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What frightened you as a kid/teenager? Whether it was a movie, T.V. show,song on the radio,a toy, an object,a memory from your childhood. Compose a list of what frightened you the most.

Here is my list:
 1.I was petrified of clowns and balloons. Clowns because they were strangers wearing hideous looking make-up and would often walk up to me and talk to me during circuses and carnivals. Balloons because they made a loud noise when they exploded. And what do most clowns do when approach children? They hand them balloons! My top two childhood phobias often came "hand in hand". I would boycott all circuses and carnivals as a young boy.
2. The final scene of the orginal version of "The Fly" from 1958. Yes,my friends..the famous scene at the end when the fly with the scientists head gets trapped in the spider web and screams "Help Me ! Help Me!" The first time I saw it..I almost ran out of the living room where our t.v. set was. It seemed so real and creepy.
3. I was scared of photographs of Sissy Spacek all covered with pig's blood in the original "Carrie" from 1976. I recall a drugstore that my family and I went to quite often that had a paperback novelization of "Carrie" and the book had a photograph of Carrie all covered with blood on the cover. I found the photo so disturbing...I could not touch the book. Heck..I wouldn't even go down the book shelf aisle for the longest time because I knew it was sitting there on the shelves.
4. "The Exorcist" (1973). Who wasn't scared of this movie as a kid? Even a lot of adults find it scary and un-nerving.  I saw it for the first time on a small black and white portable t.v. set. When I rented the uncut version on videocassette a few years later...my buddy told me I jumped during the scene where the young priest was sleeping and had a disturbing nightmare. As we "Exorcist" buffs know,during the priest's dream sequence they show a very fast image of the demon's face. The actual face of the evil spirit that is inside Linda Blair's character's body!  For the longest time I could not watch the movie during the nightime or alone because of the shots of the demonic faces. As an older person I can put theses scenes in slow motion when I watch my "Exorcist" DVD . Through movie trivia reseach,I have discovered these demonic  faces were actually Eileen Dietz,Linda Blair's stunt double in makeup. Apparently the director filmed her in this makeup to see if it would look good, and decided to re-use the footage throughout the movie. Most people to this day talk about how startling and scary those demonic faces are.
5. The final scene from the 1978 remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Seeing Donald Sutherland point to the camera, and make a horrible facial expression while hissing scared the hell out of me!
6. When I was a wee lad of 4 or 5,we were invited to dinner at my parent's friend's house. They were a couple who had two teenage daughters who were into Elton John and his music. They kept playing one of his songs which was popular around this time entitled "Funeral for a Friend". It starts off with a tolling bell tower chime and howling wind sound effects. My sister tells me I was so scared I would hide in their bedroom closet whenever they played that song! However,once they told me that the clowns played hide and go seek in their closet,I had to find a new hiding place. LOL!
7. Does anybody remember the old t.v. show "Night Gallery" from the early 1970's? My mother actually would not let me watch this show because she kept claiming it would give me nightmares. Once she fell asleep early, and my father let me watch the show with me. Just seeing the intro with the distorted faces grimacing at the camera during the opening theme song was bad enough. But the episode dealt with a young girl who had a medallion of this small,very ugly,insect like creature. She would take off the medallion before she went to bed each night. But the insect medallion would actually come to life and fly out her bedroom window and attack people!!! Sure enough...this episode gave me a nightmare. Mother know best,I guess! LOL!
8. The scene in the original "Alien" (1979) where Sigourney Weaver re-attaches the android's head and it talks to her creeped me out more than the scene involving the baby alien bursting out of John Hurt's chest. Wow! Real nightmare material for a 10 year old boy!!!

I will post more when I think of them. In the meantime...what frightened you the most when you were a kid/teenager?

I know I'm going to become a target for smart remarks or worse, but what frightened me the most as a child and still bothers me some to this day was the children's book, The Velveteen Rabbit .

Why? Since age two I have suffered from asthma and allergies. The story involves a little boy who gets sick and the doctors suggest to the mother "confiscate all his toys and burn them." This includes the toy rabbit he loved.

I still worry that I'm going to get sick and have everything I own, CDs, DVDs and books, confiscated and burned. Part of that fear could be just living in southwest Missouri. There was a church in Springfield when I was younger that held a book and record burning every year.

Also, now that I'm grown I've learned of a book published by a nutcase in the St. Louis area who suggested instutionalizing children with chronic illnesses like asthma for "the good of national security." Not only was this book popular in Missouri but I'm hear many of this guy's theories expoused by national pollitians.
I'm working this stuff into a novel I'm writing about a terminally ill boy in a small town in the 1950's.

I was generally scared of skeletons until adolescence (or thereabouts).  I have this very clear recollection of waking up in my Mom and Dad's bed (after a nightmare drove me to climb into their bed) when I was about 3 years old and looking at the doorway; standing in the doorway of their room was a skeleton, and it was looking at me.

I suppose I was dreaming; it was one of the most vivid, realistic dreams of my entire life.  I can still remember it clearly nearly 37 years later.

Later in life, I became fascinated with skulls, so things go full circle, I guess.

I used to lay awake in bed sometimes CONVINCED Dracula (as played by Bela Lugosi) was in the house.  So long as I faced a certain way in bed, he could not get me (yeah, like that would work).  This was probably around age 10-ish.

Also, I did not like that little flying drilling ball from Phantasm.

When I was real young for some reason I remember being scared of Alex from the Clockwork Orange although I'd never seen the movie, just the box cover.  
Also I was scared of Billy Idol. I have no idea why.
The sister with the twisted spine scared the living bejeezus out of me. Hell she still scares the living bejeezus out of me.  
The lizard people from V when they'd take their faces off.
Crap I was a little wussy, everything scared me!

Master Blaster wrote:
> The sister with the twisted spine scared the living bejeezus
> out of me. Hell she still scares the living bejeezus out of me.

From Pet Sematary? Yeah, at the time, that girl was one of the freakiest things I'd seen in a movie in years. Having gotten to the point where nothing on the big screen had been remotely scary for some time, Pet Sematary was a lot of fun, but I must have been around 20 at the time.

Probably the silliest thing that freaked me out as a kid was that book, Where the Wild Things Are. I suppose the point of the book was not to be scared of the titular wild things, but hairy monsters with big eyes, pointy teeth, horns and claws make quite an image for a kids' book. Still makes me a bit uneasy to look at the illustrations.

Then there were the Sid & Marty Kroft shows. Of course, I probably wasn't the only little kid who thought the H.R. Pufnstuff show was weird and scary.

You've all said so many of the ones that scared me from my childhood! That's amazing!

Steve - The scene from the original "Fly" scared me when I was a kid, and the first time I saw "The Exorcist" was on a small black and white TV as well. Scared the HELL out of me!

And  I'm with you guys in regards to 'Zelda' from Pet Semetary. Saw that movie when I was a sophomore in high school and it scared the crap out of me!

Ozzy - Don't feel bad. I may have 'The Velveteen Rabbit' beat. I was TERRIFIED of a skit on "Sesame Street". Yep, I was a wimp. It was a skit illustrating the difference between "Near and Far". This furry little puppet with huge eyes would poke into the completely white screen saying, "Near" up close to the screen, and then "Far" from way back. And then he'd start running from far away right at the screen, yelling some near & far song, and it would scare me ever time! I had nightmares!

Rob
 The KO Picture Show (http://www.geocities.com/rtillisch/KOPictureShow.html)

I guess I just figured everyone would extract the movie reference from my brain psyonically. Yeah, I meant to reference Pet Semetary.

