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How do!

So spinning off from comments on ETC, I’ve realised that many, many things my dear old and genuinely sadly departed Grandparents would be shocked by have seriously informed me. And my parents totally allowed, if not outright encouraged.

There are so many I could fill a thread with them myself.

Genuine warning? I was born in 1980, and so grew up with some….now questionable influences. Not the media itself, but the authors/directors/actors etc.

Here’s one to kick you off. Rik “The Grate Wun” Mayall, and his anarchic sense of humour married to Roald “had some seriously questionable at best opinions” Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine.

So. Disputable merits of the author and similar aside?




Anyone else saw media in their earliest years that, had they found out, might’ve put a premature end to their lovely old Grannies?

Oh, wow, an absolute stone cold classic

*Your.

Quiet, you!

To be fair, the 80’s were likely the peak of parents showing small children horrific shows and films. There’s a reason they sold Aliens toys and made cartoons for Robocop and Rambo.

Man, the 80s were way before my time. I thought that was the period where everything was sanitized to heck and back!

I remember when I was a kid, the "cool people" would be the ones that claimed that they watched the more horrifying movies. I think The Grudge was the most common bragging right. Of course, it's questionable whether or not they did see the movie or were bluffing the entire time...

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
To be fair, the 80’s were likely the peak of parents showing small children horrific shows and films. There’s a reason they sold Aliens toys and made cartoons for Robocop and Rambo.

That boggled me, even as a kit at the time

These were “R” movies. And they were marketing them to kids with Saturday Morning Cartoon level stuff.

--

One of my Grandmothers was way laid back. Not a lot would phase her. The other would get offended about almost everything. I had a great aunt who was a straight up roaring 20’s flapper. So per the title of this thread, everything/nothing would bother my Grans.

It has been interesting revisiting “classic” 80’s stuff with my son. And talking to my brother about what he’s exposing his boys to. My son is almost 16, his are 12 and 14. So I have a little more wiggle room about what’s OK. But remember, a lot of stuff came out before PG-13 was a thing. So there are a wide range of R movies out there. Some would probably be PG-13 these days with a mild rework. Watched Predator a few weeks ago. Besides the unrestricted F-Bombs, it’s no worse then a modern PG-13. But sometimes for other movies we are used to PG-13 sex scenes, and forget that before that rating existed, they showed a bit more rather then a fade to black/obscuring angles. And I’m not talking about excessively smuty films, just the gratuitous scenes were a bit more gratuitous.

I just watched Blazing Saddles with The Boy on Saturday. There is ZERO way Hollywood would greenlight that these days. It was overtly offensive, tossing racial/religious slurs around like popcorn. But for the most part, in a very inoffensive way. The racist hicks were salt of the earth, clay of the new west. You know, morons. There was some stuff that didn’t age well. Still one of the best comedies of all time.

My dad showed me the Alien and Predator movies when I was about 8. I loved the gak out of them. Had all the old Kenner toys.

I remember being a kid and getting some Alien comics too. Not sanitized in any way. Nudity, sex, gore. Yup. Just me being not a teenager yet wading through the totally adult alien and predator franchises.

On top of those already mentioned I always thought it was odd that they made Punisher and Wolverine toys for young kids.

You should see the films they MADE us watch in thr 1970s!

These were supposed to scare us into being safe and I remember being shown some of them at primary school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0xmSV6aq0g&ab_channel=DanGale

My grandmother hated my hobbying.

Wouldn't let me paint minis.

I hid my paints and minis and would sneak out and paint stuff outside in the cold

When it was found out all my minis and paints were destroyed.

 GoldenHorde wrote:
My grandmother hated my hobbying.

Wouldn't let me paint minis.

I hid my paints and minis and would sneak out and paint stuff outside in the cold

When it was found out all my minis and paints were destroyed.

That’s really horrible. I’m saddened you had to experience that.


