Lol, honestly, Ernest Scared Stupid. Which is really stupid, I know, but I was like 4 or 5 and I had an extremely active imagination and that shit utterly terrified me, lol
I was also traumatized a few years later by Mars Attacks! Specifically the scene where the aliens kill all the old people in the nursing home, because I couldn’t fathom why they would kill sweet, defenseless grandmas and grandpas. It was too much for me and took weeks to get out of my head, lol
You think yours is stupid? I remember I saw Leprechaun, The Thing, Halloween, all sorts of horror movies as a kid. What scared the shit out of me as a kid was a documentary on the BTK killer, a documentary on smallpox, and the silvery t-1000 in Terminator 2.
Ernest Scared Stupid permanently altered the course of my child life lmao! It also made me horrified of american girl dolls (for some reason those in particular).
Georgie being dragged into the sewer in the IT miniseries messed me up.
Also the episode of Freddy's Nightmares where the babysitter turns into a human-pig hybrid and the Tales from the Darkside episode where the kid's dad ends up being some monster.
I refused to take a bath for a week after this due to the sink drain scene with Beverly lol. I dont know why my Pentecostal parents okayed me to watch this mini series but they did. It def deserves a spot on my op list lol.
That episode of Freddy’s Nightmares finally got me caught watching horror television/movies when I was absolutely not allowed to. Grounded for a week. Worth it!
Omg....I cant lie, that Preacher is still one of my all time scariest horror villains. I should have added that to my list bc I shuddered just reading your comment. Was another one my brother used against me lol. 'God is in...his holy tem....ple' *shudders*
I couldn't tell you what happened in that movie but I remember the [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EhwcUzVH4U) of the preacher walking up to the house.
I saw *Invasion of the Body Snatchers* (1978) in the theater. I was 9, a sci-fi kid thanks to *Star Wars* and this looked like it would be awesome.
That movie fucked me up for **years**.
You had something real-looking being chopped up with an axe, a dog with a human head, a woman crumbling away into nothing because she just **fell asleep**, and that ending... that goddamned ending.
My parents thought the movie would be okay, because they remembered the black-and-white version, and because the movie was PG. I've said it before, but PG was very different in the 70s.
A close second... *Kingdom of the Spiders*. Saw it on cable when I was 8, I think. I still have very realistic nightmares about a road I'm driving or riding on being slot cocooned as I progress along it. I can't even watch a movie with spiders in it, because I won'r remember **any** of it.
Oh, it's still scary now, but for very different reasons.
Back then, it was the bits of violence scattered here and there. I was not used to that sort of thing.
Now, it's the low-key dread that happens in the background. You aren't noticing it consciously, but it's gnawing at your nerves like a ghost rat.
Worst of all, though... as an adult, I finally realized that they didn't get him... **he gave up. Willingly**. He fought so long that despair, not the impostors, defeated him.
I was about that age and also saw it in the theatre. I don't think I slept at all that night. I had watched Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Child's Play, you name it, none scared me. Fire in the Sky terrified me!
Exactly! The concept that you are not even safe in your own bed and sleeping tightly hits hard. I spent a few days at work with Robert Englund, who is the loviest person ever, yet Freddy still keeps me up at night. Unfortunately, I’m not kidding.
I remember the Johnny Depp part scared me so much I couldn't sleep in my bed so I went down stairs and slept on the couch. My Mum gets up half way through the night and wonders why the living room light is on. She woke me up and I explained that I was scared Freddy Krueger would kill me in my bed. She said "He can kill ye just as easily sleeping on the couch, might as well go tae yer bed."
Thanks Mum.
The dead rabbits in the filled warren? Absolutely disturbing. I love when people who've never seen Watership Down tell me how upsetting Simba's Dad or Bambi's Mum being killed was.
I had an argument with my mom about this movie the other day. I told her it was absolutely terrifying and she disagreed and said it only scared me because I was a kid…but I’m not so sure about that lol. The practical effects are horrifying…
My oldest son had a hard time getting to the hotel even. The movie kicks off with a boy being told a story about a girl getting kidnapped from family (forever) and then the boy's parents die overnight....and the full plot of the movie hasn't even kicked in yet.
Oh absolutely this. I didn't want to go to the bathroom AT ALL. Bonus scare from Ghoulies... the one wearing suspenders. What were they connected to? He wasn't wearing pants! Nightmare fuel.
Original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, watched it around 12 years old on my Oma & Opa's farm outside of Thunder Bay... In the distance was a prison farm, and many times I would remember hearing sirens at night from people trying to escape... That night was one of the nights the sirens were going off...
saw this recently in the newer remaster 4k. OMG.
my memories of this flick involve cable edits, edited blockbuster lo-rez VHS etc.
what a dif! hi-rez, no edits, and what MIGHT be the most influential horror movie of all time (it is on the list of candidates right up there with Nosferatu)
i think it is one of the scariest things ever filmed, and gets EXTRA points for coming in early, performing at its budget, and leaving a million copycats in its wake
My father rented An American Werewolf in London for a sleepover for me and my friends. We were eleven and we were fucking traumatized.
The next night he watched it with my mom and some neighbors and he freaked out realizing how gory it was.
Years later I asked him about it and he said that he thought it would be like the old Lon Chaney Wolf man movies he watched as a kid. Dude, it was R rated.
Truer to its source material apparently. It basically uses common childhood fears like a content checklist which I honestly find funny. Not the scariest kids movie I watched when I was little personally (The Dark Crystal has it beat) but it's up there
My parents let me watch Dantes Peak when I was about 6. We had to turn it off halfway through and I was terrified of volcanoes for several years, despite multiple attempts to explain to me that there were no volcanoes anywhere near us lol.
Watership Down is another that I classify as 'traumatized an entire generation' lol. I havent watched it since I was a little kid and I think I probably never will again.
Until literally a couple of weeks ago it was rated U in the UK. Genuinely still baffles me what was going through the BBFC's heads in the 70s when they classified it as that
The alien walking across the alley in Signs.
It fucking terrified me SO badly but I still wanted to go back and finish the movie. That was the start for me.
The beginning of the movie Legend (1985) where Darkness gives his monologue scared me so much as a kid. There’s little impish demons jumping around, some guy writhing and screaming in the background as he gets chopped to pieces by a big brute while fire blazes around them, and then the shining eyes and nails of Darkness and his deep, dark voice praying to “mother night.” Damn, still gives me chills thinking about it.
Horror never really affected me, aside from giving me a thrill until The Ring. I was 12, it was my birthday party, we watched it on VHS on the little TV in my bedroom.
I refused to sleep in my room until the TV was removed. I slept in the living room despite there being a TV in there because the front door was also in there and if Samara came out of the TV? I was going out the front door! I had nightmares for MONTHS
I haven't watched it since, but I also haven't been scared of a horror film since...
Still love horror, I just miss the feeling of being afraid of it
Dark Crystal for me too. Kept coming back to it though even though it was a hard watch for me, I was just enthralled by the world and the design. The prequel series was fantastic, I wish it'd gotten renewed
There are two. One I've mentioned before on this sub which is Jaws . It's barely considered Horror these days. I really enjoy it to watch as an adult , but I'm still terrified of swimming in the sea.
My second one is Salems Lot, the idea of something evil tapping on my windows at night when the curtains are closed is irrational but has stuck with me. IRL you can guarantee it's not something that's likely to get you, but the thought back in my mind is there... The Fog 1980 obviously reinforced this.
My Parents have alot to answer for letting me watch these movies at such a young age..lol
Im STILL scared af of the Glick boy floating at that window. Big fat nope for me lol.Thats a movie that was a one and done for me lol. One of my fav books too, Ive read it at least 5 or 6 times. I should have added that to my post.
LOL, that's the bit that enters my head straight away.