Everything scared me. I had a rough, broken childhood and didn't feel very secure so I was scared of quite a bit but movies generally didn't do it to me (there were a few exceptions). Now, nothing scares me except getting old and useless and everything dangerous that my 4 year old attempts to do.

Wow! I wasn't expecting such wonderful replies to my post. Ulthar...were you scared of all skeletons in general (photos,drawings,and television/movie skeletons) or just "live" skeletons on film? Just curious. My clown phobia was selective.  I only was frightened of clowns that I met in person. I had no problems when it came to photos of clowns or clowns on t.v. We have some embarassing home movies where my family is at a parade, and when the clowns approach me,you can see me start to cry hysterically, and hide behind my mother's skirt. LOL! Your description of having to sleep in your parents bed brought back many memories of my childhood. My family is Catholic, and my Mom had a statue of "Baby Jesus" that she kept on my nightstand. I used to have nightmares that "Baby Jesus" would come to life, and walk up and down on my nightstand, and talk to me in a creepy voice! I would wake up screaming, and my Mom would have to come into my room in the middle of the night, and remove the statue from my room. Eventually this was not good enough, and I wound up sleeping in my parents bed. Diablo...I don't seem to recall that "Sesame Street" sketch you described to us,but I have heard other people talk about it. Maybe if I saw the sketch it would ring some bells for me. I do remember a sketch where they were talking about several words that begin with the letter "V". Various voices would say "V" stands for...and they would mention words that begin with the letter "V". The last word was the word "vampire" and the narrator was a woman with a low pitched sinister sounding voice. While she was talking they would show an animated cartoon of Count Dracula changing into a bat and flying away. This sketch always creeped me out even though a few years later I became a monster movie addict, and several of the films I would watch and enjoy involved vampires. Go figure!!! LOL! I thought of a film that did scare me as a youth. No...it was not
"The Wizard of Oz"  or "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory",even though many people I speak to say they were terrified of those films when they were young. It was a comedy movie:"Foul Play" starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. The plot revolved around a group of criminals who wanted to assasinate the Pope. Goldie's character has some evidence regarding their conspiracy, and the criminals hire some thugs to bump her off. The scene that got to me involved Goldie being in a library late at night, and this ugly albino guy was stalking her, and trying to kill her. My sister went with me to the theater to see "Foul Play" and to this day, she always teases me, and tells me how I over-reacted to this scene. I had to use the restroom but insisted that my sister escort me to the bathroom. I was old enough to realize it was only a movie...yet I kept worrying that the albino was in the theater, and would chase me down the aisle!!!  I guess when we are ten years old,we are very impressionable! LOL!!!  

Keep on posting your scary childhood memories,my friends. Thank
you!
Sincerely,Steve.

When I was five I was terrified of THE SCRUBBING BUBBLES. I can't even remember what cleaning product they advertize, but they were a lot scarrier in those days. They didn't have the little smiles drawn on them, just eyes, so that brush thing at the bottom of them looked like a gaping jawless mouth. In the commercials, swarms of them would tear all over the bathroom making all kinds of noise, then they'd go down the drains and behind the toilet, like they were HIDING. So I couldn't go in the bathroom and close the door because that's when they'd come out and get me. The shower was pretty scary around that same time.

Ulthar reminded me of this guy that called the radio show Loveline awhile ago. When he was little, he was all creeped out by monster's feet in movies, all different kinds of monster feet, like the Hulk, dinosaurs, Predator. Now that he's grown up, he's got some kind of monster foot fetish where he looks at pictures of Alien feet and stuff.

Had a conversation about this topic with my parents one time. My mom got freaked out by a flashback in a Dick Tracy strip to how on of the villains had been disfigured in a fire, and she mentioned a friend of hers that had been scared by the TZ episode Little Girl Lost, where the kid rolled under her bed into another dimension. My dad mentioned The Island Of Dr Moreau and The Willows. I just read The Willows a few weeks ago, it is pretty scary. I found it under Algernon Blackwood on the Gutenberg website (just realized I have the URL written down right by the 'puter: http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/b#a1370). You can see where Lovecraft got a lot of his notions from that.

Steve Byczek wrote:

> ...were you scared of all skeletons in general
> (photos,drawings,and television/movie skeletons) or just "live"
> skeletons on film? Just curious.

As I recall, it was any skeleton.  I remember being scared but fascinated at the same time, so even though scared, I would not look away.  Skeleton costumes on Halloween always had that dichotomy.

As I said, later this totally reversed; skeletons in general and skulls in particular, became a "thing" for me.  Friends gave me skeletons for gifts, a skeleton key chain hanging from the mirror of my truck, skeletons on many T-shirts, etc.  It's wierd how it came around like that.

But then, there remains that brief instant of 'shock' whenever I see something with a skeleton on it....

This one stands out for sheer goofiness.
One of the most frightening nightmares I ever had, I was in bed, completely unable to move or make a sound. Hovering over my bed in an extremely menacing fashion, were the shirts of The Lovin' Spoonful. You know, those ones with the big horizontal stripes. The Spoonful weren't in them, it was just their shirts.
30+ years later, I'm still trying to figure out what brought that one on.

Bargle5 wrote:

> This one stands out for sheer goofiness.
> One of the most frightening nightmares I ever had, I was in
> bed, completely unable to move or make a sound. Hovering over
> my bed in an extremely menacing fashion, were the shirts of The
> Lovin' Spoonful. You know, those ones with the big horizontal
> stripes. The Spoonful weren't in them, it was just their
> shirts.
> 30+ years later, I'm still trying to figure out what brought
> that one on.
>
Maybe they were out wearing the Blues Magoos' neon shirts or the Raiders' Tri-corner hats and jodaphurs.

Sorry, just had to say that.

Not sure what age these first happened to me, but I was fairly young (maybe around 6 or 7). Anyway, I was scarred by the movie Jaws in general and the scene in The Blob 2 where it drops from the ceiling onto that guy and he's all covered with slime. So even to this day  (been at least 10 years) I still look up when I go to the bathroom to make sure it's not up there about to drop on me and will not hang my feet off my bed because Jaws will bite them off. I think I'll always have these two "perks".

Dave...I remember the "Scrubbing Bubbles" commercials back in the 1970's. They never really scared me...but I must admit they were weird. I remember some episodes of the "Twilight Zone" scaring me as a kid. The one episode with Telly Savalas entitled "My Living Doll" where the little girl had a toy doll that would talk,and move,and kill people. I also remember being disturbed by one episode where a woman was in the hospital recovering from a horrible accident that disfigured her face. She was all covered up with bandages,and they did not remove them until the end of the episode. You the viewer expects her to be hideously ugly,and after the bandages come off...she turns out to be beautiful,but all the doctors and hospital employees are pig-faced mutants! Really creepy stuff!
I also heard about a episode where a little boy would receive calls on his toy plastic telephone from his dead grandmother. If I saw that one as a kid I would have had nightmares for sure!  Its funny though...not all things have to be of the horror genre to give us nightmares. I had a friend who lived next door who actually had a nightmare when he was 6 years old from an old "Popeye" cartoon he saw on television.  In the cartoon he saw,Popeye had built a log cabin but his house was invaded by termites. The insects proceeded to eat his entire house. My friend woke up screaming,and kept telling his parents: "The termites are coming for me!".


Keep the scary childhood memories coming,my friends! Sincerely,Steve.

"My name is Talking Tina and I don't like you."

