The TV commercials for It’s Alive did it for me as a kid. Looking it up on IMDB reminded me that the poster creeped me out, too.
Twilight Zone’s Nightmore at 20,000 Feet. That monster scared the hell out of me.
…Nor consumer rent nor buy.
Apparently.
I remember that, too!
But the one that got me was the original “The Blob” – I was about 9 when I saw it at the local movie theatre (a matinee show). We lived in an old creepy wood-frame house that creaked. I slept in the bedroom next to the attic stairs. The door to the attic was always closed, & we weren’t supposed to go up there.
But I would imagine the blob ooozing down the attic stairs and through the gap at the bottom of the door … :eek:
Who needs movies or tv? Basements and attics all by themselves are scary enough!
I forgot about the soap opera “Dark Shadows.” Creeped me the hell out.
Also, The Amityville Horror (original) scared the crap out of me because I had heard people talking about the book beforehand and how it was a true story. My 16 year old self didn’t realize what “based on a true story” actually meant.
There are a few scenes in the movie where George Lutz wakes up at exactly 3:15 AM most mornings. That happened to me once a few days after seeing the movie and I thought I was going to die of a heart attack!
Over thirty years later still the single most terrifying thing I’ve seen on television
God yes, the Cheaters. Last time I mentioned that someone sent me the YouTube link.
The music opening the Twilight Zone. Once a girl friend and I went over to her house when her parents weren’t home, in the early evening, darkening. Her dad had wired the TV to come on when you turned on the living room light switch, I guess, because we did and there it was–we ran upstairs like scared kittens to her room.
A Vincent Price epic-House on Haunted Hill. Price vamping all thru it and the last scene. And of course the “mother” scene at the end of Psycho.
The only thing that ever gave me the nightmares for some reason, was back when I was bout 5 or 6, perhaps 7 and was a faithful viewer of voyage to the bottom of the sea. And one episode where they had rock men coming out of the walls kinda gave me nightmares for a few nights.
Declan
The mid-80s Amazing Stories, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and the “new” Twilight Zone had several episodes that scared the hell out of me as a kid.
The one that was bone chilling was about a woman in prison who made a deal with the gravedigger to be buried with the next deceased person and then be dug up later (presumably outside the prison walls). After being the coffin for what seemed too long, she flicks her lighter and sees the body next to her: the gravedigger.
My nine year old self was scared shitless for months.
I’d have to say the X Files scared me a lot when I was really little lol.
Came in here to post this as well. Some other movies/TV mentioned (“The Night Stalker” comes to mind) might have scratched the surface, but this was far and away the most frightened I was watching something on TV.
As a kid, I had a love/hate relationship with “monster movies.” I wanted to see them all! I’d take every chance I’d get to watch a scary movie. But some of them did stick with me.
I had no problem with flying monkeys or any “monster” that was more or less of human form or origin (vampires, mummies, Frankenstein monsters, etc.). What got me were the bugs and such.
The Fly (1958) – that claw hand, and then the reveal with all the eye facets.
Some weird mandible-monster (likely from The Monster that Challenged the World or some monster that looked like that). I remember I was swimming in a motel pool at night (I must have been 7 or 8) and there’s that weird underwater bulb on one end to light the pool in that spooky greenish wavering glow, but the deep end is dark…I was sure that mandible monster was down there ready to grab me!
I was 8 or 9 and on a sleepover at a friend’s house when the TV movie “It Happened at Lakewood Manor” was shown. Bugs? How about millions of little ants everywhere? I was scratching myself and itching all night, worried that ants were going to cover me up if I fell asleep.
Perhaps the most horrifying thing I remember scaring me was that scene in** Invasion of the Body Snatchers** when the pod tries to duplicate Donald Sutherland and that pod thing was so unformed and pulsating (and then Donald smashed it with a shovel if I recall). I was probably 10 or 11 when I saw that and I was certain an evil pod would appear if I fell asleep.
When I watched the Supergirl premiere in which she saved the plane, after she lands it she stands on the wing and everyone looks out at her, and I thought of this episode.
The story that always go me was The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. The King was going to flat-out murder Bartholomew with a bow for something the kid couldn’t help or control. As a kid, that was scary.
For me it was an old B&W British movie called “Village of the Damned” (not the 1995 remake).
IMDB link: Village of the Damned (1960) - IMDb
I was about 9 or 10 and was watching the movie on tv. I was alone in a dark living room (only light was from the tv) and had to leave the room when the movie got to one of the scenes where the kid’s eyes start to glow.
Really creeped me out; had to leave that room and go elsewhere in the house to get away from those eyes and be around another person.
British people always make a horror film more horrifying. I caught one from the late Seventies or early Eighties about an American couple vacationing in Britain who come across a country house party that consists of famous, wealthy and successful people, all of whom achieved such by selling their souls to Satan. He begins to collect - people start dying in mysterious ways (a rock star chokes on a chicken bone…while eating a steak).
The one that creeped me out, though, was the beautiful young woman who was swimming when the top of the water turned to glass. I can still recall the scene - the swimmer desperately hammering at the glass, then slowly drowning.
I totally get that. The picture of that house, with the two windows lit up like eyes, scared the hell out of me. I still don’t like houses with Dutch barn roofs - wonder if that had anything to do with it?
As far as the distinction between “true story” and “inspired by a true story”, I had a similar problem with a book called The Ghosts of Flight 401, about an Eastern Airlines L-1011 that crashed in the Everglades, and whose passengers and crew made a practice of haunting other Eastern L-1011s.
Once again, right there with you. I woke up one morning at five to six, and thought for a moment it was a sign that I was going to hell. (Since my digital clock couldn’t show 6:66, the Devil chose 5:55 instead. Hey, it made sense when I was half asleep.) When I was very young, I thought the blanket on my bed might have been evil, because I wasn’t sure of the difference between Satan and satin.:smack:
Little House on the Prairie - Sylvia That mime mask was stuck in my head for a while. As far as movies goes, it’s Amityville for me, too. I was a little too young.
The episode of Gilligan’s Island where a ghost is trying to scare everyone away. There is a scene where Gilligan opens a window and there stands the ghost. I was afraid to open windows after that. They had the creepiest sound and voice of any spook I’ve ever heard and it really scared me. Hard to believe Richard Kiel in a bedsheet could be so scary.
But then Scooby Doo kind of made me afraid of the dark also.
My 5-year old brain confused the **gorilla **soldiers in The Planet of the Apes with **guerrilla **soldiers I’d heard about on the news. I didn’t tell my mom until years later, but I worried when my dad had to travel for him job with the department of defense.
Also, the episode of In Search Of… (I think it was) where they talked about Bigfoot. They had video of a “Bigfoot” arm crashing through a big living-room window, and waving around between the couple sitting on the sofa. And I was sitting on a sofa in front of a big living-room window. :eek::eek::eek:
Forty years later, and I’m still iffy about sofas in front of living-room windows and must have the curtains closed when it gets dark.