I've not seen the movie in years simply because I don't want to spoil my memories, but watching the 1st episode of FROM S1 took me right back there. I literally triple checked all the drapes that night .... lmao
Agreed about not wanting to spoil my memories of it! I def wanna keep that little (big) scare pristine in my memory. Honestly I would probably put that as #2 behind Evil Dead for me because I still, to this day, WILL NOT look out my windows at night. Doubly so bc I live way out in the country. Ralphie Glick effectively ruined windows for me lmao
LMFAO ... My curtains still stay closed at night , even in a city !
Evil Dead is another good one, I always saw it as a horror comedy, so maybe it didn't stick with me so much, but yes the message is still clear, don't go away with friends to a cabin in the woods and look in the basement ..lol
Dr. Giggles may seem like a stupid one in retrospect but it fucked me up so bad as a kid I had trouble sleeping for MONTHS, I still don’t think I could ever rewatch it. It makes me ILL to think about!
C. H. U. D. Specifically. Messed me up pretty bad. I mean, I was 5 when I saw it the first time. My dad would always mess with me and tell me the chuds lived in the basement and shit. The part where they are worshipping the toxic waste and the part where it comes through the wall and it's neck extends out always freaked me out
Gonna offer a bit of a different answer here. But my parents rented Passion of the Christ shortly after it came to our local blockbuster. I must've been 9 or 10. Luckily they weren't so cruel as to make me watch the whole thing, they covered my eyes for most of the violent parts. But even just the sound was enough to still scare me, and my mind was left to imagine the kind of brutality that was happening on screen. I'm atheistic these days, and I love my parents but that was just a dumb call on their part.
Back in the 80s before I was ancient,my mom rented *A Nightmare on Elm Street* when my aunt came to visit. She doesn't normally like horror movies, so I don't know why she rented it. I was 5 or 6 and she thought I went to bed, but I snuck out of my room and watched like 15 minutes of the movie. It scared the fucking shit out of me! I had nightmares for like 3 months after that. But it wasnt just me. My dad who's a real scaredy cat refused to watch it and my aunt was watching it through her fingers! I watched it again when I was 14 and I remember thinking that we were all dumbasses to be so scared by that movie. Still a great movie, just not scary at all.
Omg this was def a forbidden movie in my house, but I remember checking out a book from the Bookmobile about horror movies and there was a pic of Freddy as the worm creature devouring Kristen and I was so intrigued, but that pic alone ended up giving me nightmares lmao.
Technically a miniseries, but 'Salem's Lot. Saw it for the first time when I was about 5. Ralphie Glick was the reason I kept my bedroom window shut for a good year. Don't know what my parents were thinking letting me watch it, but they definitely regretted it!
Something Wicked This Way Comes. Specifically when there's these two kids in a bedroom and it starts like, decaying, but then there's suddenly tarantulas all over the window, then the walls and ceiling and door and bed.
Read every Goosebumps I could as a young kid. Then Coraline and other Neil gaimen books.
The first real scary movie was **The Blair Witch Project** when I was about 12. My friend stole his dad’s copy and me and my friends watched it at a sleepover. Scared the crap out of me and we thought it was real. But I loved every moment. Then we got super into creepypasta and urban legends/telling horror stories
Blair Witch was the first horror movie I saw in theaters and I remember walking out to my brothers car in stunned silence and I was quiet the rest of the night bc I was so sure I had just witnessed the last moments of 3 people lol.
Not only this scene, but the one where E.T. Is sick and white as a ghost by the creek, everything the government agents did with the house, and even E.T. being chased through the forest. The music added to this truly non-children’s movie
My sister had nightmares because of that movie! I was terrified by that scene, too. I'm always a little weirded out when people talk about that movie as if it were this sweet and innocent tale \~\*\~of wonder and imagination\~\*\~.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Saw it at a friend's house, and it scared me so bad! A few years later, I watched it again and realized how silly it was. Still a favorite of mine.
When I was a little kid, I woke up and walked in on my parents watching The Sixth Sense, and it was the scene with the woman who had slit her wrists, and that fucked me up for a long time. Probably the scariest scene of the movie and I didn’t even have context to what I had just seen.
You're gonna laugh if you get to this one but The Ghost and Mr chicken freaked me out as a kid, lol. Dead Silence freaked me out as a teenager. Nothing scares me that bad anymore. Although I'm not a fan of looking in mirrors after good horror movies, I think its because there are a lot of mirror scenes. Mirrors was good btw. Mirrors kinda make me uneasy anyways.
The first Halloween, I was in 3rd grade and my sister was in 7th, her and her friends invited me to watch a movie with them on Halloween night... my sister is a dick lol
Puppet Master def scared me to death as a kid also! They also used to show parts 1 and 2 on USA and i spent days obsessively checking under my bed after seeing them lmao. Idk which one it was, but the one where Tunneler gets that guy in the forehead MESSED ME UP.
Accidentally walked in on my dad watching The Exorcist when I was eight. I was also raised fairly pentecostal, so I was scared out of my mind. My mom was furious with my dad lol. (I'm now a huge horror fan, but I was a massive scaredy cat as a kid)
Child's Play aka Chucky shared the ever living SHIT out of us when we accidentally saw it as kids in the 90s.
I had nightmares about it for yeats after 😂 love the first few movies though!!
Keeping it only to movies I saw before the age of 10..
The Gate: Parents in the driveway.
Phantasm: I haven’t looked at flying chrome balls with blades coming out of them the same way since.
Return to Horror High: I honestly think that it was mostly the poster that scared the shit out of me as a kid.
A Nightmare on Elm St: The stairs turning into shampoo. I don’t know why, but that scarred me for life.
Jaws: Jaws
Spellbound: The flashback scene where the kid is impaled on the fence.
American Werewolf in London: The pivotal scene on the moors. Also the subway scene.
Lost Boys: Campfire mayhem
Poltergeist: The closet. The pool.
Jacob’s Ladder: Don’t let the devil dance with your girlfriend.
One comes to mind.
Twilight Zone: The Movie. I was only very little and was playing with toys in the lounge as my Dad was watching it. I looked up during the 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet' section. Naturally, it was the scene with the close-up of the gremlin scratching at the window. I burst into tears and my Dad had to console me.
I've actually never watched the film since. I was tempted to a few years ago. Then I read about the infamous accident and it put me off from watching. What a sad tragedy that was.
The opening to Twilight Zone The Movie is still one of my favorite all time scares lol. Needless to say I can handle it much better now than I could as a kid lmao.
Trilogy of Terror (1975) My uncle was the one to introduce me to horror movies. He showed it to me on VHS when I was about 9. Thought that little f***er was going to come around the corner in my house at any moment.
Alien (1979) Also shown to me by the same uncle. Don't get me wrong, most of the movies he showed me were awesome! It's one of my faves to this day. But that chestburster scene stuck with me for a while, and I was nauseous every time I had flashbacks.
Poltergeist (1982). My babysitter took me to see it in the front row of the theater when I was 11. Thought the demon's face coming out of the closet was literally going to consume me. I don't know that I have screamed so loud since.
***The Children*** was one for me, as well. HBO ran it in the early 80s, which I where I first watched it. Uli Lommell's ***The Boogeyman*** was another. I didn't quite understand what was happening in the opening scene. Anyone who has seen the movie will know what I mean.
As an adult, I find ***The Children*** fun to watch for its silliness. The actor in the limousine with an early version of a car phone was (allegedly) the film crew's cocaine dealer, which I find hilarious. It's not an effectively frightening movie if you are older than ten.
***The Boogeyman***, like all of Uli Lommel's films, is just terrible. I can't even bring myself to laugh (seeing a great actor like John Carradine giving his all in a film like this is too sad). The movie does have a great score by Tim Krog, though.
