Badmovies.org Forum

Halloween decorations are starting to sneak into stores, so let's talk scares. 

What movies (or scenes from movies) do you remember that have actually scared, frightened, or given you the chills?  It doesn't matter if it was a movie you saw last week or something that freaked you out when you were five years old.  In fact talking about the scares you had as a kid might even be more fun. 

Let me share a few. 

The first movie that I can ever remember scareing me was Beetlejuice.  While there's plenty of creepiness  thoughout, there are two scenes that got me. 

One is when they ask Beetlejuice if he can be scary and all this weird stuff just quickly pops out of his head.  The other is later in the movie when he turns into a snake.   That always creeped me out. 

Another good creepy moment was at the end of Vincent Price movie House on Haunted Hill.  Now the good Mr. Price is one of those people that can make reading the phone book sound scary, but it's his confession at the end that got me.  I'm going to spoil the movie for you if you haven't seen it (and why haven't you?)

At the end, we find out all the spooks and craziness was just an elaborate plot by his wife to kill him.  Then we find out, he knew that all along and was playing along so he could kill her instead.  After she takes a dip in some acid he “confesses” to the others that he may have accidentally caused her death but it going to take responsibility for that. 

The guy just straight up murdered her, doesn't show the slightest bit of remorse, and is going to get away with it completely.... and they're still locked away in the “haunted house” with him until morning.   

It's just a really great chilling moment. 

For more modern sensibilities,  I'd also like to bring up Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer is a disturbing movie.  There are really no good people in that movie, evil triumphs without even a hint of anyone trying to stop it, and there's not even any explination for why Henry is doing what he's doing.  Very bleak movie. 

The advertisements for Gremlins scared me a lot as a kid and gave me nightmares.....I still haven't seen it or Gremlins 2

EVENT HORIZON!  That movie scared me like no other!  Serious space/alien movies bother me - I usually don't watch them.  I'll watch demonic horror movies, but they tend to creep me out the most. But demons in SPACE!  Whoa! No way man!  I can't even look at Sam Neill anymore without getting a little scared in my tummy. I won't watch that one again!

Night of the Demons (1988) is a good one.  I watched it again recently and I was surprised that the "jump scares" still got me.  I like the way this movie scares me though :smile:.

The Haunting (1963) still scares me a little too.. in a good way.

Crowhaven Farm

(http://www.terrorhook.com/stills/c/crowhaven/1.jpg)

Baffled!
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/04/Baffled!_FilmPoster.jpeg/220px-Baffled!_FilmPoster.jpeg)

Jannie Totsiens
(http://www.kinema.uwaterloo.ca/fileobj.php?type=2&id=1230)

The Medusa Touch
(https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/mHddRjhdw1SzzkUf0cheTQIyQ2G.jpg)

The Believers
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5178Z60C5JL.jpg)

Prince of Darkness
(http://horrorfanzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/prince-of-darkness-36.jpg)

Event Horizon
(http://flashbak.com//wp-content/uploads/2014/02/portal9.jpg)


Also, if a non-horror film has a scary sequence in it - e.g. the dream sequence in Robert Benton's Still of The Night (Teddy bear with the bleeding eye socket) and the interrogation scene in Michael Apted's Gorky Park - then that is memorable and scary for me.

THE RING
JEEPERS CREEPERS
THE HANGMAN
MIRRORS
WILLOW CREEK
GRAVE ENCOUNTERS

Mullholland Drive

Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders

two films that succeeded in making me half think I'd stopped being awake and had slipped into some kind of alternate consciousness that was not comfortable


Don't Look Now - atmospheric creeps


Open Water
Jaws

2 shark ones. Jaws goes for the blockbuster Hollywood type scares but they work amazingly. Open Water is more the 'oh god what's going to happen' type uneasiness but it genuinely freaked me out


Long Weekend

tension builds and builds. never over the top, but had me squealing by the end.

How on earth could I have forgotten about Pet Sematary? *

(http://www.toddalcott.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/Pet-Sematary-Remake-2.jpg)

I ran out of the fricking theatre!!   :buggedout: :buggedout:

Two other frightening films, both from South Africa and both banned:

The Stick :buggedout:

(http://www.sudplanete.net/_uploads/images/films/ROODT_Darrell_1987_The-Stick_00_DVD.jpg)

The Shadowed Mind :buggedout:

(http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BZWNkMDA4NmUtYjZjMC00NzFiLWE0MjEtMTFiNjE0YjRhMjI3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzM4MjM0Nzg@._V1_UY268_CR9,0,182,268_AL_.jpg)

Renny Harlin's Mindhunters was another one.  :buggedout:

(https://shaniawan.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/217.jpg)

I'd recommend you see Gremlins 2: it's very funny indeed and less darker than the first film.   

from my childhood:

The Last Man on Earth (1964) on TV. Gave me nightmares. Woke up screaming actually.
Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971) at the theater. Too intense for me. We left the theater because I was freaking out.
Expulsion of the Devil (1973) on TV. Peeking through sheets only.
The Exorcist (1973) at the theater. I was hiding behind the person sitting before me, peeking through my hands.
Jaws (1975) at the theater. I was too scared going swimming after watching this.
The Omen (1976) at the theater. Again, hiding behind the person before me most of the time.
The Sentinel (1977) at the theater. First time I screamed, but so did most in the audience.
Alien (1979) at the theater. First certified jump scare that made me actually jump out of my seat. I sort of missed out on the one in Jaws because I had my eyes covered.

in my teens:

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) on video. Stuck with me for weeks because the film was so disturbing.
The Evil Dead (1981) on video. Notorious dare-you-to-watch back in the day. I did watch, but from behind my pillow  :bouncegiggle:
Poltergeist (1982) at the theater. First time I realized that being scared can also be fun.

