I've been meaning to rewatch Watership Down for the last twenty years but have still not managed to deal with the trauma from forty years ago.
"The Thing" (1982)
I first saw this movie at the age of 13, in a very dark and creepy unfinished basement. It was terrifying.
Even after all these years, this movie still holds up very well to modern standards and stands out as one of the best sci-fi horror movies of all time. I just watched it again in October (my designated horror movie month) and it still never fails to make me uncomfortable and on edge while watching.
I'm using "scare" a little loosely here, but I was waaaay to young to have seen clips of Alien when I did. It really fucked up to the point that I wasn't able to sleep in pitch black into my adulthood. Nowadays, Alien is one of my favorite movies, specifically because it's so scary, but I avoided horror movies like the plague at least up until high school
I can certainly watch that movie no problem now, and I wouldn't say it scares me in the same way it did when I was little, but I wouldn't love it as a horror movie if it wasn't still one of the most frightening pieces of cinema
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Not me. My best friend growing up.
Child's Play came out when we were around 5. My friends parents rented it and planned on watching it after putting him to bed even though he wanted to see the movie (and of course theu told him he was too little). They started watching it and his dad noticed my friend had snuck back down and was watching the TV from the stairs.
Well his parents decided to act like they didn't notice and left him there to watch the whole movie.
The next day while my friend was at school his parents went out, bought a my buddy doll, and left it sitting up on his bed waiting for him. He had nightmares a good while after that one. Lol
The first movie I ever saw was Popeye, in 1980, with Robin Williams. I cried my little eyes out. It's not a scary movie, but I was expecting a cartoon, and seeing it with live actors freaked me right the fuck out.
I'm sure it wouldn't scare me now, but I haven't watched it since.
Sort of a similar thing with The 'Burbs with Tom Hanks 9 years later. Probably wouldn't scare me, but nah.
Poltergeist.
It's only been very recently that I've been able to watch that movie and then sleep with the lights off. It just hit at that right time when I was in middle school that it cemented in my mind for life.
I feel like the practical effects still hold up, and the acting definitely holds up from the entire family. Just seeing a mom that freaked out onscreen messed with me as a child.
Also, anyone who watches that now needs to understand the social and cultural context of the 70s and 80s. We had this new technology that could allow recording and sharing of video, but it was slow and low resolution. There was nothing like ubiquitous cell phone cameras of today. So there was this constant sense that maybe mysterious things were happening just beyond your ability to see and document them. Like having bad glasses in a foggy room.
The advent of cell phone cameras really washed away that sense, and made the world feel much more concrete and exposed. But back then, there was still a sense that something like Poltergeist might really be out there happening.
The first Alien movie. It came on tv once and my dad was all into it. That took years to get over.
Tales from the Crypt when I was ten years old .
This was I think 1972. There was a scene where a dead guy came back to life in his coffin due to his wife's third wish, for him to live forever.
Unfortunately he had been embalmed in formaldehyde and would live in agony forever .
My father was a manic depressive alcoholic who refused to take his lithium. Maybe not the best person to get popcorn with.
Sophomore in college probably isn't too young, but probably Requiem for a Dream if I were ever to watch it again, which I'm not gonna do.
I watched this in the theater when I was 6 or 7 years old. Freaked me the freak out, especially that baby at the end. That baby, man.
Ok so before I say the name I want to explain the story. I was 6 or 7 when my aunt and her friends brought it home and they were insistent I could not watch this movie but I snuck into the living room and eventually sat with my aunt. It took 1 scene to send me into such a panic I to this day can't sleep for days after I willingly watch it. This movie warped my sense of horror and not a single movie has lived up to it. The movie is the exorcist from 1973 and the 1 scene was the bedroom scene where the bed starts moving and her body begins to change.
Monster house. I vividly remember watching part of it in a best buy when i was younger. I had nightmares that my house was gonna eat me. Ive gotten over houses eating me, but the art style is still rather creepy.
Terminator 2, when he took off his skin from his arm, I NOPED out of there. I did finish it the next day though. It's also now in my top ten movies of all time.
I saw Chucky as like an 8 year old and gave me a ton of nightmares
Lots of the answers here make me feel old
Return to Oz.
Dooooorrrrrrrtthhyyyyyyyy. GAAAALLLLLLEEEEEEE!
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi gave me nightmares as a young child, for years. Still, remembering how much I loved it, downloaded it to show my young kids, gave it a watch while they were out. Hell. No.
Let's just say Orson Wells had no business narrating a children's cartoon.
Saw Dawn Dawn of the Dead (1978) in the theater when I was 12. Didn't scar me for life, but it did have a big impact.
Not technically a movie, but the 1990 It mini series has always gotten me. I can watch the newer movies and it won't bother me at all, but that show was masterful in terrifying me as a kid.
