The dying Skeksis Emperor in The Dark Crystal scared the everlasting crap out of me. I usually *loved *being scared as a kid (and still do), in horror movies or haunted houses and what-have-you, but that was just a step too far.
I was about five when I first saw it, and ended up being so freaked out that my grandparents let me stay up with them…as they watched Terminator 2. To this day, that film is absurdly comforting to me.
I saw this at the cinema and it scared the crap out of me, too. I was actually going to mention this one myself.
Others:
The MCP from Tron.
The scene of the supercomputer turning the villainess into a robot in Superman III.
The boatride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Actors with their faces painted a single, solid colour (e.g. the Wicked Witch, Oompa Loompas and the green woman in Lost in Space).
And perhaps the weirdest was when my mum told me about the students getting put through a mincer in The Wall. She told me when I was four!
The Wizard of Oz (the movie, not the book itself) was just full of these sorts of things, wasn’t it. The flying monkeys were probably the worst, but I didn’t always make it to the damned monkeys before I hid under the bed.
My father took me to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind when I was a young’un and it freaked me out for about a week. I saw it again as an adult and understood it, but I also understood what scared me about it!
This is after my time, but one of my boys loved Pingu and used to watch it as often as we’d allow. For a while he refused to watch the cartoon in which Pingu has a nightmare about a walrus. Eventually he did watch it, and we had a very nice talk afterwards about bad dreams. At least that one scares kids for a reason…
Not much freaked me out as a kid, due to early exposure to horror movies, and worse. (I watched an autopsy live at 4.)
There’s 3 things I do remember that creeped me out something fierce. The theme to MAS*H being the first. Even to this day I get chills when it plays, despite it being one of my favorite shows. My sister can’t even be in the room when the show comes on.
The second is the X-Files theme. For the longest time I had to flip to a different channel until the show had finished coming on.
The third is, as mentioned above, the pictures from the Scary Stories series. I bought the series just for those pictures.
Me too. Well, not that scene particularly but just him in general. I really disliked him even though so many people found him cute.
Speaking of friendly things, Casper skeeves me as an adult. Not him, exactly, just the fact that he’s the ghost of a kid and he’s so lonely. It just seems like such unspeakably sad concept for a children’s show. I think I have to stop reminiscing about stuff from my childhood while menstruating. It’s probably not Casper–it’s me.
Hey, so did I! Only it wasn’t a couch, it was a “comfy chair” – I felt much safer behind that comfy chair…
I was also afraid/fascinated by Godzilla, some of the monsters on “Johnny Quest”, the thing in the closet in “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”, the giant rat/spider thingie from “Angry Red Planet”, and various and sundry other beasties… But I felt a lot better once I got behind the comfy chair, that’s for sure!
Kamelian? The robot that could take the shape of whatever.
I agree with you on the Poltergeist clown, as well as all clowns.
I am pretty certain we had the same Poe album that you are describing. Only for me, I love looking at it. I think that album started my life-long love of all things Poe.
Two of the earliest nightmares I can remember having (separate nightmares I think) involved Charles Nelson Reilly as Hoodoo the Magician in Lidsville and Gossamer (the hair monster rom the Bugs Bunny cartoons). Both freaked me out to the point that I couldn’t watch them, though I could watch Match Game or other CNR shows or other Bugs Bunny shows. One of the Gossamer cartoon featured a mad scientist who says “nnnniigggghhhtttttyyyy nighttttt” in a sleepy voice- also freaked me out.
There was a TV show called Circle of Fear that had an episode called Legion of Demons (available on YouTube) that was cheesy as hell by today’s standards but to a 6 year old who attended a “literal hell” Christian school it was for some reason terrifying.
The miniseries Helter Skelter is based on a true story of course, but I’ll count it anyway for reasons I’ll go into: I saw the miniseries when I was in, I believe, 4th grade. Allowing me to watch that is a judgment call I question on the part of my parents, but in their defense most of the other kids in my class seem to have watched it as well because it’s all we were talking about on the days after at school.
For those who haven’t read the book Helter Skelter, in the 1970s it was available in the paperback section of every department store and lots of kids my age would have to sneak a peek when we were in there; it contains photographs of the crime scenes in which the bodies of the victims are removed and replaced with something like a white silhouette- just absolutely horrifying. The miniseries also beefs up the “supernatural” elements of the case for dramatic effect: claims of Charlie resurrecting dead animals and flying buses, Bugliosi’s watch stopping when Manson looks at him the first time, the girls telepathically sing-songing in unison, Manson taking a Christ on the cross pose in the courtroom, etc… I hadn’t read the book in 4th grade of course, but when I did a few years later I learned the watch story and some of the other events were significantly embellished from Bugliosi’s account, that the claims of his supernatural powers and the impromptu ‘telepathy’ with Manson had been rehearsed beginning before they were ever arrested, and there’s nothing supernatural about a guy striking a crucifix pose (don’t even remember from the book- which I later did read- if that actually happened or not, but certainly it’s something Manson could have done), *BUT being a kid *and a religious one at that where any mockery of Jesus was almost supernatural in and of itself and of course satanic people could perform evil miracles- t all added onto the pile. Basically the fictionalization in the miniseries and in my imagination and in the imagination of others talking about it all led to Charles Manson becoming a mythologized combo of anti-Christ/Hannibal Lecter/Freddie Krueger/other-all-powerful-all-seeing-villains/Hoodoo/Gossamer/Hitler/demon/etc. all rolled into one, except far more terrifying because he was ‘real’. Scared the shit out of me for years.
It wasn’t until I was a teenager and watched some interviews with Manson (reruns of Tom Snyder among them) that I began to realize “he’s not a demon- he’s a crazy ass hillbilly- he reminds me of that old drunk nutcase James Oscar, that Daddy gives a lift to when he’s hitchhiking down the highway”. Then when I first saw the real pictures of the crime scene it was amazing that, while obvious terrible and bloody, they weren’t nearly as terrible or as bloody as the imaginations of a bunch of 4th graders! Then finally actually reading the book and realizing that the case was fascinating but it was a story of a bunch of drugged up hippies with knives and guns weak enough to be manipulated by a criminally insane hillbilly runt and then being hunted by one of the most incompetent police departments in history rather than the story of a satanic mastermind who dispatched minions to do his evil bidding through his demonic powers- it was actually a major part of skeptical rebirth.
His voice and that creepy laugh scared the living hell out of me. It was just so…sinister yet mocking. Not to mention he looked like a rotting zombie. If I heard the theme song, I would literally run from the room because it freaked me out so much. Of course, my brother would specifically turn to whichever channel it was on at the right time just to make me suffer.
The commercial for It’s Alive used to scare the shite out of me.
Ditto the levitating undead Tobe Hooper, aka the boy at the windowin Salem’s Lot (this back when vampires were murdering undead bloodsuckers instead of brooding pale boys with nice buns).