# The first movie that scared the snot out of you...



## J Dean (Feb 9, 2009)

What was the first movie that had a scene that really freaked you out?

I remember seeing the preview for this movie called "autopsy" (I think it was Italian), and the preview was extremely disturbing.  I was pretty young then, and just happened to walk into the room when this preview was playing on TV.

Still creepy to think about it.


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## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

_Nightmare on Elm Street_, when I was eleven years old.


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## ashleygirardi (Apr 3, 2011)

I went to see _Jurassic Park_ when I was eight. To this day, I still worry about the fact that raptors can open doors.


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

There were a ton of b movies, but I can't recall the names. So, I'll say Jaws, and then The Exorcist, and then Carrie.


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## AnneKAlbert (Dec 7, 2010)

Deliverance.


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## Alle Meine Entchen (Dec 6, 2009)

This will date me, but remember, I was a little little kid when this movie came out (4 or 5). Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure freaked me out. My mom had a bunch of us sleeping in her bed for like 2 months after we watched that movie. For those of you who haven't seen it. The scary scene involves a woman named Large Marge:


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## Stephen T. Harper (Dec 20, 2010)

That TV commercial where Paris Hilton is eating a cheeseburger while being hosed down on the hood of a car... Oh wait... you were talking about horror movies.  I was thinking of the film that made me afraid of cheeseburgers, cars, and sex.  Nevermind.


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

When I was very small my parents watched The Thing (the old black and white version) and I saw parts of it. To this day I won't walk to the bathroom in the dark. Thanks a lot Mom and Dad. And you wondered what was the cause of my childhood bed-wetting.


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## Basil Sands (Aug 18, 2010)

The original Dracula, with Bela Lugosi.... I was 12 and made the mistake of watching at midnight, alone, with the lights off.  Too scared to step into the shadow and turn the light on, or step close to the TV and turn it off (long before remotes).


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## kcmay (Jul 14, 2010)

I don't remember the title, but I was about 8 or 9 when I *BEGGED* to be allowed to go to the movies with my brother and his friends. It was some creature feature. When some guy got doused with gasoline and lit on fire, I was scared, but that didn't really get me. It was when he dove into a swimming pool to put himself out and came up with a bloody mass of tissue for a face. I got up and called my mom to come get me. I couldn't take it!


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## Crafty (Apr 14, 2011)

Child's Play (I was only 2 or 3). What were my parents thinking?!


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## Tris (Oct 30, 2008)

The ever classic "Jaws"...caught it on accident on the television while I was real young.  Made me terrified of going swimming in the open waters for years!  I also couldn't stop the pang of fear swimming in the pool when it was dark.  I wasn't afraid of many 'scary movies' (Silence of the Lambs, Chucky, etc.) but "Jaws" just struck a chord.

Tris

P.S.

There was this movie that must have been made in the early 80's (?) about kids killing people...kind of like child zombies.  One scene involves the main male character hacking off the killer kids' arms with an axe was they punched thru the walls.  Does this ring a bell with anyone?  I saw it as a 4-8 year old and no one ever could get the name of it.  I really would like to know the name of the movie after all these years!  Thanks!


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## EGranfors (Mar 18, 2011)

Psycho when I was 16.  yikes, the shower!


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## Indy (Jun 7, 2010)

The Crawling Hand, in black and white on late-night tv, I was about 5 or 6 I think.  To this day I can not be tickled unsuspectingly without danger of wild violence resulting.  I mean, that thing was awful.  It hid under a bed!  I used to sleep, for YEARS, in mortal terror of having hands or feet hanging off the bed lest the disembodied hand (or my dead mother, she died shortly after I saw the movie) reach out from under the bed and grab me.  I just knew I would DIE if something grabbed me in my sleep.


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## BTackitt (Dec 15, 2008)

Daniel Arenson said:


> _Nightmare on Elm Street_, when I was eleven years old.


Well, I now know how old Daniel is. Because this came out when I was 15, and my BFF and I saw it Halloween night, midnight showing, neither of us slept for 2 days.


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## Scheherazade (Apr 11, 2009)

Fantasia... I was really little and already wasn't crazy about theaters because they were dark, the floor sloped, and the floor was always sticky.  So it was tough to get me into a theater to begin with.  Then the scene came on with the demon standing on the mountain... I am told I ran out of the theater screaming at the top of my lungs.  I was also really afraid of the Dark Crystal.  For some reason I had one of those picture books of the movie, and I hid it under the bed and constantly peered over the edge to make sure it wasn't up to no good.


