My parents are incredibly kind and well-meaning. But it’s a wonder that their only child turned out to be well-adjusted considering all the PG-rated atrocities they allowed me to view over the first decade-and-a-half of my life.

In their defence, Uncle Walt Disney did assure them that letting seven-year-old me watch Sleeping Beauty on VHS was perfectly fine — even if it did have a self-proclaimed “mistress of all evil”. One who cursed the baby and held a grudge for 16 years because she didn’t get invited to a party, gave the evilest side-eye in animated movie history, had the ability to conjure up nefarious spells and curses, and could transform into a giant, terrifying fire-breathing dragon.

How could my clueless parents have known that sharp-horned Maleficent would scare the living daylights out of me and caused me years of sleepless nights? To this day, I still can’t draw up a party invite list without having a panic attack.

And now, with a ferocious Angelina Jolie putting on the iconic villainess’ cloak of evil as the title character, Maleficent, in Disney’s new live action version, my childhood emotional scars are looking to make a major reappearance. But instead of cowering in a corner, I’ve decided to face my fears head-on by listing down movies (and certain characters and scenes) that traumatised me as a little child — Emotional Scar Factor rating included.

Maleficent opens in cinemas tomorrow.

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THE WIZARD OF OZ. Margaret Hamilton’s green-skinned, pointy-faced, broom-riding witch scared the pants off generations of youngsters. Not only was she as scary as sin, she also possessed a maniacal cackle so shrill, dogs would cry. Oh, she also sets people on fire and owns an army of flying monkeys who ripped the stuffing out of Scarecrow. Can’t visit the monkey exhibit at the zoo? Deep-seated childhood issues courtesy of the Wicked Witch of the West. 6/10

CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG. A perennial high-ranker on all lists relating to movie villains who scare the sh** out of kids. His name alone, The Child Catcher, still sends shivers down my spine. He was not actually in the original Ian Fleming novel but was created by none other than expert child-scarer Roald Dahl, who wrote the script. How this was considered suitable for children is baffling because this movie is disturbing enough to inspire an entire album by Marilyn Manson. Set in a land where children are outlawed, the evil Child Catcher, who is equipped with a long nose for sniffing out kids, lures children out with a haunting, sing-song refrain: “Here we are, children, come and get your lollipops, lollipops, come along my little ones”, before capturing them in a net and hauling them off to prison. Sickly-sweet sing-along tunes, candy and ice cream trucks will forever plague my nightmares. 9/10

GREMLINS. Gremlins isn’t a children’s movie, you say? Tell that to all the little kiddies who wanted to own the adorable fluffy little Gizmo. Just remember not to give him a bath or feed him past midnight, because mutant duplicates will sprout out of him and morph into rapacious reptilian monsters! Gremlins was a black comedy with reckless rampaging and crazy violence. And while we may love that now, watching humans getting straight-up murdered by little evil creatures and monsters exploding in microwaves sure taps into some pretty serious childhood phobias. 7/10

BAMBI. Fuzzy, friendly forest animals! Nature! Nurture! What could go wrong? Well, how about the fact that little Bambi’s mother gets murdered half an hour into the movie made for little children. About a cute little deer’s journey in life. With Bambi’s mother killed in cold blood by a hunter’s one shot, all our anxieties about mortality, be it an animal’s, our parents, or even our own, comes into question. Try explaining that to your five-year-old. 7/10

WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. As if the sight of disobedient little children blowing up into human-sized blueberries and being sucked through giant glass pipes to be turned into fudge wasn’t enough, this movie about kids and candy includes a nightmare-inducing psychedelic boat-ride-from-hell scene. That’s right, children all over the world were treated to such unforgettable spectacles such as decapitated birds, dead people with worms crawling across their faces and giant flying insects — not to mention Gene Wilder’s legitimately terrifying song about fires of hell and the grim reaper. I have never fully recovered from witnessing the look of horror on the characters’ faces as they begged to get off the boat. 8/10

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? It’s not really a kid’s movie seeing as how it’s based on pornography, adultery, alcoholism, and murder, and features a chain-smoking, womanising infant and a cute bunny rabbit married to a buxom sexy human. But we still all watched it as kids and one could say that the sight of main antagonist Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) when he gets slowly run over by a steamroller before “coming back to life” as a bug-eyed, saw-wielding maniac with the voice of a helium addict who then suffers the cruel fate of slowly melting away in a pool of toon-acid while emitting screams of agony. Pretty traumatising even for adults. 5/10

CORALINE. This stop-motion animated movie slithered out of the twisted mind of Neil Gaiman so we shouldn’t be surprised. But honestly, there are some truly terrifying sequences in the film, with the introduction of Coraline’s “other” parents arguably the most disquieting. (Later, the mum rips out a child’s voice box and stiches his lips into a forced, rictus grin.) Don’t like your parents or home life? Fine! Just find a parallel world where your parents are the most amazing people ever and to join them, all you’ll have to do is replace your eyes with giant black buttons, leaving a doll doppelganger in your own world in exchange. Whoever green-lit this project must really hate kids. 6/10

THE DARK CRYSTAL. Who would have thought that beloved visionary who gave us Kermit, Miss Piggy and Big Bird could come up with this? Jim Henson decided to jump on the fantasy bandwagon with a bunch of Tolkien-esque puppets in tow and the end result was a surprisingly dark kiddie flick filled with nightmarish monsters and New Age mysticism. By far the most distressing sequence is the lingering half-death suffered by a hapless Podling as he is drained of his life-essence in a laboratory. That puppet’s eyes still haunt me to this day. Parents in the ’70s liked the Muppets because they were cute enough to be loved by kids but had a sly humour that could be appreciated by adults. Sure, we probably did not understand the nuanced, rather adult subplots of this movie when we first saw it at such a young age, but the one thing we understood was how terrified we were of the evil murderous vulture-like Skeksis and why they always appeared in our nightmares. 8/10

JURASSIC PARK. Kids love dinosaurs. Kids love theme parks. Put them both on a tycoon’s private island and it’s a kids ultimate amusement paradise right? When those genetically engineered dinosaurs ran amok and embarked on the extreme violent splatter, they did the same on our previously untainted innocent imaginations. Kids never looked at wobbling jello the same way again. 5/10