I don’t get scared at movies, but I do get disturbed.
Last summer’s Jeepers Creepers, despite its flaws, was disturbing. I wish I’d known the back story before seeing it though – would have been even more effective, I think.
Sometimes it just makes all the difference if you can see something on its first run. I saw Night of the Living Dead at a drive-in when it was first released, and it just froze me up. But now, it’s been remade and parodied and used in TV commercials – hard to take it seriously as a movie – it’s a product, and it just seems silly.
Nobody’s mentioned Don’t Look Now. It keeps you in anticipation that something is going to happen at any moment. More mental horror than in your face special effects.
OK, The Exorcist and Blair Witch were definitely scary. The Exorcist I can NOT watch alone. Blair Witch gave me nightmares for a week.
Tonight I saw a movie I’ve been hearing about and finally got the chance to see. It’s a Japanese movie called Ring (or Ringu, according to the IMDB).
The basic premise is that there’s a cursed videotape going around. If you watch it, you get a phone call that tells you you’re going to die in exactly one week. And people do. They die with hideous expressions of terror on their faces.
A journalist whose cousin dies from this decides to investigate. She watches the tape, gets the call and realizes it’s real and she’s going to die. She and her ex-husband spend the week trying to solve the mystery of the tape and prevent their deaths (he watches it, too).
It’s very atmospheric and creepy. But for a while, I thought all the hype was false. There were a few moments where I got creeped out, but that was it. It wasn’t as scary as people had said it was. Until the last few minutes.
I won’t give away what happened, but I have never had a movie scare me that badly. Not even the spider walk in The Exorcist got to me like this movie did. The spider walk was a shocking scene - this movie’s scene STAYS with you. Even just thinking about it, I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.
If you can find this movie, watch it. It’s subtitled, but it didn’t detract from the movie at all.
::Raises an eyebrow:: Back story? One of the things I hated about JC was that it seemed to have basically no back story. Where did you find a back story?
Two more votes for Hellraiser and The Blair Witch Project*. Both have their flaws, but a damn good scare, all the same. I wasn’t scared during Hellraiser, but afterward. Never looked at Venetian blinds in the same way again-- too much like the slats in the room opening to admit Pinhead.
I’d also like to nominate The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The part where the old man gives a ride to one of the girls (she thinks she’s finally safe & escaping), and he begins jabbing her with his cane. Creeps me out to this day.
The Wizard of Oz (you can stop laughing at me now)
No joke - I can still remember the nightmare I had after seeing it for the first time. Nothing I’ve seen as an adult even comes close. Why do they push that movie on kids???
Stephen King in Danse Macabre IIRC said that one of the scariest movie for a kid is probably Bambi (because of the scene where Bambi’s mother is killed), so no I’m not laughing at you, actually I kind of agree with you. Any movie can be scary depending on the state of mind you’re in when you see it.