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## Bob Mayer (Feb 20, 2011)

I saw Alien in the theater at Fort Benning the night before my first parachute jump.  Not the best timing.
The Thing with James Arness as the creature is a classic.  The short story is was based on was one of the most terrifying stories I've read.


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## Sandpiper (Oct 28, 2008)

Vincent Price movie -- House of Wax. Older sister of a friend took us younger kids (grade school) to the movie in the '50s. NIGHTMARES!

Had (maybe still have some place) 78 RPM records of Basil Rathbone narrating Hansel and Gretel. When the witch laughs / cackles -- scared me big time as a child. I suppose I could listen today . . . but with trepidation.


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## Thumper (Feb 26, 2009)

It was one of the Dracula movies with Christopher Lee... I think I was around 7, and my parents took me. 
And they wondered why I turned out the way I did...


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## Doug DePew (Mar 26, 2011)

The Shining...and I never even SAW it. 

I just remember Jack Nicholson on the commercials saying,"Heeeeeere's Johnny!" 

That was enough for me.


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## tsilver (Aug 9, 2010)

The House of Wax in 3D with Vincent Price.  The 3D feature made everything seem so real.


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

Salem's Lot for me... was 13.


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## julieannfelicity (Jun 28, 2010)

That would be the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Especially the one where Freddy was on a pizza, and shot his hand up a toilet. I temporarily became un-potty trained at that time. Eek!


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## Jane917 (Dec 29, 2009)

Wait Until Dark, then Deliverance.


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## Vegas_Asian (Nov 2, 2008)

i am a year younger than the little boy from Sixth Sense. that movie freaked me out as a child. esp at the school with the hangin people in the hallway


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## sjc (Oct 29, 2008)

MichelleR said:


> There were a ton of b movies, but I can't recall the names. So, I'll say Jaws, and then The Exorcist, and then Carrie.


 ditto; if you include Psycho and the Birds.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Believe it or not: "The Wizard of Oz." I think I ran out of the room the first 2 or 3 times we watched it on TV whenever the winged monkeys were sent out after Dorothy. They really freaked me out. (In my defense, we're talking about when I was around 5-6 years old.)

In modern times, while I would not call it "scared," no movie scene has made my arms hurt from gripping the movie theater seat arms like the D-Day scene at the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" the first time I saw it.


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## spotsmom (Jan 20, 2011)

The original "The Haunting" (of Hill House).  A close second was "Aliens".


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## Trish Milburn (Apr 14, 2011)

I remember when I was young seeing King Kong and then being freaked out when I went to bed. We lived out in the country, and it was dark when you turned the lights out at night. I was convinced King Kong lived in the woods behind our house and was going to come get me. LOL!


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## KindleChickie (Oct 24, 2009)

The Exorcist hands down scariest for me.  Jaws didn't phase me, even with my ocean phobia.  Speaking of which, Hunt For Red October gave me nightmares as an adult.  

I also was extremely disturbed by Glengary Glenross.  It gave me nightmares.  Seriously.


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

Sandpiper said:


> Vincent Price movie -- House of Wax. Older sister of a friend took us younger kids (grade school) to the movie in the '50s. NIGHTMARES!


I so loved Vincent Price -- his movies were so good even when they were bad. I think it was Pit and The Pendulum in which they open the coffin and the skeleton's face was frozen into a scream, because she'd been buried alive. Total nightmare fuel. As a preteen, I totally wanted to marry Vincent Price ... or Bob Barker.



KindleChickie said:


> Jaws didn't phase me, even with my ocean phobia.


It might have helped that I was seven, but I think I would have been scared anyhow. My mother read me Jaws as a bedtime story, left in all the violence, removed the swearing. A few years later when we went to see The Shining no one was too concerned for my delicate psyche until the naked woman in the tub, and then my grandmother clapped her hand over my eyes.


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## NapCat (retired) (Jan 17, 2011)




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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

NogDog said:


> In modern times, while I would not call it "scared," no movie scene has made my arms hurt from gripping the movie theater seat arms like the D-Day scene at the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" the first time I saw it.


