10 Surprisingly Dark Children's Movies From The 80s

Co-written, produced and directed by Terry Gilliam, and starring Sean Connery, John Cleese and Shelley Duvall, Time Bandits was released in 1981 to tremendous success, both critically and commercially.

The very first entry in “The Trilogy of Imagination”, Time Bandits is about escapism, a concept which children in particular would undoubtedly relate. With that being said, there are several moments from the film that are suggestive of a more mature audience, the surrealist aesthetic enough to give anyone nightmare.

In particular, Evil has a tendency of murdering his own subjects, blowing them into smithereens at a moment’s notice, sometimes accidentally. In the closing moments of the film, the protagonist’s parents are also inadvertently disintegrated, leaving him a helpless, homeless orphan in the streets, which is pretty grim in of itself.