Ghost where the demons drag the bad guy to hell. I must have been 6 or 7.
Pet Sematary. The scene with the diseased old lady was the worst.
Braindead/splatter. Guy kills his zombie mother with a lawnmower I think.
Pumpkinhead. Actually kinda sad but still fucked up.
I had an 5 yrs older brother who would force me to watch scary movies.
The original 70s Texas Chainsaw Massacre makes me uncomfortable still as an adult.
Killer Clowns from Outer Space
To this day I still get a weird thrill eating cotton candy, knowing it might be a person
Aliens. It wasn't the movie itself, it was the TV adverts for it. A two-second shot of a door buckling as something pounded against it from the other side. I was exactly the right age to be shocked by the thought that you can't shut the monsters out with just a closed door.
Tommy. So much horror for a musical.
My dad used to watch horror movies when he was supposed to be watching me, then fall asleep the couch with the movies still going. I don't watch horror movies at all as an adult, I can't handle them, but here's a list of the ones I can remember that I got exposed to while dad was sleeping:
Scanners
Cat's Eye
The Thing
Any old Twighlight Zone episode
The Lost Boys
Gremlins
Whatever show that was with Elvira
There was some show with a talking skeleton at the beginning all the time, I forget what it's called
Needless to say, ANY horror movie scares me, and i avoid them all, even the "funny" ones
The Day After.
I was like 6 when my grandmom suggested we rent The Amityville Horror. I slept with the lights on for a week.
I don't think it would bother me now if I rewatched it but I've also never wanted to rewatch it.. I guess take that for what's it's worth.
The Grudge. I saw it when I was maybe 7 or 8? I was at an Aunts house with some older brothers that had it on. Honestly I barely remember actually watching it, but good lord it scarred me until I was at least 18 or so. I could never get the image of hair growing out of random places, turning into something terrifying out of my head whenever I was showering and stuff. I still haven’t rewatched it :D I’m quite a scaredy cat when it comes to horror movies already and I could totally see it giving me nightmares again if it’s anything like I remember as a kid
There was some movie on TV that I caught a glimpse of when I should’ve been in bed. I was probably about 3 yo. It was some blobby monster which in my memory was a bit like a skinny Michelin Man, emerging from a pond or river. Scared the shit outta me and the memory stuck.
I Am Legend
The cure for cancer creating a bunch of rabid, fast moving, sunlight fearing, flesh hungry, "zombies" ... Yeah that was a bit much
Duel at Diablo. That guy roasting over the fire...
So when it was a little too young, I slept in the same room with my grandmother during the summer and she would like to watch TV very late at night, even while she slept. Because of that, i would sometimes happen to come across some of the more mature movies that they would be airing. This is a little too specific, but one night they were airing Superhero Movie 2008. I don't remember if I was paying attention or not, but when my grandmother put the channel with this movie on, it was around the funeral scene.
Yeahhhh my young ass was traumatized. Necrophilia is a no no.
I'm old, but "The Mephisto Waltz," a1971 horror film about a dying pianist (and Satanist) taking over a young piano players body. Lots of murder, lots of screaming, and decanters of blue liquid. My parents took me in a drive in to see it, and I guess thought I'd be okay with it at age five, sleeping in the back of the car.
Nope.
Blue liquid still freaks me out.
C.H.U.D.
Early 80s b-grade movie. Absolutely laughable from a modern cinematic perspective, but I haven’t touched it in over a third of a century due to how it scared the fark out of young-teenaged me. I have also taken a disliking to horror movies (in general) for that same reason.
House of Wax and the Saws.
Was far too young to be looking at stuff like that, and I felt unwell for days afterwards.
Bruce Lee's - The Big Boss where they put some dead bodies into the ice in a ice factory and the big ice saw is sawing them into smaller pieces.
I watched it through a crack in the door from a different room when my dad and my uncle watched it after I supposedly went to sleep. Needless to say that I didn't get much sleep that night. But I never told my dad that I've seen it :D
Mosquito (1994)
My older brother really did a number renting and bringing that movie to my house. I remember I saw it on a summer afternoon with him. You know, the time of the year when mosquitoes are everywhere.
I should watch it again now, I'm sure the effects aged poorly, and maybe that heals my wounds from the past.
Ringu.
I was about six or seven when I watched it despite my parents telling me to go to sleep. I can hear my father watching it and me trying to pretend to sleep and watch it at the same time.
I wasn't able to sleep after the movie and wasn't able to sleep without a light in my room and a blanket covering all my body (which sucks during summer because I live in a tropical country) for the next two decades. Wasn't able to sleep properly, too without any background noise as I often experienced sleep paralysis without it.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.
Mars Attacks. The screaming aliens and the guns that turn people into colorful skeletons.
The banshee from Darby O'Gill and the Little People still creeps me out!