The traumatic-reality of that scene is what hits so damned hard. The other scene that wormed its way into me and gave me many sleepless nights was towards the end with the slow-knife death between the German and the American with the American's buddy huddled in the stairway unable to do anything, something about the unstopability of it was simply too much for me.


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## Guest (Apr 15, 2011)

It hasn't happened yet.

I wrote reviews and did a review radio show for a long while as my second/side job (while working for da feds).  I love film.  Scary movies don't scare me.

I can get excited, and enjoy a good psychological thriller.  I just have one of those dorky nerd minds that anticipates horror and responds with church giggles.


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## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

First movie and first thing I can identify that really scared me was the original version of The Haunting. We watched it while visiting the home of friends and I convinced my parents to stay later than they wanted to watch the end. Then spent every night for months waiting for ghosts to start banging and tearing at my bedroom door. Weirdly, when we visited the same friends again later it was on again and I insisted on watching it again, supported by the two kids who lived there. 

I can't remember what the show was,  but when I was about three I saw a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits that included a scene where a villain had a woman on an operating table covered with a sheet and doing something to her that I interpreted as giving her a shot in her throat. For years I felt anxiety at night that the guy was in my parent's bedroom doing that to my mother! 

Sent from my Sprint EVO using Tapatalk


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

MrPLD said:


> The traumatic-reality of that scene is what hits so damned hard. The other scene that wormed its way into me and gave me many sleepless nights was towards the end with the slow-knife death between the German and the American with the American's buddy huddled in the stairway unable to do anything, something about the unstopability of it was simply too much for me.


The single moment that most haunted me for whatever reason is during the D-Day footage. At one point the camera is looking from a German machine gunner's view bow-on to a landing craft, and as the ramp drops the gun (MG42?) starts firing at virtually point blank range into the troops packed in there. By no means the goriest scene in the movie, but the sheer man-versus-man brutality of it made my guts clench. Nothing glorifying war, just making you ask, "How did we come to a situation where people have to do this to other people?"


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## Cristian YoungMiller (Mar 3, 2011)

i'm not sure, but I think the movie's called: It's Alive. It's about a baby that is born and then eats the doctor. I was about 7 when my brothers took me to see it. WRONG!


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

The Hooded Claw said:


> I can't remember what the show was, but when I was about three I saw a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits that included a scene where a villain had a woman on an operating table covered with a sheet and doing something to her that I interpreted as giving her a shot in her throat. For years I felt anxiety at night that the guy was in my parent's bedroom doing that to my mother!


Well, if you're going to _Twilight Zone_ the most unsettling one was when the Burgess Meredith character, with coke bottle glasses, couldn't ever find time to sit quietly and read. He worked in a bank and would go into the vault at lunch to read in peace. . . . .but one time on one let him out and when timer opened it the city (world?) had been destroyed. . . . he wandered the town, found the library and, to his joy, all the books were intact -- though spilling down the steps. . . . . . Then he trips, his glasses fall off and break and now he _can't read them!_ .

As a kid with bad eyes who loved to read that was just horrible to contemplate. . . . . .


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Well, if you're going to _Twilight Zone_ the most unsettling one was when the Burgess Meredith character, with coke bottle glasses, couldn't ever find time to sit quietly and read. He worked in a bank and would go into the vault at lunch to read in peace. . . . .but one time on one let him out and when timer opened it the city (world?) had been destroyed. . . . he wandered the town, found the library and, to his joy, all the books were intact -- though spilling down the steps. . . . . . Then he trips, his glasses fall off and break and now he _can't read them! ;o_.
> 
> As a kid with bad eyes who loved to read that was just horrible to contemplate. . . . . .


I sobbed. It was a mess. The name of the episode is Time Enough At Last.


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

NogDog said:


> , "How did we come to a situation where people have to do this to other people?"


And in the end, it comes back to the table, yet it seems as though we still are incapable of keeping it around the table rather than throwing lives away.


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## John H. Carroll (Nov 26, 2010)

I don't remember which one I saw first, but the two movies that scared me and gave me nightmares were "Logan's Run" and "Pinocchio".

I don't even know how my brothers and sisters convinced my mom to let them take me to Logan's Run, but as a kid it really disturbed me.  I want to watch it again as an adult one of these days.


