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Happy (almost) Halloween, my faithful watchers! In celebration of the holiday (and also regardling that I'm not sure if I'll have another chance to post this before the holiday actually arrives), I'm following up my long-past installment of my Top 10 Scariest Cartoons , with another list-with a few new criterion added in.

My major criterion for this list includes:
-Not specifically relegated to anything animated (in fact, only half of the choices on this list are animated)
-Primarily consists of films, with one exception as a tie of TV episodes from the same show
-Excludes classic Disney movies, because those would consume too much of this list (and you'll see another reason why else as the list goes on)
-Moments that didn't just give me brief scares as I watched them, but also took tolls on my pshyche, had me jolting me awake, and kept me awake and shivering in my at night for hours on end...

So without further or do...

10) Wishbone;"Frankenbone"/"Legend of Sleepy Hallow" : Believe it or not, my first exposures to The Headless Horseman and Frankenstein's monster were NOT through Disney or Boris Karloff. They were through Wishbone-a show centered on a pooch introducing classic literature to children, that, quite frankly, is far less talked about today than it has any right to be. The Sleepy Hallow story, which paralells the story of Wishbone's life with the kids going on a scavenger hunt and coping with the concept of the supernatural, really captures the spirit of Halloween. It also incorporates the big picture of a neighborhood house that is supposedly haunted, all while juxtaposing it to the complete hauntingness of Washington Irving's classic (so much so that I was scared just looking at the first black-and-white illustration of the headless horseman). The other episode, in which Wishbone parallels the Frankenstein story to a science fair project regarding bringing inanimate objects to life. But the portrayal of the Mary Shelly story, in this version, captures an element that most adaptations tend to neglect-the tragedy part of it. Yes, in a show aimed at kids.
(Spoilers, this is not going to be the last time you see adaptations of either of theses stories on this list)

HEADS UP: Numbers 9-6 are going to be "Nightmare Sequence" scares!!!

9) Lion King 2: Simba's Pride; Simba's Nightmare : I said that I was excluding Disney classics, but I didn't mean that I was excluding Disney altogether-and who would have ever guessed that I would have picked a direct-to-video sequel as one of my choices next?! I just as surprised as you.
This is one of the better cheapquels to be sure, even though Simba coming off as a prejudiced, overprotective dad is easily something fans of the original would prabably take a little bit of issue with. But his dream of reliving the death of his father is a clear indication to why. It starts out a bit how you'd expect a traumatic-experience-nightmare to play out, Scar laughing maniacally over Simba as Mufasa falls to his death...until it turns out to be Kovu! It is also noteworthy, of course, how they got James Earl Jones to come back just so he could use half of his script for the ENTIRE movie, in this little scene.
All this makes me wonder what sort of images poor Simba, as a cub, must have been trying wash clean from his memory while he was adapting to Timon and Pumbaa's "Hakuna Matata"...
Although, if you thought that scene was disturbing, take a look at a deleted extension of the scene of Zira's death .

8) The Brave Little Toaster; Toaster's Nightmare : Now, I didn't grow up with this movie like a handful of other kids of my time did. But I did watch it once in a classroom...and this scene, out of all the nightmare-inducing ones in the movie, was the one that stood out to me the most!!! It starts out as a friendly scene with a live kitchen appliance making toast for his beloved little master...and THEN IT ALL GOES UP IN FLAMES! LITERALLY! And it ultimately ends with the toaster dreaming of dying from electrocution in a sink!
Oh, and if you weren't scared of clowns before, you will be once this scene is over!

