I had a Milton-Bradley board game called Which Witch? that required a bit of a complicated setup by my mom. She left it assembled, and it stayed out in my room, leading to a few bouts of insomnia for me.
[QUOTE=Missy2U]
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.
[/QUOTE]
The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane.
I looooooved this movie when I was a kid! Kick ass Jodi and don’t take no shit from nobody.
[QUOTE=Rebecca DiMwitter]
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
[/QUOTE]
Maybe the adrenaline rush from fear reminds you of the adrenaline rush of sexual excitement now? It’s all a big rush.
[QUOTE=Kyla]
God, this reminds me of how totally freaked out I was when Pinocchio and…what was his jerk friend’s name?..turned into donkeys.
[/QUOTE]
Lampwick.
[QUOTE=WOOKINPANUB]
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 (?)
[/QUOTE]
I am way beyond impressed that someone knew this. Thanks!
“Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits” both creeped me out. Of all the T-Zones, “The Fever,” with the compulsive gambler being haunted by the one-armed bandit, was the probably the scariest.
Another vote for the banshee.
The worst, though, was a show I saw when I was 10 about mentally ill kids. I spent the whole next year worrying that I was going to become one of them.
[QUOTE=kelly5078]
“Twilight Zone” and “Outer Limits” both creeped me out. Of all the T-Zones, “The Fever,” with the compulsive gambler being haunted by the one-armed bandit, was the probably the scariest. /QUOTE]
Fraaaaaaaaaaanklin
[QUOTE=Struan]
Another one I remember, that doesn’t appear to be on the National Archives site linked above, is a short film that was shown to kids who lived in the countryside. Highlights included a kid getting mushed under a tractor’s wheels, another kid drowning in a slurry pit, and a little girl dying in screaming agony after mistaking paraquat for coca-cola. I didn’t leave the house for years after that.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks a whole bunch. 37 and I have blocked that one out of my memory, up until now. They made us watch it at school (in the middle of the Sussex countryside) and my mother had just started going out with a farmer. Any time for years after we went over to his place I was convinced I was going to drown in a slurry pit.
The Trilogy of Terror with Linda Black…in a shirt and maybe panties (maybe) starting to stab that carving knife methodically into the floor as she squatted there…waiting. chills
Strangely enough, Julia Child shouting “Hello…!” would send me scurrying out of the room at a very early age. (drunk old woman with knives phobia? Go figure…)
The ‘Twighlight Zone’ episode where Talulah Bankhead is terrorized by and eventually massacres the NASA expedition team…or when Shatner was on a plane. I think I shouted 'use your phaser, Kirk!" at the TV screen.
The original ‘Night Stalker’. Saw it after Mod Squad was over (nobody ever died on that show, except for drug over-doses; they didn’t even have guns). It even had a neat promo commercial by a “Mike” of the Mod Squad saying ‘stay tuned’, so I did. Suddenly I’m seeing a vicious animalistic murderer throwing cops around, bullets bouncing off his chest and out-running police cars. The scene where he discovered Kolchak in the closet freaked out this 5-year old.
The ‘Drag-Net’ episode with the toddler was shown drowned face-down in the water. (Yes, they really did show it)
There was an old B-movie that got me too…started same old same old enough…rocket ship to Mars, monster on board, bullets don’t work, and its strong enough to punch through metal bulk-heads. So they try electricity and that doesn’t work. And he’s eating crewmen. Finally they open the air-lock to kill it just as he’s going for the girl.
As a teenager, ‘Galaxy of Terror’ traumatized me by showing me a beautiful woman stripped naked, raped and then eaten, by a 15-foot long Maggot. (Talk about nightmares you can’t scrub from your brain)
[QUOTE=Foxy40]
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.
[/QUOTE]
After WOOKINPANUB helpfully identified Suspiria, I had to go find the trailer – which is, of course, on YouTube.
A warning to the curious: it’s definitely unsettling.
[QUOTE=Scupper]
The TV movie they made of Salem’s Lot messed me up good when I was a kid.
The little brother floating up to the window out of the mist is still one of the most horrifying things I can recall seeing on screen. I was paranoid that my little brother would get vampire-ified and come for me.
[/QUOTE]
Holy Crap! That creeped me out, too. That scene and also the one where the body of a vampire (a child?) was in the grave and David Soul opens the casket and the body sits up. I’m 36 and I just got chills thinking about that!
