Last night, A Clockwork Orange was playing and I hesitantly decided to watch it. I was watching Jerry Maguire on TBS, which of course edited out all the f-words and such. Anyways, I didn’t really know much about A Clockwork Orange. I just knew that it was very violent. But, then, I saw that opening scene where the main character (forgot his name) and his buddies are sitting on a couch and there are those white statues of naked people around them. The main character freaked me out. Just the way he looked freaked me out. He vaguely resembled a clown and I am terrified of clowns. Then, after a little bit of Jerry Maguire, I hesitantly went back and saw the main character and his buddies with baseball bats standing in front of a homeless man . I lost it. I couldn’t watch it after that.
So, what other movies have you been really freaked out by and/or are (were?) too scared to watch?
I’ve laughed through the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, watched The Omen, seen at least two parts of the Jason Voorhees/Freddy Kreuger/Candyman/Chucky/Hellraiser fanchises, seen every Alien movie at least twice, and pretty much John Carpenter’s whole filmography.
But I can’t watch The Exorcist. Not again. Tried, failed. My mom dared me to watch the movie on HBO when was I was ten and me, being stupid, agreed: she spend the evening cutting the lights on and off, slipping ice cubes down my back, making spooky-demon possessed voices and throwing pillows at me from across the room. I pretty much have the whole plot seared into my brain: I have no reason to see it again.
Horrible. Absolutely awful. Shock value for the sake of shock value, nihilistic, gory, depraved, sadistic, and totally revelling in it. It was my first exposure to Miike, and I refuse to watch anything else by him after Ichi the Killer. I don’t mind violence or blood at all and I’m not easily offended or disturbed, but this one took way too much perverse joy and pleasure in pain and suffering and gore and nastiness.
For the same reason, I won’t watch House of 1,000 Corpses or The Devil’s Rejects. I don’t like gory horror films in general, but everything I’ve heard about these tells me Rob Zombie’s movies are all about torture and mutilation and sadism, in a generally exploitative style. I don’t need to see that.
Keep in mind I’m not a wuss… I loved A Clockwork Orange and *Sin City * and the Kill Bills and even the new Dawn of the Dead.
There’s a scene in Caltiki, The Immortal Monster where a scuba diver is attacked by the blob-ish creature. He’s pulled back up to the boat…and his face has been eaten away! That scene caused me more nightmares than any other I can remember.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And yes, my fear of this movie extends to the remake- I can’t even watch the previews of CatCF. When WW came out on video, I couldn’t go into the local Walmart for about a month because they had a huge cutout advertising the movie right at the entryway. ::shudder::
The thing is - I think I love to be creeped out…it’s like spicy food…a challenge to see how much i can take! Which is exactly why, for instance, I force myself through some films even though I know it’s going to really creep me out or disturb me a little. It’s best in a theater though - no escape! I think Exorcism of Emily Rose is hopefully giong to be soooo creepy and I’ll see in the theater for sure to see how much I can handle.
As much as I can stand the Rom Zombie movies, Traces of Death/Faces of Death, and other real-gore, I could not stand The Ring, and had to look away every time they showed some of the people’s faces once that creepy girl had gotten to them. It took me until a few months ago to find a still shot of that closet scene and actually look at it. :eek:
Brr…I never did see the second. Every time it was late and I turned the TV off, I had to tell myself if was only a movie
Besides that, “The Day After” was pretty creepy, esp since I was born in 83 and it seemed like a simple “not if, but when.”
No kidding, Blair Witch freaked me out six ways to Sunday, for sure. I don’t think I slept at all the night after I saw it, and I did that annoying thing where I made Mr. Del get up about twenty times during the night to check if various doors and windows were locked. I would have checked them myself, except I was petrified with fear and frozen to the bed.
The strange thing (to me at least) is that intellectually, I don’t think it’s a particularly good movie. When I parse it out, nothing about the film should make it as creepy as it seems to me.
I grew up watching scary movies. I just revealed in another thread I saw Alien at age 11. In 1982 when I was 14, you could have made a list of the 50 scariest movies of all time and I probably would have seen at least 30 of them.
There is one movie I never finished, though.
Eraserhead.
I saw it when I was about 12, and I knew it was supposed to be freaky, but it turned out to be much more freaky than even as hardened a veteran as I could handle. I left halfway through, and never wondered how it ended.
I will not watch The Passion of the Christ. I can’t purposefully sit down and watch someone be tortured to death. I haven’t been a Christian for 2+ decades, but when I was a kid, I’d always cry during Jesus of Nazareth and get all choked up during Good Friday mass, so I know I can’t take The Passion, even though I feel like I was missing something.
It haunted me for years. I just can’t take psychological sadism. It’s one of my regrets in life that I didn’t walk out early in that movie ::shudder:: Silence of the Lambs, however, bothered me not at all.