"My name is Talking Tina and I think I'm going to kill you."
From the TZ episode mentioned above with Telly Savalas. I absolutely loved the original TZ series. When I was a kid, they would show it on WPIX (I think) on Saturday afternoons. I admit that some were creepy but none of them were really scary to me. I grew up watching horror movies from the time I was about 5 or 6...which, my wife says, explains quite a bit about me.

So odinn...just out of curiousity...what were the titles of the movies that were the exceptions? What movies DID scare you as a child and/or teenager? Sincerely,Steve.

So odinn..what were the titles of the movies that were the exceptions? What movies DID scare you as a child and/or teenager? Sincerely,Steve.

odinn7 wrote:

> I grew up watching horror movies from the time I was about 5 or
> 6...
>

Yeah, me too.  I remember Saturday afternoons there was a show called "Shock Theater" that showed all horror movies, most of them bad b&w's from the 1950's.  Every once in a while, they showed classics like the original "Mummy" or "The Wolfman."  One they showed quite often was "Gargoyles."

One of the creepiest that I remember shown during this time was called (iirc) "The Blue Room."  At least it was creepy to me at my age, because I remember the ending where the protagonists both died and became ghosts.

When I was even younger, I do recall my parents not letting me watch "Creature Feature," but that may have been more because it was on so late.  This would have been early 1970's.  It was THE show to get to watch when I was young, kinda like Saturday Night Live was when I was in Middle School.

I used to watch Creature Feature every Saturday night with my father. My parents got a messy divorce when I was real young and I would stay with my father on the weekends. He would watch these movies with me and then my mother would be p**sed and say that I shouldn't be watching things like that. If it had been up to her, I wouldn't have even been allowed to see King Kong or Planet of the Apes. Anyway, to the point, I remember Creature Feature very well and also Chiller Theater.

Steven, the few movies that I recall that actually scared me:
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark- this one is mentioned many times on this board. I have a story associated with it that I'd rather not write again but if you're interested,  click here.  (http://www.badmovies.org/bbs/read.php?f=2&i=66822&t=66821)
Let's Scare Jessica to Death- My older sister thought it would be funny to make me watch this. I had great trouble with it but ran out of the room when it showed the guy riding the tractor with his throat slit and blood everywhere.
The Omen- I had a scary thing for Satan and demons. Didn't want any part of them.

That was pretty much it as far as I can remember.

I've been trying to think of what Frightened me as a kid because I was a sissy back then but nothing would come. When you mentioned Twilight Zone though, I remembered the big one.

The episode Eye of the Beholder... where the "ugly" people try to turn the beautiful girl into an ugly person like themselves. The faces on them were just terrifying

I remember when I was like 6 I was Jaws and when the dudes leg to bit of that scared me a bit

I remember my  family made fun of me because the end of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" when Christopher Lloyd Rose all smashed up and started walking around scared me...then again I was even scared of the Alien Popping out Chest scene... IN SPACEBALLS!

Most recently the ending of "Sleepaway camp" has  been freaking me out but not for any reason more than it's just a creepy final shot and her face is really creepy.

Very Interesting saintmort. Just out of curiousity...what scene in particular from "Roger Rabbit" scared you? I only saw the movie once, and it was several years ago. I seem to recall a scene where one of the actors got his head crushed. I can't remember what caused it to happen. Maybe his head got run over by a truck or trapped in a waffle iron. Anyway...I remember one of the actors walking around with a horizontal,one dimensional "cartoon" head that was flat as a pancake. Was this the scene that freaked you out? I have been told there is another scene where some guy gets changed into a pig and he walks around through one long scene with an animated cartoon/'pig-head" but apparently this scene is only available on the special edition D.V.D. Come to think of it,I  was 19 years old when it first came out,and even though it was promoted as a "kiddie" movie and I did not see it until several years later, I remember the critics describing it as very violent for a so-called "children's movie". When I did finally see it, I felt it had a lot of risque, and sometimes weird  "adult" humor. It definitely would have confused me, and given me nightmares, if I saw it as a young child.

odinn..I recall all of those films very vividly. I did not see "Let's Scare Jessica to Death " until I was a young adult (early 20's) but I can still understand why it frightened you. It would have scared the hell out of me if I saw it as a kid. I heard they are currently remaking "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark". I wish Hollywood would stop going on this "remake spree" and leave the old classic horror and sci-fi movies alone. I like the originals so much better. They bring back so many fun memories when we wach them, and they still have the capability to thrill and excite us!


Sincerely,Steve.

For some reason, the TZ reference reminded me of an episode of Lost in Space that was pretty scary when I was little. It was the one with the "golden man" who is judged to be a good guy because he's good looking. Smith hands over all the weapons, and the guy reverts to his normal form - this ugly red thing with a big distorted head and lopsided green eyes. I had to look away when he was on.

Of course, in typical Irwin Allen fashion, the costume was reused in a couple more episodes, and each one caught me totally off guard.

it sounds like you're talking about the same scene

The full scene is Doom (the villian) gets his foot glued to a steamroller and is crushed and camera shows him screaming in pain as the steamroller flattens him but then you see his hand start to raise up and this flat  1 dimension version is wobbling around and talking, fills itself with helium and his "fake" eyeballs fall out and when he turns around his eyes are animated.

Freaky as hell for a kid who was in like 2nd grade at the time.

Awww. "Lost in Space" one of my childhood favorites! Can't think of any particular episode that scared me,though. I do remember my friends and I on the playground having debates regarding which "show" was more "cool",the original "Star Trek" with Shatner and Nimoy or "Lost in Space". I am embarassed to admit that I used to actually prefer "Lost in Space" as a kid because it was a faster paced show with more monsters and aliens and gagdets,and the plots of the episodes were easier for a kid to understand than the socio-political symbolism inside the "Star Trek" episodes. But now I am getting off topic. My friend was frightened of the "alien head" in the "Star Trek" episode entitled "Corbomite Maneuver". Gee..they had such wonderful t.v. shows in the 1960's and 1970's:"The Twilight Zone","Outer Limits","Lost in Space","Star Trek","Night Gallery". Not only were they well made but they were also well written and quite exciting and scary at times. Does anyone recall a t.v. show which came out in the early 1960's entitled "One Step Beyond"? It was similar to "The Twilight Zone" but unlike "TZ" the episodes were based on supposedly "true stories". It only lasted a couple of seasons but I saw most of the episodes as re-runs on a local t.v. station in the early '90s, and many of them were very well made not to mention very eerie and suspenseful! If you haven't seen any episodes of this almost forgotten show,don't miss out on the opportunity to watch them!!! Perfect viewing material for a dark and stormy night!

Sincerely,Steve.

I remember being scared to death by "beyond belief" stories

"The Omen- I had a scary thing for Satan and demons. Didn't want any part of them."

Wow, you mentioning The Omen reminded me of "Stephen" on Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare.  That is a rather creepy song.

The Omen *was* creepy.  2 was not bad.  Three I laughed through.

I never saw "Beyond Belief" but my wife tells me it was a fascinating but very scary t.v. show. I think they would have a narrator...wasn't it Jonathan Frakes from "Star Trek:The Next Generation" (?) and he would tell us several tales. Some of them were works of fiction,and others were based on true stories. You the viewer had to vote on which ones were true, and which ones were false. She said one that really creeped her out involved a young man who worked in an airport. His parents were at home one day while he was at work, and were terrified to discover on the 5:00 pm news that a plane had crashed into his workplace,and firefighters were convinced everybody in the airport was killed. They were even more suprised since he had called them earlier that evening around 4:30 pm  telling them there was an accident at the airport but he was okay. When the newscaster said the explosion had taken place at 4:00 pm and the whole place probably caught on fire around 4:15 pm,they came to the conclusion that the phone call they received from him took place AFTER he died. Wow! Talk about creepy stuff!


