Stop-motion animation and claymation give me the willies. You know the Rudolph the Reindeer special that everyone loves to watch around Christmas time? Well, instead of giving me a feeling of joy and happiness, it instead makes me want to cover my eyes with my hands, and run out of the room screaming in terror. I of course hold this in, as I do not want the others around me to know how much this animation petrifies me. I have endured this for far too long, and it is time to come clean- so here it is- stop-motion animation is freakin’ scary!!!! I don’t find it cute, or endearing, instead it scares me more than most horror movies. Why you ask? Did I have some kind of traumatic experience in childhood that led to this irrational fear? Not that I know of. But maybe it stems from my early childhood viewings of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, especially the animated Santa Clause who I found to be more cruel than jolly.
I seem to have a weird emotional connection to cartoon animals (so in this case stop-motion animals), and in this case I even had an emotional connection to the poor elf, who just wants to be a dentist. Santa Clause seems like such a miserly old curmudgeon, and is also quite prejudiced against red-nosed reindeers. He is just extremely unpleasant, and he only accepts Rudolph when he sees that he can get something out of Rudolph’s deformity. So I’m thinking my fear may stem from this cruel stop-motion Santa Clause, and it just branched out from there, growing into a full out stop-motion-phobia. Now this fear seems to be confined to claymation and stop-motion animation such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Clause is Coming to Town, James and the Giant Peach and the like, and has not branched into traditional animation. It seems to be a more specialized fear. So there you have it- stop-motion animation gives me the willies!!
I have a feeling this is going to come back to haunt me next Christmas where my brothers will decide to lock me in a room with a non-stop stop-motion-athon that they have set up to play on the television from which I will be unable to escape….
Scared Shirtless: 2 Chicks Who Dig Horror Movies 
don’t give me ideas
Have you seen the Harryhausen stuff?
That’s just a big bag of awesome.
I think it’s when stop motion things try to be kind (and we see right through it), or when the whole world’s stop motion, that it gets creepy for me.
watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs
I saw it late at night, and I had such willies that it kept me up.
Very sorry to hear that stop-motion gives you discomfort. I can tolerate Rudolph and Wallace and Grommit, but only because they are happy and not serious. I have seen some scary, weird things on stop-motion that have disturbed me to this day. I dont’ even feel right mentioning them because I hope to cause you no more distress. I watched a scary video on a Wallace And Grommit DVD that bothered me a lot. Also I have seen some scary Will Vinton show about the devil that was absolutely terrifying. Also, there’s a plato’s allegory of the cave on youtube that is stop-motion animated and is so terrifying and awful.
I think it is because their movements are unnatural, their faces are often distorted and disturbing, and yet it is in real space so they seem more real than cartoon-animated things. I can enjoy Gumby sometimes too if there aren’t humans in the episode.