Films that terrified you when you were a child...

[David Howery]

jeez, what a bunch of kids we have on here... most of the movies you people are naming are ones I saw in college or high school...
The only movie I can remember that gave any kind of willies as a kid was a hokey old one called "Vampire Circus"... watch it now, and it seems tame as can be, but when you're 10.... scary stuff... Horror movies have just never bothered me much....

 

[Wombat]

I think it was called Magic...the one where the dummy is a killer, it was so freaky that the commercials freaked me out....

Tony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Merideth

Fantastic film -- way creepy!

 

[milotha]

Your dad took you to see Alien when you were SEVEN YEARS OLD? WITH YOUR YOUNGER SISTER???!!!!

I mean, we were all reading the Alan Dean Foster novelization, and I was in, like, sixth grade. Your dad took you to see it? How did he get you in? Wasn't he arrested or something? Why haven't you sued him?

Holy crap.

I was eight in a drive-in. I don't think anyone even noticed me when my family went in. Of course, that was back in the old days.

 

[Tewligan]

The clown doll in Poltergeist. Horrifying.

 

[Ashwyn]

Anyone else remember that one?

Not on purpose. God that one messed me up. Wizard of Oz was bad too. But what really scared me wasn't a movie, but puppets. Like Madam. And those puppets they had in some show I can't remember that did skits. Was that the same show? One was a Reagan puppet. The Emu was the worst. I'd cry when I saw it. I'm still freaked by puppets like that to this day. The Bear in the big blue house makes me very very uncomfortable. It's like he could just lash out with his snake-like neck at any time and take my head off.

 

[Iron_Chef]

jeez, what a bunch of kids we have on here... most of the movies you people are naming are ones I saw in college or high school...
The only movie I can remember that gave any kind of willies as a kid was a hokey old one called "Vampire Circus"... watch it now, and it seems tame as can be, but when you're 10.... scary stuff... Horror movies have just never bothered me much....

Vampire Circus was good, but Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (also by Hammer in the early 70s) was even better. The vampires in this movie sucked the YOUTH out of buxom young girls in the woods! It still holds up as a swashbuckling good time. Vampires fighting with swords long before Blade or Buffy!

 

[Iron_Chef]

My little sister was terrified of puppets, starting with "Smedley" on Candid Camera or whatever that show was in the mid-70s. He was a big, mute baby puppet that scared the hell out of her (she thought he was going to eat her alive!). Strangely enough, the Muppets and Sesame Street didn't bother her... just weird, creepy puppets like Smedley. He never scared me, though the dummy in MAGIC sure did!

 

[KChagga]

I'm glad someone else said it first...
E.T. scared the beejezus out of me when I was little.
I think I was four and my mother took me to the theatre to see it. The volume in the theatre was so loud! Suffice it to say from the first time Elliot ran into E.T. in the field and they both screamed and ran away I just hid in my seat. Any time I would look up I would see that freaky looking E.T. and just go back to hiding. E.T. still weirds me out with his looks today. They seriously should have made a more kid friendly alien.

The other movie that scared me was An American Werewolf in London. I think I was six and I was changing channels in my house. We had HBO and it was in the middle of the day. I flipped the chanel and there was the guy turning into a werewolf, screaming and hollering in pain. I was so scared I couldn't even change the chanel. I had to yell bloody murder till my mother can in and changed the chanel. I was like a deer in headlights.

 

[Napftor]

I'll go along with Alien but the chest-burst that really freaked me out was in Aliens when the colonist pleaded for help before having the chest explosion. It gives me goosebumps just typing it. I couldn't watch that scene for a loooong time after the first.

 

[Kai Lord]

Kingdom of the Spiders starring William Shatner. I was six or seven and was terrified of spiders for years after this one.
Halloween. Was about eight years old, and I watched it on Halloween night. Slept on the floor in my parents room for two weeks because of it.
Jaws. Still get nervous swimming in the ocean because of this one.
Watcher in the Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes. "Watcher" was just creepy as hell and "Something Wicked", eek, again with the spiders.
The Thing, or rather, the first half hour of The Thing. I was pretty impressed with myself that I slyly convinced my parents to rent and then let me watch this one by myself in 1983 (I was nine), but as soon as that dog's face split apart, that was all she wrote. Ejected the tape, sent it back to the video store, and didn't have the nerve to watch it again until I was in junior high.
The Amityville Horror. Watched this one on TV at 3:00 in the afternoon on a sunny day with tons of company over. Still scared the crap out of me.