# Movies or TV that Terrified you as a kid **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 28, 2015, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964 "2015-10-28T14:15:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![gytalf2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ac91a4/32.png) [@gytalf2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gytalf2000)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/21 "2015-10-28T18:04:14Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > There was an episode of Jonny Quest, [“The Invisible Monster”](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837348/), that scared the heck out of me when I was a kid. Oh, I remember that one! It frightened me, as well. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/22 "2015-10-28T18:08:58Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > When I was six, my dad had a day off of work so he took me to see [Devil Doll](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058007/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), a movie about a murderous ventriloquist’s dummy. I have no idea what he was thinking, but it freaked me the hell out. **kayaker** , you might consider exorcising that memory with the MST3K version: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VhgKERWo-FA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VhgKERWo-FA) It’s hilarious. One of their best. I wish they had done the same for _The Tingler_. An idiotic movie I saw when I was about the same age, where fear manifests as a millipede-like growth on the victim’s spine. Or something. :eek::dubious::rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/23 "2015-10-28T18:17:30Z")
Movie: _Jaws_. To this day, I get nervous when I am swimming, and I cannot see the bottom. TV: the _Space: 1999_ episode [“Dragon’s Domain”.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Domain) Made me scared of the dark for years afterward. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/24 "2015-10-28T18:21:58Z")
**The Crawling Eye**. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/25 "2015-10-28T18:45:10Z")
The only movie that actually frightened me was **[Dinosaurus!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurus!)**. I was eight and I kept looking for tyrannosaurs outside my window. It was weird, since the movie was basically a comedy. I outgrew it, though, and can’t think of any movie that scared me since. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/26 "2015-10-28T18:46:24Z")
_The Wizard of Oz._ Flying monkeys still give me the willies. ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/27 "2015-10-28T18:51:32Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > Movie: _Jaws_. To this day, I get nervous when I am swimming, and I cannot see the bottom. > > TV: the _Space: 1999_ episode [“Dragon’s Domain”.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Domain) Made me scared of the dark for years afterward. Every single Doper between 40 and 50 came here knowing that would be posted. [If you want to reopen those scars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WKfEj5JpwA). ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/28 "2015-10-28T18:54:25Z")
Sometime in the '70s there was some sort of Bigfoot ‘documentary’. There were some loggers in the woods that were getting boulders thrown at them and took refuge in a cabin. Much noise and pounding on the roof from rocks ensued, then silence. Slowly one of the men turned to look out the little window in the cabin and…_looked right into the face of a Bigfoot looking in the window!!!_. I still hate being in the woods at night, and even the stupidest of Bigfoot shows (e.g. Survivorman) can give me the willies doing nothing more than “Shh…what was that?”. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/29 "2015-10-28T18:55:59Z")
Oooh - one more. Likely the single greatest dropped ball by my parents. Sunday was “family day”, when we would all go to a museum, park, or something. One day in the early 60s, we went to the Chicago Historical Society, where they used to show movies in an auditorium off the lobby. On this particular day, my impression is that my parents thought they were showing some sort of a nature film about birds. Hard to imagine my parents would have been that clueless about a Hitchcock film - I’d imagine they simply didn’t think it would be that bad and made up the “nature film” excuse later. But the six of us, including 4 kids aged 3-8, ended up sitting in the second row. I remember walking out after the scene w/ the old guy with his eyes pecked out! Made quite an impression on this pre-schooler! ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/30 "2015-10-28T19:07:34Z")
I remember Wizard of Oz scaring the crap out of me one year though it didn’t the year before. It was the flying monkeys. I was fine a year later but for some reason that one year, viewing that really struck something with me. ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Juicy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/31 "2015-10-28T19:48:00Z")
When I was little my mom took me to see “Silence of the North.” The scene where the bear breaks into the cabin scared the hell out of me. (Which is funny because I felt sorry for the bear!) ---
**Author:** ![Labtrash](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/labtrash/32/528_2.png) [@Labtrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labtrash)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/32 "2015-10-28T19:48:10Z")
The disembodied(?) cat head from \*Sybil \*freaked me out as a kid ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/33 "2015-10-28T19:50:24Z")
