7. The Child Catcher - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
Children growing up in the 1980s didnt have many ways to watch scary stuff. In the years before the advent of home video, with only a few channels on television, there wasnt much out there to put the heebie-jeebies up the kids. Frankly, the closest they got to fright night was some of the creepier episodes of Doctor Who. But every year, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang would be on television at least once, and so every year children would cluster around the idiot box and gape in fascinated horror at the goddamn Child Catcher. Played by dancer Robert Helpmann, the man or thing in the shape of a man served the Baron of Vulgaria in kidnapping any and all children from the streets of his country. Essentially, the Child Catcher is a state-sanctioned child abductor, skipping merrily about and offering free candy, cake and ice cream to any kid foolish enough to come out of hiding, throwing them in a cage when he catches them. And with his long, quivering nose, the fiend can smell children wherever they try to hide... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUnhfvGdmmw If the measure of a truly horrifying and evil villain is that he gives kids nightmares that last long past their adolescence into adulthood, then the Child Catcher belongs near the top of this list. Try to hide your children from him, and hell have your teeth for a necklace, and your eyes for earrings
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
