Movies That Scared Us As A Kid

[yakers]

From the Netflix thread, I thought I would statrt a new one rather than hijack that thread:

AMC showed "The Tingler" for Halloween last night. I remember being scared bleepless by that as a young kid and hadn't seen it since. Watching it last night, I was amazed at how lame it was. You could almost see the strings pulling the inanimate rubber joke-shop toy across the floor.

As a young kid, maybe 5 yrs old, I saw I think the name was 'The Curse Of The Mummies Toumb' I remember the high priest saying something like 'we burn 3 beans and it keeps it alive, less it dies and more it becomes a monster', well, you know what happens. Scared me shitless. A year back I came accross it on TV and was amazed at what a crapy campy badly made flick, I would laugh at it as a comedy now. But not then, oh no. Maybe there are some advantages to getting older. And maybe we really do need to pay attention to what young children are watching. Or maybe its inevitable that something will scare us silly as a child.

 

[REWahoo]

The Creature From the Black Lagoon scared the bejeebers out of me when I was about 10. Been too afraid to see it again.

 

[Htown Harry]

The Birds.

 

[ronin]

The Crawling Eye

I see a hilltop covered in clouds and I have flashbacks.

 

[ERD50]

..'The Curse Of The Mummies Toumb' I remember the high priest saying something like 'we burn 3 beans and it keeps it alive, ....

It was "tana leaves" (whatever those are? OK, wiki says 'fictional plant'), nine of 'em I think.

For me, it was the original "The Fly". My older brother would scare us by talking about the movie, and walking around dragging his foot like the fly-man in the movie. We saw it a the drive in, and I was scared! "heeellllp me! Heeeeeeelp me!"

-ERD50

 

[travelover]

The Blob. I was sure it was under the bed.

 

[Bestwifeever]

The Birds.

Ditto.

 

[MBAustin]

The Day the Earth Stood Still

I remember sneaking out of bed and hiding behind my mom's chair to watch this on TV - I was probably about 6. Had nightmares for weeks after and to this day I don't watch horror movies. DH finally talked me into watching it on TV again a few years ago and I wasn't scared but I still didn't really enjoy it.

 

[sengsational]

I didn't watch this clip myself. No need to go through THAT again!

 

[braumeister]

The Blob.

+1

 

[Marita40]

The Day the Earth Stood Still for me too! I remember it vividly--scared me to death.
On perhaps a lighter note, but still scary enough for me as a child, was The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with Don Knotts.

 

[Moemg]

Frankenstein !

 

[calmloki]

Saw very very few movies when young - protective Mom and probably finances. Remember being allowed to go to a movie with some neighbor kids and it turned out not to be the light hearted film Mom probably expected it to be, but The Beast From Hollow Mountain.

Swinging on a rope to coax T-Rex into the quicksand?

Horrible horrifying idea!

 

[dirt_dobber]

hands down scariest - "I Saw What You Did"
I had nightmares about this movie for a long time...

 

[Ian S]

As a kid maybe five years old, I had nightmares after watching the 1953 version of Invaders from Mars on TV. Probably something to do how the parents were implanted with devices that allowed them to be controlled by the invaders. Scary stuff for a science inclined kid.

 

[harley]

Day of the Triffids. Going blind still scares me.

Also the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

 

[karen1972]

Carrie when I was about 6 and it aired on TV.. hid behind sofa to see it.. never will step near a grave even today. Then Exercist, then children of the corn (given I lived in corn field country). yeh great.

 

[Rustic23]

The original 'The Thing'!

 

[Car-Guy]

Many that have been mentioned are classics (IMO) The originals of The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I don't think any were scary as a kid. I've got copies of them all and still watch them occasionally.

Probably the only one I can recall that was scary to me when I was a kid was a movie called "The Tingler" made in the late 50's I think.

Today, "Too Big to Fail", scares me to death! In the future, if they make one about "The Fed" over the past ~6 years, it will probably scare me too.

 

[mystang52]

I'll echo 2 prior, and add 1:
Tingler (agree how lame it was....when I saw it a second time, much older) but as a young boy it scared me no end.
Creature from Black Lagoon
Wolfman - I was the youngest of 3 boys, and we shared one bedroom. My 2 older brothers told me the Wolfman was in our closet at night. By the way, it didn't help matters that my fourth grade teacher had quite a resemblance to the Wolfman.

 

[stepford]

Long before it became the institution it is today "Night of the Living Dead" was a little known B-movie making its way around America. It wandered over to my little hunk of innocent suburbia in 1970 during the summer between my 4th and 5th grade as the back half of a double feature.

My Mom dutifully dropped off a few friends and me - a bratty gang of 9-10 year olds - at the local theater one late afternoon. And picked up a clutch of wide-eyed terrorized catatonics about 9 that night. That would probably be thought of as child endangerment these days, but free range parenting was much more the norm half a century ago.

 

[MRG]

The Exorcist freaked me out. We saw most of it not too long ago, pretty lame.

Last House on the Left was creepy too. DW rented a copy last year, still kinda of scary. A little bit close to home on some of the whack jobs in the news.

 

[brewer12345]

Practically anything with any suspense. Mom delighted in sneaking up behind us during the moment of tension in the show and grabbing us and shouting. I am somewhat amazed that none of us ever wet ourselves when she did so...

 

[Bestwifeever]

Although I was an adult when I saw The Exorcist, that definitely was the scariest movie I have ever seen. I wonder if we could see it in a theater, in the dark, with that theme music pumped up, vs on our home tv sets--I think I would still be scared out of my mind.

I never go to horror movies now but DH does--I'll have to see what he thinks today's scariest movies are.

 

[ABQ2015]

Long before it became the institution it is today "Night of the Living Dead" was a little known B-movie making its way around America. It wandered over to my little hunk of innocent suburbia in 1970 during the summer between my 4th and 5th grade as the back half of a double feature.

My Mom dutifully dropped off a few friends and me - a bratty gang of 9-10 year olds - at the local theater one late afternoon. And picked up a clutch of wide-eyed terrorized catatonics about 9 that night. That would probably be thought of as child endangerment these days, but free range parenting was much more the norm half a century ago.

I saw that movie at a drive in when I was 13 and it scared the heck out of me. My older sister (she drove) was there so that was a comfort although she got a big kick out of my being so scared and teased me. I can't imagine watching that movie at 9 years of age without parents or older siblings present.

As a younger child, the scariest movies to me were the haunted house type. The SciFi things from out of space were not as appealing or scary.