Sincerely,Steve.

TV and movie-wise:

In the comedy-drama "Fuzz" with Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch, there's this subplot of these teens who get their kicks setting bums on fire down by the docks.  That freaked me out, because it just seemed so ruthless and cruel for cruelties' sake.

"Jaws" kept me out of the water at the beach the Summer it played.

The scene in "The Exorcist" where Linda Blair's head does a 180 degree STILL freaks me out.

When I was real small, my sister and some of her Brownie friends were watching an episode of "The Outer Limits" where a monster slowly ambles toward the camera, getting closer and closer.  I ran out of the room, shreiking.

Couple of the old "Night Gallery" episodes gave the chills.  Anyone remember the one with the old lady gardener who wants to stay put on her property while some developers try to force her off?  The ending to that one freaked me.

Many scenes from the movie "Black Christmas", which aired on our local TV as "Silent NIght, Evil Night", gave me the heebie-jeebies.  Of course, now it's one of my all-time favorite horror flicks.

As a teen, I caught a midnight showing of Romero's "Dawn of the Dead", and had to drop a friend off way down a desolate highway, before returning home.  I remember that was a spooky ride.

Some of the many insect-swarm movies that were so prevelant when I was a kid in the `70's were enough for me to curl-up in my chair with the feet off the floor.

The scenes in the old "Salem's Lot" with the kids friends outside his window, begging to be let in, never failed to freak me.

As for non-movie/TV:

I remember I could scare the crap outta myself at night in bed in the dark just by whispering my own name.

Otherwise, just the usual things, like being called on in class and so on...

Isn't it funny that Alice Cooper is a christian now?

oh the simple ironies in life

That's the show.

I remember there was one where they were in a pro wrestling match and the one guy was suppose to lose his title to this a***ole guy, but he couldn't do it.

SO they have the match and in the end the guy with the title wins and then they find out the other guy was dead and had been for  95% of the match.

Even if you can make that story more interesting then it is, wrestling with a dead guy....ewwwww

For me it was 2 things
Men with beards freaked the hell out of me
And the commercial for Susperia scared me to death. I kept having nightmares of it for years until I bought the DVD and finally watched the movie.

Something that consistently gave me nightmares as a kid (8-10) was seeing movies/TV shows involving injuries to women's breasts. The scene from the beginning of Dr. No of the woman shot in the breast and another scene from a TV show where a woman was slowly stabbed between the breasts still stick in my mind.
This probably says something Freudian about me. Sigh.

Erik:What brought on your "beard phobia"?  Do you remember what the origin of this phobia was? Was it just men with beards in person or was it also men with beards in photographs and movies and t.v. shows? My cousin actually got scared of my Dad (her Uncle) when he grew a moustache. I am not sure if it was because she did not recogonize him after he grew it or if it gave him a sinister appearance ( he has a dark complexion and even though he is not Mexican,the moustache did kinda make him look Hispanic sort of like a chunky version of Pancho Villa). When my Uncle and Aunt and cousins came over for Thanksgiving dinner, she started to cry as soon as she saw him with the moustache, and eventually got so scared that she ran out of our house. My Mom and Aunt had to coax her back in when it was time to eat the turkey. LOL! They re-assured her the "scary man" as she kept calling him was the same old Uncle Mike.

Sincerely,Steve.

Mine are all stupid in retrospect.

SWAMP THING put me off apple juice, because Alec Holland was working with a bright yellow liquid before he was set on fire and then jumped in the swamp to turn into Swamp Thing.  I was served apple juice after seeing that, my mind made the connection, and I didn't drink it for years.

There was this revenge movie, I believe it was WIRED TO KILL but don't quote me, where this teenager takes revenge on some gang.  He breaks open a battery and the somehow turns the battery acid into white powder.  He then proceeds to sell this stuff to one of the gang as cocaine.  So this gang guy snorts the stuff and starts screaming.  The next image is this guy lying against a wall and every orifice in his head is leaking white foam.  That image scared the hell out of me for years.

Also, those "yip yip" aliens from SESAME STREET freaked me out.

Dr. Kobb...I recently saw "Black Christmas" and many scenes did disturb me and I am a 36 year old man. I can only imagine how frightened you must have been of this movie as a younger boy! Yikes!!!  Your anecdote about "Dawn of the Dead" reminded me of something similiar that happened to me when I was 11. I had a buddy that would hang out with me whenever he visited his grandmother's house. His grandmother lived on our block. My Dad took us to see "Zombie" (1979) which was basially an Italian imitation of Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". We so scared while watching this movie...we kept giving each other "pep talks" telling each other to "be brave...be strong..the movie is almost over with." When it finally ended...we were scared to enter the parking lot. I almost felt like clinging on to my Dad's arm! LOL! When our visits were over with,I would escort him back to his grandmother's house. Even though she only lived a few houses away from my parents house,on that particular night...the walk seemed longer than usual and very ominous. Every shadow and noise took on a whole new meaning! It was a creepy night,and boy was I glad to go to bed (with a nightlight,of course). LOL!

Sincerely,Steve.

Ha Ha!  Your story about seeing "Zombie" reminds me of when my Dad took me to see "Alien"!  Scared the bejeebers outta me.  Much like with that "Black Xmas", it's now one of my all-time favorite horror movies.

 "Black Christmas" DOES hold up well, doesn't it?  'The Masher' is freaky as anything.  His M.O. scared the heck out of me as a kid.  I don't wanna spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but the ending did me in as a kid.  Sleep did not come easily that night.  Some consider it one of the true forerunners of the 'slasher' genre that swept the `80's.

The beard story is funny. My daughter used to be just the opposite of that when she was between 1 and 2 years old. I've had facial hair since 10th grade so from the moment my daughter could see, she was used to beards and such. Most of the men in the family have facial hair also. There was a family gathering where her grandpa showed up after shaving it all off. Well, she was scared sh*tless and didn't want anything to do with him. She also never liked being held or approached by guys without facial hair. She's over that now but it was amusing.

odinn - The facial hair thing made me laugh, because it reminded me of my childhood. When I was an infant, my father had a beard. So one day he decided to shave it off. But he didn't want me to be scared of him without the beard or be freaked out by this "new guy" picking me up out of my crib. So he shaved off his beard in front of me. I just sat in my highchair by the kitchen sink while he shaved off his beard, saying, "See Robbie, it's still me! It's still Daddy!" It's one of my earliest memories. The thought it was pretty smart of the old man.

Rob
 The KO Picture Show (http://www.geocities.com/rtillisch/KOPictureShow.html)

I remember a lot of sleepless nights after seeing the last story in the TV movie Trilogy of Terror.  The little Zuni fetish doll was pretty creepy chasing her around her apartment but what really got me was the end scene of her waiting for her mom to come over, squatting on the kitchen floor in her bath robe, stabbing the floor with a big butcher knife and having the same teeth as the doll.

 My light stayed on at night for a couple weeks after that.

Diablo, that's a pretty funny story. Your father was quite smart to do that in front of you. Some people don't think like that.

I thought of a few more things that frightened me as a kid.