7) All Dogs Go to Heaven; Charlie's Nightmare : Oh, Don Bluth! The plethora of scariness you provided us with in our youth! From the genetic mutation of the rats in the Secret of Nimh, to the majority of An American Tail's running time-and not to mention the gruesome Sharp-Tooth scenes they had to cut out of The Land Before Time...
But of for me, it's Charlie B. Barkin's HORRIFYING inception of eternal punishment that takes the cake for me! This isn't the drudgery-turmoil sort of hell you'd typically imagine, it's horror...after HORROR...AFTER BLOODY HORROR!!! But what projects this into that special level of disturbing for me is that Charlie, despite being introduced to the film as a scheming, self-serving, undeserving prick, is still automatically blessed with easy access to heaven by virtue of being a dog. The only thing that gets him exiled from it is him restarting his life watch so he can be alive again! Of course the ending where he earns his way back into heaving by sacrificing his own life to save Anne Marie's, has been referred to as a cop out by some, and as a representation of "the fall and rise of man" by other.
All I can really add is this: if your kids were not affected by the "Pleasure Island" scene from Pinocchio, show them THIS!!!; this will teach them not to be dirty, rotten, or greedy!

6) The Prince of Egypt; Moses' Hieroglyph Nightmare : When you hear people talk about what they remember about this movie, it will usually pertain to how surprisingly sophisticated it is for an animated film from the 90s, its nuance, its songs and visuals, etc. But I'm really surprised that nobody brings up THIS scene. I first saw this movie when I was six years old (yes, really) and it scared the EVER-LIVING crap out of me! AND IT STILL DOES TO THIS DAY!
But this stands out among other nightmare sequences because this one is void of dialogue. It's just a sequence of moving hieroglyphs depicting Pharaoh Seti's purging of newborn Isrealite boys, complete with a horrifying score, and only a select few backdrop noises of soldiers marching and women screaming in terror as their babies are snatched away from them. And it's all capped off by Moses tearfully witnessing the memory of his mother sending him adrift to safety...followed immediately by him being chased by soldiers unitl he falls into the nile...and all grows dark as he's surrounded by the screeches of thousands of babies being murdered!!!
But even after Moses wakes up, it doesn't stop there. He ultimately finds the hieroglyphic depiction of the mass genocide, and it sends him into a severe identity crisis, as well as paints an entirely different picture of how he originally perceived Seti as his father!
And surprisingly, its made all the more evocative at the pique of the showdown between Moses and Rameses, when Moses identifies this being the very fate for Ramses' family and kingdom.

5) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: I dare you to find anyone who says that the Potter film adaptations are flawless (and if any of you watch The Dom's video reviews, well... ). The general concensus among the public, I find, is that the best of the film series is either this one or The Prisoner of Azkaban. I'm not to picky, but I would agree with either one of those two, although this movie definitely negates fewer details from the source material.
The Goblet of Fire does come close, and the prospect of dementors is enough to give anybody nightmares, but for me, there's just one little detail that projects this movie to being the scariest of them all: this movie introduced us to a species that even giant, man-eating spiders fear! As someone who was an arachnophobe for most of his life, I never thought it was possible, but I ultimately found something to which I'd prefer encountering a gang of giant man-eating spiders! You can't tell me that you wouldn't be afraid of facing a sixty-foot snake that you'd only have ANY chance of defeating if a pheonix swooped in and clawed its eyes out! Even more haunting is the notion that whenever you're rounding a corner, this snake could pop out from behind your nearest kitchen sink or toilet at any time and kill you/turn you to stone, and you wouldn't even be able to hear it approach unless you yourself could talk to snakes!
What puts this on the "psychological" levels of terror for me, however, is the themes it introduces beyond the basic good vs. evil. This is the first glimpse we get of Voldemort's backstory AS well as the prospect of prejudice in the wizarding world! It started making me questioning my own motifs as a person, and whether or not I had the potential to become a murderer/phsychopath myself. Even though Harry himself doesn't fully come face-to-face with his darker sides until about the fifth installment, in here, he's already put on the spot when he discovers that his ability to speak to snakes is exceedingly rare. Most of the other Hogwarts students start to become distrusting of him, and even he himself (for those who have read the book or watched the deleted deleted scenes) starts wondering if it's possible he was the culprit and didn't realize it.
All I can say after this: if you somehow, miraculously come across a pheonix, make it your friend and guardian at all costs!

