Movies That Terrified You as a KID Film Festival

Diva is a great film. Opera, music piracy, the mob, and Paris.

I tried to watch Pretty Maids not long ago on TCM, and it was so awful I bailed after 15 minutes. I'd forgotten what an incompetent director Roger Vadim was.

The 1963 version of The Haunting scared the crap out of me when I saw it on TV as a 10-year old.

"Pretty Maids all in A Row" terrified you? Maybe it is possible to be too gay.

Slept with light on for weeks.

I’d like a special midnight screening of The Legend Of Boggy Creek, please. I think it was rated G, but it cost me (and my parents) I don’t know how many nights' sleep.

“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”

“The Omen”

“The Shining”

Some tug called “Satan’s Cheerleaders”. I was alone and had to change the channel.

When I was very young, the Wicked Witch of the West. I’d hide behind my grandmother’s armchair.

Night of the Living Dead

I saw it when I was a kid and it was on a local TV station very late one night - it was the NY television premiere.

It scared the crap out of me.

When it was over and I shut the TV and the living room light, I literally ran to my dark bedroom and hid under the covers.

Salem's Lot

The Exorcist

The Shining

Magic. Saw it in the theater when I was around 11 and it fucked me up good. I couldn’t sleep for weeks and to this day get freaked out when I see images from the film.

The Other, where the kid jumps out of a hayloft....I was even younger when I saw that one on the Saturday afternoon movie on TV sometime in the 70s.

The was another Saturday afternoon movie where one of the characters, I think it was the older sister of the kids in the movie, finger painted flowers on the bathroom mirror using the blood of her victim(s). Can’t remember the name of the movie or even the plot but I remember that scene vividly.

Tuned in to the middle of a PBS broadcast of Cocteau’s “Orpheus” when I was 10 - freaked me out but I couldn’t stop watching.

Some TV movie with Lee Grant(!) and Helen Hunt(!!) called "The Spell". There's a scene where the Carrie-light main character makes some old lady basically roast alive from the inside. Tore my 8 year old ass up for weeks.

The Wizard of Oz, The Omen, the original Scarface (1933), Trash, Clockwork Orange, Triumph of the Will, Demon Mountain, The Battle of Algiers, The Scarlet Empress, The Bad Seed, A Place in the Sun, Cheyenne Autumn, Broken Arrow (1950)

lots of movies about war, particularly colonial wars, movies with evil as a theme, and movies about desperate poor people - they made me feel trapped and without options

[quote] Magic. Saw it in the theater when I was around 11 and it fucked me up good. I couldn’t sleep for weeks and to this day get freaked out when I see images from the film.

All I ever saw was the TV commercial and that was enough to scare the living hell out of me.

The Witches from 1990. Everything about it from the opening story about the little girl who was kidnapped and trapped in the painting to the treehouse witch trying to lure Luke out of his treehouse and the witches revealing their true selves in the hotel ballroom. Terrifying! Even as an adult, this movie gives me an uneasy feeling I can't shake. Unlike the recent remake, it keeps things somewhat realistic and does most of its magic in camera and on set which makes everything seem more real.

Candyman

The Exorcist

R9, was it The Mad Room? Haven't seen it since I was a kid but I think that might have happened in that movie.

R11, The Spell's on youtube!

I thought the original Night of the Living Dead was the gold standard for scariness when I saw it at a comic book festival, probably about a year after it came out. But I HATED Dawn of the Dead and have avoided Romero's other films. Not scary, just gross.

Yes, R16 it looks like the movie was The Mad Room. It’s on Amazon Prime, I may watch it again to see if it still scares me! I can’t ever watch Magic or The Other again though. No way, no how!

convention, not festival. Too much Sondheim, friends.

Poltergeist, especially the tree attacking the boy.

Cujo, Jaws and Mad Max really freaked me out and I only saw the TV-edited versions with commercials. The part in Mad Max where the gang kills the baby really shocked me.

Children of the Corn was another that terrified me — I managed to catch the uncut, R-rated version on cable without “parental guidance.”

I believed all these things could get me!

Carnival of Souls and The Innocents. These classics played a lot on Sunday afternoons when I was a kid in the '70s.

Night of the Living Dead was the only movie that scared me on late-night Creature Features, with Bob Wilkins. It was so low-budget and gritty, it felt like a documentary than an actual movie. That gave it a sense of urgency that made it feel like it could be happening right outside.

