What movie scared the daylights out of you as a kid?
Or even older?
Would you go to a scary movie today?
25 thoughts on “Reader Friday: Scary”
Three immediately come to mind:
▪️Invaders from Mars – a 1950’s black-n-white I saw one Saturday afternoon on the idiot box that just creeped me out – starts with the kid waking up during a thunderstorm, looking out the window to see a UFO land over the hill… the creepy part was the invaders implanted something in the back of the neck of anyone they got back to their ship and looked up beginning with his parents –
▪️The original, black-n-white Invasion of the Body Snatchers, again, on Saturday afternoon TV – what scared me the most was the end when the hero is on the highway, finding the pods in the back of trucks inching along in Atlanta-like traffic
▪️Later, in my twenties, Alien – the first, and to my mind, the scariest in the franchise… by the end I realized both my date and I were sitting with our feet up in the seat…
Looks like there’s a sci-fi theme here…
Alien was where I took my wife for our first date. The children refuse to watch it with me.
One rainy day, unusual for Los Angeles, my junior high screened “The Day of the Triffids” in the auditorium. That was my first and last horror/scary movie. I’m not a horror fan, and I don’t like being scared.
As a kid the TV version of ‘Salem’s Lot’, with David Soul kept me looking over my shoulder for a long time. As an adult ‘Shutter Island’ still blows me away every time I see it. I’m not a huge horror fan but if I do watch one, it has to be at home. Screaming in public is a little embarrassing.
Shutter Island is a great scary movie.
When I was a kid, it was the Wizard of Oz. It wasn’t even the witch that scared me; I think it was just the old style film and Glinda standing there almost emotionless when talking about the witch (Elphaba).
Never watched scary movies as a kid nor as an adult. Don’t watch gory movies either. I decided after I heard Janet Leigh state that she didn’t take a shower for two years after filming Psycho that I didn’t need to watch. I only watched Psycho a few years ago as an old adult because it is a classic. Have to admit, the acting was superb. I adore Stephen King because he does so much for the State of Maine and the University but I can only read certain books of his. The ones I have read I like but his most famous….. sorry, can’t do it.
Obviously, I am not a horror fan. Real life can be scary enough. Don’t need to purposely scare myself silly.
The scariest experience for me was seeing Psycho for the first time, in high school, on a stormy night in the gym. I had no idea what to expect, and with the crowd screaming most of the movie, I shed my skin.
In high school, 1979, a class field trip was to go to a local college to watch the Halloween night showing of The Exorcist. Webster College (now University) was primarily a theater college. Students were in medieval costumes working the show. The auditorium was a former chapel.
The next day in Social Studies class we learned the true story of the Exorcist. The events happened in St. Louis. When I was a student at St. Louis University, there was always a light on in the top floor of Jesuit Hall, supposedly the room of the priest who performed the exorcisim.
Today I watch more thrillers than horror. But I do like the classics.
As a kid I saw them all. It was Invasion of the Body snatchers that got me as a kid. I even wondered about my parents afterward.
I still love horror movies. The scariest one of all is the film version of Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. No scary monsters just humans.
The latest good horror movies is The Substance. it is body horror at its extreme. Demi Moore stared and was fabulous.
During the covid epidemic people who watched and read horror did better psychologically] than did those who didn’t. Interesting.
Fascinating, Brian. Makes sense, though. Horror watchers/readers/writers are more conditioned to violence and chaos.
I saw the British horror film “Island of Terror,” about deadly alien silicates infesting an island when I was ten or so, and was very jumpy for days afterwards. I have read and seen horror films when I was a younger adult, but these days, no thanks. The same goes for modern thrillers. Give me a classic thriller film though, and I’m there.
Gotta be Psycho.
In 1960, I was 6 years old. Didn’t watch it then, of course, but several years later when I was probably about 12 or 13, I watched it on TV one Saturday afternoon with my Mom.
Couldn’t sleep for a week…
When I was just a young kid, my brother took me to see Them!, a movie about giant ants. That’s when I decided I didn’t like being scared. Psycho confirmed that.
The Day The Earth Stood Still. And The Birds.
Yeah, Jane! I totally forgot about The Birds. That was another one that scared me to death. A masterpiece of scary…
I was in middle school when it aired on television – I slept with my mom that night!
The Exorcist scared me half to death. Oh, and Amityville Horror. Some scenes scarred me for life. LOL
My childhood bedroom was beside the living room. While I had a high fever, my older brothers watched the original FRANKENSTEIN. I hallucinated to the voices, sound effects, and the music. Highly not recommended.