4) Tim Burton's Sleepy Hallow: A nice, clever spin on the classic story, and an homage to the classic Hammer-Horror genre. Most R-rated movies I'd seen at the time, got the rating for more mild content like sex and language. Tim Burton's spin starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci is perhaps the first movie I've seen reserved excusively for adults by virtue of being legitamately horrifying. Seriously, seeing the Headless Horsemen taken up to the next level with axe-swinging and heads being severed on screen in all their horrifying glory, is one of the biggest testaments to testing your intestinal fortitude ( try saying that three times fast!) you will ever have to endure. Not to everyone's taste, obviously, and some of the supernatural additions/backstories are debatable. But this is one of those movies that actually manages to be scary enough to WARRANT the mature rating, rather than trying so hard to be lowest-common-denominator material to claim as "mature".

3) "Mary Shelly's" Frankenstein (1993): Another one of the first R-rated movies I ever saw. Originally directed by Frances Ford Copella before the reigns were handed over to Kenneth Branagh, who was also tasked with playing the lead role, this adaptation tries to resort closer to the original tale (with its own spin of course). Also featuring Robert DeNiro and Helena Botham Carter as its other two biggest names, the quality of the performances varies between actors and scenes depending on their strengths.
The major script-writer for the movie said that it was the best script he'd ever written-only to come out as the worst film he ever saw. Even though this version does try to stick closer to the source material's roots, it does take some inspiration from the classic Boris Karloff movie (because let's face it, it's become such a staple that it's practically inevitable for a Frankenstein movie NOT to try to pay homage to it). One of the most noteable changes from the original story includes the segment where Victor Frankenstein tries to make the moster an identical bride, but refuses, and after the monster kills her (IN ONE OF THE MOST HORRIFYING WAYS YOU CAN DO AN ONSCREEN DEATH!!!), Victor tries to instill his wife's old processing mind in the would-be-bride monster. And he succeeds...before he and the monster get into a duel over her and she lights herself on fire!
Love the movie or hate it, you do have to admit that the prospect of a quasi-human creature, with abnormal strength, PLUNGING HIS BARE HAND THROUGH YOUR CHEST AND RIPPING YOUR F*CKING HEART OUT, has a way of gripping the mind (yes, even moreso than the Temple of Doom)!!!
To me though, the best film version of Frankenstein will always be Mel Brooks' classic spoof version.

2) Psycho: I never watched this movie all the way through, but I will say that even after this one iconic scene, I'm still unable to get over my discomfort with the prospect of bleeding wounds in the shower/or in rain! The music is also the most iconic you will ever hear, and Alfred Hitchcock is such a master of suspense that he can make his trailers horrifying-all while defying the basic conventions of movie trailers!

1) Education for Death: The Making of a Nazi (1943): Yeah this...The OTHER big reason that I avoided using classic Disney scares is because this WWII propagonada piece outdoes them all! Yes, it even outdoes "Hellfire" and "Night on Bald Mountain"!
If you follow animation, then the prospect of Disney creating animated shorts for WWII is probably not new to you. But this is not like most other WWII shorts. This is not a creative satire with an end-of-the-day message promoting all that is good in humanity, like Der Furher's Face. Oh no no no no! This depicts the life of a typical innocent boy born into the world ruled by the world's most monstrous demagogue. While there is a brief scene showing America's interpretation of a Nazi's take on Sleeping Beauty in an over-the-top, comical way (albeit a bit insensitive, given that American political cartoons from the era were not particularly concerned with sensitivity to other cultures), the portrayal does not shy away from the mercilessness and relentless brutality any typical person had to undergo to become part of Nazism-and how it's all to serve a cause that will ultimately lead to the individual being brainwashed into submission, living and dying to serving the upper hand.
I first saw this at a time when I was undergoing a bit of a denial for liking anything to come out of Disney, seeing them as a source of shameless, insencere marketing. But this was probably the biggest punch in the gut I've ever seen from them, even though I can't call it technically bad! But seriously, you thought the cheapquels were hard to sit through? You thought films like Chicken Little and Mars Needs Moms were unpleasantly bad? Trust me, all of those COMBINED are weak sauce, compared to this!!!

And that's all I've got! Leave comments in the comments section (as always), and I look forward to hearing what your biggest pychological scares are! (Don't worry, I won't judge you!)

