Sure, those films made from his horror novels, but some of the others have been most excellent. Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, The Dead Zone, Delores Claiborne, were great and I have high hopes for The Green Mile.
JMHO - I don’t find bloody or spooky-music-startle-effects-FreddieKruger-stuff to be scary. However, movies like Silence of the Lambs or Helter Skelter scare the crap out of me.
>^,^<
KITTEN
Please tell your pants it’s not polite to point.
The scariest commercial for a movie I never saw was “Carrie”. I was in grade school and those commercials scared the bejesus out of me. That and the “Amityville Horror” with the little pig’s eyes looking thru the window. Yikes! Maybe it was the Catholic upbringing, but demonic movies do me in.
Movies aside, there was one episode of “The Twilight Zone” that made my hair stand on end. It was about this freaky little doll that kept re-appearing even though they kept trying to destroy it. Brrrr.
The scariest song was “Rollercoaster” by the Ohio Players. My sister had me convinced that the urban legend was true, and I’d cover my ears every time I heard the song come on.
Needless to say, I’m anxiety ridden so I don’t watch scary movies much anymore. I’m still on the therapy couch over Chuckie…
Roman Polanski’s “Scissors” was really bizarre. Weird, but bizarre. “The Shining” scared the living bejeezus outa me, as did that hideous devil doll thing in “Trilogy of Terror.” Also, the original “Frankenstein” freaked me out. My dad used to wake me and my brother up to watch it. AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!
I saw The thing (1982) when Elvira hosted the premiere at a theater in Hollywood. (I understand the movie was a real flop.) It was the only scary movie I have seen since 1960, with special effects and all.
About 1960 I saw Mill of the Stone Women, apparently made in Belgium; it was rather a knock-off of House of Wax. The scary part was at the end, set in a windmill that was on fire, when the wax figures–actually wax-coated corpses of people the villain had killed–traveled along the track and started burning; flesh burned off the bones and eyeballs fell out of the sockets! Yeek! I had nightmares for a week.
The original MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM from 1932 (Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray) has a MUCH more grotesque fire-in-the-wax-museum scene than the Vincent Price version, HOUSE OF WAX.
Scary & Disturbing: Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Scary, Disgusting & Funny: Brain Dead, the Best Gore Horror ever.
Plain F***ing Scary: Hellraiser I - The Best Horror. Period.
Creepy Scary: The Shining, The Vanishing (although I actually mean the original Dutch version “Het Gouden Ei”, ‘The Golden Egg’), Nosferatu (silent one, 1923 I think), and, in a very disturbing way, Schindler’s List. Just to think that that stuff isn’t fiction makes my stomach turn…
I cann’t believe anyone was scared by “Trilogy of Terror!” I was in my mid-teens when it first aired, and I fell off the sofa laughing, and I nearly injured myself when I saw a recent rerun.
First off, the doll itself looks like Buckwheat. It chases cross-eyed Karen Black around her apartment going “yanni yanni yanni,” and it never once occurs to her to drop-kick the little SOB across the room and just LEAVE. That scene where she tosses him in a suitcase and sits watching while he patiently saws his way out of the Samsonite–hilarious!
As for me, I think Demi Moore’s “Scarlet Letter” is the scariest goddam thing I have ever seen.
I haven’t seen (nor will I see) the Pokemon movie, so I can’t nominate that one…
I’ll have to go with the cheese-fest “The Fog” because I saw it in grade school on halloween night at someone else’s house and it scared the crap out of me. As an adult, I laughed my ass off at it.
I don’t really like horror movies though, and I never watch slasher/gore movies…
Scream-because I have a friend that looks just like David Arquette and he showed up at my door at one of the climatic parts of the movie and scared the snot out of me.
Silence of the Lambs: first time I saw it was after bar time at about 3-4 a.m. I was driving home (sober but very tired) when I started thinking that a super intelligent serial killer could be waiting for me at home. This is the only time that I have been scared by a movie as an adult.
As a child, the scariest movie to me was Salem’s Lot. The scene where the kid is floating outside of the window used to give me nightmares.
Y’know why coming into these sort of threads depresses me? Because so many of my TM brothers and sisters don’t watch any movies that are MORE THAN 20-25 YEARS OLD!!!..thank god for Dex and Flora and a few of you other fellas…
Here’s a thread-hijack query: Do you guys feel that older movies just aren’t that frightening, or would you never think to hit a repertory house or rent a B&W film in ANY case?
Uke: Actually, my VCR is busted so right now I don’t rent ANYthing.
But, to answer your question, I do find older movies frightening. Psycho (the original) scared the bejeezus outta me (but I haven’t seen it in awhile and I had just seen the Shining the other night which is why it came to mind). Back when my VCR did work, I used to rent Hitchock stuff all the time.
Oh, and btw, one of my alltime favorites is “Gaslight”…
Ok, you can now file that away in the “More than I really cared to know” category…
Okay Flora,It Does seem a little lame now,but I was quite the paranoid. I was afraid of all vampire movies,used to sleep with a pillow over my neck! OTOH,I saw Hellraisers and thought it was fine.Go figure.
I saw a made-for-TV version of The Exorcist when I was in fifth grade and couldn’t sleep for a week. Only after a long talk with a minister did I feel better. Saw it again when I was eighteen - no biggie.
Others that I haven’t seen in the previous list:
John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness - A gooey green liquid is actually the devil! Mr. Frost - Jeff Goldblum is actually the devil! Videodrome - Debbie Harry attempts to act! Rosemary’s Baby - Don’t remember much about it except that it scared me. Oh yeah, and Mia Farrow is Rosemary - now she’s scary! The Believers - Voodoo, baby! Serpent and the Rainbow - More voodoo, baby! Eyes of Laura Mars - Faye Dunaway!
Goofy comments aside, each of these movies truly freaked me out.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, dogs are from Pluto.
I’m still going to go with that episode of the muppets with the ‘send in the clowns’ song. Goes hand in hand with that episode of Fantasy Island where the dolls/toys come to life and hunt the guests.
I’m with you on the old movie thing! A lot of movies today rely way too much on special effects to get their point across.
As for scary movies, I mentioned in another thread about the Val Lewton movies, and “Dead of Night”. For some variety though, I’ll bring up “Seconds”, about an underground organization that will fake your death and create a new identity for you. Not necessarily a scary movie, but depressing as hell.
