I saw plenty of horror and sci-fi movies growing up in the 1950s and 60s. The Dracula-Frankenstein-Wolfman classics just rolled off me. I liked them, but I knew there were no such things, and even if there were, those stories took place a long time ago in far off countries. However, “Man Made Monster” starring Lon Chaney Jr. made me nervous. I was afraid of electrical shock after having been zapped one time. But the one that really got me was a little horror movie made in 1958, “The Colossus of New York.” I was 8 when I saw it. I won’t go into the plot but it involved a mechanical creature, driven to madness, who fried people with these rays it shot from its eyes. It took place in contemporary times, and worst of all, it took place in a city only 150 or so miles from where I lived! It was in black and white, well-acted with a creepy piano score. I had nightmares about the Colossus showing up at the front door for years.
The Entity.
It got lousy reviews because its not scary second to second. What makes the scary part more intense are the ‘dull’ parts where people (doctors, scientists, the neighbors) realize what they’re coming up against is not a disturbed woman, but something they can’t control. The denouement was a bit flat, but up til then it has some really terrifying moments.
I never saw it but just the commercials sent me running scared. I was eight at the time.
I don’t really enjoy scary movies so I haven’t seen many, but the movie that scared me the most as a child was The Day After, the nuclear war made-for-tv movie from 1983. I watched it again recently and of course it’s really cheesy but the people and the horse that turn into x-rays and then just disappeared still freaks me out.
The Conjuring is out on DVD tomorrow and I heard it’s worse than the exorcist. ? Has anyone seen it in the theater this year, IS it scary scary?
The Conjuring is middling scary, like the Insidious movies by the same director. But then, none of the older movies listed so far in this thread scared me, so… I really think we should try a thread like this, but limit it to movies seen at 18+ because I didn’t watch these movies as a kid and they’re tame to me, especially The Changeling.
Anyway, the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is In the Mouth of Madness.
My personal theory is that you have to be young and innocent to be truly scared. As you get older and more experienced, being truly scared gets rarer and rarer. My guess here, without even reading any posts, is that most people picked a movie they saw when they were younger than 12 or so.
One of the first movies I can remember seeing was when I was 5 years old. Manitou. I had nightmares for months afterwards. Today, I would probably find it crude and boring.
Recently though, I thought the Evil Dead remake was pretty close in scaring me. The Ju-On films directed by Takeshi Shimizu are all interesting, yet not very scary.
It has some creepy atmosphere, but it relies a lot on jump scares. Watch it with the volume cranked up, the sound production was critical to making the scares effective.
As for the scariest movie I’ve ever seen…I’d have to say probably The Blair Witch Project. I caught it during an afternoon screening when I was in high school and I had to walk home alone afterwards, through the woods, just after sunset.
The first one that came to mind: Audition, by Takashi Miike.
The Exorcist was the scariest for me. When it came out nothing like that had ever been done before and it was a real shocker. I liked Nightmare on Elm Street because it was “fweeky” as Letterman says. But the only other movie that really affected me was Case 39. Watching it, I was getting more and more uncomfortable until I finally realized I was actually scared. I like scary movies but none of them ever are. But that one…yeah.
This. Scared the bejesus out of me. Even watching it again scared me just as much.
Dinosaurus. Of course, I was eight at the time.
Movies don’t scare me. At most, a horror movie might startle me. My reaction to that is usually annoyance, not fear.
Paradise Lost, because I could have easily been a female Damian Echols a few times in my adolescent life.
I was 8 I think when I saw that in the theater. Seriously, who lets a 8 year old go see that movie? The ivy and vines outside my bedroom window were an especially nice touch.
Jaws no question… I will still never go much past waist deep in the ocean.
I saw this movie on video, years ago, while high as hell. I don’t remember a single moment of it–but to this day, just reading the title gives me the shivers. So I guess I was scared at the time.
When I was five-years old (there is no doubt about the date), I saw an ad on TV for the now-classic Village of the Damned. It included this shot (or something virtually identical). I was so upset by it that not only could I not fall asleep that night, I actually vomited. It’s a family story now.
Wolf Creek terrified the bejesus out of me when it was released. Even though I live here in Australia, the big wide uninhabited spaces depicted in the film brought home just how damned easy it would be to do unspeakable things to people and nobody would ever know.
The film was also a compilation of sorts of real-life abductions of backpackers that had occurred in recent years, some solved, others’ bodies feared murdered but never found. Sorta took that urgent desire I’d had for years to do a 'round Australia solo road-trip.
I forgot, 1922 “Nosferatu” with Max Schreck. If you aren’t creeped out by this one, you aren’t human!
I worked with a woman who, at the time she saw it, thought it was real. I haven’t seen it, but I could imagine how someone could think so based on what I know about it.
I finally saw “Poltergeist” a couple years ago, and it bordered on comedy for me. Not scary at all.
Most horror movies do nothing for me. Slashers like the Halloween- and Friday-series I find stupid. Psycho flicks like, er, Psycho and anything dealing with Hannibal Lecter-types, ditto (Misery is a noteable exception!). Same for Haunted House movies and the latest craze, “found footage” (Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity-series).
Having said that, John Carpenter’s The Thing, as well as Alien, both scared the crap out of me. I liked the 2011 prequel The Thing, but it didn’t scare me.
Open Water had me filled with a kind of sick dread throughout.
Threads also scared the shit out of me.