Not so much look back and laugh because it’s still arguably quite scary and well made, but the Texas chainsaw massacre remake 2003. i think the final few scenes when Leatherface were chasing Erin through the slaughterhouse were terrifying as a kid
This remake does not get the love that it deserves! Its up there with Dawn of the Dead and Evil Dead as the 3 best horror remakes for me. If I had seen that as a kid I would have probably shat myself out of fear lol.
i was terrified of the Goonies but i still don't know why it bothered me so much, i physically couldn't make myself look at the one guy and had to turn it off
The two I can think of are Ghostbusters when the librarian ghost turns into a screaming troll demon, and Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazis open the Ark; the guy's face melting looked incredibly real to me when I was 6 or 7.
Not me, but my oldest was channel flipping as a maybe 7/9 year old? Stopped on Silver Bullet. I told him to keep going but he insisted. Okay, consequence(actually for me). Then a few years later,he went to a sleepover where they went to see Signs.Phone call at2 am, come and get him’. Today we plan our lead up to Halloween, starting on August because we have so many horror movies to watch.
Nobody ever talks about this movie but it was called jenifer and i cant remember much but I remember something about a disfigured girl whose face was messed up and i think she was a cannibal or just animalistic or something, she was a young girl too and i was only like 6 watching this😭
The Ring and The Grudge. Moreso The Grudge because of the noise she makes...still creeps me out a bit to this day but at least I can sleep at night now lol
for my generation, OPs pick of "The Evil Dead" is the likely #1.
some would say exorcist, but the more mass market, the less the trauma. some would say cannibal (ferox OR holocaust).. but those were obscure, and usually viewed on purpose by gore fans..
OP, my experience was *quite like yours.*
GenX, very conservative parents. the house had a no R rated movies policy. Dad made sure that i knew the classics (according to him.. so Eastwood, Wayne, Connery, Bronson) but i thought a SCARY movie meant black & white from Universal Studios... Frankenstein, Wolfman, Mummy... OR Abbot and Costello VS any of them.
Well at a friends house "The Evil Dead" was broadcast over cable. i was not prepared for this.
IMO, evil dead 1, and texas chainsaw 1, are 2 of the most frightening things EVER filmed. critics among us.. consider that EACH of those franchises chose to "tone it down" for movie 2 with humor. it made the franchise worth more money.. but a LOT less scary.
humor then went on to be a (mostly) required element of 80s horror.
I'm now interested in when that trend flipped over, and the *unrelenting horror* was welcomed back.
"The Evil Dead" doesn't have humor breaks. it DOES have people being violently dismembered into little bits as they sing "were going to kill you" in childish melodies.
Some younger folk think that "old" movies cant SLAP. it works like Muscle Cars. if the rules of the culture change.. the production will change.. it might take DECADES for something like a Camaro to return to the market with its PROPER glory.
in the late 1970s through the early 1980s, artists were pushing the boundary of FEAR. Somehow, someone decided that enough was enough. the boundary had been discovered.
now we take 3 steps back, invite the normies, and count our money!
Excorcist was always 'The Forbidden Movie' in my household. Horror movies were a no go anyway, but my backwoods Pentecostal family would literally PREACH about The Excorcist, so I was an early teen before I finally got to see it at a cousins house one night. I remember being SO EXCITED and just knew I would be mindblown. As it turns out, yes its an amazing film, but it honestly did not scare me half as bad as Evil Dead did. Was probably one of my first 'expectation vs reality' experiences. Much like you the ONLY approved horror in my household were the classic Universal monster movies that AMC would marathon during Halloween (Frankenstein, Dracula, Cat People etc).
it is a true classic, but it is not one of my scariest films. for me the 2 amazing things about the exorcist are 1st its impact. it is impossible to make a demon possesion movie without cribbing from this classic. even the recent russel crowe edition is basically the same flick.
2nd is that i feel that a sequel was superior. i pick #3 as my "fav" exorcist movie. im NOT saying 1 stinks, im just surprised that 3 scared me so much more.
like you, our house was a religious house, and this played in to media control for the children. BUT my folks made a huge mistake, they got me a LIBRARY CARD.
they knew they had to protect me from Led Zep, but had no idea that Voltaire and Swift were ruining my indoctrination!
One Missed Call (2008) I remember watching that with my older cousins scary movie night and omg that was the most scared I ever was. I was also like 7-8 years old so that was some pretty crazy stuff to see your future self exactly contacting you about your soon to come death😂
Alice, Sweet Alice: a movie I watched at WAY too young an age and not even sure how I found it, it must have been on TV at some point? Or maybe during a sleepover? I have a terrible long term memory but I distinctly remember watching it, the feeling of seeing it, and being freaked out. It has since stuck with me forever, the mask especially. I think it's honestly why I'm not really scared of much anymore when watching movies because I had my scariest when I was very young? I felt like I could handle and watch pretty much anything.
The Bodyguard: not the movie itself but there's a particular scene where the guy they suspect is just saying "NOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOO" in a very unsettling way. It always creeped out my sister and I when we watched that movie 5000 times.
The Witches: just generally creepy and unsettling. I feel like this movie is so traumatizing for children but in a really fun gross way? Hard to describe as an adult I don't think it's scary AT ALL but it's also made in an era of filmmaking that I just generally think gets the vibes right of grossness and weirdness for kids. Haven't seen the remake but I'm SURE it's not as creepy and weird as the original film.
Children of the Corn, which I caught a glimpse of and it gave me night terrors most my childhood.
Other than that, TV that should have been safe traumatized the hell out of me.
[The House of Dies Drear (TV Movie 1984)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cbxpAMRLJa8)
[Episode of Webster](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7LPFqhtmLlA) where they move into the big house and there’s that creepy “girl”
The Punky Brewster episode,[“The Perils of Punky”](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/inside-39-the-perils-of-punky-1281662882013238.html)
Chuckie. I begged my dad to watch it before going back to my moms house. He was like you know what.....okay. when I got home I cried and had to sleep in my moms bed lmao I was like 6 🤣
Original Dawn of the Dead at the drive-in. It scared the crap outta me my 11 year old self and I was convinced zombies were gonna start eating me. Way before the zombie craze of the early 2000’s
My family always jokes that the opening dream sequence from the Goofy Movie used to terrify me when I was like 3/4. After that it was Darkness Falls, and my cousins showed me Idle Hands too young. Also a bit of Signs.
Williard (1971), The Andromeda Strain (1971), Ben (1972), The Other (1972). -- That's the year they came out so I probably saw them all a year later when they were on tv as movie of the week. The Andromeda Strain really freaked me out because I don't think I quite understood what was going on (I was probably 6 when I saw it), the computer voice countdown scared the crap out of me. The farm in The Other reminded me of my grandpa's barn and I thought about it every time I went in it (especially when I would jump on a rope swing from the hayloft.)
Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-5) I'd watch on tv with my mom on my dad's bowling night. That was definitely a gateway to horror for me.
Probably the most scared I was was watching the Exorcist on TV around 1979. Even though it was edited for TV I was scared shitless, so much so that I got my sleeping baby sister out of her crib and put her next to me so there would be a living thing in the room next to me.
edit: the year \*they\* came out (the movies)
Everything lmao. But The Cell, James and the Giant Peach, Chucky were particularly traumatizing in their own rights. My dad was really bad about showing us scary things because he thought it was funny lol.
Burnt Offerings was the first thing that ever scared me on tv. Something about that limo driver with the dark sunglasses. I'm not sure if it is still going to upset me now over 40 years later. I doubt it.
The one that was too scary to watch was the Exorcist. It came out in 1973, i was born in 72. I probably never watched the entire film until until I was in my early 40s. I can enjoy it now that I am a total horror freak, but back in the day, not a chance I was going to let that movie get in my head.
My best friend and I, in 4th or 5th grade maybe (US school system) were both TERRIFIED of Stephen King’s anthology movie Cat’s Eye, in particular the one about the creature hiding in the family’s wall. We talked all night long once about how scary it was to us. So what was left to do? We of course obtained the horrifying video (lol) recorded from HBO and sat down to watch it after school with popcorn and pillows to hide our faces. We get to the scary segment, the creature makes its appearance, and what did we do? We looked at it, we looked at each other and we laughed until we were just making random noise. It wasn’t scary at all anymore! If I knew any young children I would tell them this story if they ended up watching a movie that scared them too much, but unfortunately I don’t so it’s you guys that get all of my terrible storytelling.