As an adult I hardly get scared watching horror movies anymore. The last film that creeped me out big time however was Paranormal Activity (2007).

Them.  I was very young (low single digits) and it stuck with me.  Now it is one of my all-time favourites.
Dracula (1931)  I read the book when I was about 10.  Almost couldn't watch the movie.  Slept with the covers held tight around my neck for many years after.
The Innocents (1961)  Shook me up: not knowing what was real and what wasn't.  Yikes!

eta: Event Horizon (1997)  and In the Mouth of Madness (1994) did a fair job of scaring me too.  These days, for me 'scared' is more achieving a sustained state of uneasiness than anything else.

oh yes, good call. quite a few scares in there...

As a kid/teen (I generally avoided horror films as a kid as they tended to give me recurring nightmares):

Salem's Lot (the window scene)
Predator (the big reveal and the discovery of people skinned)
Superman III (the merge of computer and human)
Poltergeist (clown & tree scenes)
The Shining (the little girls, Nicholson going off the deep end)
Jaws (bigger boat)
Alien 3 (it was the first one I actually saw)
Forbidden Planet

As an adult:

Ringu
The Ring
The Grudge
Ju-On: The Grudge
The Haunting (1963)
The Innocents (1961)
Carnival of Souls
Poltergeist II
The Day After
Threads
Intruders (1992)
Nosferatu (1922)
Halloween (1978)
Psycho (1960)
Alien (1979)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Jacob's Ladder
In the Mouth of Madness
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Evil Dead (1981)
Freaks (1932)
Planet of the Vampires
Queen of Blood
Lifeforce
Quatermass and the Pit
The Thing from Another World
The Fly (1986)
Horror Hotel (aka City of the Dead)
Black Sabbath (1963)
Black Sunday
Burn, Witch, Burn!
The Reptile
The Thing (1982)

When I was very young, I remember sneaking a peek at a movie my father was watching and being terrified by the monster. That movie, I'm ashamed to admit, was Monster of Party Beach, with the hot-dog mouthed monster being the source of my terror. Go figure.

As a teen, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers scared me good. I refuse to go back and watch it again in order to preserve that feeling. I rewatched Party Beach and saw how ridiculous that monster was; I don't want the same to happen with Body Snatchers.

The first Nightmare on Elm Street was good and creepy. A guy that kills you in a dream?!? Yikes!

The most recent movie that gave me a good case of the creeps was probably The Babadook. It may not work for everyone, but it sure left me a bit uneasy.

I'll throw in the only good horror movie I've seen in the longest time was House of the Devil. You probably need a particular taste for it though. It's pretty slow.  :hot:

V: The Original Min-Series scared me in my younger days too, mostly for the big reveal of what the aliens really looked like. Also the Disney Mr. Boogedy movies come to mind.

     I saw WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE when it came out (I was six); it scared the tacos outta me.

     At twelve, my brother Mike (who was ten) and I saw the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and didn't sleep well for a week afterwards....it's probably hard for some of you to imagine that film being scary, but we'd never seen anything like it up to that point, especially with the hero getting killed at the end like that.

      The "wedding night" scene in DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT still gets me, as does the "grabbing hand" in CARRIE.

      I was babysitting for a neighbor lady one Monday night-she'd gone out to bingo, and just wanted me to sit in the apartment in case her two little kids woke up. I'm eighteen, there's a thunderstorm, and I'm watching THE TINGLER, with Vincent Price.
By the end of the movie, I had my feet up on the sofa- I was SURE that thing was in there with me.

I saw the BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1959) on TV when I was a kid-when the conehead monster broke out of the closet my stepbrother Jimmy ran screaming out of the room-and I was so scared I was hugging my knees and laughing!
.the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974)-I was 19 when I first saw it on one of them old disc/record things-me,Nick and his sister Daphne,and Terry Camfield watched it about 11:30 at night. The kitchen table scene-I didn't know whether to laugh or scream. That whole movie f**ked me up. I have a problem with that-when I get spooked-sometimes I laugh. Weird.

OH! Here's a rare clip of a deleted scene!

http://youtu.be/CIdIobKYcAU (http://youtu.be/CIdIobKYcAU)

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE Saw it first at a midnight showing around 1980.  Relentlessly terrifying, TCM is a masterpiece. 

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD Saw it first on a late night TV broadcast about 40 years ago.  Went to bed looking out the window hoping a car would drive by...

CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS reminded me of many of the crappy houses I had spent lots of time in working with my father, they all looked cheap and all were smelly. 

     CSPWDT has a scene that still works on me, and I'm not really sure why; I'd rather not go into it.

Two recent films that creeped me out were:
THE LAST SHIFT and
HANGMAN.

Both quite excellent!

Probably the first R rated movie I saw, Sleepy Hallow. IIRC it had to do with the final scene.

The original Carnival Of Souls creeped me out sooo much. AWESOME and a bonafied classic!