Has anyone on this board seen a made for TV version of "Dracula" starring Louis Jordan as Dracula?  It was a British made for TV movie, and I saw it for the first time during Halloween of 1979. The first scene that creeped me out was the weird shot of Dracula crawling on his castle wall. The second one was a sequence showing Dracula arguing with his brides over Jonathan Harker. The brides wanted Harker for themselves,but Dracula had other plans for him. Drac hands them a leather bag. The women open up the bag, and there is a live human baby inside the bag. They take the baby out of the bag,and literally eat him...flesh,bones,blood,and all! That scene really got to me the first time I saw this version of "Dracula". Boy was I disappointed when I recorded this movie off Public Televison several years later,and the "baby" scene was cut out! Both of these events take place in the Bram Stoker novel, in case you never read it.There was also another scene in this movie where Van Helsing drove a wooden stake through Lucy's heart,and the huge fountain of blood that came out really surprised me,and almost paralyzed my sister with shock! Watching this flick on a black and white portable TV set in my parents basement while experiencing a Halloween candy "sugar buzz" merely enhanced my viewing experience!!!

I remember the scene in "The Incredible Shrinking Man" where they showed the close-up of the giant spider's face,and its fangs were twitching and dripping venom scared me as well. Of course, when the "Shrinking Man" stabbed the spider with a weapon he made,I wasn't expecting to see blood drip out (in consideration of the fact that this movie was made way back in the 50s)

Since I was scared of clowns...I also was leary of "Jack In The Box" toys since they would make a large noise when "Jack" came out of the box. I would occasionally toughen myself up,and play with them in toy-stores,but no matter how prepared I thought I was,I always got startled when "Jack" jumped out of his box.  And guess what Jack's occupation was? He was dressed up as a clown. I think I did have a "Bozo the Clown" doll but rarely played with it. If you pulled the string he would say things like "I'm your old pal Bozo!" "How are you?" and other examples of "small talk". I wasn't scared of him all the time,but if I saw a clown in real life at a parade or a carnival and did my usual "clown phobia/anxiety attack", I packed "Bozo" away in my closet until I calmed myself down. Funny...I had no problem watching Bozo's TV show.





Keep on posting!
Sincerely,Steve Byczek

Basically, any kind of deformity or scarring scared the hell out of me as a kid.  People with bad burns, scars, amputations, or physical deformities would usually make me scream.  More than once, I'd be out with Mom and she'd have to cut short whatever she was doing to bring me home if I saw an amputee in a wheelchair, or somesuch.

The worst instance I remember is seeing a boy with some kind of horrible facial disfigurment.  I remember he didn't have a nose and his eyes were just empty holes.  That was the only time in my life I was simply frozen with horror.  Mom saw what was happening and dragged me to the cash register to pay and get me out of there.  I clung to her, with my face buried in her thigh, and stole nervous glances behind us to see if the boy was coming.  Then -- I HEARD him.  I heard him somewhere, back in the store, grunting.  But it was worse than that.  I could tell he was trying to speak but his mouth was too deformed for him to do so.  He was trying to speak ... but was too deformed to do so ...  The rest of it is a haze, but I think Mom picked me up and ran out to the car with me before I could start screaming.

I'm STILL like that.  Not as bad, thankfully.  Occasionally, though, it still gets to me.  My recent girlfriend had a baby nephew with a bad cleft pallette.  I could not be in the same room with him until his parents finally got it fixed.  Probably the worst that's happened recently is when I saw a young man at work who looked just like the kid from "Phenomena".  I'm not joking, he looked just like that little monster.  After trying to sputter out an answer to what he asked me, I had to tell him I was sorry and call someone else to deal with him.  From his expression and the look in his eyes, he knew it was because he was ugly.  I felt really bad about that.

Needless to say, any "body horror" movie usually scares the p**s out of me.  The 1986 remake of "The Fly", the end of its sequel where Bartok is dumped into that pit, the ugly guy from "Goonies".  The remake of "The Blob" where it showed people being melted inside of it.  The faces of Freddy and Jason used to scare me quite a bit.  There was an episode of the "Friday the 13th" TV show in which an aging model would use a cursed makeup mirror to cause rival models to become deformed that I never could watch all the way through.  And, good lord, that episode of "GI Joe" where the old woman was stealing other women's faces to make some kind of age preventive.  It ended with her falling victim to her own device and walking blindly about, clutching the blank veil of flesh that used to be her face, and trying to scream without a mouth.  Man, what kind of $#@!ed up episode of a kid's cartoon was that?

Oh yeah, I've got to mention this as well.

My parents got me a Howdy Doody ventriloquist dummy for Christmas when I was, oh, less than eight I'd say.  It had those blank eyes and those huge buck teeth.  They looked ready to bite off your fingers.  I only stuck my hand in it once, and was very disturbed to find out that it was ... strangely warm inside.

I played with it mostly by flinging it around and pretending to beat it up.  One morning, I awoke and stepped out of bed, right on Howdy Doody's face.  Of course, I slipped and fell, quite painfully.  It landed in a sitting position against the wall, staring right at me as I lay prone.  I HAD PUT IT IN THE CLOSET BEFORE GOING TO BED.  There was no way it could have gotten next to my bed.

For a few nights the terror escalated.  Sometimes I would wake up and hear ... something ... moving.  It would always be anywhere but where I put it come morning.  I even left it in the living room and closed my door once.  Yet THERE IT WAS in my chair, in my room, when I woke up.  Finally, I came to one morning and it was in bed with me!  Staring into my eyes, ready to bite out my throat with those vicious plastic teeth.

I took it outside and threw it up into the branches of the big tree in our back yard.  It caught there and was trapped.  I knew it would die and rot there.

And so it did.  Dad never got it down.  It stayed up there all winter, all spring, all summer, through snow, hard rain, and scorching sun.  By the end of summer, I had totally forgotten about the few days' terror it had put me through.

Until one day, one ordinary day, I was walking under the tree and something very hard and very heavy hit me on the head.  With stars in my eyes I spun around and turned my gaze toward the earth to behold the one part of the Howdy Doody doll that hadn't rotted away:  its head.  It stared up at me with only one blank eye now; the other had weathered away.  The rubber band holding its jaw shut had rotted and its mouth was hung agape, baring those teeth that were now rough and jagged from wear.

I quickly took it to the burn pile and incinerated it.  The one remaining eye held me in its gaze the whole time, the last part of the head to melt.  When it was over, there was nothing left but a flesh-colored puddle of plastic.  I couldn't sleep for a day or two.

TOP 10 LIST
Things that frightened the bejesus out of me as a KID (meaning age 15 and under). I was hard to scare when it came to movies because i watched alot of horror growing up. But i do remember specific instances and/or scenes:

10. My brothers jack-in the box toy - he had a really creepy one

9. "Jaws", I remember after seeing it i was scared to go to the toilet because jaws might be in there..lol

8. Ronald reagans finger on the button. Truly!

7. Poltergeist - specifically the scene with the kid and his clown. I used to imagine when i went to bed my toys came to life. When the realization came that they might want to kill me, i never slept with my toys again.

6. This still applies for me - any commercial that has food talking. Sandwhiches, dancing cookies - it freaks the hell out of me.

5. King Kong (the jessica lang remake) when kong steps on Charles Grodin. I don't know why, but this scene always gave me the willies. maybe it was the gleefull look on Kongs face as he did it

4. Legend of Bloody Mary

3. First time i read stephen kings "the boogyman". I'm a kid who loved the dark, in fact i can't sleep with any light in the room. After reading that short story I had to keep a nightlight in the room just to make sure the closet door was shut all the way.