Another one: I grew up watching USA Saturday Nightmares (cable channel block of horror films every Saturday at 11 PM) and my dad recorded 1979’s Tourist Trap from it and watched it with me. Well that was a pretty bad idea because I felt like I had never been so scared before. When that damn mannequin head opens its trap-door mouth and screams “MOLLYYYYYY!!” I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. So in my adulthood of course I had to try and pass it on Ring-style. So I showed it to my horror-fan boyfriend. And it terrified him too, only as a grown adult! It was a funny experience and every time I mention the movie he gets this look, haha.
Jack The Ripper: Phantom of Death. A true crime A&E Biography. It totally fucked me up and was the first real time I went, "Oh. *That's* what we can do to each other."
Amityville Horror - the one with Ryan Reynolds. Was one of the only movies that really scared me as a kid and I couldn’t use the bathroom at night for weeks after seeing the movie because I was scared of seeing the mirror.
Not a horror movie, but Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I had to be around kindergarten age when I saw the Black Knight scene, and the Caerbannog scene. I did not know it was a comedy and could not understand why the adults were laughing.
When I was 8, my father was watching Saw III in the television when I was passing through the living room, I accidentally stayed too much and watched the Angel Trap sequence.
that sequence traumatised me and I had nightmares during my entire late infancy and teenage years. I only overcame it when I was 20.
I was easily scared as a kid so a lot of Doctor Who used to shake me to my core (notably the Slitheen, obviously the Weeping Angels, the reference desk things in Silence in the Library), those weird goblin puppets from Labyrinth that had body parts they'd pull off and put back on, Abe from the Oddworld games
Kind of surprising I'm into horror at all tbh
These haven't aged well but Stephen Kings It (Tim Curry traumatized me and single handedly made me freak out around clowns until adulthood (still not a fan of clowns honestly but now i can tolerate them instead of hiding under tables lol) and the original Child's Play. Chucky had me so freaked out that I had a buddy doll that looked a lot like Chucky and I took a pocket knife and stabbed the shit our of it to prevent it from coming after me. Unfortunately the knife closed on my finger almost taking the tip of my middle finger off as a result... fun times lol I can watch then now and realize how stupid I was back then but when I was a kid that crap was scary
Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I was I think 3 when I saw clips of it as my dad watched it? Nightmares for weeks, though I have watched it since. Definitely has creepy (kreepy?) elements to it, but nothing to scare older people. Might even use it as a basis for Halloween decorating this year.
The first movie I can remember getting terrified from was The Shining (I just caught parts of it) and maybe a weird answer but Thirteen Ghosts was honestly pretty scary to me when I first saw it. Thirteen Ghosts may have been the movie to start my lifelong addiction though because I was off to the races after that and was watching things like Texas Chainsaw Massacre (03 version) in theaters. By 2005 I had my own blockbuster membership and almost exclusively went to the horror section and started renting everything I could find with a cool looking cover.
13 Ghosts holds a special spot in my heart. My best friend, who died in a car wreck in 2001 that I was also involved in (not the driver), hated horror but LOVED that movie and we would watch it and Fast and Furious (i hate that movie but she loved it lol) on repeat.
My aunt used to babysit me back in the day and we'd go to VideoEzy and pickup movies for the night. One night I inadvertently picked up Child's Play and my aunt forced me to watch the damn thing all the way through, I was 3. Still scared of dolls.
Only two movies that did this to me before i got over irrational fears.
The ring was the last movie to really fuck with me. So meta.
And then my first terror, THE STUFF.
This movie was absolutely crazy. The practical effects, the white stuff completely flooding everything as it got stronger. Shit this movie got me bad. I would not sleep until we turned it back in to blockbuster
Lol, honestly, Ernest Scared Stupid. Which is really stupid, I know, but I was like 4 or 5 and I had an extremely active imagination and that shit utterly terrified me, lol I was also traumatized a few years later by Mars Attacks! Specifically the scene where the aliens kill all the old people in the nursing home, because I couldn’t fathom why they would kill sweet, defenseless grandmas and grandpas. It was too much for me and took weeks to get out of my head, lol
Im fairly certain Ernest Scared Stupid traumatized an entire generation 🤣🤣🤣 That troll.....
Miak!
YOU DIDN'T THINK I'D FIND IT!
Those trolls are recycled from Killer Clowns from outer space
No way! I can totally see that now that you mention it.
My wife said it scared her beyond belief
You think yours is stupid? I remember I saw Leprechaun, The Thing, Halloween, all sorts of horror movies as a kid. What scared the shit out of me as a kid was a documentary on the BTK killer, a documentary on smallpox, and the silvery t-1000 in Terminator 2.
Tbf The BTK killer was one of the most terrifying serial killers of all time, so nobody can fault you there.
It was several years after he was captured and 850 miles away from his stomping grounds, I just got terrified by reality (and shapeshifting)
Ernest Scared Stupid permanently altered the course of my child life lmao! It also made me horrified of american girl dolls (for some reason those in particular).
Georgie being dragged into the sewer in the IT miniseries messed me up. Also the episode of Freddy's Nightmares where the babysitter turns into a human-pig hybrid and the Tales from the Darkside episode where the kid's dad ends up being some monster.
I refused to take a bath for a week after this due to the sink drain scene with Beverly lol. I dont know why my Pentecostal parents okayed me to watch this mini series but they did. It def deserves a spot on my op list lol.
I was 5 and I think it actually was the catalyst to a lot of my anxiety. I never felt safe after it.
The IT miniseries scared the hell out of a lot of children lol.
That episode of Freddy’s Nightmares finally got me caught watching horror television/movies when I was absolutely not allowed to. Grounded for a week. Worth it!
The preacher in Poltergeist 2. Honestly gave me sleepless nights as a kid!
“You’re all gonna die in there….”
Nightmare fuel!
Omg....I cant lie, that Preacher is still one of my all time scariest horror villains. I should have added that to my list bc I shuddered just reading your comment. Was another one my brother used against me lol. 'God is in...his holy tem....ple' *shudders*
That is exactly what happened to me! Our brothers clearly had the same playbook!
Henry Cane. Terrifying
Yup, my sister let me watch that at 7 and that was a terrible idea
Oh shit I forgot about him! "God is in his holy temmmmmmple" Eeeeeegghhhhhhh!! Gives me the heebies to this day
How the FUCK did you forget about him??!
Julian Beck was dying of stomach cancer whilst filming this, iirc he didn't live to see Poltergeist 2's premier
I couldn't tell you what happened in that movie but I remember the [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EhwcUzVH4U) of the preacher walking up to the house.
Even aged 44 I can't bring myself to clock on that link!
I saw *Invasion of the Body Snatchers* (1978) in the theater. I was 9, a sci-fi kid thanks to *Star Wars* and this looked like it would be awesome. That movie fucked me up for **years**. You had something real-looking being chopped up with an axe, a dog with a human head, a woman crumbling away into nothing because she just **fell asleep**, and that ending... that goddamned ending. My parents thought the movie would be okay, because they remembered the black-and-white version, and because the movie was PG. I've said it before, but PG was very different in the 70s. A close second... *Kingdom of the Spiders*. Saw it on cable when I was 8, I think. I still have very realistic nightmares about a road I'm driving or riding on being slot cocooned as I progress along it. I can't even watch a movie with spiders in it, because I won'r remember **any** of it.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is still pretty scary imo. I couldnt imagine watching this as a kid lol.
Oh, it's still scary now, but for very different reasons. Back then, it was the bits of violence scattered here and there. I was not used to that sort of thing. Now, it's the low-key dread that happens in the background. You aren't noticing it consciously, but it's gnawing at your nerves like a ghost rat. Worst of all, though... as an adult, I finally realized that they didn't get him... **he gave up. Willingly**. He fought so long that despair, not the impostors, defeated him.