Description
Happy (almost) Halloween, my faithful watchers! In celebration of the holiday (and also regardling that I'm not sure if I'll have another chance to post this before the holiday actually arrives), I'm following up my long-past installment of my Top 10 Scariest Cartoons , with another list-with a few new criterion added in.

My major criterion for this list includes:
-Not specifically relegated to anything animated (in fact, only half of the choices on this list are animated)
-Primarily consists of films, with one exception as a tie of TV episodes from the same show
-Excludes classic Disney movies, because those would consume too much of this list (and you'll see another reason why else as the list goes on)
-Moments that didn't just give me brief scares as I watched them, but also took tolls on my pshyche, had me jolting me awake, and kept me awake and shivering in my at night for hours on end...

So without further or do...

10) Wishbone;"Frankenbone"/"Legend of Sleepy Hallow" : Believe it or not, my first exposures to The Headless Horseman and Frankenstein's monster were NOT through Disney or Boris Karloff. They were through Wishbone-a show centered on a pooch introducing classic literature to children, that, quite frankly, is far less talked about today than it has any right to be. The Sleepy Hallow story, which paralells the story of Wishbone's life with the kids going on a scavenger hunt and coping with the concept of the supernatural, really captures the spirit of Halloween. It also incorporates the big picture of a neighborhood house that is supposedly haunted, all while juxtaposing it to the complete hauntingness of Washington Irving's classic (so much so that I was scared just looking at the first black-and-white illustration of the headless horseman). The other episode, in which Wishbone parallels the Frankenstein story to a science fair project regarding bringing inanimate objects to life. But the portrayal of the Mary Shelly story, in this version, captures an element that most adaptations tend to neglect-the tragedy part of it. Yes, in a show aimed at kids.
(Spoilers, this is not going to be the last time you see adaptations of either of theses stories on this list)

HEADS UP: Numbers 9-6 are going to be "Nightmare Sequence" scares!!!

9) Lion King 2: Simba's Pride; Simba's Nightmare : I said that I was excluding Disney classics, but I didn't mean that I was excluding Disney altogether-and who would have ever guessed that I would have picked a direct-to-video sequel as one of my choices next?! I just as surprised as you.
This is one of the better cheapquels to be sure, even though Simba coming off as a prejudiced, overprotective dad is easily something fans of the original would prabably take a little bit of issue with. But his dream of reliving the death of his father is a clear indication to why. It starts out a bit how you'd expect a traumatic-experience-nightmare to play out, Scar laughing maniacally over Simba as Mufasa falls to his death...until it turns out to be Kovu! It is also noteworthy, of course, how they got James Earl Jones to come back just so he could use half of his script for the ENTIRE movie, in this little scene.
All this makes me wonder what sort of images poor Simba, as a cub, must have been trying wash clean from his memory while he was adapting to Timon and Pumbaa's "Hakuna Matata"...
Although, if you thought that scene was disturbing, take a look at a deleted extension of the scene of Zira's death .

8) The Brave Little Toaster; Toaster's Nightmare : Now, I didn't grow up with this movie like a handful of other kids of my time did. But I did watch it once in a classroom...and this scene, out of all the nightmare-inducing ones in the movie, was the one that stood out to me the most!!! It starts out as a friendly scene with a live kitchen appliance making toast for his beloved little master...and THEN IT ALL GOES UP IN FLAMES! LITERALLY! And it ultimately ends with the toaster dreaming of dying from electrocution in a sink!
Oh, and if you weren't scared of clowns before, you will be once this scene is over!

