Eighty posts in and no mention of Jaws. Until now.
There are two types of people who have seen Jaws: (1) those who will admit that the movie induced some level of fear about going into the ocean; and (2) liars.
Hell House, LLC
Cheesy low-budget found footage. I have long been a fan of horror and couldn’t even remember the last time I was scared by a movie. Creeped out? Sure. Scared? Nope.
Then those fucking clowns…I spent days afterward furtively glancing into every empty room I walked by in my house just hoping a monster clown was not in there.
EDIT: I’m not even sure it’s objectively scary, btw. I call them “monster” clowns but they’re regular, normal clowns. I think it just has to hit you right way for it to be effective. Boy did it ever hit me the right way.
I just came in to post that movie. Granted, I was only 8 when I saw it in the theater, but it scared the holy hell out of me.
I thought of two others:
30 Days of Night, which is vampires in Pt. Barrow, AK.
Descent, about cavers encountering some unexpected things underground.
The summers of 1975 and 1976 were the most fantastic years of my beach-going life. We had the waves to ourselves. Jaws was terrifying but I (or anybody else that lived at the beach and around fishermen) had no reason to think that big screen monster was anything but fantasy.
Are we talking full-length theater-released movies? Because if we expand into analog horror there’s a lot to choose from like Channel 58’s work.
I think the reason Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove work is not only because of how realistic it was, it also relied on the fact that the bomber pilots did the right thing. IOW not dependent on incompetence. I’d put The Thing into that category too. It’s scarier when everyone does everything right but it still doesn’t help.
The thing that really makes this one effective is that if you watched its premiere - we did - you just aren’t expecting it. The X-Files could be scary, sure, but all within a certain standard Chris Carter framework. This one starts horrifically, a different tone from any other episode, and it just keeps going.
That second one, hoo boy. There are some scenes still stuck in my head where your eyes start to focus in a darkened scene, and your eyes start to adjust and you’re like holy fuck what is that, is that what I think that is, why doesn’t he see that? [Plus, you know, never burn a demonic book.]
Not a movie, but The Haunting of Hill House had a similar bunch of scenes.
We were 12 and had been dropped off at the mall as one is in the suburbs, and a disinterested teenager pushed free sneak preview passes into our hands. Sadistic bastard. I’ll be honest, at some point one of us said “this is boring!” in the least convincing tone ever, and we left.
Hell yes, great selection.
Hey now. Parts of Jaws scared me, like the head and various floating body parts, but that was more like fear of being grossed out. But the movie as a whole didn’t inspire any fear. I haven’t really watched it in years because I root for the shark and we know how it ends for it. Same with Cujo. To be fair, I know it did indeed scare lots of people, so maybe they have more common sense than I.
While I personally don’t think that An American Werewolf in London is one of the “scariest movies,” I have a couple close friends who do. In fact, one of them accompanied me to a matinee showing when the movie was first released and he found that he had to leave the theater. I think the combination of practical effects, jump cuts, sound, and humor was just a bit too much for him to handle. He eventually was able to watch the (uncut) movie on TV, but he still found it extremely unsettling…and he still does.
It’s notable in my house because my wife knows that I cry every time at the end.
I watched The Blair Witch Project in the theater without having heard much about it and it absolutely was the most scared I’ve been watching a movie. I think a large part of it was the lack of a musical soundtrack. It made it feel real in a way I’d never experienced before.
I remember looking away during the ‘at night’ sequences and wishing for morning to come.
I didn’t see the Blair Witch Project until it came to cable. I’m sure it hits different when you’re watching at home on the couch, but the only thing I really felt the whole time watching it was how I hadn’t been camping in a while and remember it being fun.
I saw The Blair Witch Project in its original run in the movie theater, at a time I was leading scout groups on overnight camps. The sound of a tent being zipped opened during the middle of the night still gives me the willies (mostly because I didn’t want to get up to find some kid’s tent splattered with vomit). If the tent got zipped up again a few minutes later, they means it was just a bathroom run. Otherwise, there’s something that needs to be investigated in the dark. By me.
My distinct memory of the first time I saw Jaws was wet floor mats.
Double-dating to the drive-in. KFC and beer for refreshments. When Bruce rose out of the water to smile at Brody, the sound you heard was 4 beers hitting the floor.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Thank you for explaining the wet floor mats. I was thinking something else.
Oddly enough, that was a movie we both got bored watching. I didn’t watch it during it’s first run in part because I heard how scary the movie was.
I think this is because when the movie first came out it was very novel in it’s use of a shaky cam and lack of music made the movie feel different and more real. We had already watched Cloverfield (which she LOVED) so it felt passe by the time we watched it.
The old “Casablanca is full of clichés” effect.
Laugh, sounds like our daughters should meet. She is the only one in her friend group who likes scary movies.
It was the first “found footage” film I had ever seen and had a huge impact on me. I left the theater thinking this low budget film was going to win the Oscar for best picture. I’m sure it would be laughable watching it today. Its influence has retroactively diminished its quality.