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

There were certainly some scary parts in Logan's Run that I recall as a kid - especially in the ice-tunnel with that invincible robot (or was that Logan's Run the series?).


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

I don't remember anything standing out from when I was younger that _really_ frightened me, but in recent years The Ring scared the


Spoiler



crap


 out of me. The ridiculous thing about it is, it's pretty much all in your mind. But the psychological terror that builds up as you think you're about to see something truly terrible had me hiding behind the cushions. I keep wondering if I should see it again and if I'd be as scared second time around.


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## caseyf6 (Mar 28, 2010)

Probably Poltergeist.  I always liked the feeling of being creeped out and a little scared, so when this movie came out and my Mom took my brother (I was 10), I convinced my Dad to take me.  He asked if it was too scary and I said "Mom took Eddie and they said it wasn't bad..." (Blatant lie, mea culpa...)  The scene with the half-dug pool where they practically drown in the mud still haunts me a little.  The rest mostly grossed me out, but the pool part really scared me.

"Saving Private Ryan" absolutely tore me up.  Not scared, just stunned into understanding war for the first time, despite that my husband had been a soldier for some time up to that point.  An equal reality check, from the family's viewpoint, is in "We Were Soldiers" and the taxi is driving around the neighborhood and he is delivering telegrams.  For some reason, the emotion she showed when she verbally tore him to bits for going to the wrong house, was more real than any "notification" scene I've watched.


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## Glenn Bullion (Sep 28, 2010)

Have to echo Pee Wee's Big Adventure, the Large Marge scene.

Exorcist 3, baby.

Three scenes in particular.

Lady crawls on ceiling.

Creepy lady gives confession.

And, of course, the "I will cut off your head in the hallway" scene.


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## Talia Jager (Sep 22, 2010)

Poltergiest and Sleepaway Camp


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## bobavey (Sep 14, 2010)

A movie called The House on Haunted Hill.


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## Hoosiermama (Dec 28, 2009)

The Exorcist. My husband had the album Tubular Bells when we were in college, and I couldn't even stand to listen to a bar of that music. *shudder*


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## JD Rhoades (Feb 18, 2011)

A 1951 Roger Corman film called "X, the Man With the X-Ray Eyes." Ray Milland plays a scientist who develops a serum that allows him to see beyond the visible spectrum, and it just gets weirder from there. There were two freakouts for me  in the film: one when you see that Milland's eyes have turned into what look like shiny black marbles in his head, and the very end where a preacher tells him that what he's seeing is evil and quotes the Biblical injunction "if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." Milland proceeds to do just that, and the last shot is of him raising his head to show his empty eye sockets. 

In retrospect, my parents probably shouldn't have let me stay up and watch "Shock Theater" every Saturday night. It left me with a twisted mind and a love of cheesy horror movies, the gorier the better.


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

JD Rhoades said:


> A 1951 Roger Corman film called "X, the Man With the X-Ray Eyes." Ray Milland plays a scientist who develops a serum that allows him to see beyond the visible spectrum, and it just gets weirder from there. There were two freakouts for me in the film: one when you see that Milland's eyes have turned into what look like shiny black marbles in his head, and the very end where a preacher tells him that what he's seeing is evil and quotes the Biblical injunction "if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." Milland proceeds to do just that, and the last shot is of him raising his head to show his empty eye sockets.
> 
> In retrospect, my parents probably shouldn't have let me stay up and watch "Shock Theater" every Saturday night. It left me with a twisted mind and a love of cheesy horror movies, the gorier the better.


Stephen King writes extensively about this movie in:



King wrote this in the early eighties or thereabouts and it's about the books and movies and writers who helped shape him and the current (at the time) writers he admired. I've read it several times over the years and I think it's only recently back in print.

He writes, after discussing "X" for a while:
*He pauses for a moment ... and then rips his own eyes out. Corman freezes the frame on those staring, bloody sockets. But I have heard rumors -- they may or may not be true -- that the final line of dialogue was cut from the film as too horrifying. If true, it was the only possible capper for what has already happened. According to the rumor, Milland screams: I can still see!*


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## Jennybeanses (Jan 27, 2011)

The first movie that officially scared the bejimminies out of me was The Fall of the House of Usher.