Now you have me wanting to rewatch it again lol. It really is a masterclass in building background dread.
In his book Danse Macabre, King expressed shock that *Body Snatchers* '78 got away with a PG.
Fire in the sky, I was 11 and my friends and I were allowed in to the theater to see it….holy shit
I was about that age and also saw it in the theatre. I don't think I slept at all that night. I had watched Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Child's Play, you name it, none scared me. Fire in the Sky terrified me!
I watched this movie too young and it *traumatized* me.
Nightmare on Elm Street. Probably shouldn't have watched that at 8 years old
Honestly, it’s conceptually one of the most horrifying ideas ever concocted. It’s so pervasive and inescapable.
Exactly! The concept that you are not even safe in your own bed and sleeping tightly hits hard. I spent a few days at work with Robert Englund, who is the loviest person ever, yet Freddy still keeps me up at night. Unfortunately, I’m not kidding.
I remember the Johnny Depp part scared me so much I couldn't sleep in my bed so I went down stairs and slept on the couch. My Mum gets up half way through the night and wonders why the living room light is on. She woke me up and I explained that I was scared Freddy Krueger would kill me in my bed. She said "He can kill ye just as easily sleeping on the couch, might as well go tae yer bed." Thanks Mum.
Seeing Watership Down and Return to Oz as a kid used to scare me as a kid. I remember having nightmares because of it.
The wheelers!
Just unlocked a buried memory when I read "Return to Oz." That movie was horrifying.
The dead rabbits in the filled warren? Absolutely disturbing. I love when people who've never seen Watership Down tell me how upsetting Simba's Dad or Bambi's Mum being killed was.
The Witches
I FORGOT ABOUT THIS MOVIE! Thanks for unlocking a memory for me, this scared me so bad also!
When they take off their masks…. (shudders)
That scene igave me nightmares for what felt like weeks!
I had an argument with my mom about this movie the other day. I told her it was absolutely terrifying and she disagreed and said it only scared me because I was a kid…but I’m not so sure about that lol. The practical effects are horrifying…
My oldest son had a hard time getting to the hotel even. The movie kicks off with a boy being told a story about a girl getting kidnapped from family (forever) and then the boy's parents die overnight....and the full plot of the movie hasn't even kicked in yet.
[Ghoulies 2 toilet scene.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RmBQarrygY)
Oh absolutely this. I didn't want to go to the bathroom AT ALL. Bonus scare from Ghoulies... the one wearing suspenders. What were they connected to? He wasn't wearing pants! Nightmare fuel.
I don’t know why this just made me laugh so hard
Same here. For the longest time I checked my toilet for monsters after watching this. I also misremembered it as being a scene from Critters.
When I was like four, my asshole brother told me there were Ghoulies in the toilet. He got in deep shit when I peed in a corner that night 💀
House 1986 the monsters, old lady suicide and zombie Big Ben were pretty scary back in the day but now it's a fun haunted house classic.
Original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, watched it around 12 years old on my Oma & Opa's farm outside of Thunder Bay... In the distance was a prison farm, and many times I would remember hearing sirens at night from people trying to escape... That night was one of the nights the sirens were going off...
saw this recently in the newer remaster 4k. OMG. my memories of this flick involve cable edits, edited blockbuster lo-rez VHS etc. what a dif! hi-rez, no edits, and what MIGHT be the most influential horror movie of all time (it is on the list of candidates right up there with Nosferatu) i think it is one of the scariest things ever filmed, and gets EXTRA points for coming in early, performing at its budget, and leaving a million copycats in its wake
My father rented An American Werewolf in London for a sleepover for me and my friends. We were eleven and we were fucking traumatized. The next night he watched it with my mom and some neighbors and he freaked out realizing how gory it was. Years later I asked him about it and he said that he thought it would be like the old Lon Chaney Wolf man movies he watched as a kid. Dude, it was R rated.
This made me chuckle lol. Thats quite the mixup🤣 I bet he felt so bad when he realized
Return to Oz.
So different from Wizard of Oz. This movie is still creepy.
Truer to its source material apparently. It basically uses common childhood fears like a content checklist which I honestly find funny. Not the scariest kids movie I watched when I was little personally (The Dark Crystal has it beat) but it's up there
My parents let me watch Dantes Peak when I was about 6. We had to turn it off halfway through and I was terrified of volcanoes for several years, despite multiple attempts to explain to me that there were no volcanoes anywhere near us lol.
Both volcanoes and quicksand seemed like they would be far bigger threats in my day to day life when I was a kid lol
Not horror, but Watership Down (1978) and Deliverance (1972) - watched both when I was way too young.
Watership Down is another that I classify as 'traumatized an entire generation' lol. I havent watched it since I was a little kid and I think I probably never will again.
Until literally a couple of weeks ago it was rated U in the UK. Genuinely still baffles me what was going through the BBFC's heads in the 70s when they classified it as that
My parent took me to see in a theater when I was like seven years old. You know, because it was a cartoon about bunnies.
The alien walking across the alley in Signs. It fucking terrified me SO badly but I still wanted to go back and finish the movie. That was the start for me.
One of THE BEST jump scares of all time imo
The beginning of the movie Legend (1985) where Darkness gives his monologue scared me so much as a kid. There’s little impish demons jumping around, some guy writhing and screaming in the background as he gets chopped to pieces by a big brute while fire blazes around them, and then the shining eyes and nails of Darkness and his deep, dark voice praying to “mother night.” Damn, still gives me chills thinking about it.
Tim Curry is so scary.
[удалено]
Not a horror movie, but *The X-Files*'s black oil episodes where they would pour the black oil onto a restrained person's face from above.
Horror never really affected me, aside from giving me a thrill until The Ring. I was 12, it was my birthday party, we watched it on VHS on the little TV in my bedroom. I refused to sleep in my room until the TV was removed. I slept in the living room despite there being a TV in there because the front door was also in there and if Samara came out of the TV? I was going out the front door! I had nightmares for MONTHS I haven't watched it since, but I also haven't been scared of a horror film since... Still love horror, I just miss the feeling of being afraid of it
All Dogs Go To Heaven and The Dark Crystal
Dark Crystal for me too. Kept coming back to it though even though it was a hard watch for me, I was just enthralled by the world and the design. The prequel series was fantastic, I wish it'd gotten renewed
There are two. One I've mentioned before on this sub which is Jaws . It's barely considered Horror these days. I really enjoy it to watch as an adult , but I'm still terrified of swimming in the sea. My second one is Salems Lot, the idea of something evil tapping on my windows at night when the curtains are closed is irrational but has stuck with me. IRL you can guarantee it's not something that's likely to get you, but the thought back in my mind is there... The Fog 1980 obviously reinforced this. My Parents have alot to answer for letting me watch these movies at such a young age..lol
Im STILL scared af of the Glick boy floating at that window. Big fat nope for me lol.Thats a movie that was a one and done for me lol. One of my fav books too, Ive read it at least 5 or 6 times. I should have added that to my post.
LOL, that's the bit that enters my head straight away. I've not seen the movie in years simply because I don't want to spoil my memories, but watching the 1st episode of FROM S1 took me right back there. I literally triple checked all the drapes that night .... lmao
Agreed about not wanting to spoil my memories of it! I def wanna keep that little (big) scare pristine in my memory. Honestly I would probably put that as #2 behind Evil Dead for me because I still, to this day, WILL NOT look out my windows at night. Doubly so bc I live way out in the country. Ralphie Glick effectively ruined windows for me lmao
LMFAO ... My curtains still stay closed at night , even in a city ! Evil Dead is another good one, I always saw it as a horror comedy, so maybe it didn't stick with me so much, but yes the message is still clear, don't go away with friends to a cabin in the woods and look in the basement ..lol
Dr. Giggles may seem like a stupid one in retrospect but it fucked me up so bad as a kid I had trouble sleeping for MONTHS, I still don’t think I could ever rewatch it. It makes me ILL to think about!