As for Magic, I remember staying up "late" watching Three's Company. The TV spot for Magic popped up during a commercial break. I was so terrified, I froze in my seat. I finally got the courage to sprint to my bedroom in the back of the house, and I asked my brother to go to the family room and turn off the lights and TV.

ABC Movie of the Week consistently produced terrifying made-for-TV movies that made a deep impression on me as a kid. R6 already mentioned one of the best, 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐁𝐞 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 (1973), to which I could add

𝐂𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐅𝐚𝐫𝐦 (1970)

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 (1972)

𝐀 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭'𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 (1973)

𝐘𝐨𝐮'𝐥𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐌𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 (1973)

𝐒𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐥𝐟 (1974)

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐧𝐞? (1974)

𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫 (1975)

There's others, but I think these are the best.

[quote]3. The Sentinel

The scene of the old man coming out from behind the door in a dark room freaked me out so bad it would still unsettle me every time I thought about it well into my 40s.

Also, Salem's Lot was terrifying for a made-for-tv movie. I think Chitty Chitty Bang Bang got super creepy, too, and gave me nightmares.

Bad Ronald

^^ Oh yeah I couldn't leave out

𝐊𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐝𝐨𝐳𝐞𝐫 (1974)

𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐧'𝐬 𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 (1975)

Other networks got into the act, too. CBS produced 𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐨𝐲𝐥𝐞𝐬 (1972), and NBC did 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐔.𝐅.𝐎. 𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 (1975). Both of these scared the piss out of me as a child.

OP is fine and dandy, but I’ve never found a horror movie made before the 1970s scary except for Psycho.

Even as a little kid. You just couldn’t show much on film in Olden Times.

R26, the OP's list doesn't have anything prior to the 1970s.

No movie scared me as a kid and to this day no movie has really freaked me out. As little kids, my best buddy and I were total freak geeks and obsessed with horror movies. We’d stay up all night in the 70s watching the late, late horror shows hosted by The Ghoul. My bedroom was an homage to Universal Pictures. My bookcase was filled with Steven King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, and Dean Koontz along with Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and HG Wells. To this day I eagerly seek out the rare GOOD horror flicks that aren’t slice & dice and I’m continuously disappointed at the offerings. Peele has done some interesting stuff so there is hope but good horror, really spooky creepy horror, is all too rare.

R28 is the asshole who gave me nightmares when he brought Fangoria to the slumber parties.

R26, I found Rosemary's Baby scary.

The Haunting

Race With the Devil

Burnt Offerings

The only thing terrifying about Pretty Maids All in a Row was Rock Hudson trying to play a raging heterosexual.

A Chelsea Boy of my acquaintance well into his twenties was terrified by the remake of The Time Machine (the one with Guy Pearce).

This guy is physically formidable himself, yet he was like a small child about this movie, and had to bunk with an ex-boyfriend for something like six weeks before he could face sleeping alone.

I have to admit, the way the Morlocks are portrayed, leaping up out of the ground to grab the Eloi, is really startling. And the last sequence, when Guy P has to enter the Morlocks' domain to rescue the heroine, is very unnerving.

Although I am fascinated by the scene between Pearce and the Max von Sydow-like guy, whoever he is (Ian McKellen or someone, surely) with all the eyeglasses left by earlier time travelers.

[quote]No movie scared me as a kid and to this day no movie has really freaked me out. As little kids, my best buddy and I were total freak geeks and obsessed with horror movies.

R28, why would you be obsessed with a genre which you claim has never scared you at all? If none of these films scare you, what's the motive for continuing to watch them?

[quote]Although I am fascinated by the scene between Pearce and the Max von Sydow-like guy, whoever he is (Ian McKellen or someone, surely) with all the eyeglasses left by earlier time travelers.

R33, the Über-Morlock was Jeremy Irons.

^^ Bad link.

Maybe this one will work better.,

When I was a kid (early 70s), my mom and I turned the TV on to watch some Christmas special or something, only we had the wrong channel on. What we saw started with an adult drowning a small child in the bathtub. You never saw either of their faces. I remember the child was wearing jeans. Scared me to freaking DEATH.

To this day, I don’t know what we saw. Some MOTW, maybe? Any DL detectives know?

These two come to mind:

Helter Skelter (the TV movie with Steve Railsback as Manson).

In Search of Historic Jesus (a friend’s religious mother took us to see it in a dank old theatre at night. Maybe the experience was creepier than the actual movie)

The original "Helter Skelter" TV movie from 1976, especially when it reminded us that several "family" members were still roaming the streets waiting to do Charlie's bidding.

