Beauty And The Beast (1991)
The Movie Death: Beast is stabbed in the back and lies bleeding to death in Belle's arms while struggling to breath (presumably thanks to a punctured lung).
How It Broke Us: It doesn't matter that he was magically brought back to life moments later by Belle's declaration of love - by this point we have already seen a Disney character that we have got to know and grown to love die a slow and agonising death just because life can be an utter bastard sometimes.
The Black Cauldron (1985)
The Movie Death: The Horned King – an undead, skeletal villain – is destroyed when his magic cauldron gets out of control and consumes him, sucking him in piece by piece – clothing, flesh and finally bone.
How It Broke Us: It’s pretty much the first and only cartoon character that we have ever seen skinned alive. But he was always ‘undead’ anyway, so it’s ok, right? Our therapist says that it’s ok.
The Mouse And His Child (1977)
The Movie Death: In this story about toys being enslaved and ruled as an army by the evil Manny The Rat, one toy breaks down and is treated to a sarcastic speech of sympathy by Manny before another rat is ordered to take him apart for spare parts.
How It Broke Us: It teaches us an important lesson about the cruel conditions of slavery, as well as the fact that rats are definitely, definitely vile little creatures.
When The Wind Blows (1986)
The Movie Death: Having taken shelter during a missile attack, James and Hilda try to continue their lives in the wake of mass destruction, only to succumb to starvation and radiation.
How It Broke Us: It seemed like such a sweet film, in the same style as The Snowman . Instead it told the increasingly tragic tale of two people dying. A classic case of “Don’t judge a film by its cover”.
Black Beauty (1994)
The Movie Death: Even though Black Beauty spends most of his life smitten with chestnut mare Ginger, the two are eventually separated and, when he sees her again, she is clearly being abused by her new owner. Then, a short time later, he sees her dead body on a wagon.
How It Broke Us: They were supposed to end up together and live happily ever after galloping in a field somewhere. Instead we are taught that not everyone gets a happy ending. Thanks for that.
Hocus Pocus (1993)
The Movie Death: Young girl Emily Binx is killed by the three 'comedy' witches of Hocus Pocus in 1693, when they drain her of her life force in order to regain their youthful appearance.
How It Broke Us: It was never really addressed for the rest of the film, or indeed the scene, but these not-so scary witches in a Disney film definitely KILLED an innocent little girl. This might explain why we've always been a little scared by Bette Midler.
The Last Unicorn (1982)
The Movie Death: Evil witch Mommy Fortuna succumbs to her own freakshow of magical creatures and is clawed to death by a harpy.
How It Broke Us: This was supposed to be a film about a sweet, amazing unicorn! The lesson to be learned here is: Film titles can be misleading.
Project X (1987)
The Movie Death: This sci-fi thriller about chimps being trained on flight simulators and reacting to nuclear situations hits a tragic point when one of the chimps, Goliath, gets stuck in a chamber and dies from radiation poisoning.
How It Broke Us: If we didn’t know it before, we definitely knew it after watching this film: ANIMAL TESTING IS BAD.
Turner And Hooch (1989)
The Movie Death: Having formed the best interspecies buddy cop partnership since K-9 (released three months before), Turner & Hooch’s oddball relationship comes to an early end when the heroic hooch takes a bullet for his partner.
How It Broke Us: The film made us love this brilliantly slobbery dog only to kill him off at the end. We’ve never been able to form meaningful friendships since.
Oliver And Company (1988)
The Movie Death: Roscoe and DeSoto, two Dobermans belonging to evil loan shark Sykes die when they are thrown from a car on to train tracks and electrocuted. Sykes then dies too by driving straight into an oncoming train.
How It Broke Us: The Dobermans may have been vicious but their deaths were so graphic . Plus, did we really need to now be afraid of trains too?
