# What movie scared you the most? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 19, 2007, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055 "2007-11-19T18:08:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nivlac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3bc359/32.png) [@nivlac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nivlac)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/21 "2007-11-19T21:23:26Z")
Psycho. Man, was I creeped out after that movie! I turned on all the lights in the house and made sure that the bathroom door was securely locked whenever I took showers for the next few weeks! Today, when I see the movie I actually enjoyed the way that Hitchcock cleverly manipulated the audience with camera angles and red herrings. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/22 "2007-11-19T22:51:17Z")
Angel Heart. The bit at the end with the red window. Ugh. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/23 "2007-11-19T23:11:55Z")
I was pretty young when Omega Man came out and it was quite scary for me. I thought of it first, but then I read the rest of the thread and The Omen might qualify. ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/24 "2007-11-19T23:14:48Z")
It scared me so much that I stopped watching it and have not revisited it even today. John Carpenter’s _The Thing_. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/25 "2007-11-19T23:16:37Z")
I say this as a horror movie afficionado, and in complete seriousness- Killer Klowns From Outerspace. There’s just something primally horrifying about huge fanged clowns who kill. ---
**Author:** ![Roadfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Roadfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadfood)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/26 "2007-11-19T23:21:09Z")
Another vote for _The Exorcist_. I was around 17 when it came out. I saw it in the theater with three friends. I had driven us all to the theater. We were all so freaked out by it that when I got to the house of the first friend to be dropped off, we all sat in the car in the driveway for at least a half an hour, trying to make jokes about demons hiding in the bushes, before any of us could get out of the car. ---
**Author:** ![Ms.Pumpkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a87d85/32.png) [@Ms.Pumpkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms.Pumpkin)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/27 "2007-11-19T23:22:39Z")
**Pet Sematary** , mostly because I was only 9 or 10 at the time, and had never been exposed to any kind of horror movie previously. ---
**Author:** ![Trollhaugen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Trollhaugen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trollhaugen)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/28 "2007-11-19T23:23:08Z")
Event Horizon. I knew it was going to be a looonnnnggggg movie when the opening scene scared me, and that was just the noise of some mini-blinds being pulled up quickly. ---
**Author:** ![LH75](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lh75/32/4438_2.png) [@LH75](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LH75)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/29 "2007-11-19T23:39:17Z")
I was about seven years old when my older sister and her boyfriend took me to see Psycho at our neighborhood theater. We walked home in the dark. I don’t think I have ever been that scared since. ---
**Author:** ![Shawn1767](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shawn1767](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shawn1767)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/30 "2007-11-19T23:46:50Z")
Sad story about _The Exorcist_. It came out when I was real little, so I did not see it on its first run. But my parents went. They were in their early 20s at the time. I remember it being a big phenomenon at the time it came out and lines were around the block. My mom had been reared Catholic and it was quite scary for her. Well, fast forward 30 years and the re-release. I went to see it at the theater when it was re-released and the theater was packed. I believe it was at the Galleria in Metairie before it closed here. Anyway… apparently it did not work for the current generation. Almost the entire audience was laughing the whole way through the movie. They were making fun of it and just really not into it. Imagine being at a movie where the entire audience is made up of the people who post on imdb or youtube. Bleah… ---
**Author:** ![Nightingale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecae2f/32.png) [@Nightingale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightingale)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/31 "2007-11-19T23:53:13Z")
_Poltergeist_ I turned on the TV one night when I was about six just in time to see the tree reach through the window and grab the little boy. My mom changed the channel pretty quickly, but it was too late! I spent the next year being sure the tree outside my bathroom window was going to eat me. _Wolfen_ Kind of a similar story. . . I walked into the room (I think my folks were watching it) and saw these red glowing eyes staring out of the darkness on the screen. Nightmares for a week. _The Exorcist_ I din’t even have the sourage to watch it until I was about 24. I was (and am) a fundie Baptist, so the whole demonic possession thing. . . very real and very scary to me. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/32 "2007-11-19T23:53:34Z")
