Nightmare Fuel [...] means those things that scared the pants off you as a kid, though they weren't meant to. It's something that was meant to amuse, entertain, or be only slightly scary to the audience; but in execution, they're so trauma-inducing that they may cause adults to void themselves in terror [...] Things that are supposed to scare the pants off you fall under High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
- Tv Tropes Wiki
Made by Flameknight7, Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-db9qgn99o
I remember as a kid, I got really freaked out after an episode of Dr Who. The bad guy was called 'The Light' I think. Do you remember it? I remember runing from my trampoline into the house cos I thought he would zap me!
ReplyDeleteI think you're probably talking about Light, from the Seventh Doctor episode "Ghost Light," an alien opposed to evolution, who was able to turn people into stone and primordial goo and such. I only saw a tiny piece of that one. 'Ghost Light" was actually one of the last Doctor Who serials filmed before the show was cancelled in 1989 for low viewer numbers, a real shame if you ask me because the Seventh Doctor was one of my favourites and the series was getting much better after the frankly awful Sixth Doctor stories.
ReplyDeleteI remember being freaked out by a few of the Doctor Who monsters as a kid (most notably by the early Cybermen and the shop-window mannequins, the Autons), and I think that's partly why I like it so much. New Who has had a couple of really good scary monsters (my favourites being the Empty Child, the clockwork assassins, the unknown creature from "Midnight" and Billie Piper), it's big-budget stuff now too so it's even creepier. The old series was really limited by it's it's small budget, but in some ways I think it might have meant they had to work harder, and so they had some great concepts. The good news is, when Who comes back next year, it's being produced by Steven Moffat, who is known for his horror stuff, and who wrote some of the most disturbing New Who episodes these last few years.
Other childhood stuff that's really freaked me out includes the giant slugs from NZ's own "Under the Mountain" (which has been made into a film and is coming out later this year), the Guardian from Kiwi classic "The Boy From Andromeda," PufnStuf being roasted slowly over a fire by Witchiepoo, Venger from "Dungeons and Dragons," and yes, the Care Bears. When the teletubbies arrived on the scene I was old enough not to be scared, as such, more disturbed. The above clip has made them the stuff of my nightmares ;)