Oh yeah. I wasn’t really scared but I didn’t like him. The frowning face. He seemed so angry. I like him a lot more now.
Also didn’t like Sweetums. To be honest, Sweetums is still creepy.
I guess that’s bringing it back to Jim Henson, since he also worked on the Witches…
Oh hell yes. I have still never said Bloody Mary thrice before a mirror in a dark room. I’m going to see if I have the balls to finally do it tonight.
The picture of Tash in The Last Battle. Freaked me out, couldn’t look at the page. Terrifying.
Did anyone else read John Bellairs when they were kids? I think all of his books frightened the heck out of me, but there’s one scene from (I think) The Mommy, the Will and the Crypt) where the main character is walking down a windy, moonlit street, and sees leaves and something white blowing across the ground. He gets closer, and realises it’s a death mask scuttling towards him.
This is the sound of me hiding under the bed.
I hadn’t watched that skit in ages. Thanks for reminding me of it, lol!
+1
I was also scared of the “Scary Stories” book series.
Oompa Loompas. From the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka movie.
Except they scare me as an adult.
Sharks (from seeing Jaws at the age of 7 while living in Hawaii and going to the beach every weekend) and vampires.
Also, the Wicked Witch of the West. And the “daDUMP. daDUMP. daDUMPDUMPDUMP” music from Jaws.
Oh God, yeah.
Also, the Daleks in the original Dr. Who. Exterminate! Exterminate!
The evil Queen as the apple-bearing, old lady in Snow White!
The little devil doll that had the soul of an african warrior trapped in it. Specifically, the shot of it rising out of the bath tub at the end of the hall.
I was going to mention a certain bug based movie, but remembered that such creatures are not fictional. Damn.
OOOOh yes. He was scary. So was the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. I had to run from the room. I’m quite surprised my parents let me watch them in view of their dislike of me watching westerns and stuff which didn’t bother me.
Oh, tell me. Those were intense. Those pictures. Remember the lady with stringy hair and no eyes? Blech. The Thing still gets me, too. The stories by themselves were a bit creepy but they’d never have stuck in my mind but for the illustrations. And the scary black font…those books always made me shudder. I actually re bought them as an adult and they still get me.
“Trilogy of Terror” with Karen Black. Yeah, it freaked me out when the thing started cutting through the suitcase she had it trapped in. I don’t have any idea what the other two parts of the trilogy were, but that doll sure made an impression.
Wanda the witch from Sesame Street scared the crap out of me. But everytime it came on I had to watch it.
Oh, yeah. That’s what I stopped to mention. Not the stories, so much, you know. Just those goddam, soul-destroying, pants-wetting illustrations by Stephen Gammell.
And I now see that reprints will be coming out, newly illustrated by Brett Helquist. Fie, I say! He does nice work, but he doesn’t horrify.
Yup. The original Outer Limits creeped me out for years. Still does, a little. The one that really got to me was “Warm Hands, Cold Heart.”
The child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. ‘Ice-cream, lollipops, all free today’
Shudder.
filling_pages, newly illustrated? That’s absurd. I’m the last person to judge a book by its cover, but honestly, these books were defined by their pictures. And those pictures were wonderful. Every person I meet who has read the books comments on the illustrations. They were incredibly powerful and Stephen Gammell was incredibly talented.
He could make the simplest things seem so incredibly unwholesome. Even simple things like black cats seemed intensely evil when he drew them.
Might have been early teens:
The Salt Vampire from Star Trek TOS (Man Trap)
and even worse, the weeping woman who had her face removed in “Charlie X”
Movies, mostly.
The original “Invaders from Mars” (1953, but I saw it on TV a few years later, maybe '57 or '58). I was alone in my grandmother’s house during the afternoon, broad daylight, but it really got to me. Why? You can’t even trust your parents!
Two movies I saw on a double bill , presumably shortly after they were released in 1959. I would have been probably 10 at the time, and I had to cover my face so as not to see certain things - “House on Haunted Hill” and “Horrors of the Black Museum”.
Roddy