2. The Shining. I made the gross error of watching this movie unedited on video when i was 6 as it was in my parents VHS collection. The images of the two little girls..."won't you come play with us danny, forever and ever and EVER" scarred my brain for life. But it's one of my favorites :)

1. Spiders. I used to love "Kingdom of the Spiders" and any type of b-spider movie. Then i moved to arizona where i lived with tarantulas and black widows, my entire perspective changed and i had subsequent nightmares about giant spiders ripping the roof off and eating me. :-o



Post Edited (05-17-05 17:58)

akiratubo..I bet you were scared of "The Elephant Man". I remember just seeing commercials on TV promoting it scared the living hell out of me. Even though John Hurt had a potato sack over his face during the preview...just knowing this incredibly ugly person was beneath the sack was enough to make me stay home when my parents went to the theater to see it! LOL!  When I found out it was based on a true story...I almost flipped. I finally did see some real photographs of the real-life "Elephant Man" and I almost had a coronary!  My parents said there was an advertising campaign that said "The Elephant Man" would never be shown on television. Of course it has been shown on TV more recently. But back in 1980 before videocassettes,cable,and DVD's,they probably didn't expect such a depressing and disturbing film to ever be shown again.

akiratubo...Have you seen "Twilight Zone:The Movie"? There is a scene in the film where a boy with special powers removes his sister's mouth, and they do show a close-up of her face without the mouth. I bet this would have creeped you out as a kid. It sure did scare me as a teenager! Trivia note:The actress who plays the voice of "Bart Simpson" is in this movie.


Keep on posting!

Sincerely,Steve Byczek

Do you have older siblings?

I remember having a horror film reference book as a child and it did have some stills from the movie "Freaks" a controversial revenge drama made in 1932. The plot revolved around a group of circus freaks who band together and mutilate a woman who marries and tries to kill one of their members, in order to get his money. The freaks in the movie were not created with make-up or special effects. They were actual deformed people in "real-life". Just looking at the photos from the movie in this book gave me the creeps. It got so bad at one point I was literally too scared to touch the book. I eventually got over it though. Amazingly,I had no problems watching the movie years later when it was first released on VHS. I found "Freaks" to be more sad than disturbing, and very funny at time,too.

akiratubo. I bet you would have had a hard time getting through the movie "Freaks" as a kid. That story you told about your "Howdy Doody" toy was amazing. It sounded like it had a life of its own!

Sincerely,Steve Byczek.

Steve Byczek wrote:

> akiratubo..I bet you were scared of "The Elephant Man". I
> remember just seeing commercials on TV promoting it scared the
> living hell out of me.

No, I never saw it.  I picked it out once just because of its title, thinking it would be a cute movie about an Elephant Man.  Mom and Dad wisely told me to put it back.
>
> akiratubo...Have you seen "Twilight Zone:The Movie"? There is a
> scene in the film where a boy with special powers removes his
> sister's mouth, and they do show a close-up of her face without
> the mouth.

Oh, hell yes.  That freaked me out to no end.  Just that image of her sitting there without a mouth, watching TV.  Gah!  The beginning where Dan Akroyd turned into a monster was a doozy, too.

gooble gobble gooble gobble..one of us!
we accept you
we accept you

Good lord, are we going to list them?

1.  Vampires used to scare the crap out of me.  When I was about seven a friend got these plastic 'Dracula teeth' and threatened to bit me with them, and it scared the holy hell out of me.  Strangely, in my late teens I became quite fascinated with the whole Anne Rice vampire thing, watched loads of vampire movies, and generally enjoyed the concept.

2.  Box covers of horror movies at the video store.  I never saw a lot of these movies but just looking at the box covers and reading the blurbs and taglines was terrifying in itself.  Movies like Xtro, Bloodsucking Freaks, Scanners... I used to scare myself when going to a dark part of the house to visit the bathroom, thinking that the Xtro alien was waiting for me.

3.  Ozzymandias - I had never heard of the Velveteen Rabbit until you mentioned it here, and I just found a complete version of it on the internet.  Heck, I'm going to cop some crap for this, but I was crying NOW when I read it.  I had some much-loved toys when I was young, and the thought of having to have them burned is just awful.

4.  The movie of Carrie - yes, I was terrified of that movie, too.  I remember when my parents went to see it.  I seem to recall a newspaper article on it, with a huge picture of Sissy Spacek covered in blood.  That freaked me out.

5.  Any kind of torture scene or HINT of torture scene in a movie.  There was an Australian 'bank job' movie called 'The Money Movers' made in 1979.  The box had a drawing of a pair of bolt cutters and the line 'The lucky ones chose to lose their toes!'  Man, that sickened me and scared me to bits.

I just realized something.  Unless we (the people who post on the Badmovies forum) are not representative of the 'normal' population, this whole thread indicates that as kids, we had many strange fears that we never broached with our parents, fears that we kept to ourselves and were never able to talk about.  Does this mean that kids in general have many of these odd fears, without the recourse of being able to talk about them?

And how might our childhood fears have been alleviated at that time?

~Archivist~

What scared the hell out of me was chesterbusters in Alien movies. I mean I was scared as much as Ripley was. I also was afraid of being Abducted by aliens. Don't know why I live in a city.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can’t give it, you can't buy it, and you just don't get it!-Aeon Flux



Post Edited (05-17-05 22:21)

Oh man, all this about the amputees and the "freaks" from the movie reminded me of something that scared the crap out of me when I was a kid and some of you will probably remember it too. In the 70's, comic books usually had some form of advertisement on the back cover. If I was lucky, it would be for a Daisy BB gun or some mail away crap. Once in a while, I would get one that had old b&w pictures of siamese twins, people with no arms, no legs, etc; I don't even recall what these ads were for but they made me very uneasy and I couldn't even look at them. There was another ad that graced the back covers and I didn't understand it and I'm not sure now why it bothered me but it did...it was an add or public service announcement type of thing about hemophelia (sp?) and showed a syringe. I had to tear these covers off of comic books just so I could read them without being all creeped out.

Archivist wrote:

>
> And how might our childhood fears have been alleviated at that
> time?
>

Small children of course have what seem to us as 'irrational' fears.  My daughter received a Mrs. PotatoHead as a gift from her grandparents; she would not go near it and would freak out if you mentioned playing with it.  The weird thing was, she would always mention Mrs. PotatoHead-like driving in the car, she'd say "I Love Mommy, I Love Daddy, I Love Roxy (our cat) and I Love PotatoHead."  It was like that crazy thing was part of the family, but she would not go near it.

Now, at almost 3, it's one of her favorite toys.

She's been like that with things that sort of look right but don't.  Once, in a gift shop, she noticed some ceramic angels that were very pretty, but did not have faces painted on them.  She went totally nuts.

We got some toy catalog that had a couple of pages of Halloween costumes near the back.  She was totally freaked out by one picture that sort of looked like a skeleton mask, but was just a little bit alien.  She would flip through that catalog, but skip that page.  Eventually, I convinced her it was just a picture, and eventually, she laughed at it.  The other 'scary' masks did not bother her one little bit.

On the other hand, she's got some cards from a series called "Incredible Monsters" or some such with pictures of sharks (in frenzy mode), dinosaurs, cobras, etc, etc and they are favorites.  For a short period, she was afraid of the dark, now she just thinks it's funny (I helped this one along by going into the bathroom with her and turning off the light.  We'd talk and play short little games for a minute or so, then go back to the living room; after a couple of times, darkness no longer phased her).  There is just no way to know ahead of time what will scare a child that age.

Once while we were dating, my wife and I were in a Rain Forest Cafe (or whatever it is called) in Denver, and a couple with a small boy sat at a table nearby.  The animatronic monkey started its gyrations and the kid totally freaked out.  They left the resteraunt because he was so freaked, and I began to wonder "what do you do if you just cannot convince your kid that it really is alright."

