When I was about six, I made the mistake of reading the Classics Illustrated versions of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds before going to bed. I spent the rest of the night with the light on and didn’t drop off to sleep until around 4:00 am.
I also had a CI book of Ghost Stories with a cover that gave me the willies—a ghost pointing at me and at an old mansion in the distance with a “Rooms for Rent” sign out in front. The thing was so damned realistic, I couldn’t sleep at night if it was in the same room with me.
Speaking of The Time Machine, I saw the 1960 version with Rod Taylor and Alan Young also when I was about six. I came out of the cinema convinced I was going to die when “The Atomic Satellite” destroyed Earth in 1966. The sight of the Morlock corpse decaying in fast-forward didn’t help matters much either. For a long time, the sound of an air raid siren would make my stomach churn.
I also remember a really creepy episode of “The Outer Limits”; I think David McCallum was in it. As I recall, he volunteered for an experiment inside a “time capsule.” As he travelled forward in time, he continued to evolve into a pasty-skinned superhuman with a huge brain and six fingers. I got the shivers just looking at him!
Some sort of toddler-mashup association between Spock, the Vulcan on Star Trek, and the statue of Vulcan in my then-hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. I had very unsettling dreams where people from space who looked like starfleet people would land at the statue and come and take me.
E.T is the scariest thing ever. When I was a kid (admittedly a TOTAL pansy when it came to anything remotely scary) I don’t think I ever got through 30 minutes of that movie. I still think his ugly, and the movie is disgustingly manipulative, but I was terrified of him as a child.
I must have been about 7 years old when my parents took me to see the original version of Disney’s The Shaggy Dog, in which. IIRC, a boy (well, a teenager I think) puts on a magic ring and is magically turned into a shaggy dog. I became afraid of being magically turned into a shaggy dog.
The video of the “Sweet Dreams” remake by Marilyn Manson probably scarred a whole new generation too.
I’m with **Runestar **on how scary the Abominable Snowman was in Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer.
“Talky Tina” from The Twilight Zone really got to me as a teenager.
The earliest one that I can remember was from Sesame Street, and it wasn’t any of the ones that lew_cody mentioned. It was the yip-yip-yip-yip “Martians” who discovered the telephone et al. Those had me running from the room with my hands over my ears.
The Shaggy Dog wasn’t scary to me, but confusing. Because the only time I saw it, it started halfway in when the kid was already transforming into a dog. The rest of the class had already seen the movie and loved it. I was just like “okay, so apparently he can transform into a dog, but what lets him do this and what’s he trying to accomplish”? If I knew the word surreal at the time, it would describe my experience.
There was a show from my childhood (much later I thought it was The Banana Splits, but I may be mistaken) whose credits ended with the animated cartoon characters turning into static figures painted on a wooden fence. For some reason, this image has continued to vaguely haunt me. If anyone could direct me to a youtube clip in the hopes of letting my adult self review and dismiss it, I’d appreciate it. The series would likely date from 1965-1974.
Reminds me of how “The Wild Wild West” would cut to commercial - the scene would freeze and be replaced by an engraving showing the image The Wild Wild West - Wikipedia
I used to be deathly afraid of Rip Taylor when I was a kid. I’d run screaming from the room when his show came on. People could just say his name and it would freak me out. I have no idea why.
The OH-WEE-OH guys were the ones which scared the crap out of me.
I saw 5 Million Years to Earth when I was 12 or so, and the ants overruning the earth, along with the Devil’s Flame, seriously freaked me out.
Oh-yeah. Didn’t bother me tho when I caught it a few years ago, and to boot the people who made the cartoon broke the rule where You Never Show the Monster. Once it got all that paint dumped on it it became much less scary and even pathetic and worthy of pity (yes I actually felt sorry for the poor essobee).
There was an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark that ended up with just eyes and a mouth over a table or something like that. That was the only episode that ever got me.
The dinosaur at the end of the opening credits to Land of the Lost scared me. He would turn and look right at the camera and he could see you through the television! I would always hide my face. The Sleestacks were equally terrifying.
I would also hide my face when Yuck Mouth, who won’t brush, 'cause he likes his teeth like this, would open his mouth for a Yuck Mouth kiss.
I was scared of Jaws even in a swimming pool. This is without ever having seen Jaws.
While I think the intent of this thread was to list things that weren’t necessarily supposed to be scary, this is EXACTLY what I thought of! I swear this movie ran every Saturday for half a year…and I watched it every time even though it scared the crap out of me.
If we’re listing scary things being scary, it would be a movie called “The Legend of Boggy Creek.”
Large Marge freaked me out too, also Vigo from “Ghostbusters 2”. Watching them both again today, Vigo still scares me a little, though hopefully not as much as he did before(I couldn’t sleep for days then) but Large Marge is really no big deal.
Since I was the youngest by over five years, I ended up going to movies that were sometimes not so child-friendly. I remember going to “Sleeping with the Enemy” with my mom and sister who was 15 at the time. I had just turned ten. My sister and I spent the majority of the movie hiding our eyes behind my coat.