I forget the name of the movie, but the one with the babysitter and the guy that calls and says, “Have you checked the children?”, freaked me out when I was a kid. Especially when the call was traced and the operator says, “The call is coming from inside the house!” I slept with the lights on that night and had the covers pulled up over my head (because we all know that bad people can’t find a child under the covers ).
I agree. I wasn’t even “little”, I was 13 when I saw it, but it was disturbing. I think it was the whole “this could actually happen someday” feeling of the time that made it more disturbing.
Large Marge for me, too. I watched it not too long ago and was surprised to see that the makeup was actually pretty damn good for back then and I had good reason to be afraid!
The clown in Poltergeist, yes…but more scary was when they got sucked ino that giant mouth-wall, and later fell out, all bloody as though they had just been reborn. I think my childhood mind was fascinated and troubled by what happened in the wall. I still feel creeped out, just thinking about it.
But the only blank wall we had was in the shower. So somehow I got this mixed up with the shower wall, and for years I would continuously get soap in my eyes cause I’d be too afraid to shut them when washing.
After I saw Fright Night, which in itself is not a terribly scary movie, I had to sleep in my parents’ bed because I kept seeing the red eyes you see at the end of the film.
Jaws taps into a primal fear that’s nothing really unusual, but that opening scene is always worth a mention.
I think, though, what most traumatized me as a child was watching The Tin Drum, and that scene in the doctor’s office where Oskar screams and shatters all the jars of preserved specimens, which slide all over the floor. And then the scene where they drag the horse’s head out of the water and all the eels are swarming inside it. It didn’t terrify me so much as make me feel awfully unsettled, and still does to this day.
Hoo-boy, hope I can sleep tonight, after revisiting so many traumatizing moments in this thread! Planet of the Apes was a biggie, and those doggone flying monkeys terrified me for years & still give me the shakes! Poltergeist egad! And I was a teenager then! Even as an adult I couldn’t sit through The Hitcher on cable.
However, the only time I ever screamed out loud in a movie theatre was during Benji, when I was about 8 yrs old. There’s a scene where the Bad Man kicks Benji’s friend, a little white dog, who went limp and lifeless. That one sent me into hysterics.
Don’t feel bad all, the flying monkey scene scared my brother and sister, too.
Mine is E.T. - I was little when I saw it (5 or 6) and the scene where Eliot and ET get sick and the house gets raided by agents in hazmat suits scared me to death. I had nightmares for a while. I told my mom about it years later, and she apologized profusely - she’d never known it affected me that much. I saw the movie recently, and wow. What was I scared of? A lot of schlock? Like riserius1, I guess I expected it would have more effect on me.
I remember being pretty scared by some parts of E.T. as well. Adults never seemed to figure that out, but you and I aren’t the only ones, I’m sure. This is among the reasons I still dislike that movie.
There’s only one movie scene that scared me so much that it still affects me: the shower scene from “Psycho”. I first saw the movie when I was eleven and at first I didn’t think it was very scary. But I’ve been locking my bathroom door when taking a shower ever since.
Other scenes:
*When Brundle leaps through the window of the clinic to carry Geena Davis away in “The Fly”. I kept imaging the Brundlefly leaping through my window! Another window image that scared me was of the gremlin in The Twilight Zone Movie.
*Sloth in “Seven”. I’ve never watched that movie since then because of that scene.
*Although it’s a rather lame movie overall, the Pascow scenes in “Pet Semetary”.
*I think it was the first “Friday the 13th”—when Kevin Bacon is stabbed from underneath the bed. Whenever I went to bed I thought, “There could be a serial killer underneath my bed right now, just waiting to stab me!”
Another vote for Poltergeist but a different scene: tequila bottle, worm & a slimy quadriplegic was the stuff of nightmares for six year old me.
ET scared the crap out of me when I was five. When he hid in the pile of dolls - that scarred me for years!
Return to Oz creeped me out fully. The mental hospital, the hall of heads, and those wheeled bad guys completely messed me up. Who knew Fairuza Balk would go on to bigger and better things, huh?
Would you believe a Sesame Street skit, of all things, traumatized me as a child? I don’t remember what the skit was about, but at the end Harry (the big, blue monster) roared into the camera and fogged up the lens (simulated by whiting out the image) so all you could see were his eyes. To my fragile and impressionable four-year-old mind, this scene was incredibly terrifying. Once I learned to identify which skit this was I’d run out of the room and wait a couple minutes and then return to the TV once I knew it was safe again to do so.
I’ll add the infamous attacking clown scene from Poltergeist as one that had me freaked out for awhile.
Back in the late 60s, ads for a product called “Dip It” (for cleaning coffee pots) featured a coven of scary-looking, cackling witches (“Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble”).
This, combined with the In Search Of, umm, “documentary” , freaked me out completely. I was terrified of Sasquatch! He was out there…in the woods, behind my house…waiting.
I had nightmares for months. Horrible, relentless nightmares.
Even now, just hearing Leonard Nimoy’s voice brings back terrifying Sasquatch visions!
The worst scene I can remember is from The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark, starring Elliont Gould, I think. Anyway, they’re getting off a deserted island on a WWII bomber turned upside down as a raft/boat. Anyway, at one point they’re at sea and on of the kids is sitting down in the gunner’s capola. The entire front is glass, so you just see out into the empty ocean. Until the GREAT WHITE SHARK swims RIGHT AT ME! Freaked the hell out of me. I haven’t been able to swim anywhere I can’t see the bottom without freaking out since.
More recently, I had rented Jeepers Creepers. I watched the film, not too bad, but it was over. Rather than shutting it off, I just let the credits roll as I cleaned up to go to bed. Well, at the end of the credits, while I’m not paying attention, the villias van goes zooming across the screen and blows his creepy horn. Not expecting that in my silent apartment, it freaked me out.
I didn’t have anything for this thread until you mentioned that. I don’t know what movie it was, but there was this presence? You could tell it was there because it turned the lights red. You’d have, say, a green clock display and it’d turn red. They have one of those felix cat type clocks with the eyes that go back and forth … and at the end its eyes turn red.
I think it was Superman III (correct me if I am wrong) - a woman backs into some kind of sparking machinery, and is turned into a robot. Freaked the heck out of me!
The Shining I saw when I was like 8. The twins really freaked me out.
But something that stayed with me is kind of random. I saw an episode of That’s Incredible once where a kid got drawn (somehow) into a drainage pipe. He survived by floating on his back with his nose and mouth in the air pocket at the top.
I’d stay up at night scared to death about being in that scenario but without the air passage.
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