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## Scribolin (Apr 5, 2011)

For me it was the Exorcist.  That's the only horror movie that I can't laugh at.  Something just seems so real about it.  I'm 46 years old now and I still can't watch it with the lights out.


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## kdawna (Feb 16, 2009)

both The Birds, and the Exorcist scared me but I don't remember which I saw first


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## JD Rhoades (Feb 18, 2011)

MichelleR said:


> Stephen King writes extensively about this movie in:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Corman mentioned something about that in an interview. But he didn't say it was "too horrifying" (this is Roger Corman, after all). I seem to remember he just didn't like that ending, but it's been a while since I've seen the interview.


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## ZsuZsu (Dec 27, 2009)

My family moved a lot when I was a kid- I lived in 13 states before I graduated from high school, so once I would finally get used to the "new" house, it would be time to relocate to another one.  This meant that I never got really comfortable with those "night noises" that the different houses would make, and it always made me just a little nervous, until I saw this movie called ( I think) "Bad Ronald"- for about 3 years after that, the noises scared me half to death!
What I remember of the plot was that this teenager named Ronald for some reason lived in these "rooms" that were built inside of the walls of his house- there was a little trap door from the kitchen that took him to "his" space and then he could walk between rooms in the spaces between the walls.  He spied on the family that moved into the house until he was finally found.....

I was CERTAIN that there was someone staring at me while I was in the bathroom and swore that the creaks I could hear at night were a bad teenager who was walking "between the walls"..... it freaks me out to even think about it now- and I am 46 years old!!!!!


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## sjc (Oct 29, 2008)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Well, if you're going to _Twilight Zone_ the most unsettling one was when the Burgess Meredith character, with coke bottle glasses, couldn't ever find time to sit quietly and read. He worked in a bank and would go into the vault at lunch to read in peace. . . . .but one time on one let him out and when timer opened it the city (world?) had been destroyed. . . . he wandered the town, found the library and, to his joy, all the books were intact -- though spilling down the steps. . . . . . Then he trips, his glasses fall off and break and now he _can't read them! ;o_.
> 
> As a kid with bad eyes who loved to read that was just horrible to contemplate. . . . . .


That was my absolute favorite episode: I remember watching that episode and saying (to my now X) you would find me hanging if that happened to me.

I have actually posted here several times (forget which thread) about that episode. It is called "TIME ENOUGH AT LAST" and Burgess plays the character Henry Bemis. I recall posting about if he had a kindle: he could have adjusted the font size and it wouldn't have mattered that he broke his glasses...and all those piles of books could be in his Kindle.


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## Aaron Scott (May 27, 2012)

I remember being very scared by the trailer for the Swarm, a late entry into the disaster movie craze that starred Michael Caine during his "anything if the pay's good" years.  It probably showed before Close Encounters.  Years later I watched the flick and there's a scene where a kid who has been stung hallucinates a giant bee buzzing at the foot of his bed - I'm sure that was probably in the trailer and probably is what made me the most frightened.  Yipes!


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## JimC1946 (Aug 6, 2009)

tsilver said:


> The House of Wax in 3D with Vincent Price. The 3D feature made everything seem so real.


Terry, I was going to say the same thing. I saw it in 1953 when I was eight years old, and it scared the crap out of me!


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

sjc said:


> I have actually posted here several times (forget which thread) about that episode. It is called "TIME ENOUGH AT LAST" and Burgess plays the character Henry Bemis. I recall posting about if he had a kindle: he could have adjusted the font size and it wouldn't have mattered that he broke his glasses...and all those piles of books could be in his Kindle.


I saw that episode when I was a kid, and it pretty much destroyed me. Copious amounts of tears.


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## sjc (Oct 29, 2008)

I've seen it at least half a dozen times; the first of which I cried buckets.  I was mortified.  I remember feeling such despair; I can recall nearly hyperventilating through my tears.  I distinctly remember the sharp intake of breath.  To me; reading was and is the greatest passion.  I couldn't fathom... Poor Mr. Bemis...

I so often go back in my mind to over 40 years ago like it was yesterday:  First grade... standing in the library after everyone else had filed out... closing my eyes; taking in a huge whiff and making a wish:  "I wish I could have any book anytime I wanted with the push of a button."  Mrs. Barnes looked at me and asked if something was wrong.  I said no, I just love the smell of books and I hope you love your job. From the next week on, Mrs. Barnes let me take two library books out at once, until the last day of my last year there.  I was on cloud nine.  40 years later I was one of the original K1 owners...my wish had come true.