I used to think that children were "programmed" to be scared of some things inadvertantly by people around them. Of course I realized that there are instincts that are imbedded and do need to be followed but my reasoning was that some things that are just not natural, well, how could a child know it was scary? For instance, Alien, how does a real young child know to be scared of this? I reasoned that if you didn't act scared or told your child that it was just silly, they shouldn't be scared. Well, as most of you parents know, it doesn't work this way for whatever reason. I tried this with my daughter but she still has things that she's scared of (reasonable or not). There are some things that I really wonder why she would be scared of (such as ulthar's potato head story, we've all seen something like that from our kids, haven't we?) and there are things that I think should frighten her but don't. It's just not something you can predict or "program" but I have learned that you can help to guide the child away from it in most cases.

I think kids are just naturally scared of people and things that look strange and different. Since they don't know what it is, and whether it's a threat, nature just errs on the side of caution. That's probably why beards and clowns are such common fears for little kids.

The animatronic monkey reminded me of a trip to the Field Museum in Chicago a few years ago. My wife (girlfriend at the time) and I were going through this special exibit that was supposed to look like we were bug-sized and walking through tunnels in the soil. One of the cooler things was a six-foot earwig in its nest. When you walked up to the railing in front of it, a motion sensor activated the thing and it started to move as though defending itself. The tail flipped up over its back and those big pincers started snapping. Really made us jump. But, there was a family with kids not far behind us, and this thing really freaked their son out. I mean he was screaming his head off, yelling "kill it, Daddy, kill it!" His parents had to pick him up and carry him away, all the while explaining that its not real. We felt bad for the little guy, but also found the whole thing kind of funny, especially that his first thought was to kill it. Not to mention that it would be Dad's job to tangle with a giant, snapping earwig.

Funny that somebody also mentioned being scared of video box covers. That used to get me. I'd see covers with some of the creepiest things on them. I was old enough not to be scared of the covers, but imagined that the movies were far scarier than they were. That changed when I started renting them, and found that they weren't so scary. Most of the ones with the scariest boxes were actually quite cheesy.

What really got me, however, were TV commercials for horror movies. I was a little older when video stores came along, but commercials for movies like It's Alive, The Shining and the Changeling came along at just the right time. I remember being freaked out by Jack Nicholson limping along with his axe, or the empty wheelchair chasing George C. Scott at the moment the narrator said "Don't go in the attic." Later on, I made a point of watching these movies, and found the ads to be a little bit misleading. The Shining and The Changeling remain two of my favourite horror movies.

I also used to get a little bit scared when my older siblings (I'm the youngest by quite a few years) came home from a scary movie and told me about it. My imagination could make a hell of a movie out of that description.

akiratubo. Did you ever see the movie "Mask" made in 1985 starring Eric Stoltz and Cher? This is a movie about a boy who suffered from this disease that made his head and face become horribly disfigured. It is based on a true story,and is a very uplifting and moving film. But since it involves a boy with a facial deformity...I was wondering if it scared you when you were younger.



Sincerely,Steve Byczek

Hey Steve, please do not take this the wrong way but I am getting curious here...Are you writing a report or doing some sort of research?

I was thinking the exact same thing.  Again, it is no big deal to me, but if you are, you can tell us.

No my friends. I am not writing a report,or gaining any profits from your answers. If I was,I would ask everybody's permission. Please forgive me if you think I am nosy. I am just curious and I enjoy chatting with people about offbeat topics that I find interesting.




Sincerely,Steve.

Steve, as I said, please don't take my question the wrong way. I meant nothing by it other than to satisfy my curiosity.
Carry on...

Box covers, TV ads for horror movies... a lot of the time, we've been scared more by what we *think* is going to happen than what actually *does* happen.  Andy C mentioned how ads for The Shining and The Changeling were scarier as ads (with horrible things implied) than they were as movies.

All of our childhood fears point to the fact that our imaginations can be more powerful than reality.  It also points to the effectiveness of movies like the Blair Witch Project, and that nasty scene at the end of 'Trilogy of Terror', with that wooden doll walking along with its snapping jaws.

This is a great topic, by the way.  Really fascinating stuff.

~A~

Andy C and Archivist both make good points. Sometimes the promotional materials (TV commercials,trailers,and ads) can be more frightening than the final product. I guess that is exactly their point. The people who make the ads trick us into thinking that there is more than what meets the eye...they can make almost any movie, even the low-budget terrible ones, look like the greatest film ever made,and our life will not be complete until we see it!

A good case in point is when my sister and I went to the movies in 1979. I forgot what the movie was. Probably some PG rated comedy. Before the film began they showed a bunch of trailers,and most of them were comedies,maybe one or two dramas. Just when we thought the main feature was about to begin...another trailer slowly emerged on the screen. It was for the original version of "The Amityville Horror" and all it consisted of was a still photograph of the house. All of a sudden the screen went blood red,eerie music began to play,and a narrator's voice said; "Based on a true story". I was so scared,I literally slid down in the my seat. I was trembling,and I wanted to cover up my eyes. But at the same time I was also
fascinated,and could not take my eyes off the screen. As a result I was too frightened to see the movie in the theater. I waited until it was on television,and the final product was indeed scary but it did not have the details and high "scare factor" I imagined it to have (based on how I felt after seeing the trailer.) Yes my friends,good advertising does raise our expectations,and can make or break the way we appreciate almost everything in life especially movies.


Other things that scared me as kid...

The made for TV movies "Sybil" (a drama based on a true story;Sally Field plays a disturbed woman who has over 10 different personalities) and "Helter Skelter"  
(an expose on the Charles Manson Family murders). We had a "Viewmaster" toy (does anybody remember those?) and two in particular scared the living daylights out of me. One was "Alice in Wonderland". The frame that showed a giant Alice inside a house creeped me out. All we saw was a house,and a huge hand sticking out of the top window. The second one was "A Christmas Carol" and the frame that showed a "ghost-head" materializing on Scrooge's front door with a grimace on his face always managed to frighten me. My sister tells me she had an "Addams Family" Colorform kit (does anybody remember "Colorforms"?) and the little piece that was supposed to represent Morticia scared her. They actually made the bottom of her dress infested with dust and spider-webs,and she always avoided bringing "Morticia" out when playing with the kit. LOL!


I am glad that a lot of people are enjoying this topic I came up with.

Sincerely,Steve.

OK, one more from me. When I was 6, I somehow convinced my parents to let me go with some other kids from the neighborhood to see a vampire movie at the theater. Given the time frame, ('61 or '62), it was probably an early Hammer films entry. Anyway, a short way into the movie, a vampire got up out of the grave (of course) and I freaked. I was so scared, one of the older kids had to take me home. Overall my parents did a good job of raising me, but they dropped the ball on that one.

I saw a trailer (for an old Sinbad-style flick when I was really little) that featured a giant golden hand coming out of the floor, trying to swat at the hero.  That night, I awoke in a fit of terror.  I had a dream about the scene, and was drenched in sweat and all tangled-up in my blanket.

Bargle, that reminds me of something that happened a long time ago.  My uncle took my brother and I to see Ghostbusters in the cinema.  When the first ghost roared out, my brother freaked out and he had to be taken out of the cinema.  I stayed and enjoyed the extra popcorn and movie.

I was also scared by some Marvel comics.  Can't remember what they were, but I do remember being scared.

~A~

Dr. Kobb wrote:

>  giant golden hand coming out of
> the floor, trying to swat at the hero.  