And speaking of crazy hippie zombies, 1972's "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", about a group of hippies who dabble in witchcraft and grave robbing (only to have the bodies come to life and massacre everyone) fucked me all the way up as a kid. And believe it or not, it was directed by Bob "A Christmas Story" Clark.

80's kid here, so a lot of mine are similar to everyone else's. "Night of the Living Dead" - I was so terrified to go anywhere near a cemetery, ironic since in the movie it was only the unburied dead who rose, but I was a dumb kid.

"Trilogy of Terror" (3rd story) - Anybody else have a sick relative who tried to scare them with a doll after this? My friend's older brother delighted in this.

"One Dark Night" - So many corpses.

"Poltergeist" - Corpses in the pool and clowns under the bed.

After I got old enough to not be scared, I really appreciated how creepy the original "Carnival of Souls" was. Had I seen that as a kid, it would have definitely been on the list.

And r39, despite having almost zero budget, "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" has FANTASTIC makeup and effects. The movie may be idiotic, but the zombies are scary as shit.

Night of the Living Dead had me running out of the room, screaming. My parents figured it would be fine since it wasn't rated R and was in black and white. I still think it's scarier than most R rated horror movies.

I don't know how truthful this is, but the anecdote I LOVE about Night of the Living Dead is how the premiere was at a matinee, because "zombie" movies before were like those lame 50's ones and they thought NOTLD was the same thing, and a bunch of kids ended up being severely traumatized as a result.

As a child I watch a 40’s British horror film called Dead of Night. A group of people share scary stories in a house. One story dealt with people who lived in mirrors which terrified me. The film also had a nightmare ending quite the opposite of happy. Even as an adult I’m too scared to rewatch it.

The only other film that I found as scary was Poltergeist when the little girl is lost in another dimension,

Dead of Night also included the story of the dummy who takes over the mind of his ventriloquist starring Michael Redgrave.. kind of Hitchcock meets Twilight Zone but scarier.

Old Yeller

The creature from the Black Lagoon, and the giant tarantula movie.

I wasn't old enough to see Jaws when it first came out, but I went with a friend's family to see Jaws 2 in 1978. Marge's death traumatized me for years.

I think this creeped a few kids out back in the days

OMG LAVALANTULA, you guys!!!

It's just so REALISTIC!!!!!!

All those 70s movies about kids getting a terrible disease and dying, like Death Be Not Proud.

Suddenly, Last Summer

Hello, Dolly

"Queen Of Blood"

Another vote for Salem's Lot.

"The Blob."

Not helped by the fact that my older sister would insist the Blob was in the family garage and scare me to the point where I didn't want to get in the car.

"Goddamn it, Tracey, stop SCARING him! And you -- get in the GODDAMN CAR!"

The Fog - the original of course. And Halloween - also the original. I saw both when I was very young and they just terrified me.

R55, I forgot about Halloween. I saw it in the theater and had to leave. I never saw any of them or the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

I don't even have to think about it... NOT OF THIS EARTH.

Poltergeist.

The Bride of Frankenstein.

The stuff of nightmares...

Kim Darby’s Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark

Jaws

Burnt Offerings

The Fog is not scary. It’s kind of quaint.

Caged. I was ten and we were visiting my aunt and my older cousin was watching it on tv. That poor dead cat gave me nightmares for weeks.

Unsure if anyone mentioned it yet, but this thread cannot be complete without 1985’s Re-Animator. I watched it on HBO late at night with one of my best friends huddled under a big blanket. We were scared out of our minds.

I Want to Live!

Oh Man, the original Lord of the Flies gave ne nightmares as a child. The scene where they kill a fellow schoolmate haunted me for years....I don't even think I could ever watch it again!

Like r58, Poltergeist was terrifying.

The Fog and Salem’s Lot are not scary. You’re just a pussy.

Wait Until Dark - first when the girl’s corpse was hanging in the garment bag in Audrey’s closet, followed by other creepy stuff, then, of course, when Alan ‘rose from the dead’.

OG Body Snatchers - the idea that these people that looked like your neighbors were actually monsters, then using pitchforks to kill the monster ‘fetuses’, then to discover what made it all happen was that you simply had TO FALL ASLEEP??!!

I obviously went bonkers.

R68 says this as an adult - when we’re talking about what scared you as a child.

Such a troll.

Wait Until Dark, my parents took me to see it when I was 8. I had nightmares for months

13 Ghosts, The Bat

It was the old, old days and I was only about five. I saw The Bat the other day on TCM and it's laughable.

