden dolls. And in the movie, the villain almost succeeds! Pretty much all of the innocent kids get transformed into wooden dolls, which was very creepy and unsettling for me to see when I was a kid. In retrospect, it should have been even more disturbing if I had considered that the fate of the children rested on Ernest P. Worrell, a man so dumb his stupidity is touted in the title of the movie. This was not the lighthearted Ernest Goes to Camp or Ernest Goes to Jail. This was Ernest fighting a demon troll, and I clearly had no faith in his ability to save the day because I knew in my heart those children were doomed. – Matt Goldberg

The Secret of NIMH

One would think that animated movies featuring talking animals would be all sunshine and rainbows. And then there’s The Secret of NIMH. A dark undercurrent rolls through the entirety of the story, punctuated with truly terrifying moments. The critters referenced by the title are survivors of a series of scientific experiments, a plot point that’s laid out in a psychedelic scene featuring one of the film’s scariest characters. It’s not surprising that creatures like the rat-eating cat Dragon and the villainous rat Jenner are drawn to be scary, but it’s unusual to find that the protagonist’s mystical allies are every bit as terrifying. Nicodemus, a wizened old rat, has glowing eyes like coals and a long, flowing mane; The Great Owl is cut from the same cloth; both of these characters are ominous by design and the display of their powers make for some potent nightmare fuel.

If you barely managed to survive The Secret of NIMH as a kid, though, then I have some bad news for you. While the horrors of lab experimentation on animals takes a back seat for a moment, the savagery of the animal kingdom (and the cruelty of man) takes center stage in this horror-fantasy classic, Watership Down, which also bears mentioning. There’s a rabbit who experiences visions when he has a seizures, a near-death experience of another rabbit caught in a trap, and brutal battles against both friends and enemies alike. As for which creature is the most haunting, it might be a tie between the bloody General Woundwort and the Black Rabbit of Inlé, the rabbit’s version of the Grim Reaper. It’s fun for the kids! — Dave Trumbore