The instant I saw the thread title I thought of the Boogyman from “The Real Ghostbusters.”
That thing was scary as fuck! And the cartoon was designed for little kids! I’ve been trying to find an aimage of it online, but none seems to exist.
Here is a not too good picture, but you can still see how much he could disturb a child.
And interesting side note, while researching ghostbusters trivia, I found out that the guy who did the voice for Peter Vankman in the Ghostbusters cartoon also did the voice of Garfield in the Garfield and Friends cartoon. Bill Murray, who played Dr. Venkman in the two Ghostbusters movies, did the voice of Garfield in the recent Garfield movie.
Kinda freaky, no?
The ghost girl in The Ring was pretty freaky. It really made up for how badly the movie drug up to that point.
Cujo
Leatherface
The Thing
Predator
As for lame
Worms that’s right. Earthworms get pissed off and start attacking people…
The vampires in Dusk til Dawn
Must disagree. I saw this movie when it first aired, when I was about 8 or 9, and it terrified me. I had nightmares about these little guys creeping around my house, waiting to drag me into the chimney, as much as 10 years later.
When I saw this movie again in my 20s, I was surprised at how cheesy the special effects were (cardboard cutouts menace William Demarest at one point), and that helped to dispell some of the - er - demons from my dreams. But the way I saw these little monsters as a child haunted me for a very long time.
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I saw that years ago. I wonder if they were supposed to be scary, because they still looked cute to me.
No matter how big a bunny gets, it’s still cute.
Now…if they had turned it into a huge, rotting thing with razor sharp claws, that would have been different. Not scary, but something I might consider running fromt.
I love it when cute things turn to sources of real horror.
Movie: The Shining. People talk about Jack Nicholson’s work, and the infamous “What were those costumed guys doing?” scene. But the scene that really freaked me out was when son of Shelley keeps on repeating ‘Redrum’, while Shelley wakes up, and first thought (as well as the audience) though he was being cute…until she looked at the mirror.
TV: The ‘turn back’ birds in Teen Titans.
Best: The possessed Reagan in ‘The Exorcist’; the demon in ‘Night Of The Demon’; ‘Mother’ in ‘Psycho’.
Worst: the so-called ‘cult’ British TV show ‘Dr. Who’ had half-decent monsters and villains in its early days and won a fair reputation for being scary. However, in the 5-6 years before it was mercifully axed the production budget had gone waaay down, while audience sophistication had gone waaay up, and the so-called monsters were spectacularly weak and unimpressive. They’re bringing it back, so it will be interesting to see if they manage to make shows of decent quality.
I’d also like to cite ‘Space 1999’, which relied on the premise that an obviously perfectly normal human actor, if given skin of a garish hue, constituted some sort of inter-galactic alien villain. Every week.
Re Doctor Who
As a Whovian, I respectfully disagree. Monsters, aliens, and special effects were pretty cheezy for most of the series. The writing and acting were often marvellous. But the aliens often look like actors in unconvincing face paint, unconvincing piles of latex, or unconvincing miniatures. The Daleks and the Cybermen looked great. Nearly everyone else was ‘I don’t care if I look milk man with electrical tape on his uniform and bits of imitation leather glued to his head. I’m an alien I tell you! A dangerous alien!’
For me it was the toy clown in Poltergeist. When he attacked the boy (Robby?) in the bedroom it freaked me out. I’ve been creeped out by clowns ever since.
The worst had to be Jack Frost. A serial killer dies and comes back as a killer snowman. I don’t think so.
By the time Poltergeist came out, I was too old to really get freaked out by a horror movie… but I have known LOTS of people who relly hated that toy clown. Even the first time I saw the movie, I remember thinking, “Jeez, that thing’s friggin’ horrible. What sane parent would put THAT in a kid’s room?”
…and I remember Jack Frost, too. Eesh. And judging from all the one-liners, the producers were hoping for a Freddy Krueger kind of franchise thing, here…
Re Phantasm
The first was mostly a standard horror film. But, it had a certain something.
The second had some very original ideas, and IMHO one of the most frightening lines in any horror film. The Tall Man is tormenting a priest. The film does not make it clear if he’s lying to frighten the priest, or if he’s telling the truth about the universe the films are set in. “You think when you die you go to Heaven? You come to us!” No God, no eternal reward, just a conversion process that turns human bodies into mindless slaves.
The third film was more action oriented.
The fourth (and I hope the last, as it so nicely wrapped things up) reaches levels of dread and creepiness seldom achieved.
Minor spoiler-
One of the characters is driving a hearse. A strange old woman in old-fashioned clothes suddenly appears in the passenger seat beside him. She stares at him from behind spectacles of smoked glass. He (and most of the audience) wait for her to say something strange and terrifying or to transform into some hideous monster. Instead, she stares at him for thirty seconds and vanishes. An attack or a prophecy of doom would have heightened the fear and tension, and then relieved them. The quiet visit just raises them, and provides no release. Phantasm IV isn’t about monsters popping up and chasing the heroes. It’s about the fact that doom is coming, and nothing can stop it.
Glad to see someone else remembers what I’m talking about. That guy made Peter Lorre sound like Ol’ Blue Eyes.
Worst:
The Killer Tree in From Hell it Came. Bad guy gets reincarnated as walking tree. He looks less convincing than the trees in The Wizard of Oz. Treebeard he ain’t.
Best evil clown: Pennywise from the made-for-TV movie It