[QUOTE=Count Blucher]
As a teenager, ‘Galaxy of Terror’ traumatized me by showing me a beautiful woman stripped naked, raped and then eaten, by a 15-foot long Maggot. (Talk about nightmares you can’t scrub from your brain)
[/QUOTE]
That would be Taffee O’Connell. I was about the same age. I just assumed it was “Gratuitous Nudity.” In fact they could have flashed “Gratuitous Nudity” in red letters, except that would have obstructed the view.
The lumbering mummy in the opening credits of “Jonny Quest.”
Bernie Casey’s Gargoyle from Gargoyles (1972).
Roger Patterson’s footage of Bigfoot.
[QUOTE=saoirse]
That would be Taffee O’Connell. I was about the same age. I just assumed it was “Gratuitous Nudity.” In fact they could have flashed “Gratuitous Nudity” in red letters, except that would have obstructed the view.
[/QUOTE]
Well, that’s one Taffee that got chewed… yikes!
It was GN, but it was also a horrible beastial rape/murder which was graphic and very disturbing. I remember being shocked/horrified/stunned, as I wasn’t allowed to see ‘slasher movies’ growing up. It was on cable (there was no cable in my house) where a group of us were watching it and drinking beer, and a particularly obnoxious girl (who wanted me to leave her 'queen-bee’ness presense) shouted out at me “Hey, you get an eyeful there, Count…!?” I don’t think she had any idea how traumatized I was from watching that sickness, but she was right about one thing: she had embarassed me into leaving immediately.
[QUOTE=Velma]
ET creeped me out in a big way.
[/QUOTE]
I dissagree. ET is not creepy. ET is completely and totally fracking terrifying. Birdman makes fun of me: “But he’s cuuuute.” No he’s not. He’s a hideously misshapen freakish monster that conned poor little children into letting him into their home. The feds were right to try to kill that little shit.
When I was in elementary school, I read a book called something like Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction which had a lot of creepy fictional stories. The one that terrified me back then was a short story about a black dog who ran out of his owner’s house and into the night-black forest, chasing after an unusual sound…and an hour later the dog came running back to the house, his hair gone entirely white.
The most irrational thing to creep me out was when I was even younger. I had a children’s songs tape that had “This is a church / This is the steeple / Open the doors / And here’s all the people” set to music. The music was this very eerie, high-pitched tinkling sound meant to evoke thoughts of people running out of the church (I guess), but it frazzled my nerves every time I heard it. It was traumatic enough to remember it 20 years later. 
Ohhhh, BayleDomon’s creepy kids tape reminded me of a record I had with a song on it called “The Cat Came Back”. It was about Old Mr. Johnson who kept trying to kill a yellow cat, but the cat came coming back on account of his nine lives, I guess. The whole song is a detailed list of the ways in which he tries to kill it. Two of the ways I remember were electicution and he also tried to send it away in a hot air balloon. How freakin’ morbid is that!
Few things. One was the boat/tunnel scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I was afraid to walk down the hall in my house at night for YEARS.
The Star Trek episode “Spock’s Brain” apparently traumatized me tremendously, according to my mom.
And I have no idea what movie it was, but I caught a glimpse when my mom was watching it… some guy outside at night with a pitchfork, and there were weird foamy white things on the ground that he was stabbing with a pitchfork… and the sound of the pitchfork stabbing into them just sickened me and the whole thing creeped me out.
Amityville Horror scared me and I never saw the movie until I was way into my teens! But when the commercial for the moview would come on, I would jump up and turn the tv off!
That damn vodoo doll in Trilogy of Terror had me checking behind the shower curtain for YEARS whenever I went to the bathroom!
Bleh, and the Twilight Zone movie, just the first part with Dan Akryod… “Do you want to see something really scary?”
As a kid I was always afraid my open bedroom door would slam shut and some ghost would get me. I used to put stuff in front of the door, between the hinges, I even tied a string to the doorknob once! No idea where I got the idea but I was always sure my door would slam shut while I was sleeping.
I was a very neurotic, easily creeped out kid. Aside from stuff already mentioned (Salem’s Lot, Suspiria etc.) I was freaked out by the trailer for Phantasm.
I was also freaked out by the first couple of minutes of Murder on the Orient Express, in which a Lindbergh-type kidnapping is recounted. What got me especially was the creepy moody incidental music used during it.
And silliest, but creepiest of all was a show called ‘Vegetable Soup’ ‘Sesame Street’ type show, but produced by folks that apparently indulged in massive LSD binges. The worst segment of all was the Outerscope segment featuring these Thalidomide-like puppets with giant-lifelike hands protruding out of their puppet bodies.