Movies that actually scare/scared you!

Good question.

This may take some thinking...

Raiders face-melting was scary at 7 or 8, Jaws was fucking scary at about 8 or 9, I hid behind the couch for most of it and had shark nightmares. Several horror movie previews I can't remember on our home videos scared me...

Just seeing the covers in the horror section of the video library scared the crap out of me til I was almost Zig's age. The only actual horror movie that scared me for days was Amityville Horror 3, which was the first one I ever saw at about 13.

Nothing was quite as scary after that first one, but others that left a lasting impression were The Omen trilogy and The Exorcist. The end of The Ring freaked me out and I'd be lying if I said Blair Witch didn't make a bit of an impression as well. I'm sure there are a few others that escape me.

Okay, I thought about it.

Alien really scared me because I was only 8 or so when I saw it.

doubleKO said:

Jaws was fucking scary at about 8 or 9, [...] and had shark nightmares.

The flying head from Time Bandits got me really scared as a kid - I often wouldn't sleep at night, in fear such a giant, detached ghostly head may be floating about in the corridor!
Kinda funny, seeing how cute and corny it looks now :)

Also after seeing Back to the Future, I was afraid of something happening in my past that would make me disappear - nowadays I worry more about some sudden heart failure (if at all), but back then, that scene really made an impression on me!


Recently, the stabbing scene from "A Cry for Help", based on a real life incident.
Very realistically shot, and got me shocked and depressed for days.

THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION

This movie either scared the hell out of you or you've never heard of it. Trailers on youtube paint it as some sort of comedy / kids film but trust me, this thing was nightmare fuel.

Salo. (1975)

I can't get the fear that someone would make another sick, pointless piece of filth like that out out of my head, some of the scenes still pop up and dance around my visual memory (usually when I'm having a really good time).

Shoah. (1985)

The thought of ordinary people contributing effort to such an awful exercise as the extermination of millions of men, women and children is an impossible idea to shake, especially after watching an angry young man interview seemingly each and every one of them for nearly ten hours.

On The Beach (1959)

Not only a frightening warning about the folly of Nukes but also a charming metaphor for God's most popular invention, Mortality. If you ever want to wander out of a theatre or switch of the telly with the thought that everything and everyone you love, hate and are indifferent or ignorant about will die, belching in your ear for the rest of your life, pop this film on. Fred Astaire can't dance in this one.

Slightly off topic as it's television but while we are talking about nukes...

Threads (1984).

If this doesn't get under your skin and gnaw at you brain parts for ages and ages after watching it, you are not alive. Everything that On The Beach doesn't show, so you can focus on the slow crawl of death, is pushed under your nose with the sort of realism that only a BBC micro budget of the eighties can muster.

Johnny Ringo said:

THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION

This movie either scared the hell out of you or you've never heard of it. Trailers on youtube paint it as some sort of comedy / kids film but trust me, this thing was nightmare fuel.

 

 

I dunno man, I just read the synopsis on Wikipedia, and it reads like something from a Scary Movie spoof or something... like, in the original, horrible creepy ghosts give you cancer and disfigure your face into a half-skeleton, and then there's another movie about some evil teacher experimenting on sickly children - and then comes "The Peanut Butter Movie" which combines the two plots, and makes the ghosts give the boy instructions on how to... correctly apply peanut butter to his head so some hair may grow. And then the bad guy from the other movie steals the kid for having too much hair.
Then the ghosts make him slip on soap in the kitchen.

It's wacky, and just weird.

But yea, just my funny impression from the synopsis, haven't seen the actual movie... :)

When I was a kid, there were three parts of Raiders that scared me.

Beginning - Spiders
Middle - Snakes
End - Face Melt

When you were a kid? surely you jest! why the movie only came out 30 odd years ago.

Only?

I see what you did there.

Only two movies really scared the living shit out of me. I first watched them as a kid, though; I don't find them scary anymore.

The Changeling (1980)

My parents let me watch this on TV when I was five years old. The ghost boy in a bathtub and the wheelchair that moved on it's own was enough to freeze my blood solid.

Pet Sematary

One word: Zelda. I was left afraid for days after seeing her.

Two of em set a bench mark for me.

The scene in Jaws chomping Quint in half....(plucked me up as kid, as i thought Jaws will bite my bed in half as i slept)

And an American In Werewolf in London...during the stalking in the moores(ship my pants again).

The subway freaks me out when i have to use the inderground late at night now.

Thank you frikken George Landis!

theprequelsrule said:

Bingowings said:

Threads (1984).

Agreed.

+1

EyeShotFirst said:

I am talking real fear. You have to have been so scared you thought of the film a good couple of days after you watched it.

What might not even scare one person, might terrify another. It depends on the individual, so be honest, even if you don't think anybody else will think it's scary.