This. Very, very this.

I don't get it.

I'd seen Nightmare on Elm Street by the time I was 11. Scared the shit out of me, but no harm done.

What was the most violent movie that you'd seen by then? Did it mess you up? Do you wish you hadn't been exposed to it?

For me, Robocop. At...I think age 6 or something. I didn't understand a damn thing that was going on.

My sister was pretty easily spooked even up until she was 13 or so. Bloody movie? Violent movie? Slightly scary movie? Nightmares for weeks.

It was about this age that I saw John Carpenter's The Thing. I begged my father to let me watch it and he did--I slept in my parents room for a week--but I survived. And it's still one of my all-time favorite flicks.
I also saw Aliens in the theater--so about 13 years old. Whether those films affected me or not---I'll leave that to others to decide

But this whole discussion has me wondering about the possibility of a gender difference. Boys often role-play violence from a very early age, but not the girls I've know (anecdotal evidence and nothing more). I don't know, I'm asking.

Robocop for me too. Then again, by that point I had also shot a dog in the head with a shotgun, so my reaction to a lot of that movie was "Well, that doesn't look right at all."

I was reading mature themed novels when I was twelve, on up. I read "Lord of the Flies" in the fifth grade. I read as much science fiction as I could find in my schools library, including some of the trippier books by Heinlein. I even tackled Dhalgren long before I was ready for it. I don't think I was even a particularly precocious reader - girls in my class often read more than me, including those disturbing V.C. Andrews books.

I just suspect that many parents, with the best of intentions, undersell the emotional maturity of their children. While no one would want a twelve year old to have sex, get drunk, try drugs, or kill someone and then hide the body ... reading a story with those elements isn't the same thing and isn't nearly as damaging as some may believe.

But what do I know? I don't have children and am only responsible for myself. Things change when you have kids and other criteria must be considered.

We're not discussing 'reading'. The daughter in question has read the book. We are talking about 'seeing' exceptionally good facsimiles of violence and/or gore.

Ok.

The "really scary" thing I saw was Lost in Space. I must have been pretty little, because it's not a scary show, but the slow moving monsters with the malformed, asymmetrical faces scared me. I remember being relieved when Land of the Lost came on afterwards, because that was more comical.

The first real scary movie was the 1979 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I would have been been nine when it came out, but I saw it on tv, so it was probably later. In any case, I was terrified of falling asleep, but I don't remember any specific nightmares. The movie that really stands out to me as scary, while I was young, was Hellraiser. I sneakily recorded a copy on VHS from cable and then watched it in my room. I knew my parents would never let me watch something like that. I was around 17.

In retrospect, that must seem like an awfully sheltered youth.