(as a kid) * Fall of the House of Usher, * with Vincent Price
*The Andromeda Strain
The Bad Seed * (about 1961)
As A child:
- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (I thought they were killing all those kids, and it really disturbed me)
- American Werewolf in London (the commercials gave me nightmares–granted, I was like 6, but still!)
- Poltergeist (although I watched it countless times, and it’s one of my all-time favorite movies!)
- The Day After (ugh!)
As an adult: - Silence of the Lambs (I shook for two hours after the movie, and had nightmares for weeks)
- Prince of Tides (the child rape scene freaked me out–it was so graphic! I can’t believe the child actors and their parents agreed to it!)
- Boogie Nights (it wasn’t scary, but the characters were so emotionally disturbed–and so real–I walked away haunted by them)
- Good Fellas (just so incredibly bloody and violent…I got sick to my stomach watching it)
Because I have such hypersensitivity to this kind of thing, I haven’t seen such films as * SPRyan, The Blair Witch Project, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, *etc. I just don’t have the constitution for it. Funny, I love Jaws, Aliens, Jurassic Park, etc–I have no problem with animals eating/maiming other people (hey, they’re hungry!), but people killing people just out of evil…ICK.
BTW, topolino, I’m the exact same way! I still can’t watch the maggot and face peeling scene in Poltergeist, and the melting face in Raiders–nevermind that I’ve seen bodies ripped in half since without flinching!
I need to go cuddle with my teddy bear now.
“Me fail English? That’s unpossible!”
“English? Who needs that? I’m never going to England.”
I can’t believe you think the Bad Seed was scary–I love that movie. I read the book when I was a kid–that was scary because in the end, mom dies and the child’s life is saved!
I must be a real wuss but The Shining freaked me out. Also in college I saw the Exorcist one week and the Texas Chainsaw massacre the next–could’t turn off the lights for a week!
My relatives saw the whole movie * The Bad Seed *; I didn not. (I had to wash the dishes that night.) What little I recall was that the bad girl tried to retrieve a metal grid, or something, from a lake–just as a bolt of lightning hit it!!
Old H.P. really knows how to do a number, doesn’t he??? “Pickman’s Model” was the first H.P. Lovecraft story I ever read. I was nine years old and it scared the shit out of me. Haunted me for weeks afterwards, too. As you can see, I have become permanantly warped because of it.
“Heh heh heh heh”, as the old Crypt-Keeper used to say…
Nobody has mentioned “Meet the Feebles” which is about muppets gone bad, very bad.
This reminds me…when I was little, there was a store in the mall that had a poster for “A Clockwork Orange” hanging on the wall. That guy with the big eye and knife scared the crap out of me. I was living in Michigan so I must have been in the first grade.
“Never got this hot in Brooklyn. This is like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot…I don’t know if I can stay here if it’s gonna be this hot.”
-Matthew Broderick in “Biloxi Blues”
The Wicker Man disturbed me when I first saw it. I still think it is a fantastic film.
I once saw a movie that scared me when I was young, but all I can remember is a camera shot at the bottom of a spiral staircase, looking up and then a dark room where something (the decorative curls of a couch??) was swaying back and forth like a cobra. Lots to go on, eh?
I would love to know what movie this was, so I could see it again.
Ahh yes, i have a book with several of H.P. Lovecrafts tales. It’s the only book of tales I ever really read all of them. Pickman’s Model was the erriest of them. I didn’t really understand what it was until the end of the story. Another fave of mine of his is “The Color Out Of Space”. His way of doing horror is so eerie…coupled with all of those old, odd, scary New England towns he sets his stories in.
Burn it was called “Dark Night of the Scarecrow” and yes it freaked me completely out. I remmebr my mom asking me why I cried and I said because I felt bad for the Bubba guy (the scarecrow)
Ones that got me ill
Meet the Feebles (sick sick sick)
Dead Alive (lets just say that the gore pumped in at 5 gallons a second in some of the final scenes)
Seven (Sloth made me throw up)
I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned “Eraserhead” yet …
Star 80. That really pissed me off. True story, too.
I can recall two things from my childhood that really disturbed me, and now I’m not even sure what they were or how much was added to them by the nightmares they caused.
The first was a movie that I think was called, “The Ghost that Still Walks,” although a search of the imdb turns up nothing. I saw it on tv when I was probably only 4 or 5 (in the late '70’s), and it may have been a made for tv movie. I just remember vague scenes of a shriveled up corpse that seemed to have telepathic control over a woman. But I’m not sure because I have trouble separating what I saw from what I dreamed afterwards.
