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

[GMSkarka]

There was a movie made in the 60's about Gargoyles threatening a modern day small town out west. It always gave me the willies (I didn't really care for the Sleestaks much either)!

It was a TV movie from the 70s, actually, called "GARGOYLES", and was one of the first films that make-up genius Rick Baker worked. It scared the crap out of me as a kid (along with another made-for-TV horror film, mentioned earlier in this thread, "DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK").

I was lucky enough to find a copy of it on a cheap-o DVD at Suncoast a couple of years ago.

 

[WayneLigon]

It was a TV movie from the 70s, actually, called "GARGOYLES", and was one of the first films that make-up genius Rick Baker worked.

Oh, I remember that one. It was one of the first horror movies I ever saw where the good guys don't really 'win', if I recall correctly. One of the things I remember was them finding the fossil, implying that such things had been on Earth for a long, long time. That upped the creep factor considerably for me.

The scene in The Omen where they open Damien's real mother's grave.. ok, that creeped me out.

I remember being 'anti-scared' at Demon Seed. It was suppossed to be a horror film I think, but I was all 'awwww' at the end of it

Phantasm. Can't beleive I forgot this. The ending, especially.

Definately Trilogy of Terror; the doll episode is the only one I remember and the ending of it was very scary. More so to me because by that time I'd read a fair number of occult-ish books and I was thinking 'Oh crap, destroying it is about the worst thing you can do...'

The Devil's Daughter (I think this is the correct movie); the scene where they have the devil-in-human-form using a walker (cause of the hoof thing, obviously); someone who's figured out what's going on shoots him, but really just shoots himself. And the end, where she finally marries the guy of her dreams, only to find out he's the demon they wanted her to marry all along.

Willard, the first one. Oooh. 'Tear him up!' It had never really ever occured to me that small cute lil' furry rats could actually be dangerous until then....

I vaguely remember being scared by Burnt Offerings but can't remember why.

 

[Elric]

Am I the only person who was scared of The Fugitive? I had nightmares about the one-armed man and that was only from seeing the previews! When I watched it years later, it was one of my favorite movies.

 

[Hand of Evil]

The Abominable Dr. Pilbes - his 'traps' freaked me out.

 

[Cannibal_Kender]

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.

Heh. That reminded me of my E.T. experience. My Dad took me to see it when I was 3. After the cornfield scene I hid under my seat for the rest of the movie.

 

[David Howery]

besides "Gargoyles", there's another TV horror movie that was pretty good: "The Night Stalker". I thought it was pretty creepy at the time I saw it (I was 11 or so), but it didn't keep me awake at nights. Still, for a made for TV flick, it was extraordinary....

 

[hafrogman]

There's a movie called Lady in White.

It wigged me out to such a degree when I was a child that I have still not ever watched it again as an adult to determine if it's actually scary or not.

 

[Alzrius]

I wasn't a child, per se, when I did this, but when I was around 15 (give or take a year or two) I watched the modern remake of that old Vincent Price movie, "The House on Haunted Hill". I watched it alone. At night. With all the lights turned off. What's more, when the movie would rapidly flash a montage of horrific images at us, I slowed down the tape, so I would know exactly what I was seeing.

...needless to say, when it was over, I turned on all the lights and stayed up until dawn. I still try very hard not to think about that movie at night when I turn out the lights...(of course, now it's too late, thanks to this thread)

 

[barsoomcore]

Okay, Poltergeist was a pretty special experience for our whole family because the little girl in that (Heather O'Rourke) looked EXACTLY like my little sister at the time. I mean, EXACTLY like. People come over to our house and see pictures of her when she was five and they say, "Hey, you know the little girl from Poltergeist? Cool!"

So of course we were all of us completely psychotic at the end of the film. Worst of all though was my little sister, who had just watched herself get sucked into a closet of death.

She still, to this day, cannot sleep if the closet door is open.

 

[barsoomcore]

This isn't a childhood story but it's another great example of how important context can be in a cinematic experience.

I was 18 when Aliens came out. Went to see it in what was (for Vancouver, at least) a pretty new-fangled kind of theatre with super surround sound, big seats and a HUGE walloping screen.

Just so happened that I was sitting directly in front of four or five rows of Army cadets. Who, naturally, got pretty excited when they discovered the movie was going to be about a bunch of military joes JUST LIKE THEM.

Now, Alien still ranks as one of the scariest frickin' movies I'll ever see. It's right up there with Night of the Living Dead as just bad-news scary-a$$ crap that makes my brain freeze right up. So I've spent the first forty-five minutes of the sequel huddled on my big seat, dreading the first time these things are going to show up, because I know exactly how bad it's going to be.

And when they work their unsuspecting patrol all the way down into the bowels of the creatures' lair, and then the bastards start COMING RIGHT OUT OF THE WALLS, well, I must have lost ten pounds in terrified sweat alone.

Immediately added to that was the sudden jolt of adrenalin I received when I nearly got blown into the screen by the ROAR of fifty or sixty freaking out cadets as Vasquez and Drake start rocking and rolling. The rest of the film was a blur, the cadets behind me nearly drowning out the thunderous soundtrack in cheers and screams and laughter all the way through.

One of the greatest cinematic experiences of my life.