Reply With QuoteI grew up watching a ton of old horror and science fiction movies and was for the most part unfazed. The Devil's Rain at age 8 freaked me out a little, though.
There are two that I found very disturbing. I think I saw both at just 6 years of age.
* Charlie & the Chocolate Factory
* The Wizard of Oz
I should have loved C&tCF, but I found Gene Wilder creepy in it. I'd loved all his movies and thought he was hilarious, but he was so different in this.
The Wizard of OZ - Ironically, I didn't mind the witches, it was the flying monkeys that haunted me.
True "scary" movies didn't bother me half as much as these two did, and I still hate to watch these and usually avoid them if I can. For example, The Omen & the Exoricst were scary, but didn't stick with me like the above.
Last edited by jpinard; 03-14-2010 at 07:20 PM.
I grew up watching a ton of old horror and science fiction movies and was for the most part unfazed. The Devil's Rain at age 8 freaked me out a little, though.
Ditto me and The Wizard Of Oz and those flying monkeys.
I used to have a way higher tolerance for scary movies when I was a kid, but for some reason the The Changeling with George C. Scott scared the fucking pants off me. I must have seen it on video when I was about 12 or so, and the whole big spirit reveal freaked me out hard.
The shower scene in "Scarface" freaked me out a lot when I first saw it secretly on TV late one night. I couldn't sleep the whole night.
The movie "Joey" freaked me out too, with all the "dead daddy calling on the phone" and those monsters. I don't know if that movie got shown in the US?
Let's see... The arrival of the astronaut dudes in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial really freaked me out. That adorable li'l alien himself I had no problem with.
Also, Disney's kiddie horror flick, The Watcher in the Woods.
Great topic -- having grown up in a single parent household and having that parent be a serious movie buff, I got taken along to quite a few movies. And in retrospect they probably weren't really very age appropriate. So, I could make quite a list if I really put my mind to it. One that stands out from my early memories is a movie that I never hear any talk about -- possibly because it wasn't a very good movie, I'm really not sure not having seen it in over thirty years. But the movie is called Coma, and it involved some nefarious doings at a hospital, and its iconic image is a warehouse full of comatose people suspended supine from the ceiling by means of strings or cables of some sort. Also, some guy attacks the heroine and is electrocuted to death, which gave me bad dreams for weeks. Man, I should probably see if this is on Netflix or something.
Also, Poltergeist.
This, for sure.Originally Posted by FoRmaT
I remember being pretty freaked out by The Omen and Carrie, as well.
Indiana Jones. I think I was 7 when I saw it, and, like Indy, didn't like snakes all that much. It gave me terrible nightmares.
Which Exorcist had the guy walking across a pit of spikes with bare feet? To this day I can't be barefoot and I have a recurring nightmare of running across a field and spikes are shooting up out of the ground behind me.
I haven't seen this movie since I was 12 or 13 or so, but it was pretty scary at the time.
John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness
It was the transmissions from the future that did me in.
There are others from when I was much younger, like Devil's Triangle, or the original Nightmare on Elm Street, but most stuff wasn't scaring me by the time I reached my teens, with the exception of the above.
This film is the reason why certain elements of Event Horizon were creepy to me (the flashes of the original crew losing their minds), or when in the book "The Face" by Dean Koontz the telephone calls from beyond the grave chilled me in ways nothing else ever chilled me before in a book.
Last edited by kerzain; 03-14-2010 at 07:40 PM.
Other movies that I saw as a kid,, God knows why, that freaked me out:
"The day after". Really really sad and scary in those times.
"The Gate". The thing with the eye in the hand... ewwww!
"Children of the corn". Woah. That boy with the hat, and the redhead. Still gives me the creeps!
"Memphis Belle". The guy with his guts falling out was intense.
"Creepshow". The scene with the guy that gets run over and then becomes a zombie that chases the culprit, the scene on the raft, the one with the roaches... heavy stuff!
Ditto Prince of Darkness. The gravity-defying green slime from Hell broke my primitive mind.
