FORMATIVE FEARS PATIENT FILMS
INTRODUCTION
What film absolutely terrified you as a kid? We’re talking family favourites here, not the time you accidentally walked in on your older brother watching A Nightmare On Elm Street. Well, the TF team have dug up their most potent repressed fears from childhood. From Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s Child Catcher to the Grinch to, erm, Mickey Mouse, there’s a smorgasbord of genuine terrors, cute critters and outright oddities. Consultant clinical psychologist Dr. Rachel Andrews has provided insights into each particular fear, while clinical psychologist Linda Blair gives an overview into our fears as a whole, and what makes children scared of certain movies…
PATIENT NAME
MATTHEW LEYLAND, REVIEWS EDITOR
FEAR
WORK THE BROOM
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Fantasia (1940/2000)
My memory’s foggy (read: repressed), but I believe I was first ambushed by this Mickey Mouse short as part of staple BBC clip-show . So one minute, bum-jiggling Baloo… the next, the sheer gothic (or, if you will, Goethe-ic) horror of those unstoppable mops. Why won’t they stop? WHY?! Mind you, the terror only intensifies when Mickey (who’s hardly covered himself in glory by this point – don’t abuse magic, kids!) tries to make them stop… with an axe. But it wasn’t the sight of such a goody gumdrops going full Jack Torrance that alarmed me most in my tender years. No, it was all the water. As the broken brooms rise, Terminator-esque, so does the slopping cauldron; Mickey scrambles to find an un-doing spell, but the room’s swiftly consumed by a whirlpool… I was fine with other childhood frights like Spielberg’s melting Nazis, so why this soggy nightmare got to me, I’m a-Freud I have no idea.
