One function of children's movies is to introduce kids to life's imperfections. Yet instead of explaining simple truths, like why grownups sometimes pull the car over to barf, the evil in the movies we grew up with was way more intense, confusing, and existentially disruptive. While our days of filling dad's boots with urine during the opening scene of E.T. are long behind, it is an interesting exercise to revisit the movies that terrified us in our youth, and find we were right to be scared. No wonder we're weird.

• Alice In Wonderland/Alice Through The Looking Glass (1985)--jab•ber•wock•y, n: speech or writing that is meaningless and often deliberately whimsical or humorous. Well, who doesn't like a clever use of irony in their character construction? I'll tell ya who: thousands of small, semantically limited children who followed Alice's adventures, only to have them dashed by a towering, drooling, dragonish beast who forces Alice into a cowering fit of mental illness, screaming, "I'm not afraid of you!" while beating herself in the head.

• The NeverEnding Story (1984)--This film follows a boy who finds a book that transports him to a fantasyland of adventure. Cool! Dudes eat rocks, there's a hot chick who can't even remember her name, and he gets to ride around on a big fluffy flying dog. Okay, the dog is pretty spooky, but that's nothing compared to the most horrific scene ever intended for children's eyes: his beautiful, beloved horse being sucked into a pit of yucky black quicksand before his eyes, complete with wrenching whinnies and rolling eyeballs.

• Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971)--Gene Wilder plays a deeply disturbed, hermit candy baron who systematically disposes of children he finds irritating or bereft of moral fortitude. If that's not bad enough, he has also enslaved an entire race of creatures. The ever-dwindling tour group is subjected to his philosophical asides, while being transported around his sick, fruity little "factory." MARJORIE SKINNER