I saw Scream An Scream Again when I was a child. There’s a scene where someone’s fingers are being lopped off by pruning shears. Pruning shears have given me the willies ever since. (I use them though, of course. I just can’t not think of that scene.)
Large Marge terrified me as an adult.
For me it’s any cartoons that had psychedelic imagery. Dumbo was particularly traumatic. To this day I think Dumbo and Pinocchio are scarier than any movie featuring Michael Myers, Jason Voorhies, or Fredy Krueger.
Jaws. To this day, when I’m swimming, and cannot see the bottom of the water, I get nervous.
The Space: 1999 episode “Dragon’s Domain”. For years afterwards, darkened doorways or windows made me nervous.
When I was 8-ish I went to a movie theater near our house for a matinee showing of FREAKS.
That was weird for a little kid. The theater pulled the movie after the first showing, where I and a handful of kids had our psyches messed with.
When I was about 15 my 10 year old brother and I went to see Food of the Gods. I thought it was hilariously awful but it shook him up something fierce. He jabbered about it for weeks and I got in trouble for taking him to it.
nevermind, my mistake
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Do you remember those illustrations? From the mouth of hell. Apparently there’s a movie coming. Yay.
Yup, I had all those books and I could read them all night long with no sense of fear at all. That James Taylor song struck more fear into my young heart than any number of horror story books.
Yes. All the more so because it was completely unexpected the first time you saw her face.
Pascow’s scene in Pet Sematary, when he appears at the bedroom door, then face to face with the father. I still think about that falling to sleep 30 years later. Gage slicing the Achilles’ tendon with razor blade also.
In the past week or so I saw someone post on Facebook that the movie wasn’t very good. The post was from someone who had read the books as a kid.
60s Superman TV show had mole men from underground who scared me some. I was around 7 when I saw them. I have seen the episode as an adult and it was not scary now.
I didn’t realize it was out already. That’s disappointing.
When I was 11 or 12 (early 80s, pre-parental controls) we got cable and I somehow started watching Looking for Mr. Goodbar. I’ve never seen or read about it since so I only have the memory of a sex worker (I want to say Diane Keaton?) and a gory stabbing at the end (done by somebody like Richard Gere?) Anyway it was probably the first taboo/violent thing I ever saw and it bothered me for a long, long time afterward.
I remember reading some EC horror comic knockoff, don’t remember the title. The artwork wasn’t nearly as good, but one story stood out. A mad scientist had invented a suit that enabled him to turn insubstantial. He used it to walk through bank vaults, turn solid, steal all their cash, turn insubstantial, and leave. He robbed several more banks this way, getting more cocky and convinced no one could stop him.
In his final attempt, a security guard entered the vault as he was robbing it. The guard drew out his pistol and told him to freeze. The mad scientist made to turn on his suit and escape, but the guard shot and hit the engine thing on the back of his suit. The scientist phased through the wall and moved through the ground, but his suit stopped working. The last panel showed him frozen in place underground, his face in shock for all time. Since then I get the oogies whenever I think of somebody buried alive.
In a Time Life book from a set we had, possibly the book on Early Man, there was a drawing of a large animal (saber-toothed tiger?) holding an obviously dead man in its jaws. That used to really freak me out when I was about 4. Haven’t seen the drawing in many years. This may have been the book:
Rotten tomatoes actually has it rated fairly highly (78%).
Seconded. That movie was a crime against humanity. (And lapinity, I guess.)
Loved that book, and the only way that I would say it caused me trauma was that it caused me to seek out and watch the movie.
The other movie that did give me a bit of trauma was Ghostbusters. The scene where the devil dog is chasing Rick Moranis, and he ends up outside the restaurant facing it down gave me nightmares for weeks. I watched it again with a friend about a decade or so ago, and that scene still made me pretty uncomfortable.
I’m pretty sure a kidnapper I once dreamt about was inspired by the “child catcher” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. As for the film maker’s intent, well, I don’t know.
I was also crept out by those flying monkeys and the Oompa Loompas, but I don’t remember them haunting my sleep.
My brother is six years older than me. When he was in high school, he and the neighbor boy were heavily into sci-fi and horror. One day he brought home Dracula by Bram Stoker. Ten-year-old me read that book. It scared the holy shit out of me, but I also couldn’t quit reading it because I had to find out how it ended.
All subsequent vampire books and movies that I’ve read and seen have seemed quite tame.