My grandparents were not that much of a factor. My Dad was child ten, so his parents were checked out and he barely knew them. He was raised by his siblings, especially his older sister…Who thought Gremlins 2 sounded too scary so she made me watch Robocop 2 instead. (By this time I had seen Gremlins 2 like5 times already, seen Robocop a bunch, and had a subscription to Fangoria.)

My mom’s mom was a bit of a psychopath, especially to her own children, and she would generally let us watch whatever, including highly inappropriate movies that my aunt would bring over for laughs.


I grew up in a house with cable, and I remember some of the late night stuff they showed at first being much, much more graphic than the later Julie Strain/Shannon Tweed Skinimax era erotica.

I think kids are seeing a lot worse these days thanks to the internet

They're exposed to more gore and sexual content than ever before.

FacebookJunkie wrote:
You should see the films they MADE us watch in thr 1970s!

These were supposed to scare us into being safe and I remember being shown some of them at primary school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0xmSV6aq0g&ab_channel=DanGale

They were still in circulation into the 80’s. I remember seeing the one about not crossing railway lines, where the lad loses his feet. That taught me I had a dark sense of humour, as when the shoes were handed to the Mum, I expected his feet to still be in them.

@ Doc, did you ever get subjected to "Death Farm" at school which was to all intents and purposes was a horror film where the yoofs get picked off one by one various by lethal elements, (although as best I recall nobody got eaten by a swarm chickens, my farmophobia of the time), clearly inspired the Saw films

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
@ Doc, did you ever get subjected to "Death Farm" at school which was to all intents and purposes was a horror film where the yoofs get picked off one by one various by lethal elements, (although as best I recall nobody got eaten by a swarm chickens, my farmophobia of the time), clearly inspired the Saw films

Quite possibly! I’m fairly certain the BFI offers a DVD of the public information films. Keep meaning to pick that up.

The one that has recently surprised me is Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. I think this was supposed to be the UK version of Alfred Hitchcock presents.

I remember watching these as a kid in the 80's and didn't really think much of them.

They are now being repeated on Sky Arts on Freeview and some of them have been soooooo dark. Quite surprisingly so. The one about the landlady with a penchant for young men and taxidermy in particular.....

And then there's the classic Threads TV film. How that got made in 1984 I will never know.....

Any of the "After the Bomb" films were pretty intense. I mean, there was a rather large % of the population that never thought we were going to see the year 2000 due to Nuclear war.

There’s a similar film to Threads made a few years earlier. My Mum’s cousin was an extra, and it was filmed in the commuter town we moved to many many years after. Which is pretty weird.

Not to slag off that town, but you can tell why it was chosen as a post apocalyptic area :p

StraightSilver wrote:


And then there's the classic Threads TV film. How that got made in 1984 I will never know.....

The 80s.
Thatcher and Reagan sabre-rattling. The cold war still running pretty warm, and hotheads on both sides.
Also, they also made "The Day After" but it wasn't depressing enough for northern UK viewers (when you already have Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool, a post-nuclear holocaust doesn't look so bad ... ), so "Threads" was begat.

Also mass demonstrations outside military bases in the UK (the "rebel base" in SW ep7 was Greenham Common, former RAF base and location for one of those protests).

And don’t forget the Incredibly Helpful And Informative Protect And Survive Manual. Which I’m sure settled many a housewife’s nerves in the face of potential nuclear annihilation….




And most certainly didn’t point out the ludicrous futility of even thinking you could survive it.

FacebookJunkie wrote:
You should see the films they MADE us watch in thr 1970s!

These were supposed to scare us into being safe and I remember being shown some of them at primary school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0xmSV6aq0g&ab_channel=DanGale

I never saw those ones (that I recall); though I seem to remember that the electrical "don't go in the substation" video I saw as a youth actually went further and they showed a black, smoking body fall to the ground to drive home the "yes he's quite dead".

And the car safety videos in the UK have always been on the brutal side. If anything those are tame to the ones we've had more recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHY69AFstE


Though Northern Island ones are even more brutal.