7) All Dogs Go to Heaven; Charlie's Nightmare : Oh, Don Bluth! The plethora of scariness you provided us with in our youth! From the genetic mutation of the rats in the Secret of Nimh, to the majority of An American Tail's running time-and not to mention the gruesome Sharp-Tooth scenes they had to cut out of The Land Before Time...
But of for me, it's Charlie B. Barkin's HORRIFYING inception of eternal punishment that takes the cake for me! This isn't the drudgery-turmoil sort of hell you'd typically imagine, it's horror...after HORROR...AFTER BLOODY HORROR!!! But what projects this into that special level of disturbing for me is that Charlie, despite being introduced to the film as a scheming, self-serving, undeserving prick, is still automatically blessed with easy access to heaven by virtue of being a dog. The only thing that gets him exiled from it is him restarting his life watch so he can be alive again! Of course the ending where he earns his way back into heaving by sacrificing his own life to save Anne Marie's, has been referred to as a cop out by some, and as a representation of "the fall and rise of man" by other.
All I can really add is this: if your kids were not affected by the "Pleasure Island" scene from Pinocchio, show them THIS!!!; this will teach them not to be dirty, rotten, or greedy!

6) The Prince of Egypt; Moses' Hieroglyph Nightmare : When you hear people talk about what they remember about this movie, it will usually pertain to how surprisingly sophisticated it is for an animated film from the 90s, its nuance, its songs and visuals, etc. But I'm really surprised that nobody brings up THIS scene. I first saw this movie when I was six years old (yes, really) and it scared the EVER-LIVING crap out of me! AND IT STILL DOES TO THIS DAY!
But this stands out among other nightmare sequences because this one is void of dialogue. It's just a sequence of moving hieroglyphs depicting Pharaoh Seti's purging of newborn Isrealite boys, complete with a horrifying score, and only a select few backdrop noises of soldiers marching and women screaming in terror as their babies are snatched away from them. And it's all capped off by Moses tearfully witnessing the memory of his mother sending him adrift to safety...followed immediately by him being chased by soldiers unitl he falls into the nile...and all grows dark as he's surrounded by the screeches of thousands of babies being murdered!!!
But even after Moses wakes up, it doesn't stop there. He ultimately finds the hieroglyphic depiction of the mass genocide, and it sends him into a severe identity crisis, as well as paints an entirely different picture of how he originally perceived Seti as his father!
And surprisingly, its made all the more evocative at the pique of the showdown between Moses and Rameses, when Moses identifies this being the very fate for Ramses' family and kingdom.

5) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: I dare you to find anyone who says that the Potter film adaptations are flawless (and if any of you watch The Dom's video reviews, well... ). The general concensus among the public, I find, is that the best of the film series is either this one or The Prisoner of Azkaban. I'm not to picky, but I would agree with either one of those two, although this movie definitely negates fewer details from the source material.
The Goblet of Fire does come close, and the prospect of dementors is enough to give anybody nightmares, but for me, there's just one little detail that projects this movie to being the scariest of them all: this movie introduced us to a species that even giant, man-eating spiders fear! As someone who was an arachnophobe for most of his life, I never thought it was possible, but I ultimately found something to which I'd prefer encountering a gang of giant man-eating spiders! You can't tell me that you wouldn't be afraid of facing a sixty-foot snake that you'd only have ANY chance of defeating if a pheonix swooped in and clawed its eyes out! Even more haunting is the notion that whenever you're rounding a corner, this snake could pop out from behind your nearest kitchen sink or toilet at any time and kill you/turn you to stone, and you wouldn't even be able to hear it approach unless you yourself could talk to snakes!
What puts this on the "psychological" levels of terror for me, however, is the themes it introduces beyond the basic good vs. evil. This is the first glimpse we get of Voldemort's backstory AS well as the prospect of prejudice in the wizarding world! It started making me questioning my own motifs as a person, and whether or not I had the potential to become a murderer/phsychopath myself. Even though Harry himself doesn't fully come face-to-face with his darker sides until about the fifth installment, in here, he's already put on the spot when he discovers that his ability to speak to snakes is exceedingly rare. Most of the other Hogwarts students start to become distrusting of him, and even he himself (for those who have read the book or watched the deleted deleted scenes) starts wondering if it's possible he was the culprit and didn't realize it.
All I can say after this: if you somehow, miraculously come across a pheonix, make it your friend and guardian at all costs!