I love technology.


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

And yet one of the classic stereotypes is that Kindle owners aren't real readers -- when we're really book nuts traumatized by a Twilight Zone episode.  

I've often said that if I had a time machine I'd go pack to my teen years, break into my own house, and grab my old books. I'd have to pick a day that teen me wasn't home pretending to be sick.


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## NapCat (retired) (Jan 17, 2011)

The original Hound of the Baskervilles










...and The Crawling Eye !!


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## Stephen_Melling (Jun 26, 2011)

Beast in the Cellar.....http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066815/

There are probably others I saw before, but this one readily comes to mind.


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

I don't remember the exact name. It was my first horror movie and it did give me nightmares for weeks. I think it was "The night of living dead"... Zombies, yes. I still have no idea why I became a fan of horror.


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## Ann Herrick (Sep 24, 2010)

Something called "The Man with the Atomic Brain." Saw it at the theater (a double feature of horror movies). The man with the atomic brain would pop out from behind trees, pick people up and break them in half! I had to walk home on a street lined with huge elm trees...


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## Ann Herrick (Sep 24, 2010)

sjc said:


> That was my absolute favorite episode: I remember watching that episode and saying (to my now X) you would find me hanging if that happened to me.
> 
> I have actually posted here several times (forget which thread) about that episode. It is called "TIME ENOUGH AT LAST" and Burgess plays the character Henry Bemis. I recall posting about if he had a kindle: he could have adjusted the font size and it wouldn't have mattered that he broke his glasses...and all those piles of books could be in his Kindle.


I always figured he'd find an optical shop, or least a good magnifying glass somewhere.


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## Nancy Fulda (Apr 24, 2011)

Stephen King's _Carrie_. I watched it as a kid (what were my parents THINKING?!?) and spent the next four hours in my bedroom with the light on and the door to the kitchen open desperately reading a novel in hopes of avoiding subsequent nightmares.

No nightmares, so I guess the tactic work.

After that I laid off scary movies until a friend convinced me to watch _Sixth Sense_. Loved it. But the ghosts still give me the jeebers.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

When I was a little kid apparently witches scared the hell out of me.  I don't really have a memory of it, but my parents love to tell how terrified I was of the Wicked Witch in Snow White and The Wizard of Oz.  I also vividly remember the TV trailer for the 1978 move "Magic" with the ventriloquist dummy that was beyond terrifying.

I think the first movie that really scared me was The Shining.  I remember being afraid to walk down the hallway in my own house after seeing that.


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## Aaron Scott (May 27, 2012)

And on the Twilight Zone episode front:

I love "Perchance to Dream", it's really so simple but so surreal.  All the horror is in the mind. 

I think the first movie proper that scared me was Creepshow -- "Where's my cake, Bedelia!"  I love it to this day, though of course now I love it more for the humour, the eclectic casting, and how it evokes the classic EC horror comics.


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

For me it was _The Deep_, a not particularly interesting 1970s thriller with a voodoo scene that creeped me out so much that I ruined my grandparents' evening.

I also have early memories of being terrified by what I later identified as a scene in the original version of _The Fog_ from 1979.

And though it's not a movie, the first episode of _Space 1999_ scared me nearly to death.

I've watched all of those films since to exorcise the old fears. However, there is one film I've never been able to identify. It was probably a western, since there were people in covered wagons. One of them was a girl with long braids. They traveled in their covered wagons across a very high and very narrow bridge somewhere in the mountains. And then the bridge collapsed and they all fell down. This bit of film is single-handedly responsible for the fact that I am still wary of very high bridges some thirty years later. At the time, I also developed an aversion against a particular brand of ice cream whose commercials reminded me of that film.

If anybody knows the western with the high bridge, I'd be really grateful, because I'd like to watch it again to exorcise it.