And in good horror news, SURREALESTATE started its third season last night. A clever, funny, and just scary enough series on the SyFy Channel.
The Blob (1958) with Steve McQueen. I watched it late at night as a kid just in double digits. THAT was a mistake. I should’ve known better because I hated the haunted Mansion at Disneyland and those things that would pop up at me. I had nightmares for a long time about being dissolved and eaten by a translucent gelatinous alien.
Even today, I try to avoid gelatinous aliens, always walking on the other side of the street when I see one approaching.
Our parents wouldn’t let us watch horror flicks, and I’ve seen very few. I’ve not seen all of “The Exorcist,” and that’s just fine. My mother’s co-worker found a skeleton in her bed one night. She shoved it out of the way and got in beside it. Hospital humor. Another time, they had a young tonsillectomy patient who was allegedly possessed. Her name was S**** C****. Strange things happened. A get well card flew up off the night-stand and clung to the wall by the girl. My mother was chosen to give the anesthetic, ethyl ether, in those days. As she put the mask on S****, the surgeon leaned toward my mother and said, “Better give her a double dose!”
An exorcist was brought in, a Fr. Wilberding. He gave the girl hell for her part in the phenomena. Things settled down and the girl was transferred to a convent for recovery.
I mistook “Event Horizon” for a SciFi movie. I started out of the theater about 30 seconds too late. It was what my screenwriting instructor calls a “dead meat” flick–no matter what the characters do, they’re all doomed.
No scary movies for me. It was hard enough watching movies where a horse had to be put down or something bad happened to a dog. Even that’s too much for me.
When I was a reporter in my twenties and working in a border town, I used to get together w/a group of friends on Friday night and watch scary movies with all the lights off. All the Jason movies, Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, Carrie, Cujo, etc. We threw popcorn at the screen and drank “beverages” while pretending to scoff that they weren’t scary (at least I was pretending). Definitely not my favorite genre, but they were perfect for having cheap fun when we couldn’t afford to go out on the town.
Psycho. Without a doubt. I never watched horror movies as a kid, but watched Psycho with a date when I was fourteen. First boyfriend and all that. But I was like Janet Leigh–no showers for me for I don’t know how long…even now, when I take a shower late at night, that movie pops in my head…
Three immediately come to mind:
▪️Invaders from Mars – a 1950’s black-n-white I saw one Saturday afternoon on the idiot box that just creeped me out – starts with the kid waking up during a thunderstorm, looking out the window to see a UFO land over the hill… the creepy part was the invaders implanted something in the back of the neck of anyone they got back to their ship and looked up beginning with his parents –
▪️The original, black-n-white Invasion of the Body Snatchers, again, on Saturday afternoon TV – what scared me the most was the end when the hero is on the highway, finding the pods in the back of trucks inching along in Atlanta-like traffic
▪️Later, in my twenties, Alien – the first, and to my mind, the scariest in the franchise… by the end I realized both my date and I were sitting with our feet up in the seat…
Looks like there’s a sci-fi theme here…
Alien was where I took my wife for our first date. The children refuse to watch it with me.
One rainy day, unusual for Los Angeles, my junior high screened “The Day of the Triffids” in the auditorium. That was my first and last horror/scary movie. I’m not a horror fan, and I don’t like being scared.
As a kid the TV version of ‘Salem’s Lot’, with David Soul kept me looking over my shoulder for a long time. As an adult ‘Shutter Island’ still blows me away every time I see it. I’m not a huge horror fan but if I do watch one, it has to be at home. Screaming in public is a little embarrassing.
Shutter Island is a great scary movie.
When I was a kid, it was the Wizard of Oz. It wasn’t even the witch that scared me; I think it was just the old style film and Glinda standing there almost emotionless when talking about the witch (Elphaba).
Never watched scary movies as a kid nor as an adult. Don’t watch gory movies either. I decided after I heard Janet Leigh state that she didn’t take a shower for two years after filming Psycho that I didn’t need to watch. I only watched Psycho a few years ago as an old adult because it is a classic. Have to admit, the acting was superb. I adore Stephen King because he does so much for the State of Maine and the University but I can only read certain books of his. The ones I have read I like but his most famous….. sorry, can’t do it.
Obviously, I am not a horror fan. Real life can be scary enough. Don’t need to purposely scare myself silly.
The scariest experience for me was seeing Psycho for the first time, in high school, on a stormy night in the gym. I had no idea what to expect, and with the crowd screaming most of the movie, I shed my skin.
