God, this reminds me of how totally freaked out I was when Pinocchio and…what was his jerk friend’s name?..turned into donkeys.
I hate Pinocchio.
Oh, God. That was the scene from my childhood that scarred me like no others. LHOTP was a freakin’ FAMILY show. WTF are you doing writing an episode like this??
I caught this episode a while ago on TVLand or ABC Family or somewhere, and I still shuddered and got the chills.
E.
Anyone else remember “The Waltons” poltergeist episode?
My mom bought me a mobile from the thrift store and hung it in my bedroom. I was about six or seven, the subject of the mobile? CLOWNS!! One big fat in in the middle holding balloons, surrounded by four others. Sometimes when the heat would click on the warm draft would cause them to turn.
Freaked me out!
I also saw Jaws when I was younger, not a big deal except my carpet was blue and I used to imagine that it would turn to water and Jaws would get me.
Last one, I had a pull down blind in my bedroom. When I would pull it down, sometimes when I got close to the bottom I would think about seeing something rushing out of the darkness at me. I would get all scared and yank it, sometimes making it jerk back up to the top. AHHHHH!
Me me me! I had this vague memory of it and just recently caught the episode on reruns.
That’s an episode that was definately scarier when I was a kid!
I hate that movie too. I’ve gotten better but I still won’t watch it.
Those stupid Ghoulies that popped up out of the toilet freaked me out for a good many years. Only at night, though. So I would run, do my stuff, and run back out of the bathroom.
Speaking of Poltergeist (and clowns)…nah, forget it!
I was scared of The Count, or more specifically the thunder and lightning after he finished counting.
When I was little, Sesame Street’s “My Beautiful Balloon” scared the hell out of me, because the guy floated away and never came back. He was kind of screaming at the end, too.
When I was a little older, I was terrified by the Vincent Price version of I Am Legend. So much so that I didn’t see the Charlton Heston version until I was 15.
After I was a little too old to be creeped out by things like this, the commercial for It’s Alive scared the holy shit right out of me. The baby crying, while the announcer says, “there’s only one thing wrong with the Dawson baby,” and the baby starts growling and the announcer says “IT’S ALIVE!” Woman screams, fade to black, list of the movie theaters.
When I was about 6-ish, my mother was visiting friends in the kitchen of their house and I was in their living room, alone, playing with my baby doll & watching their TV. There was a movie on that I (much later) found out was the original version of “House on Haunted Hill”, and the scene of the acid pit in the basement just really, really scared the bejeebs out of me, moreso than anything else in that movie, even the creepy old lady floating across the floor or the hand around the corner that nearly touches the pretty lady’s throat. Perhaps because the basement of our own house had a dirt floor and I always feared that it would somehow become acidy quicksand and I’d fall thru it…thus began my lifelong fear of our basement at home, and I still get shivers thinking of that musty smell and dirt floor to this day, altho my stepfather eventually put a cement slab in.
And even tho that original version hardly even raises an eyebrow now, wasn’t Vincent Price’s voice alone just enough to seep into your subconscious and grab hold of any pending nightmares lurking there?
I was a touch older when “Salem’s Lot” was broadcast, but the creepy Ralphie at the 2nd story window still freaked me royally, altho having the Petrie boy INVITE HIM IN to smite him with the cross scared me even more. Didn’t he know you CAN’T INVITE THEM IN?
I was just entering high school during the last years of the Cold War period of history, and our old hs building had a bomb shelter, which we were required to tour as part of a Health Class. When our teacher pointed out for us where the “dead bodies” (from those with radiation sickness) would be stored, I just totally freaked. I can still hear her voice in my head, explaining very matter-of-factly about how the dead would be stored “in zippered bags, stacked like cordwood” until folks were allowed out of the shelter, & I am sure she got a sadistic pleasure out of scaring her group of young teenage girls half to death. A curse on you, Miss Manthie!
Like Argent Towers, I too have become enamoured with the things that frightened me as a child and now find most of them highly appealing and even often sensual in manner. Wonder how that happens?
