Man, that would freak me out, too. 
Now that you mention that, I remember being a little creeped out by that. But the ads I used to see for Mummenschanz really freaked me out.
There was a cartoon I used to see in the early sixties, probably old even then, black and white. It had some kind of discordant jazz music in the background and there were these creatures who were essentially an eyeball on top of a vertical metal tube, with a wheel at the bottom. These damn things were, I think, chasing something or someone inside a building.
I would love to be able to identify this and view it again as an adult. It absolutely terrified me.
She scared me as an adult.
The Hamburgler used to freak me out.
I think there were predatory vacuum cleaners in it too, if that rings a bell for anyone.
The opening segment of Bonanza, where it shows the map burning. When the Cartwrights are riding through the burning map, I just knew they were going to be burned to a crisp. I was probably more concerned about the horses though.
I’m reading this thread and can’t think of anything that scared me much as a child, which puts me in mind of a Malcolm In The Middle episode where the oldest son is being initiated into a fraternity at college and nothing they do scares him because Lois is his mother, and compared to her everything else is rainbows and unicorns.
That’s probably my excuse too, my mother was so effing terrifying nothing else would scare you!
Although that “dragon” thing in the episode of Space:1999 was freaky!
Yes it was!!
Oh Dear God I just remembered the scariest thing of all. Soupy Sales with White Fang, a furry white hand that entered the scene from the side, making scary deep voiced ru ooh-ru ooh-ru-uh sounds. A clip is here, White Fang comes on at 1:00. We watched it in black & white.
That whole show freaked me right out.
I can remember being disturbed at, say, the dark tone of the Tenniel illustrations in Alice, and of course I was scared by The Outer Limits and such–that was the point! But mostly it was my Father (talk about “Pop culture”…!)–the one in Heaven who was constantly reading my thoughts, finding something objectionable in every single one, and threatening to set me on fire because of them.
Awww Geeze…there you go…Now I’m gonna have feaking nightmares…
and those things STILL fuck me up.
When I was about 8 or 9 I went with my aunt and cousins to see this sci-fi movie at a drive-in theatre. I was absolutely traumatized by a scene where the “failures” of genetic engineering were locked up in a cell. It really messed me up at the time. Years later I bought the DVD on the internet and the scene that bothered me so much was brief and very un-scary and…well…laughable.
Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play album cover. It didn’t help that when you turned on the light in the basement of my home a shadow appeared on the ceiling caused by pipes, the furnace and basement type fixtures that from a certain angle looked like a ballerina. I just knew it was the same one from the album. And she was evil.
Sesame Street used to have a segment on the letter I where they would show it as a tall obelisk with the music from 2001. The intensity of that music DISTURBED me when I was a kid. I always had to leave the room.
The part where the guy’s face melted in Poltergeist.
I hate you!!!
He never really bothered me. Still doesn’t TBH
Another Rankin-Bass work that didn’t necessarily scare the bejeezus out of me, but still had it moments was Mad Monster Party.
With you, Soylent, on the Honeymooners’ moon(until I started to appreciate the show), and Quimby, et. al. on the beauty of randomness of the Star Trek TOS closing credits (Balok?)…the Doomsday Machine had me more worried than normal, too.
Athena from “Lost In Space” didn’t scare me so much as piss me off, obviously…(“They were so close!”)
When I was a kid every so often the “5000 fingers of Dr T” would be shown on TV, I liked the movie but had to leave the room when the elevator operator with the weird eyes would come on :eek:
This is weird, but the monster Jerry Lewis turned into in the Nutty Professor. It really scared the crap out of me.
Salem’s Lot scared the bejesus out of me. I was five when it aired, and for some reason my dad let me watch it with him.
Anyone remember In Search Of, hosted by Leonard Nimoy? A lot of those episodes were incredibly creepy and remain so to this day. Excellent use of music in that series. I’ve been re-watching many of them on Youtube recently. Those Time Life commercials owe a lot to In Search Of.
The monster Louis Jourdan became at the end of Swamp Thing terrified me too.
My scary childhood memory is something I believed to be a freaky dream until the invention of the internet and I was able to google my dream.
Turns out the bad dream (a wedding with dead-like guests and a witch and a giant) was the Japanese’s version of Jack and the Beanstalk (1974).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_and_the_Beanstalk_(1974_film) or
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074705/
I had nightmares for well into my 20s in which I am being chased and I can directly connect it to this cartoon.