Same here, except the teller was my mom. It seemed legit at the time- when I was six. It wasn’t until much later that I understood the context in which she’d watched it. You and I and everyone here have been watching all manner of scary movies and tv shows, right in our own living room for as far back as we can remember. TWOO would have been quite a a spectacle. And I can see how The Wicked Witch of the West could freak a kid out.
Getting back to the OP, the only way I can answer these kind of questions without loosing my mind is to say whatever comes to my mind, which is usually going to be the best, most recent that scared me. That would be Oddity. I mentioned it in the movie thread. It’s well acclaimed by viewers who are into the genre but I don’t know how wide it’s release has been. Anyway, on a rare " actually watch and get into it" movie night, I turned off the lights and let myself get immersed. Holy feck, just the opening sequence had me not quite looking directly at the screen It’s one of those films that can’t not sound stupid on paper. “Blind, psychic uses cursed objects to solve the murder of her twin sister”. What an original, frightening, satisfying film.
My partner could not handle this movie…very disturbing to her For the movie buffs - this is in three parts that will play in sequence and increased my respect for what Michael Mann et al created
One of my all time fav movies, cast, director and score
Stowe is gorgeous
On the Beach has always been a favorite of mine. I first saw it on TV when I was about 9 or 10 years old, just a few years after its theatrical release. I consider it the first adult-themed movie I ever saw. Steeped as we were in the fears of the Cold War, it really made an impression on me. It was too real. I’ve read and re-read the novel many times. Fine performances by all, including Fred Astaire in his first dramatic role. The film differs from the novel in some respects, but the end is every bit as bleak.
“There is still time…Brother” reads the street banner seen at the end, but every night when I watch the world and national news, I come away with the feeling that madness has taken over, and we are soon to run out of time.
Other than nuclear war movies the one that scared me the most when I saw it was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The girl popping up out of the freezer was shocking as all get out scary. And him placing the guy on the meat hooks was bone chilling.
At one time I would have said ‘The Exorcist’, but after I became a father, it became movies, not necessarily horror movies, in which children came to harm. I rented ‘Funny Games’ (American version) and only about 15 or 20 minutes in, I realized I could not watch it because there was a family with kid about the age of my kids at the time, and I knew in a general sense what was coming.
A few years ago I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and found the movie ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’ on a streaming channel. I was watching it all alone, in the dead hours of the early morning, when there was a scene where Emily, sleeping in her college dorm room, started to experience a possession, which caused her to contort and writhe in agony. The camera panned to a digital clock radio on her night stand-- the red digital numbers showed 3:00 am, the ‘witching hour’ time the possession events would happen. Which caused me to reflectively look up at the time on the same model of digital clock with the same red numbers we had sitting above the TV-- and it showed-- yep, 3:00 am. I thought it was a funny coincidence.
Though i can’t speak to how terrifying this is to as a kid growing up under the threat of nuclear apocalypse, as there was zero chance of my parents letting me stay up to watch it. Hell, i wouldn’t have wanted to, which says a lot as to how terrified i was of such things, I would have happily watched the goriest video nasty if I’d been allowed.
Though TBH i am skeptical it would be more terrifying than When The Wind Blows, as it deliberately leaves the horrors of nuclear war to your imagination, which as any good horror movie maker knows, is always going to be scarier than actually showing you “the monster”
The Thing. The Thing from Another World Was the first science fiction that I watched and had my full attention as a youngster im sure it had movie and drive-in goer’s at the edge of there seats back then!
A nuclear holocaust seemed so inevitable as a kid, realistic movies about such an event just weren’t that scary to me unless it involved elements like post apocalyptic mutants or crazed cannibal biker gangs and the such. We reassured ourselves by noting likely nearby targets that would make our end a quick one,
Absolutely not the case for me. I was utterly terrified of anything related to nuclear war, even radiation related plot lines not related to nuclear war were scary.
Hitchcock’s The Birds, seen at age 13 one night on TV. I had to go down to the basement (in our home, a creepy place) afterwards, which was not pleasant.
The original The Shining, viewed in the theater was scary, the book as least as much, especially when reading key parts alone in the house after dark.