In high school, 1979, a class field trip was to go to a local college to watch the Halloween night showing of The Exorcist. Webster College (now University) was primarily a theater college. Students were in medieval costumes working the show. The auditorium was a former chapel.
The next day in Social Studies class we learned the true story of the Exorcist. The events happened in St. Louis. When I was a student at St. Louis University, there was always a light on in the top floor of Jesuit Hall, supposedly the room of the priest who performed the exorcisim.
https://www.slu.edu/universitas/archive/2014/exorcism.php
Today I watch more thrillers than horror. But I do like the classics.
As a kid I saw them all. It was Invasion of the Body snatchers that got me as a kid. I even wondered about my parents afterward.
I still love horror movies. The scariest one of all is the film version of Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. No scary monsters just humans.
The latest good horror movies is The Substance. it is body horror at its extreme. Demi Moore stared and was fabulous.
During the covid epidemic people who watched and read horror did better psychologically] than did those who didn’t. Interesting.
Fascinating, Brian. Makes sense, though. Horror watchers/readers/writers are more conditioned to violence and chaos.
I saw the British horror film “Island of Terror,” about deadly alien silicates infesting an island when I was ten or so, and was very jumpy for days afterwards. I have read and seen horror films when I was a younger adult, but these days, no thanks. The same goes for modern thrillers. Give me a classic thriller film though, and I’m there.
Gotta be Psycho.
In 1960, I was 6 years old. Didn’t watch it then, of course, but several years later when I was probably about 12 or 13, I watched it on TV one Saturday afternoon with my Mom.
Couldn’t sleep for a week…
When I was just a young kid, my brother took me to see Them!, a movie about giant ants. That’s when I decided I didn’t like being scared. Psycho confirmed that.
The Day The Earth Stood Still. And The Birds.
Yeah, Jane! I totally forgot about The Birds. That was another one that scared me to death. A masterpiece of scary…
I was in middle school when it aired on television – I slept with my mom that night!
The Exorcist scared me half to death. Oh, and Amityville Horror. Some scenes scarred me for life. LOL
My childhood bedroom was beside the living room. While I had a high fever, my older brothers watched the original FRANKENSTEIN. I hallucinated to the voices, sound effects, and the music. Highly not recommended.
And in good horror news, SURREALESTATE started its third season last night. A clever, funny, and just scary enough series on the SyFy Channel.
The Blob (1958) with Steve McQueen. I watched it late at night as a kid just in double digits. THAT was a mistake. I should’ve known better because I hated the haunted Mansion at Disneyland and those things that would pop up at me. I had nightmares for a long time about being dissolved and eaten by a translucent gelatinous alien.
Even today, I try to avoid gelatinous aliens, always walking on the other side of the street when I see one approaching.
Our parents wouldn’t let us watch horror flicks, and I’ve seen very few. I’ve not seen all of “The Exorcist,” and that’s just fine. My mother’s co-worker found a skeleton in her bed one night. She shoved it out of the way and got in beside it. Hospital humor. Another time, they had a young tonsillectomy patient who was allegedly possessed. Her name was S**** C****. Strange things happened. A get well card flew up off the night-stand and clung to the wall by the girl. My mother was chosen to give the anesthetic, ethyl ether, in those days. As she put the mask on S****, the surgeon leaned toward my mother and said, “Better give her a double dose!”
An exorcist was brought in, a Fr. Wilberding. He gave the girl hell for her part in the phenomena. Things settled down and the girl was transferred to a convent for recovery.
I mistook “Event Horizon” for a SciFi movie. I started out of the theater about 30 seconds too late. It was what my screenwriting instructor calls a “dead meat” flick–no matter what the characters do, they’re all doomed.
No scary movies for me. It was hard enough watching movies where a horse had to be put down or something bad happened to a dog. Even that’s too much for me.
When I was a reporter in my twenties and working in a border town, I used to get together w/a group of friends on Friday night and watch scary movies with all the lights off. All the Jason movies, Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, Carrie, Cujo, etc. We threw popcorn at the screen and drank “beverages” while pretending to scoff that they weren’t scary (at least I was pretending). Definitely not my favorite genre, but they were perfect for having cheap fun when we couldn’t afford to go out on the town.
Psycho. Without a doubt. I never watched horror movies as a kid, but watched Psycho with a date when I was fourteen. First boyfriend and all that. But I was like Janet Leigh–no showers for me for I don’t know how long…even now, when I take a shower late at night, that movie pops in my head…