I had a fear from scenes like this, too.  I remember some haunted house type movie that had a hand that would come out of the wall and grab at whoever was sleeping in the bed.  Creeped me out then, and is creeping me out now, typing this.

The thought of unseen hands grabbing at me is ultra-freaky.

Whew!  Glad to hear I'm not alone in this, uthar!  I still to this day wonder which peplum flick that giant golden hand scene was from.

I don't suppose you've ever seen "Jack The Giant Killer"?  It has a scene with a whole hallway of walls with hands that stick out, ready to grasp at anyone who enters.  That was a creepy scene, too!

I remember when I was like 9 or 10, I stayed up late one night to watch a movie by myself.  It wasn't a horror movie, I think it was Bless the Beast and Children.  I was starting to get really sleepy when the commercial for Halloween came on.  It showed Michael Myers dressed like a ghost standing at the end of the girl's bed.  Freaked me out and I immediately became wide awake and couldn't sleep at all that night because I was always scaring myself by thinking about a maniac or monster staring at me at the foot of my bed.  The little clip was exactly my worse fear.

ulthar wrote:

> The thought of unseen hands grabbing at me is ultra-freaky.
>

Hmmm.  Probably shouldn't watch REPULSION.  Or LABYRINTH for that matter.

Comic books can be very scary to a child. I had a "Wizard of Oz" comic book as a kid,and there was one part in the story that always frightened me. The plot was a sequel to the 1939 movie we are all familiar with. A new witch is threatening Oz,and the newly elected Mayor of Oz,the Scarecrow, summons Dorothy to come back and help the citizens defeat her. In one scene, she changes into a spider and they show her crawling on the wall of the room Dorothy is in,and spying on her. She looked like a spider with a human head,and she reminded me of the tiny half human,half fly creature at the end of the original version of "The Fly" (1958). I was so scared of this part of the comic, I would literally skip the pages that featured this scene. LOL!
 
I also remember being scared of a record my sister and I used to play. It had several songs of various musical genres. I only had a problem with the opera song because the singer was a man with a very deep baritone voice, and my sister informs me that I would hide in the corner of the basement when this song came on!  I thought he was a monster!  I must have been no more than 4 or 5 years old at the time.

Speaking of deep voices...I actually remember being frightened of an episode of "Mork and Mindy". In this particular episode,another alien,or was it a mad scientist (?) wanted to kill Mork. He had a machine that would literally drain Mork of all his energy. But Mork would retaliate by re-charging himself with this special Orkan instrument. There was a scene where the villian almost drained Mork of all his bodily strength,and he ran in slow motion and said in a VERY slow and deep voice:
"I must recharge!!!" This episode creeped me out for some reason, and I even avoided it when it popped up as a re-run.

There was a few other TV shows that got to me as well. Does anybody recall a show called "That's Incredible!"?  It featured people doing weird stunts in front of the camera. One article talked about a man who accidentally chopped off all four of his fingers in a paper cutting machine. They grafted an articial electronic hand on his arm in the same vein as "The Six Million Dollar Man". I would have had no problem with the article if they left it at this. But they did show a black and white photo of his hand AFTER the paper cutting machine accident. You actually saw his bloody hand, and the severed fingers laying seperatly on the table. This scared the living hell out of me. Even though the photo was not in color, and was shown very briefly,I was absolutely petrified. I almost covered my eyes when I accidentally caught this episode as a re-run. There was another popular show around the same time (late 70',early 80's) called "Real People" which featured interviews with people who practiced unusual lifestyles,or had strange hobbies. They interviewed a man who did everything backwards. He dressed backwards,walked backwards,and even talked backwards. I found his "backwards speech" very weird and disturbing!


Sincerely,Steve.

Oooh, I remembered another one!  I used to be scared of a black and white picture of the author of a cook book!  This guy had big, thick-framed 70's glasses and a black 70's beard.  Eek!

And I used to love watching 'That's Incredible'.  I also loved (and still have somewhere) my Viewmaster.  Best thing on the planet as a kid.

That's Incredible was a great show. I recall they did have a few stories that dealt with the macabre, ghost stories and such.

Funny, when you talk about severed fingers, I try to imagine what little kids think about the stuff on TV today. You can turn on a daytime talk show and see the guy with the scooped-out face. Nothing but a mouth and a big, open sinus cavity. Hell, that freaked me out when I saw it the first time, and I was 32 and desensitized by years of slasher films.

Actually, now that I think about it, I do remember something pretty disturbing from That's Incredible. Remember that Chinese guy with the parasitic twin? Had a second mouth with teeth in place of one ear, and a big patch of head hair on the side of his face, among other things.

OH! I remember that episode of That's Incredible. I watched it in horror and was unable to turn away but I had nightmares about that twin. Thanks for reminding me...

odinn7 wrote:
> Thanks for reminding me...

Happy to help  :)

ulthar wrote:>
> The thought of unseen hands grabbing at me is ultra-freaky.


Tonight as you go to bed, think about what scares you, boogymen and things in the closet. Then turn out the light and stand in the dark for just a moment. Get in bed, and leave your foot dangling off the edge of the bed - just enough so that you might feel a hand come out from under the bed and wrap it's cold fingers around your ankle....

Thanks for reminding me about "That's Incredible", i used to watch that and Real People. Good stuff

I was scared of the sounds of sirens because of that Roger Corman movie "Not of this Earth".  We lived in Gainesville, Florida and whenever I heard sirens my mom said I ran inside screaming.  Now that I have the movie I don't understand why it was so scary.

Here's another that just came to me. It didn't "frighten" me so much as it always disturbed me. No idea why, but the tom petty video "Don't come around here no more".

Even now when i hear the song it's like i'm getting some post traumatic lsd flashbacks or something


(http://www.slantmagazine.com/images/features/greatestmusicvideos/dontcomearoundherenomore.jpg)



Post Edited (05-25-05 22:55)

I feel ya on that Tom Petty video, Susan.  Love the song itself, tho'.

I thought of two other filmic things that warped young Dr. Kobb:

One was the scene in "Attack of the Giant Leeches"(`59) where the people are laying around the cave, too drained to defend themselves, while the leeches do their thing.  The rubbery leech-costumes get clowned-on in alotta reviews for this movie, but I think that, for the money, they worked superbly!  I recently watched it again, and loved every minute of it.

Also, when I was really little, one of my older siblings was watching "Invaders From Mars"(`53).  I was tiny at the time, but I recall the leader of the Martians, with the oversized head and the tentacle arms, gave me some wicked/evil nightmares that night!

Oooh, I just remembered another one.  There is a Jon Pertwee Dr Who story called 'The Green Death', involving giant mutant grubworm/larva things that ooze some nasty green toxic waste.  There is a scene in which these wriggling horrors can be seen behind the glass of a tank (or something).

I was really quite young when I saw that one on TV, and the thought of these huge maggot/larva/worm things crawling around the house, oozing their green slime onto the floor and windows was horrifying.

Come to think of it, Dr Who had a number of scary things that probably warped the minds of little kids.

~Archivist~

Remember the part where Alice is a Cake and they're cutting her up and eating her?

That wasn't his only weird video though

I recall Mary Jane's Last Dance he steals a morgue and dances and eats with her and realizes she dead so lays her in the ocean and then her eyes open.

Alice is a cake... you're going to have to remind me about that one.  And Mary Jane?  Um, are we talking about the same thing?

Archivist wrote:

> Alice is a cake... you're going to have to remind me about that
> one.  And Mary Jane?  Um, are we talking about the same thing?

He was referring to the post Susan made about the Tom Petty video.