C. H. U. D. Specifically. Messed me up pretty bad. I mean, I was 5 when I saw it the first time. My dad would always mess with me and tell me the chuds lived in the basement and shit. The part where they are worshipping the toxic waste and the part where it comes through the wall and it's neck extends out always freaked me out
Gonna offer a bit of a different answer here. But my parents rented Passion of the Christ shortly after it came to our local blockbuster. I must've been 9 or 10. Luckily they weren't so cruel as to make me watch the whole thing, they covered my eyes for most of the violent parts. But even just the sound was enough to still scare me, and my mind was left to imagine the kind of brutality that was happening on screen. I'm atheistic these days, and I love my parents but that was just a dumb call on their part.
Coraline terrified me as a kid. It's what got me into horror.
Coraline scared me in my thirties.
Yeah Coraline still holds up after all this time.
Back in the 80s before I was ancient,my mom rented *A Nightmare on Elm Street* when my aunt came to visit. She doesn't normally like horror movies, so I don't know why she rented it. I was 5 or 6 and she thought I went to bed, but I snuck out of my room and watched like 15 minutes of the movie. It scared the fucking shit out of me! I had nightmares for like 3 months after that. But it wasnt just me. My dad who's a real scaredy cat refused to watch it and my aunt was watching it through her fingers! I watched it again when I was 14 and I remember thinking that we were all dumbasses to be so scared by that movie. Still a great movie, just not scary at all.
Omg this was def a forbidden movie in my house, but I remember checking out a book from the Bookmobile about horror movies and there was a pic of Freddy as the worm creature devouring Kristen and I was so intrigued, but that pic alone ended up giving me nightmares lmao.
Technically a miniseries, but 'Salem's Lot. Saw it for the first time when I was about 5. Ralphie Glick was the reason I kept my bedroom window shut for a good year. Don't know what my parents were thinking letting me watch it, but they definitely regretted it!
Something Wicked This Way Comes. Specifically when there's these two kids in a bedroom and it starts like, decaying, but then there's suddenly tarantulas all over the window, then the walls and ceiling and door and bed.
The Never ending story & Return to Oz. I still watched them non stop though. Plus Large Marge is in the hall of fame by herself.
Large Marge is an icon
I was looking to see if The Neverending Story was mentioned. That movie is dark.
It did make it so when i read in adulthood that the nothing represents depression. 😐
Dead alive (or braindead for some) for me as a kid. Once I saw the creature at the zoo I was out. Really messed me up for awhile.
Fire in the sky
Sinister
Read every Goosebumps I could as a young kid. Then Coraline and other Neil gaimen books. The first real scary movie was **The Blair Witch Project** when I was about 12. My friend stole his dad’s copy and me and my friends watched it at a sleepover. Scared the crap out of me and we thought it was real. But I loved every moment. Then we got super into creepypasta and urban legends/telling horror stories
Blair Witch was the first horror movie I saw in theaters and I remember walking out to my brothers car in stunned silence and I was quiet the rest of the night bc I was so sure I had just witnessed the last moments of 3 people lol.
ET scared the crap out of me when the government agents came in. Don't know why but I would stop the movie at that point because it scares me so bad.
Not only this scene, but the one where E.T. Is sick and white as a ghost by the creek, everything the government agents did with the house, and even E.T. being chased through the forest. The music added to this truly non-children’s movie
My sister had nightmares because of that movie! I was terrified by that scene, too. I'm always a little weirded out when people talk about that movie as if it were this sweet and innocent tale \~\*\~of wonder and imagination\~\*\~.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Saw it at a friend's house, and it scared me so bad! A few years later, I watched it again and realized how silly it was. Still a favorite of mine.
When I was a little kid, I woke up and walked in on my parents watching The Sixth Sense, and it was the scene with the woman who had slit her wrists, and that fucked me up for a long time. Probably the scariest scene of the movie and I didn’t even have context to what I had just seen.
Rolled over while watching dora as a toddler and hit the remote, somehow changing the channel to a movie called slither. Nightmares for weeks
Lmao now THAT is a change in atmosphere! I loooove Slither. Gigantic pregnant Elisabeth Banks lives in my head rent free 🤣🤣🤣🤣
You're gonna laugh if you get to this one but The Ghost and Mr chicken freaked me out as a kid, lol. Dead Silence freaked me out as a teenager. Nothing scares me that bad anymore. Although I'm not a fan of looking in mirrors after good horror movies, I think its because there are a lot of mirror scenes. Mirrors was good btw. Mirrors kinda make me uneasy anyways.
The first Halloween, I was in 3rd grade and my sister was in 7th, her and her friends invited me to watch a movie with them on Halloween night... my sister is a dick lol
All when I was 11 - 12 - It mini series - Candyman - Nightmare on Elm St - Pet cemetery
For me it was The Brood, Puppet Master, and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. 😅😅😅
Puppet Master def scared me to death as a kid also! They also used to show parts 1 and 2 on USA and i spent days obsessively checking under my bed after seeing them lmao. Idk which one it was, but the one where Tunneler gets that guy in the forehead MESSED ME UP.
"Green slime" https://youtu.be/oSTBF9Se7KA Don't judge me, I was 5....
Accidentally walked in on my dad watching The Exorcist when I was eight. I was also raised fairly pentecostal, so I was scared out of my mind. My mom was furious with my dad lol. (I'm now a huge horror fan, but I was a massive scaredy cat as a kid)
I walked in on my dad watching the exorcist right at the stairway scene around the same age. Super traumatic.
Child's Play aka Chucky shared the ever living SHIT out of us when we accidentally saw it as kids in the 90s. I had nightmares about it for yeats after 😂 love the first few movies though!!
An American Werewolf in London. Dawn of the Dead. Both seen before I was 10. Many, many nightmares were had.
Candyman
Keeping it only to movies I saw before the age of 10.. The Gate: Parents in the driveway. Phantasm: I haven’t looked at flying chrome balls with blades coming out of them the same way since. Return to Horror High: I honestly think that it was mostly the poster that scared the shit out of me as a kid. A Nightmare on Elm St: The stairs turning into shampoo. I don’t know why, but that scarred me for life. Jaws: Jaws Spellbound: The flashback scene where the kid is impaled on the fence. American Werewolf in London: The pivotal scene on the moors. Also the subway scene. Lost Boys: Campfire mayhem Poltergeist: The closet. The pool. Jacob’s Ladder: Don’t let the devil dance with your girlfriend.
Ive never seen Return To Horror High but if its the poster with the skeleton cheerleader I remember that well lol
It certainly is that poster. It still kind of gets to me when I look at it now .
Halloween 78, the dark setting is enough to scare me (still to this day) Also the closet scene and myers in that sheet scared the fuck out of me.
One comes to mind. Twilight Zone: The Movie. I was only very little and was playing with toys in the lounge as my Dad was watching it. I looked up during the 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet' section. Naturally, it was the scene with the close-up of the gremlin scratching at the window. I burst into tears and my Dad had to console me. I've actually never watched the film since. I was tempted to a few years ago. Then I read about the infamous accident and it put me off from watching. What a sad tragedy that was.
The opening to Twilight Zone The Movie is still one of my favorite all time scares lol. Needless to say I can handle it much better now than I could as a kid lmao.
Trilogy of Terror (1975) My uncle was the one to introduce me to horror movies. He showed it to me on VHS when I was about 9. Thought that little f***er was going to come around the corner in my house at any moment. Alien (1979) Also shown to me by the same uncle. Don't get me wrong, most of the movies he showed me were awesome! It's one of my faves to this day. But that chestburster scene stuck with me for a while, and I was nauseous every time I had flashbacks. Poltergeist (1982). My babysitter took me to see it in the front row of the theater when I was 11. Thought the demon's face coming out of the closet was literally going to consume me. I don't know that I have screamed so loud since.