_Alien_. When the monster baby pops through the guy’s chest at the dinner table. Freaked me out. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2007, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/33 "2007-11-19T23:53:37Z")
The Thing is definitely number one. When I was a young teenager, I snuck out in the living room late at night while mom and dad were asleep and turned on HBO to watch it, sitting very very close to the screen because I was keeping the sound way down so I wouldn’t wake them up. When the guy’s chest turned into a mouth and bit off the other dude’s arms, it scared the SHIT out of me and I jumped back. After that…well, you have to understand, I generally don’t like horror movies. So I never saw The Exorcist or the Omen. My wife talked me into renting Exorcist III for Halloween and the scene with the guy in the hooded cloak with the garden shears in the hospital startled the hell out of me. Creepy movie. Number three I guess would have to be Poltergeist. ---
**Author:** ![Bobotheoptimist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@Bobotheoptimist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bobotheoptimist)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/34 "2007-11-20T00:00:00Z")
As a teenager or older (because even Scooby Doo and anything resembling a talking tree scared the heck out of me as a wee bairn) - Silence of the Lambs - The chick in the well (“It rubs the lotion on its skin…”) was profoundly disturbing. Alien - Just qualifies, I was 13 when I saw it on HBO. The later movies weren’t horror in my opinion, Aliens was pure-D action. Exorcist didn’t bother me, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series were good clean fun. Hellraiser kind of freaked me out, but I saw it on a date so I was a little distracted. Dang it, there was another one that kind of got me, but I can’t remember what it might have been… ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/35 "2007-11-20T00:30:22Z")
[QUOTE=KC Bravelens] The Shining, based on Stephen King’s book, is still the scariest movie ever. [/QUOTE] Seconded. I can’t wait every year for a blizzard. My wife and I start a fire in the fireplace, make some popcorn, turn off all the lights, and get mind fucked. The twins still scare the shit out me more than any gory movie. ---
**Author:** ![DudleyGarrett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d9b06d/32.png) [@DudleyGarrett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DudleyGarrett)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/36 "2007-11-20T00:50:21Z")
[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist] Silence of the Lambs - The chick in the well (“It rubs the lotion on its skin…”) was profoundly disturbing. [/QUOTE] For some reason, this scene always cracked me up. Buffalo Bill: “Put the lotion in the fucking basket!” ---
**Author:** ![Malodorous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47774/32.png) [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/37 "2007-11-20T00:59:21Z")
My parents wouldn’t let me watch any scary movies when I was a little kid (presumably not wanting to deal with me getting spooked), but did let me watch the made for TV movie The Day After, about a nuclear war between the Soviets and the US. I had a fairly active imagination, and I think that film scared me more then if they’d just let me watch a few monster flicks. The one particular scene that affected me is, after spending the first half of the film with the characters being vaguely aware that tensions between Russia and the US are building but assuring eachother that saner heads would prevail and that an actual war couldn’t happen, look up to see the plumes of the US missiles being launched, knowing that its probably in retaliation for a Russian launch that’s already happened and will hit them in less then an hour. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/38 "2007-11-20T01:06:01Z")
Alien. I snuck into the theatre with some friends when I was 9 years old (my parents had already refused to take me to see it) and had to leave halfway through. Nightmares and for about two weeks I wouldn’t walk into a room without checking the ceiling first. We got a VCR when I was 15. That was the very first movie I rented, just so I could finally watch it all the way through. Still one of my all-time favorite horror movies. ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/39 "2007-11-20T01:11:55Z")
[QUOTE=missbunny] Trilogy of Terror (last segment only). [/QUOTE] Definitely yes. Also _Threads_. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055/40 "2007-11-20T01:29:12Z")
I saw Poltergeist when I was 6 and that was pretty scary. The Thing was pretty damn scary and I was pretty darn young when I saw it. Probably warped me for life. On the bright side horror movies don’t scare me any more though I don’t watch those torture porn movies. Marc [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movie-scared-you-the-most/427055.md?page=3)