'It's Only a Movie…': 10 Non-Horror Films That Traumatized Anne Billson When She Was Younger

"What were my parents thinking? How come they never realized that films deemed suitable for Family Viewing were often, in fact, subversive Freudian swamps that would give me bad dreams for months to come? How come they would let me stay up late to watch so many unsuitable films on television? And how come they never noticed how upset I was getting?
…
[Other than Psycho,] I had carte blanche to watch any old film that took my fancy. And I watched as many as I could, and of course, some of them gave me nightmares—though not necessarily the films you'd expect. I was impressed by an early screening of Night of the Demon, but I can't say it lodged in my subconscious to fester there like a scrap of decaying offal between the teeth—not like some films I could tell you about. But Italian neo-realism, now, that's another story…"
—From 10 Bad Dates with De Niro: A Book of Alternative Movie Lists (2007).
Anne Billson is a novelist, film critic, and photographer.