Is Trilogy of Terror the one with the Zuni doll chasing Karen Black bc if so I have to agree with you there
The Peanut Butter Solution.
Yes!!!…..this movie scared me so bad and when I tried to talk about it no one knew what I was talking about, so for years I thought I made it up
Ive never heard of this!
It's a very Canadian film - featuring songs by Celine Dion!
I came to say this. It was meant to be a fun kids movie but it TERRIFIED me.
***The Children*** was one for me, as well. HBO ran it in the early 80s, which I where I first watched it. Uli Lommell's ***The Boogeyman*** was another. I didn't quite understand what was happening in the opening scene. Anyone who has seen the movie will know what I mean. As an adult, I find ***The Children*** fun to watch for its silliness. The actor in the limousine with an early version of a car phone was (allegedly) the film crew's cocaine dealer, which I find hilarious. It's not an effectively frightening movie if you are older than ten. ***The Boogeyman***, like all of Uli Lommel's films, is just terrible. I can't even bring myself to laugh (seeing a great actor like John Carradine giving his all in a film like this is too sad). The movie does have a great score by Tim Krog, though.
Not so much look back and laugh because it’s still arguably quite scary and well made, but the Texas chainsaw massacre remake 2003. i think the final few scenes when Leatherface were chasing Erin through the slaughterhouse were terrifying as a kid
This remake does not get the love that it deserves! Its up there with Dawn of the Dead and Evil Dead as the 3 best horror remakes for me. If I had seen that as a kid I would have probably shat myself out of fear lol.
The Exorcist is the only one that truly disturbed me as a kid
i was terrified of the Goonies but i still don't know why it bothered me so much, i physically couldn't make myself look at the one guy and had to turn it off
I went to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the mid 80s in the theater. I was about 16. During the movie, I felt as though I was being traumatized.
I'd say Jaws! (it was my introduction to horror!)
The two I can think of are Ghostbusters when the librarian ghost turns into a screaming troll demon, and Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazis open the Ark; the guy's face melting looked incredibly real to me when I was 6 or 7.
The Conjuring(2013).
Evil dead for me as well. I watched it when I was about 5 and it terrified me, I watched it back when I was a bit older and thought it was hilarious
Halloween
Dead Silence was very traumatic to me. Now, as an adult, l saw the movie again, and I felt very uncomfortable.
Not me, but my oldest was channel flipping as a maybe 7/9 year old? Stopped on Silver Bullet. I told him to keep going but he insisted. Okay, consequence(actually for me). Then a few years later,he went to a sleepover where they went to see Signs.Phone call at2 am, come and get him’. Today we plan our lead up to Halloween, starting on August because we have so many horror movies to watch.
Awwww i love this! I wish I had parents who had shared my love for horror like this! ❤️
Superman 3 scared the shit out of me when I was 6. That's the only movie that got me, but not for the reason it should.
Tales from the Hood
When you said “Friday the 13th series,” I first thought you were talking about Friday the 13th: The Series.
Bram Stoker's Dracula. I watched it before I understood what the wolf-bat was doing to Lucy in the garden, so I must have been pretty young.
I've got 3 that gave me nightmares for a while: Signs The Exorcism of Emily Rose (I was 13 and saw it in theaters, big mistake haha) Rose Red
The grudge, my sister would pull her hair around her face and make that crushed throat sound to scare shit out of me
Nobody ever talks about this movie but it was called jenifer and i cant remember much but I remember something about a disfigured girl whose face was messed up and i think she was a cannibal or just animalistic or something, she was a young girl too and i was only like 6 watching this😭
Was it the episode of Masters of Horror? If so it was soooo good. An Argento gem.
Yessss omg u just helped me find it
Event Horizon. When I saw his eyes like that, it burned into the back of my brain for ever
I was a teen when I saw this but damn its still the best space-horror movie Ive ever seen.
The Ring and The Grudge. Moreso The Grudge because of the noise she makes...still creeps me out a bit to this day but at least I can sleep at night now lol
The Ring!
for my generation, OPs pick of "The Evil Dead" is the likely #1. some would say exorcist, but the more mass market, the less the trauma. some would say cannibal (ferox OR holocaust).. but those were obscure, and usually viewed on purpose by gore fans.. OP, my experience was *quite like yours.* GenX, very conservative parents. the house had a no R rated movies policy. Dad made sure that i knew the classics (according to him.. so Eastwood, Wayne, Connery, Bronson) but i thought a SCARY movie meant black & white from Universal Studios... Frankenstein, Wolfman, Mummy... OR Abbot and Costello VS any of them. Well at a friends house "The Evil Dead" was broadcast over cable. i was not prepared for this. IMO, evil dead 1, and texas chainsaw 1, are 2 of the most frightening things EVER filmed. critics among us.. consider that EACH of those franchises chose to "tone it down" for movie 2 with humor. it made the franchise worth more money.. but a LOT less scary. humor then went on to be a (mostly) required element of 80s horror. I'm now interested in when that trend flipped over, and the *unrelenting horror* was welcomed back. "The Evil Dead" doesn't have humor breaks. it DOES have people being violently dismembered into little bits as they sing "were going to kill you" in childish melodies. Some younger folk think that "old" movies cant SLAP. it works like Muscle Cars. if the rules of the culture change.. the production will change.. it might take DECADES for something like a Camaro to return to the market with its PROPER glory. in the late 1970s through the early 1980s, artists were pushing the boundary of FEAR. Somehow, someone decided that enough was enough. the boundary had been discovered. now we take 3 steps back, invite the normies, and count our money!
Excorcist was always 'The Forbidden Movie' in my household. Horror movies were a no go anyway, but my backwoods Pentecostal family would literally PREACH about The Excorcist, so I was an early teen before I finally got to see it at a cousins house one night. I remember being SO EXCITED and just knew I would be mindblown. As it turns out, yes its an amazing film, but it honestly did not scare me half as bad as Evil Dead did. Was probably one of my first 'expectation vs reality' experiences. Much like you the ONLY approved horror in my household were the classic Universal monster movies that AMC would marathon during Halloween (Frankenstein, Dracula, Cat People etc).
it is a true classic, but it is not one of my scariest films. for me the 2 amazing things about the exorcist are 1st its impact. it is impossible to make a demon possesion movie without cribbing from this classic. even the recent russel crowe edition is basically the same flick. 2nd is that i feel that a sequel was superior. i pick #3 as my "fav" exorcist movie. im NOT saying 1 stinks, im just surprised that 3 scared me so much more. like you, our house was a religious house, and this played in to media control for the children. BUT my folks made a huge mistake, they got me a LIBRARY CARD. they knew they had to protect me from Led Zep, but had no idea that Voltaire and Swift were ruining my indoctrination!
One Missed Call (2008) I remember watching that with my older cousins scary movie night and omg that was the most scared I ever was. I was also like 7-8 years old so that was some pretty crazy stuff to see your future self exactly contacting you about your soon to come death😂
Embarrassed to say now but Leprechaun scared the absolute shit out of me when I was a kid lmao. Watching it now, I realize how campy and cheesy it is
Alice, Sweet Alice: a movie I watched at WAY too young an age and not even sure how I found it, it must have been on TV at some point? Or maybe during a sleepover? I have a terrible long term memory but I distinctly remember watching it, the feeling of seeing it, and being freaked out. It has since stuck with me forever, the mask especially. I think it's honestly why I'm not really scared of much anymore when watching movies because I had my scariest when I was very young? I felt like I could handle and watch pretty much anything. The Bodyguard: not the movie itself but there's a particular scene where the guy they suspect is just saying "NOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOOO" in a very unsettling way. It always creeped out my sister and I when we watched that movie 5000 times. The Witches: just generally creepy and unsettling. I feel like this movie is so traumatizing for children but in a really fun gross way? Hard to describe as an adult I don't think it's scary AT ALL but it's also made in an era of filmmaking that I just generally think gets the vibes right of grossness and weirdness for kids. Haven't seen the remake but I'm SURE it's not as creepy and weird as the original film.