Can’t believe no one has mentioned the TV movie The Screaming Woman, starring DL fav Olivia de Havilland as an old lady who is the only one who knows about the neighbor woman that was buried alive and everyone thinks she crazy when she tries to help her.

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud creeped me out as well when it was shown on TV.

Was anyone else here afraid of MJ's "Thriller" video? I loved it, but couldn't watch it alone, especially in the rec room, lol.

Watership Down and Poltergeist did it…

Also, a school film about school bus safety that showed children getting their heads run over. Even the teachers seemed stunned.

ABC Movies of the Week for me too. They sparked many nightmares.

Twister Candyman Puppet master It Carrie

R77, that sounds like one hell of a movie. Who out of that bunch won?

Any horror movie terrified me as a kid. My mom loved the things and would watch the "Double Creature Feature" every Sunday afternoon back in the 70s when that local show ran.

Didn't matter how stupid the plots or bad the effects were, I still got scared.

Even as a teenager, I could NOT go see scary movies in the theater. I've never seen any of the DL "classics". It was only in the last two years that I could FINALLY watch "Rosemary's Baby" all the way through.

We all have our weird, irrational fears.

Twilight Zone, the movie

R34 Because I’m always chasing the dragon, looking for that next big high. Horror flicks are like pizza. Eagerly anticipated though rarely very good. But occasionally you find that perfect slice that makes the long, arduous search worth it.

R28/R81, in order to make 'chasing the dragon' worthwhile, it would follow that you had at some point experienced it. But you've said you've never been frightened by films. Are you sure that's the truth? Not even as a child?

The Nazi soldiers in Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

My dad liked to watch westerns and I used to be terrified by “Indian” (Native Americans) warriors. I used to have nightmares of being tied to a straight back wooden chair while the Indians set fire to the cabin I was in. No idea if that was a scene from a movie, a memory from a past life, or my 4 year old psyche, but those dreams were terrifying.

I went to see 'Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" in 1964 when i was 11 years old. It scared me so badly I had to sleep with the light on for a week.

My parents went to see "Cat People" when it came out (1982) and brought me along. I think I'm still somewhat traumatized by that experience. It took me a while to realize that ripping someone's arm off *does not* constitute a part of sex between two adults.

Attack of the Crab Monsters The Haunting The Innocents Black Sunday with Barbara Steele

The only scary thing about Burnt Offerings was Bette Davis’ acting.

The Exorcist. Saw it when I was 9 or 10. Terrified the shit out of me.

Same r89

R90, I then proceeded to watch it over and over again. It was my favorite movie for a while. I was weird lol/

My Breast starring Meredith Baxter-Birney

The Betty Broderick Story with Meredith Baxter-Birney

Don't Go To Sleep is a 1982 American made-for-television horror film that was produced and directed by Richard Lang. The movie features Dennis Weaver, Valerie Harper, Ruth Gordon, and Robert Webber, and youngsters Kristin Cumming, Robin Ignico, and Oliver Robins.

The film focuses on daughter Mary's encounters with the ghost of her late sister, Jennifer, who perished in a car accident and is out for revenge.

The daughter kills them with an iguana, a pizza slicer, etc. Very campy but it was so scary when I saw it.

I’m sure Valerie Harper, though looking to be an early victim, lived much, much longer than she should have in the movie.

The opening of Twilight Zone: The Movie terrified me. What a way to start a movie! The rest of it didn't scare me, but a few of the scenes unnerved me like the little girl with no mouth in the 2nd to last segment.

Soylent Green. It’s made out of people.

All of you are SO young....Try "Darby O'Gill and the Little People".....try "Circus of Horrors"....."The Premature Burial"....

Seven

The banshee toward the end of Darby O’Gill… was terrifying to me as a kid, R99. (I saw it in the mid-80s, though.)

Hotline (TV, 1982) starring Lynda Carter was also terrifying. My mom wanted to watch it, and I watched it with her. Can’t believe she thought that was okay. The ending was way too intense for me. I must have been no older than 4.

The Watcher In the Woods had so many disturbing sequences and visuals. I still can’t believe my 3rd grade teacher (and apparently many other teachers all over the US, I’ve come to learn) thought it was a good idea to show this to my class one afternoon. I still love this movie, and several scenes still make me jump.