I also remember seeing an episode of Quincy where construction was going on in a hospital and, IIRC (again, I may have dreamed some of it up later), when a wall was torn down, a whole forgotten wing of the hospital was discovered, complete with the corpses of patients still in wheelchairs and beds that had been sealed up and forgotten about.
Recently, the movie Beloved really disturbed me. (I already mentioned this elsewhere, but thought I’d bring it up again.) My husband was working graveyard at the time, and I saw it after work with friends. I came home to a dark, empty house, and curled up in bed with my kitty. I tried to watch a little tv to block out the visions in my head and was finally feeling a little more normal when I heard a loud POK! from the kitchen. The cat and I both jumped! I wondered, was it the other cat, a burglar, or… Beloved herself?? (And I consider myself a skeptic–ha! I’m just as jumpy as the next person in a dark, empty house ) I’d just decided it was none of the above and settled back down in bed when I heard it again, POK!, a hollow report like a skeletal knuckle rapping on the backdoor. The cat and I both jumped again! (That the cat was startled, too, made me doubly nervous, which is stupid because this morning I startled him with a towel; courage, thy name is NOT feline.) This time I was still unsettled when it came again, POK! Then again and again, POK! POK! POKPOKPOK! And finally it dawned on me: it was rain hitting the sky light in the kitchen. It began slowly and built to a full on shower. It was also a sound I’d heard dozens of times, but had taken on a sinister note after watching… dum dum dum… BELOVED! Gack, I’m never trusting Oprah Winfrey again!
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Hey, I doublechecked imdb, and found something from 1977 called “Ghosts that Still Walk,” which may be my disturbing movie. However, there’s zippo information on it. Has anyone else seen it? What the hell was it really about??
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Big Iron – all I recall of Eraserhead was the dinner scene – the guy (Lyle Lovett’s barber, I think?) was on a date from hell.
How about Blue Velvet? I can’t watch it again and think I had my eyes covered through most of the movie – but the scenes where the Roy Orbison song was playing were very effective.
Several of you have mentioned “A Clockwork Orange.” I’ve never seen the movie, just read the book. Is the movie worth watching? And how much gore is shown with the old Ultra-Violence and the treatment Alex has to go through?
Neil
“. . .they could as easily have been carrying euphoniums and wearing war paint for all the notice their quarry would have taken of them.”
-Douglas Adams, “Life, the Universe, and Everything”
As a younger child (being that I’m still legally a child…barely) Tremors creeped me out so that I only felt safe upstairs. And I am still haunted by The Wizard of Oz. The part where it goes from b&w to color was always weird to me, and one time my cousin told me there was a munchkin hanging himself and I thought I saw it. That did it for me.
At the end of the movie Trainspotting I could not get up. I just sort of sat there. The same thing happened with A Clockwork Orange. I had read the book before I saw the movie, but they’re 2 completely different things. I still like the book much more though. Then a month or so ago I was watching IFC and a movie called Welcome to the Dollhouse came on, and when it was over I walked around dazed, then as I was sitting in bed I just started crying. Those kind of things just stay with you.
I almost forgot! There’s some movie based on an Issac Asimov story about a suicidal computer called Multi-Vac. That was weird…
I’m beginning to think I am deranged. I keep seeing movies that I own (and love) listed by others on this thread.
- Trainspotting (not so much a comedy, but darkly amusing).
- The Wall (the symbolism itself makes this movie great)
- NBK (I love the visuals - camera angles, use of colors and images, different styles . . .)
- Clockwork Orange (I love weird)
- American Werewolf in London (I laugh my ass off every time)
- Silence of the Lambs (one of my favorites)
- Saving Private Ryan (believe it or not, the opening scenes helped me to better understand those clients of mine suffering from PTSD.)
Although it is not a horror film, Radio Flyer (yep - this one is also in my video cabinet) disturbed me more than any other due to the child abuse, the betrayal of the mother, and lastly, the child committing suicide.
>^,^<
KITTEN
Coarse and violent nudity. Occasional language.
Cloclwork Orange the movie and the book are two different things altogether. They both end differently and the movie is only loosely based on it.
IMHO, I thought it did the book justice enough and I consider it one of Kubricks finest films. It seems to echo the future of youngsters nowadays and the future. Only a few can safely say they may have a true vision of the future. Bladerunner, Clockwork Orange think about it
I just saw another ad for Stigmata. I know I listed it earlier in this thread, but I have a feeling that after I see it (opens this coming weekend), it may be on the top of my list.
Damn it looks creapy!
>^,^<
KITTEN
Coarse and violent nudity. Occasional language.