–Beck
I’m sure Vincent Price would be proud of how large a role he played in the nightmares of so many children. The funny thing was he never scared my kids. Not even when they hadn’t really seen anything worse than House of Wax.
I was in a dark basement tv room while babysitting for a neighbor. Watching 70s sitcoms I guess. All of a sudden, a commercial came on. It is the back of a woman’s head with beautiful long hair (flower in her hair maybe?) and she’s singing in a sweet voice …“roses are red, violets are blue…” She then slowly spins around and she was a skeleton. “I am going to GET YOU”
Scared the crap out of me and 25 years later, it still maked me shutter. It was so unexpected.
Anyone know the film that was advertising? Believe me, I never had any desire to see it.
I almost bought this the other day. It’s out on dvd if you want…
Very likely The Wasp Woman.
You’re welcome. 
Don’t know if this is the specific thing you’re thinking about, but check out The Beast with Five Fingers.
Mine? When I was very young (about 4-5 years old), the old “Lost in Space” tv show was still running, and there was an episode where there was a machine making androids or robots or something. They were people in (not spandex, but something formfitting) sparkly outfits with head coverings that obscured their eyes/ears/noses/mouths beneath this white sparkly something.
And the walked around all stiff-limbed like robots.
Hokey smoke, did that freak me out! No faces, just the contours of faces.
Oddly enough, “Dark Shadows” fascinated me and did not scare me at all.
Yikes! Just remembered: when I was a kid, my grandma took us to see a play performed by other kids, which was a futuristic fairy tale sort of deal. In the play, people who offended the king would have their hands forced into this machine that turned things to plastic. So the guards would shove the prisoners’ hands in, the prisoners would scream in pain, then their hands would be pulled out all wrapped in cellophane, and they’d be led away crying…I was not grooving on that at all.
There was a movie that Jodie Foster was in - something about the End of the Lane or something - that movie terrified me for some reason.
That and the Amityville Horror.
i hid underneath the seat when the banshee appeared. scared the crap out of me. i’d forgotten about it, too.
oh my og, you people are stirring up childhood depths that shouldn’t be *moving * let alone stirring. :eek:
Here in the UK, an entire generation watched Dr. Who from behind a sofa. :eek:
Looking back, they relied on:
- creepy music
- darkness
- cameras pointing at a doorway
- screaming
because the monsters were all obviously men in rubber suits (it was a cheap production!).
how about at the end when they’re all trying to get out of the crawlspace?
all you see is shadows and creepy glowing eyes and one of the heroes is in the foreground of the shot and doesn’t see that they’re getting REAL close to him. :eek:
Actually, “The Child Catcher.” Very scary. Damn show gave me nightmares for years.
That would be Dario Argento’sSuspiria, and that is one of the first things I thought of when I saw this thread. As soon as I’d hear her sing-song voice I’d run out of the room. Seriously creepy creepy commercial. Scarier than the movie, and totally unrelated to anything that I can remember from it (?)
Around that same time there was one of those horror matinees that used to come on Sunday afternoons. I can’t remember if it was Chiller or Sinister Cinema, but anyway they’d sometimes do a feature box ad in the TV guide with a picture and description of a show. The movie “Death Smiles on a Murderer” (another Italian gem) was going to be showing and they had a close-up picture of a woman’s decomposing face (if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about). I came upon that picture by accident and absolutely freaked the hell out. Then after I’d seen it, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at it again and freaking out again. I don’t even want to tell you how it affected me when I actually watched the movie (god help me yes I watched it).
It became the norm for there to be an ad for that show every week and every week I would slowy turn the pages of the TVguide, dreading whatever gruesome image I was going to see. Another one that sticks out is from “Hatchet for a Honeymoon” where a psycho guy dresses up in a bridal gown and chops young women up. Does anyone else remember this series or these particular movies?
Sorry to ramble; I didn’t realize what an impact they had on me until I started writing about it.