We had a camping trip about a week after the movie came out, and my friend and I woke up extra early to put little piles of rocks in front of everybody’s tents. Of course, nobody else had seen the movie, so it wasn’t even funny. 
As a small child:
The Space 1999 episode “Dragon’s Domain”.
The banshee scene in Darby O’Gill and the Little People.
Jaws.
If you are a bachelor older than 30, Remains of the Day is terrifying.
I remember being very frightened as a small child by some horror TV series of the anthology sort, a story about Jack the Ripper. Considering I was neither female nor a prostitute, amazingly effective horror! Still, I was VERY young.
Other than that, the most horrifying stories I have encountered have been in book form. I read the short story that “The Thing” and its various remakes are based on, it frightened me a HELL of a lot more than any of the movies did, though once again, I was much younger when I read the story than when I saw the movies. Plus, I knew the story. So there’s that. Scariest book ever? 1984.
The two that stick with me are Event Horizon and Jacob’s Ladder.
This.
I have never made it through Event Horizon. I always fall asleep somewhere around the airlock scene.
For me it’s the original Time Machine with Rod Taylor. I watched it when I was about 8 and was absolutely terrified. For weeks afterwards I had nightmares about being dragged away by the Morlocks.
When I would (as a young kid) stay with my grandparents for a couple weeks, they would never alter their viewing habits to allow for my youth. There was some episode of, I think, Unsolved Mysteries that gave me night terrors and to this day I can’t stand uncovered windows at night and don’t care for the dark. Haven’t been truly frightened by a horror movie apart from the not-very-good They (It featured things in the dark that kidnap you and give you night terrors/nightmares, but it was such a bad movie I didn’t think it would bother me that much; had to sleep with my lamp on that night.)
“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”, a made for tv movie that came out in 1973, scared the bejesus out of me. Little prune head things locked up in an old fireplace and finally somebody accidentally set them free. And now are trying to get that person. Just freaked me out.
I am a horror fan, but I strongly dislike reading King. I love (most of) his stories (when turned into movies), but I can not slog through his books and I’ve tried. There’s something about his writing style that bores me to tears.
I didn’t even like The Shining (novel) and I wanted to - but it just didn’t scare me the way the movie did.
Another vote for Event Horizon.
Liam Neeson making a whole bunch of terrible decisions one after the other is the really scary monster in that movie.
Am I the first to mention John Carpenter’s The Thing, with Kurt Russell?
I liked The Grey as a sort of Jack London throwback. Never really thought of it as a horror film before.
No, I think it’s been mentioned at least twice.
A haunted hotel that sneaks up on people is a ridiculous premise. King managed to make it not only creepy but threatening, not to mention a bestseller. And then Kubrick made an iconic, if not all that scary, film. A film based on a book that not only had a ridiculous premise, but also dippy scenes (look out, it’s a killer topiary!) and cliche characters (why, I’ve never seen an alcoholic struggling writer protagonist before). So hats off to both.
I was laying on the couch watching Se7en. The scene: Sloth. I literally (really!) fell off the couch and nearly peed my shorts. Was not expecting that!!
A good movie that I saw when I was a wee child was “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Jeeeeezus, Bette Davis could play psychotic bitch better than anyone. :eek:
The 1980 version (not the 2005 remake) of The Fog. The sound of it was horrifying.
Childhood scares: Seeing Vincent Price’s *House of Wax *on television…then being taken on a family trip to a wax museum. I’m amazed I could walk. I remember staring at the wax figures, terrified that I’d see evidence of real flesh beneath.
Also, an episode of one of the anthology series (possibly One Step Beyond) in which there was a box that people looked into and were sucked inside by some creepy little blob of an alien that lived inside the box. (Maybe I dreamed this. Does this sound like a genuine episode to anyone?)
As a young adult the most frightened I’ve ever been by a movie relates to…Three Men and a Baby. (!)
This was when the theory that the ghost of a little boy is visible in the film was rampant. The theory was inspired by the fact that there’s a cut-off stand-up poster of Ted Danson’s character (I think), partly hidden behind curtains in the characters’ living room.
I KNEW that it was merely a cut-off poster. But somehow the mental picture of this there-but-completely-unacknowledged-by-the-film-personnel GHOST got hold of my mind and creeped me out utterly. For several days I couldn’t look at similar windows-with-curtains without wondering what might be lurking there.
Other than that: The Ring bothered me more than most other scary movies, I guess.
Heh. When I saw Evil Dead in the theater with my brother, I was so transfixed by the movie I never noticed him bend down so he could grab my opposite ankle, adjacent to an empty seat, at a tense moment in the film. I leaped out of the seat and screamed.
Top movie that scared me was The Shining. Could not get past Room 237. The fact I was 10 at the time didn’t help. I think that’s helped heighten the scariness of the movie in my mind, as I still have trouble with that scene.
That’s one of the only episodes of Space:1999 that I still have memories of. It was really disturbing when I was a kid. I actually watched it again not long ago on YouTube.
I think I was 12 when I saw A Man Called Horse. The initiation ritual where they stuck claws in his chest and hoisted him up left me shaking. Nothing else in the movie is very scary, but that scene hit me hard for some reason.