The Exorcist was the absolute mother of all terrifying movies. I was always interested in and absolutely horrified by stories of people who lose control of their bodies and minds, so I was naturally drawn to this one when I first heard of it in second grade (‘86-87?). I had seen parts of it during TV airings, but never anything too scary, so I didn’t know what I was in for when my friends and I rented it (from a video that would rent any R-rated films to any children, no questions asked!). I made it to the first really outlandish “possession” scene, with Linda Blair’s throat bulging like a frog’s, and I was filled with such terror that I hit my face behind my blanket and screamed for my friends to turn it off. This was in broad daylight, by the way, on a sunny afternoon. My 2 friends laughed at me, but obliged. It took me a few more years and several more attempts before I could get through the whole movie. I kept trying to watch it whenever it would air on cable, but it was always too intense. (I was raised Catholic, by the way.)

Other “loss of control” stories that terrified me in a similar way, though not to the same degree as The Exorcist, were Sybil (Sally Field, 1976); an episode of The Wizard where a feral girl, raised by wolves, is the main “guest star”; and an episode of Scooby-Doo called ‘Make A Beeline From The Feline’, where Daphne’s aunt turns into a Cat Creature at night and robs jewelry stores.

Aside from the above, many if not most of the titles mentioned already in this thread also scared me as a kid, or at least entertained me tremendously. Salem’s Lot has plenty of truly creepy scenes and jump scares that are effective to this day. Ugh, David Soul’s hammy acting, though…

Hotline! I remember that movie. For years, I kept trying to track down the movie where a woman has her hair scissored off by a crazed madman as she's crying and it turned out to be that movie. I saw it on TV at a young age and it really stuck with me. No idea why, but for years, I thought it was an episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

Child of Glass, which was part of the Wonderful World of Disney, and aired in 1978 when I was 8 years old. It gave me nightmares for a week.

Sleeping lies the murdered lass.

Vainly cries the child of glass.

When the two shall be as one,

the spirit's journey will be done.

I would also add another vote for One Dark Night, though I imagine if I watched it now the cheese would negate the scares - but E.G. Daily was in it, chewing on a toothbrush.

R103, years ago a kindly DLer confirmed the name of Child of Glass for me in a similar thread. I was able to track down a VHS copy of it and watched it with my nieces who were probably 7-9 and they called me Uncle Scaredy-cat because they were not scared at all. (Neither was I as an adult but the movie traumatized me as a kid).

I was scared by parts of Darby O'Gill, but the bulge in Sean Connery's breeches somehow comforted me.

Theatre of Blood

Coral Browne going under the hairdryer!

Theater of Blood was fricking hilarious!

"Hi, I'm Butch."

The Fly -- the original, of course. . When I was little, my father used to chase us kids around the house doing an imitation of the man/fly in the spiderweb, "Help me! Please, help me!"

When I was in 5th grade, our teachers showed us a film version of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”.

It still gives me nightmares

Fifth grade is awfully young to be exposed to that story, R109. Your teacher was taking chances with repercussions from angry parents, pitchfork parades, etc.

Was this the original film Lottery with no one in the cast anyone has heard of except Ed Begley Jr? Or the remake with Dan Cortese, who looks fabulous in his gray T-shirt but I think never takes it off. There's a still you can find online of him waking up in bed shirtless, but I don't think nit's in the movie.

Very heedless of his fans' feelings, I must say.

I read The Lottery when I was in the third grade. A bunch of Stephen King when I was that age too. I would sneak my mother's Stephen King books off the shelf and read them. Later, I checked her short story collection including The Lottery out of the library when I was 10. Of course, they weren't assigned by a teacher.

I also remember reading a short story called Examination Day around the same time. It is about a kid who goes in to take a government administered intelligence test. That one freaked me out more than The Lottery. Largely due to the subject of the story (a young boy) and the results of the test. That one was given to me by a teacher.

I was an advanced reader though.

Satan's Cheerleaders was a hoot. Borderline soft core porn with a very haggard looking Yvonne DeCarlo (not even her last film and she looked awful!) and an equally over the hill John Ireland.

I read Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House for a book report in 6th grade. I guess we were allowed to pick our own book for the assignment because I still remember my teacher’s dumbfounded double-take when I told her what book I’d read. We had to present our report to the class and I’m pretty sure she was appalled at what I was relaying to the other kids.

The only reason I picked it was because I loved the Vincent Price movie House on Haunted Hill and somehow thought the book was the basis for that movie.

Disney's Pinocchio.

I have literally never heard of any of the movies on your list OP. Are they all silent films?

I love The Haunting of Hill House, and read it for the first time around that same age. I don't think that there is really anything terribly inappropriate for a sixth grader in it, and at the very least, the opening paragraph should be required reading for everyone. It is masterful and, in my opinion, right up there with the opening of A Tale of Two Cities.

[quote] No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.