[QUOTE=mbh] Movie: Jaws. To this day, I get nervous when I am swimming, and I cannot see the bottom. TV: the Space: 1999 episode “Dragon’s Domain”. Made me scared of the dark for years afterward. [/QUOTE] > [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > Every single Doper between 40 and 50 came here knowing that would be posted. > > [If you want to reopen those scars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WKfEj5JpwA). On a side note, the Wikipedia synopsis of the episode reminded me how fuzzy my memory is getting. For years, I had incorrectly assumed there was a twist to the episode in that the creature, rather than being a flesh-and-blood space monster, turned out to be a robotic alien probe designed to spot, lure, capture, and analyze life-forms. Unfortunately, the probe got free from its alien controllers and had been blindly and randomly “analyzing” whatever biological life-forms unlucky enough to encounter it. Of course, they didn’t use that plot-line episode so I must’ve seen or read it somewhere else. ---
**Author:** ![stillownedbysetters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/41988e/32.png) [@stillownedbysetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stillownedbysetters)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/34 "2015-10-28T19:52:31Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > _The Wizard of Oz._ > > Flying monkeys still give me the willies. Exactly this. Horror movies didn’t scare me. Even as a little one, I could tell the difference between real and make believe, but I was afraid of monkeys. Those anthropomorphic monkeys and their scary music would send me kiting out of the room whenever the Wizard was on tv. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/35 "2015-10-28T20:03:55Z")
**Caltiki, The Immortal Monster** –the scene where they pull up a scuba diver and his face is eaten away. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/36 "2015-10-28T20:04:17Z")
[The Naked Jungle](http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Jungle/dp/B00DJYKGKS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446062455&sr=8-1&keywords=the+naked+jungle) (1954), starring Charleton Heston. It wasn’t necessarily supposed to be creepy, but it had a gigantic army of killer ants (20 miles long, 2 miles wide) destroying everything in its path. In one scene, the guy who is supposed to open the flood gates to sweep them away falls asleep. When he wakes up, the ants have eaten all the flesh off of his hand. Freaked me right the fuck out. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/37 "2015-10-28T20:36:29Z")
I just recently rewatched Back to the Future II with my son (in light of the fact that their “future” is our present). And it made me remember how scared I was when Marty came back and his house was in the shitty part of town. Drive-bys, random strangers living in your house, hair metal clubs with 80s teens! It sounds silly, but we were almost at the highest peak of crime in this country in 1989 and I was inundated with it. So it scared the crap out of me. Also, that scene in Big where Tom Hanks is living in a crappy apartment in New York and hearing gunshots all night. Also, Terminator. I remember walking home after watching it when I was around 6 or 7, and there was a radio tower visible through the woods with a red light on top. I really thought Arnold was in the woods with his red robot eye about to terminate me! ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/38 "2015-10-28T20:38:38Z")
I don’t remember ever being scared by a movie that didn’t intend to be scary, or by some component of an otherwise non-horror movie, but as a kid, I didn’t deal with the horror genre well at all. I was in college before I started to appreciate horror. The first movie to really scare me was [The Watcher in the Woods](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081738/). It might be PG Disney and was shown in a brightly lit summer school classroom, but it still scared the hell out of a first-grade me. I was pretty young when ALIENS came out. It was on HBO one night and I convinced my parents to let me watch it, mostly because of the sci-fi elements. I made it as far as the first battle with the xenomorphs, when they were crawling all over the walls. As I was going down the hallway to my bedroom, I was just sure I could them crawling all over the hallway too. It took me a few years to get the courage to watch it again, and I’ve been in love with it ever since. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/39 "2015-10-28T20:40:26Z")
“Terrified” would be an overstatement, but I remember finding two Underdog cartoon stories to be unsettling and disquieting: • The Mole Men • The Flying Sorcerers ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2015, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964/40 "2015-10-28T20:50:20Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > Many years ago, a child psychologist published a book called MOMMY, I’M SCARED, about the sorts of things that frighten young children. Of course, I bought a copy immediately so that I could warp my kids for life. > > Supposedly, what fucks little kids up is TRANSFORMATIONS. Of nice people into bad people. Like Bill Bixby turning into the Hulk, or like Daddy having several drinks and then hitting Mommy. Horror in general is heavy on transformations. Vampire, Werewolves, Zombies, Demonic possession etc. are all about people becoming monsters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-or-tv-that-terrified-you-as-a-kid/735964.md?page=3)