Edit: This movie has not stood the test of time. It is laughable now.
Last edited by baren; 03-14-2010 at 07:50 PM. Reason: Adding old-person reflection
What about Hellraiser?
I haven't seen that one yet. By the time I become aware of it they were on the umpteenth sequel and the pictures of the cast made the film look like a bad Beetlejuice sequel.
The two movies that scared me most as a kid were Nightmare on Elm Street and Children of the Corn. This has far less to do with them being actually scary movies than it does with the age/time period in which I saw them (they are both so hopelessly obsolete as movie watching experiences I'm sure I'd laugh if I watched them today).
I recently saw the trailer for the new remake of the original Nightmare on Elm Street and because it isn't the same old crappy fx movie from back then it gave me a strange feeling of dread, like it slightly woke up some latent fear I still had left over from watching the original (without my parents' knowledge) back when I was ~11.
I think I've seen the first two Hellraisers, and they were pretty scary.
Another one that scared me was... don't laugh... "Momo". Those grey men...
The Hitchhiker and the Raft are from Creepshow 2. The roaches segment is from the first movie.
One that freaked me out, that I must have been 10 or 11 for was Strange Invaders. Man that one spooked me good.
Yes, I remember I've seen various Creepshow movies, but can't quite place the individual episodes.
Another movie that freaked me out so much that I'm unable to re-watch it even today is "Link".
Another one that scared me plenty was "Invasion of the body snatchers" (the remake).
Salem's Lot (Barlow as Nosferatu freaked me out)
An American Werewolf in London (Scene in the forest when he's in bed)
The Legacy (just the commercial gave me nightmares)
H.
The beginning of Jabberwocky.
The end of The Private Eyes.
JP, you and I may be separated at birth. I STILL won't watch Willy Wonka, and I'm not a big WoO fan either.
E.T. scarred me to death as a kid. Like Omniscia, it was that part where they quarantined the house and had those freaky astronaut looking guys walking around.
The critter under the stairs in Creepshow always freaked me out.
When I was little, the parents took my brother and I to see a double feature at the drive-in. 101 Dalmatians followed by Jaws. We were supposed to be sleeping in the back seat, but kept peeking over the seat instead. Still don't like swimming in the ocean.
Early 70s tv horror is what freaked me out as a kid, these in particular:
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark(Jim Hutton, Kim Darby)
Satan's Triangle(Kim Novak, Doug 'you might remember me from...' McClure)
Legend of Boggy Creek, plus stuff like The Mysterious Monsters/Chariots of the Gods, for theatrical movies. The idea of Bigfoot/Snowmen/Aliens/etc being real was just creepy to me back then.
I remember one point when I was about five when my dad rented both Batman and A Fish Called Wanda. I stopped watching the latter when Michael Palin runs over Kevin Kline with a steamroller because I thought it was scary. I'd already been freaked out by Kline eating the fish.
But at least there I almost finished the movie. As for Batman, I barely made it past Joker's origin. Nicholson falling into the vat in the factory? Scary. Him tommy-gunning a guy at his desk a few minutes later? I was out of the room.
As I got a little older, (around 10-11,) I almost made it to the end of The Fly. I ran upstairs screaming when Jeff Goldblum dissolved the guy's hand with his puke. Around the same age, I was able to make it until the end of Mars Attacks! in theaters with my friends but I didn't sleep well for a week. (Amazingly, Mars Attacks! was rated G in Canada.) I now love both of those movies, and my mom still holds them up as examples of my current desensitization to violence.
Ooh, anyone remember Trilogy of Terror, with Karen Black and the Zuni doll that wouldn't die?
Poltergeist, the Watcher in the Woods, and the cockroach part of Creepshow.
OH WAIT. I totally forgot about this scene. Freaked the hell out of me when I first saw it.
Bad Ronald
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Salem's Lot
Was thinking of the exact same scene noun. Ralphie Glick scratching at the window...yikes!
Last edited by Malathor; 03-14-2010 at 09:36 PM.
Posting Permissions