4) Tim Burton's Sleepy Hallow: A nice, clever spin on the classic story, and an homage to the classic Hammer-Horror genre. Most R-rated movies I'd seen at the time, got the rating for more mild content like sex and language. Tim Burton's spin starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci is perhaps the first movie I've seen reserved excusively for adults by virtue of being legitamately horrifying. Seriously, seeing the Headless Horsemen taken up to the next level with axe-swinging and heads being severed on screen in all their horrifying glory, is one of the biggest testaments to testing your intestinal fortitude ( try saying that three times fast!) you will ever have to endure. Not to everyone's taste, obviously, and some of the supernatural additions/backstories are debatable. But this is one of those movies that actually manages to be scary enough to WARRANT the mature rating, rather than trying so hard to be lowest-common-denominator material to claim as "mature".

3) "Mary Shelly's" Frankenstein (1993): Another one of the first R-rated movies I ever saw. Originally directed by Frances Ford Copella before the reigns were handed over to Kenneth Branagh, who was also tasked with playing the lead role, this adaptation tries to resort closer to the original tale (with its own spin of course). Also featuring Robert DeNiro and Helena Botham Carter as its other two biggest names, the quality of the performances varies between actors and scenes depending on their strengths.
The major script-writer for the movie said that it was the best script he'd ever written-only to come out as the worst film he ever saw. Even though this version does try to stick closer to the source material's roots, it does take some inspiration from the classic Boris Karloff movie (because let's face it, it's become such a staple that it's practically inevitable for a Frankenstein movie NOT to try to pay homage to it). One of the most noteable changes from the original story includes the segment where Victor Frankenstein tries to make the moster an identical bride, but refuses, and after the monster kills her (IN ONE OF THE MOST HORRIFYING WAYS YOU CAN DO AN ONSCREEN DEATH!!!), Victor tries to instill his wife's old processing mind in the would-be-bride monster. And he succeeds...before he and the monster get into a duel over her and she lights herself on fire!
Love the movie or hate it, you do have to admit that the prospect of a quasi-human creature, with abnormal strength, PLUNGING HIS BARE HAND THROUGH YOUR CHEST AND RIPPING YOUR F*CKING HEART OUT, has a way of gripping the mind (yes, even moreso than the Temple of Doom)!!!
To me though, the best film version of Frankenstein will always be Mel Brooks' classic spoof version.

2) Psycho: I never watched this movie all the way through, but I will say that even after this one iconic scene, I'm still unable to get over my discomfort with the prospect of bleeding wounds in the shower/or in rain! The music is also the most iconic you will ever hear, and Alfred Hitchcock is such a master of suspense that he can make his trailers horrifying-all while defying the basic conventions of movie trailers!

1) Education for Death: The Making of a Nazi (1943): Yeah this...The OTHER big reason that I avoided using classic Disney scares is because this WWII propagonada piece outdoes them all! Yes, it even outdoes "Hellfire" and "Night on Bald Mountain"!
If you follow animation, then the prospect of Disney creating animated shorts for WWII is probably not new to you. But this is not like most other WWII shorts. This is not a creative satire with an end-of-the-day message promoting all that is good in humanity, like Der Furher's Face. Oh no no no no! This depicts the life of a typical innocent boy born into the world ruled by the world's most monstrous demagogue. While there is a brief scene showing America's interpretation of a Nazi's take on Sleeping Beauty in an over-the-top, comical way (albeit a bit insensitive, given that American political cartoons from the era were not particularly concerned with sensitivity to other cultures), the portrayal does not shy away from the mercilessness and relentless brutality any typical person had to undergo to become part of Nazism-and how it's all to serve a cause that will ultimately lead to the individual being brainwashed into submission, living and dying to serving the upper hand.
I first saw this at a time when I was undergoing a bit of a denial for liking anything to come out of Disney, seeing them as a source of shameless, insencere marketing. But this was probably the biggest punch in the gut I've ever seen from them, even though I can't call it technically bad! But seriously, you thought the cheapquels were hard to sit through? You thought films like Chicken Little and Mars Needs Moms were unpleasantly bad? Trust me, all of those COMBINED are weak sauce, compared to this!!!

And that's all I've got! Leave comments in the comments section (as always), and I look forward to hearing what your biggest pychological scares are! (Don't worry, I won't judge you!)