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## Lisa Scott (Apr 4, 2011)

Amityville Horror left me with many sleepless nights, convinced every noise I heard was a ghost.  Also, I think it may have been the people who lived under the stairs.  Not sure, maybe it was a different movie.  I remember some guy watching a family from behind their walls through a knot hole.  It may have been a made for TV movie.  There was another made for TV movie where two little boys were taking some girls measurements and then started digging a grave for her.  Scared me to death.  This would be in the mid seventies.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

I wish I remembered what it was called. Not that it would matter as it was a german production, so most here wouldn't know it anyway. It was black and white and I was a kid. It was a story about someone making a deal with the devil and/or death. Death came to the door to collect so to speak. I don't remember much, but I remember being totally freaked out about death knocking on my door.

A while later my grandma told my mother about death having visited her bed at night. She described 2 red bright eyes coming closer and closer. She died 5 days later. We had a whats it called, light bar in the bedroom. Long round thingy, and when you turned it off, for a long time you could still see the 2 ends glowing and glowing. I would be stiff with fear, staring at those spots coming closer and closer, waiting for the knock on the door by Death.   

I was scarred for life there and it all started with that movie. I was slightly obsessed with death for a few years after that.


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## kindlequeen (Sep 3, 2010)

I remember finding a video of Aliens when I was little and watching that, I was about the same age as the girl in the movie... that was pretty scary.

I have to second (or third?) Pee Wee - seriously, that movie is dark!

My brother is 13 years younger than me and his favorite movie when he was 4 years old was Saving Private Ryan, to this day he is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to WWII.  

Movies affect me differently today than they did when I was a kid, most recently the movie that made me grip my seat was Toy Story 3.


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## Mari Biella (May 10, 2012)

_Jaws_, when I was about seven or eight. I remember sleeping with the light on that night, and _still _ being convinced that man-eating great white sharks were lurking in every corner.

This was in my bedroom, in Britain, miles from the sea. The fact that my fears were absurd did nothing to make them less potent.


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## MichelleR (Feb 21, 2009)

Mari Biella said:


> _Jaws_, when I was about seven or eight. I remember sleeping with the light on that night, and _still _ being convinced that man-eating great white sharks were lurking in every corner.
> 
> This was in my bedroom, in Britain, miles from the sea. The fact that my fears were absurd did nothing to make them less potent.


I get that -- it made me fear baths.

I also have a memory of reading Christine and not wanting to dangle my feet over the bed.


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## LaRita (Oct 28, 2008)

The Tingler, 1950 something....saw it when I was about 9 or 10 and had nightmares for months.


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## lucasfernan (Apr 25, 2012)

Tomyknockers! - I was 4 okay.


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## Vet (Apr 25, 2010)

Night of the Living Dead (196


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## *DrDLN* (dr.s.dhillon) (Jan 19, 2011)

I honestly avoid watching scary movies. It gives me nightmares...lol


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## TouchedByaKindle (May 4, 2012)

I would have to say the Twilight series.

Vampires that shine in the light... you can't see them in the dark, and you're not safe when the sun is out as they will blind you with their shininess.


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## Alle Meine Entchen (Dec 6, 2009)

Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure. Of course, I was little and this was scary:


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

Showing my age here, but the original Exorcist is the first movie I remember really scaring me.


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## cc84 (Aug 6, 2010)

Crafty said:


> Child's Play (I was only 2 or 3). What were my parents thinking?!


This. My brother made me watch the first 2 when i was a kid. I used to love dolls until i saw Chucky


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## brooksjones (Jun 6, 2012)

The Omen--I was probably 14 or 15 and watched it (without my parents' permission) on a school night. Couldn't sleep all night and was horrified! I think my mom said "I told you so," but can't quite remember...


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## geniebeanie (Apr 23, 2009)

The granddaddy of them all, Pycho.  I was fourteen and babysitting at night.  My mom told me she did not want me to watch it so of course I had to.    Did not take a shower for six weeks.  My mom figured it out when I started taking baths.


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## Tonyshoey (May 23, 2012)

I don't know the title, but it was one of those old b/w 1930's Dracula's films, incredibly cheesy now, but I was only about 13! I watched it in my friends house and had to walk home alone afterwards, past a huge dark church and graveyard. My heart was pounding and I ended up walking down the middle of the street so as to get as far away from the hedgerows as possible!
I can still feel my nerves fraying, I didn't want to run in case I broke the spell and caused something to start chasing me! I've never been so glad to get home and open the door. Alllllllll these years later, I still love those old movies, it's a shame they don't scare me the same though!


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