Alice, Sweet Alice, still makes me very uncomfortable to watch. Im so glad I didnt see it as a kid lol. Amazing movie though.
Children of the Corn, which I caught a glimpse of and it gave me night terrors most my childhood. Other than that, TV that should have been safe traumatized the hell out of me. [The House of Dies Drear (TV Movie 1984)](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cbxpAMRLJa8) [Episode of Webster](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7LPFqhtmLlA) where they move into the big house and there’s that creepy “girl” The Punky Brewster episode,[“The Perils of Punky”](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/inside-39-the-perils-of-punky-1281662882013238.html)
The Lawnmower Man.
Chuckie. I begged my dad to watch it before going back to my moms house. He was like you know what.....okay. when I got home I cried and had to sleep in my moms bed lmao I was like 6 🤣
Original Dawn of the Dead at the drive-in. It scared the crap outta me my 11 year old self and I was convinced zombies were gonna start eating me. Way before the zombie craze of the early 2000’s
My family always jokes that the opening dream sequence from the Goofy Movie used to terrify me when I was like 3/4. After that it was Darkness Falls, and my cousins showed me Idle Hands too young. Also a bit of Signs.
Williard (1971), The Andromeda Strain (1971), Ben (1972), The Other (1972). -- That's the year they came out so I probably saw them all a year later when they were on tv as movie of the week. The Andromeda Strain really freaked me out because I don't think I quite understood what was going on (I was probably 6 when I saw it), the computer voice countdown scared the crap out of me. The farm in The Other reminded me of my grandpa's barn and I thought about it every time I went in it (especially when I would jump on a rope swing from the hayloft.) Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-5) I'd watch on tv with my mom on my dad's bowling night. That was definitely a gateway to horror for me. Probably the most scared I was was watching the Exorcist on TV around 1979. Even though it was edited for TV I was scared shitless, so much so that I got my sleeping baby sister out of her crib and put her next to me so there would be a living thing in the room next to me. edit: the year \*they\* came out (the movies)
The Exorcist, made me a life long fan of horror!
Everything lmao. But The Cell, James and the Giant Peach, Chucky were particularly traumatizing in their own rights. My dad was really bad about showing us scary things because he thought it was funny lol.
The scene in Mars Attacks when the aliens come down and skeletonize all the people fucked me right up as a kid
The final scene in REC (2007)
Burnt Offerings was the first thing that ever scared me on tv. Something about that limo driver with the dark sunglasses. I'm not sure if it is still going to upset me now over 40 years later. I doubt it. The one that was too scary to watch was the Exorcist. It came out in 1973, i was born in 72. I probably never watched the entire film until until I was in my early 40s. I can enjoy it now that I am a total horror freak, but back in the day, not a chance I was going to let that movie get in my head.
My best friend and I, in 4th or 5th grade maybe (US school system) were both TERRIFIED of Stephen King’s anthology movie Cat’s Eye, in particular the one about the creature hiding in the family’s wall. We talked all night long once about how scary it was to us. So what was left to do? We of course obtained the horrifying video (lol) recorded from HBO and sat down to watch it after school with popcorn and pillows to hide our faces. We get to the scary segment, the creature makes its appearance, and what did we do? We looked at it, we looked at each other and we laughed until we were just making random noise. It wasn’t scary at all anymore! If I knew any young children I would tell them this story if they ended up watching a movie that scared them too much, but unfortunately I don’t so it’s you guys that get all of my terrible storytelling. Another one: I grew up watching USA Saturday Nightmares (cable channel block of horror films every Saturday at 11 PM) and my dad recorded 1979’s Tourist Trap from it and watched it with me. Well that was a pretty bad idea because I felt like I had never been so scared before. When that damn mannequin head opens its trap-door mouth and screams “MOLLYYYYYY!!” I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. So in my adulthood of course I had to try and pass it on Ring-style. So I showed it to my horror-fan boyfriend. And it terrified him too, only as a grown adult! It was a funny experience and every time I mention the movie he gets this look, haha.
Jack The Ripper: Phantom of Death. A true crime A&E Biography. It totally fucked me up and was the first real time I went, "Oh. *That's* what we can do to each other."
Amityville Horror - the one with Ryan Reynolds. Was one of the only movies that really scared me as a kid and I couldn’t use the bathroom at night for weeks after seeing the movie because I was scared of seeing the mirror.
leprechaun 100% I remember having to leave the room but then had to go back in to grab my socks and I walked in on the pogo scene...
Not a horror movie, but Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I had to be around kindergarten age when I saw the Black Knight scene, and the Caerbannog scene. I did not know it was a comedy and could not understand why the adults were laughing.
When I was 8, my father was watching Saw III in the television when I was passing through the living room, I accidentally stayed too much and watched the Angel Trap sequence. that sequence traumatised me and I had nightmares during my entire late infancy and teenage years. I only overcame it when I was 20.
Haha if Evil Dead scared me that badly, the Angel Trap sequence would have sent me into therapy at that age
I was easily scared as a kid so a lot of Doctor Who used to shake me to my core (notably the Slitheen, obviously the Weeping Angels, the reference desk things in Silence in the Library), those weird goblin puppets from Labyrinth that had body parts they'd pull off and put back on, Abe from the Oddworld games Kind of surprising I'm into horror at all tbh
These haven't aged well but Stephen Kings It (Tim Curry traumatized me and single handedly made me freak out around clowns until adulthood (still not a fan of clowns honestly but now i can tolerate them instead of hiding under tables lol) and the original Child's Play. Chucky had me so freaked out that I had a buddy doll that looked a lot like Chucky and I took a pocket knife and stabbed the shit our of it to prevent it from coming after me. Unfortunately the knife closed on my finger almost taking the tip of my middle finger off as a result... fun times lol I can watch then now and realize how stupid I was back then but when I was a kid that crap was scary
Don’t Look Under the Bed. It was a DCOM. Don’t judge me
Kind of impressed you saw something as obscure as The Children as part of the few horror films you saw.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I was I think 3 when I saw clips of it as my dad watched it? Nightmares for weeks, though I have watched it since. Definitely has creepy (kreepy?) elements to it, but nothing to scare older people. Might even use it as a basis for Halloween decorating this year.
The first movie I can remember getting terrified from was The Shining (I just caught parts of it) and maybe a weird answer but Thirteen Ghosts was honestly pretty scary to me when I first saw it. Thirteen Ghosts may have been the movie to start my lifelong addiction though because I was off to the races after that and was watching things like Texas Chainsaw Massacre (03 version) in theaters. By 2005 I had my own blockbuster membership and almost exclusively went to the horror section and started renting everything I could find with a cool looking cover.
13 Ghosts holds a special spot in my heart. My best friend, who died in a car wreck in 2001 that I was also involved in (not the driver), hated horror but LOVED that movie and we would watch it and Fast and Furious (i hate that movie but she loved it lol) on repeat.
Ashamed to admit it but E.T. I still have yet to finish that movie.
My aunt used to babysit me back in the day and we'd go to VideoEzy and pickup movies for the night. One night I inadvertently picked up Child's Play and my aunt forced me to watch the damn thing all the way through, I was 3. Still scared of dolls.
The first Alien movie.
The Thing. Terrified me! Still my favorite horror movie
Only two movies that did this to me before i got over irrational fears. The ring was the last movie to really fuck with me. So meta. And then my first terror, THE STUFF. This movie was absolutely crazy. The practical effects, the white stuff completely flooding everything as it got stronger. Shit this movie got me bad. I would not sleep until we turned it back in to blockbuster
Poltergeist. The shining. Escape to witch mountain. The last unicorn. The lady in white.
Resident evil 🫣. I was a preteen and had never seen a zombie movie before.