Oh heck yeah! When he’s in the scarecrow and all you can see are his terror filled eyes! The grain silo scene disturbed me way more than it should have.I sure wish they still made TV movies like that. That was the same era as Trilogy of Terrorand Harvest Home. Does anyone remember any other titles from that time period?
I watched a lot of horror movies as a kid, epecially the ones they showed on Sunday afternoons where there was a host, like Elvira or Paul Barer. One movie that I cannot bring myself to ever watch again is Joe D’Amato’s Death Smiles on a Murderer. It’s a cheesy, Italian movie from 1973 starring Klaus Kinski and is exactly what you would expect based on that criteria.
I don’t remember all the details of the plot - if I ever understood them to begin with- but one of the main characters is killed by being bricked up in a cellar. She then comes back from the dead to seek revenge. One minute she’s this beautiful young woman and then she suddenly has turned into a rotting corpse. Holy fuck, I can’t think of a single image that has struck such dread in my heart. If I saw it today I’m sure I’d find it silly and not at all scary or realistic. Of course, that’s not going to happen becasue I can’t even bring myself to google a photo. To this day my best friend and I talk about the afternoon we watched it, cowering together on my couch and screaming in terror.
As for not scary, devil possession movies are real yawners for me. With the exception of *The Exorcist *, and even that was really more gross than scary.
Books:
Most - Passing Strange by by Joseph Citro and David Diaz
Maybe you have to be familiar with a lot of the places they’re talking about, and maybe it needs to be late at night, but this “non-fiction” book is the scariest thing I’ve ever read, far scarier that the scores of horror novels I’ve read.
Least - toss up between House of Leaves by mark z. danielewski and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.
Movies:
Most - In the Mouth of Madness and Phantoms
Least - The Changeling and The Fog…I don’t know, maybe if you watch them for the first time when you’re 8 rather than 30+ they’re scarier, but I can’t believe how many people claim they’re the scariest movies they’ve ever seen.
The Thing (1982) - Caught it on a late night showing on cable c. 1986. Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep that night.
The Shining (the Jack Nicholson vehicle) however isn’t the least bit scary to me after all the parodies it’s endured-Ol’ Jack’s incessant scenery chewing I find hilarious more than anything else, so much so that I would look askance at anyone who professed to be scared of it today.
Start lookin’ DiFool. Okay, I wouldn’t say it actually scares me anymore, after 32 years and countless viewings, but it did have its moments and I still get tense during the scene in room 217.
Oh, God, yes. I read that story as a teenager and had pretty much the same reaction: mortal terror, frantic avoidance of mirrors, especially at night, etc.
As an adult, I re-read it. Or tried to … because I just couldn’t finish it. When the nastiness started, I had to put it down.
Right now, once more, I’m most of the way through re-reading that book of short stories (the book is called “The Picnic, and Suchlike Pandemonium”, if anyone’s curious). Most of them are so light and cheerful! And now I’ve just got “The Entrance” to go … and I’m hovering, hovering, trying to get my nerves up…
Book…Ghost Story. Read it when I was in my early 20’s. Had to keep all the lights on around the house.
Movie/TV…Salem’s Lot. Saw that when I was about 10. To this day, the image of the vampire scratching the 2nd floor window, telling the boy to open the window and let him in still gives me the heebie jeebies.
I remember that creature! It scared the crap out of me, and I was older than five. Geez, I haven’t thought about that since I was ten or eleven. Hmmm, wonder if it’s on YouTube.
Other scares for me were the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz and the banshee in Darby O’Gill and the Little People. At least up until I was seven or eight.
Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. The murders and the fact that it was real. That could’ve been me, either murdered or murderer. I guess I was about 13 when I read that.
As for fiction, the book that kept me up at nights was 'salem’s Lot.
I’ve never ‘met’ anyone else who’s read that story! And yeah, part of the genius of it is that it comes after all these witty little pieces of clever froth, so your guard is down and you’re expecting some quirky characters to wander up with gin fizzes and BLAMMO.
I haven’t had the guts to reread it since I was a teenager. I keep thinking I should, because it was so good, but there’s a mirror in our bedroom…
The TV previews for Jaws freaked me out enough as a (relatively sensitive) little kid that I didn’t even need to see the movie to be unwilling to swim in water I can’t see the bottom of, to this day of life in my mid-40s. There was a period of time I’d even give swimming pools a serious sussing out before entering.
Anybody remember an old CBS TV show called “The Night Stalker”? A reporter (played by Darren McGavin) in I think Las Vegas investigated killings that always wound up being done by a different monster-of-the-week.
Not high drama, by any stretch, but one episode is routinely considered to be the absolute worst episode in the show’s brief run, and is in the running for the dumbest episode of any show ever. It was called “Chopper,” and it was about a headless motorcycle rider who used a sword to kill people.
It scared the absolute CRAP out of me. Nightmares-for-seven-nights-running, had-to-have-the-light-on-at-all-times, refused-to-sleep-in-a-room-by-myself SCARED. It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s or early 30s that I realized how truly dumb that show was.
On a different note, Stephen King’s short story “Gramma” still gives me the heebie-jeebies, probably because all my relatives have always been considerably older than me. And I finished the last 200 or so pages of “The Shining” in a single night, because I was too scared to go to sleep.
Remember in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? when the detective looks through the keyhole, and he sees Jessica Rabbit, only it’s NOT HER AT ALL BUT A HORRIFYINGLY UGLY VERSION OF HER AND THEN SHE CHASES HIM ALL OVER THE PLACE HOLY CRAP RUN RUN RUN!.
I don’t know why, but as a little kid that scared the CRAP out of me.
The scene that freaked me out from The Stand is Stu’s escape from the hospital after killing the agent. He’s running around getting more and more scared because he can’t find an exit. And there are all these dead and dying medical people, and he finally gets to an exit door at the bottom of some steps and a hand grabs his ankle just as he’s getting ready to leave.
I literally (and I do mean literally) jumped up out of bed at that moment. I think my pulse rate didn’t go back down for three days.
Okay, I wouldn’t say it actually scares me anymore, after 32 years and countless viewings, but it did have its moments and I still get tense during the scene in room 217.