OT: Movie/TV program that really scared you
In the spirit of the given month, I thought it'd be cool to post about our favorite Halloween picks. Specifically movies, TV shows, specials that left an impression because they scared us.
My entry is a show called Haunted Lives (I watched it under the name Real Ghosts) which aired as three separate specials on CBS and later on UPN in the early 90s. There's one reenactment that scared me so much I covered my eyes and ears and refused to open them till there was a commercial. I spent the rest of the night watching college football in the other room for the first time.
https://youtu.be/_M8E3VAtquY
October 4th, 2020 at 1:50 PM ^
the exorcist
saw it once only, on a dark, foggy, rainy night. scary business.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:27 PM ^
That movie is horribly boring and not scary nowadays
October 4th, 2020 at 2:29 PM ^
Says YOU!
October 4th, 2020 at 2:55 PM ^
maybe, but back in the 70's that was cutting edge.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:41 PM ^
For me, it was the original Alien movie, saw it in the theatre and it was frightening as hell. So original and interesting.
Horror movies like Friday the 13th, et al, suck for me, stupid and boring and not really scary, just lame.
Suspenseful movies are so much better and well written.
October 4th, 2020 at 4:02 PM ^
I watched The Exorcist as a 10-12 year old kid, with my younger brother. We tuned in late on a Friday night after the parents went to bed. It was then, and still is to this day, the only movie that made me sleep with the lights on. I was in a parochial school, and the religious aspect is still, really, the only genre that has the ability to scare the shit out of me. Play on the psych aspect (ie: The Grudge) and you'll get me. Try the cheap BS that relies on sudden scenes and I'll jump - like everyone - but that's it.
Put some effort into your fright, please...
October 4th, 2020 at 5:56 PM ^
It's okay VaBlue, I'm here for ya buddy, I'll be like the Motel 6 and leave the light on for you.
Alien was very suspenseful, not just cheap frills by any means, you didn't know where the hell that thing was or where it was coming from.
October 4th, 2020 at 9:09 PM ^
I’d read The Exorcist not long after it was published in 1971, so I knew what to expect, but when I saw the film during its opening week in a theater in Manhattan in December 1973, I was so stunned that I couldn’t leave my seat until after all the theater lights went on.
October 4th, 2020 at 9:12 PM ^
I saw that opening weekend. All I kept thinking the whole movie was don't open that frigging bedroom door. It has a great soundtrack, every time I hear it even to today all I can think is don't open that frigging bedroom door.
October 4th, 2020 at 10:24 PM ^
I don't get to say this often, but I'm a little young for this one, but that doesn't mean I don't have a story.
Apparently my old man was a Mike Oldfield fan and had tubular bells on 8 track or phonograph or whatever he had in whatever beat up car he had in high school. He and a bunch of buddies go to see the Exorcist on opening weekend. They were all scared to death. And then they got in the old man's car, and the theme song started blaring as soon as he turned the key. Apparently they all screeched and jumped out of the car.
October 4th, 2020 at 1:53 PM ^
Jaws... I can be in a freshwater lake and I’m still concerned about what lurks underneath
October 4th, 2020 at 2:28 PM ^
Very funny (not haha) that 2 people mentioned I think the only 2 movies to ever really scare me - like truly haunted, couldn't forget them or get over them - for a loooong time.
Exorcist traumatized my preteen self (great parents took kids ranging in age from 10-15 to this horrifying R rated movie!) I mean for years!
Jaws I got over more quickly, but I remember being terrified a Great White was coming up to overturn our outboard powered fishing boat - on Lake St. Clair!
This was actually not that far fetched really in my mind, since Sea Lampries were big news in those days. Hell, if they could make it to the Great Lakes, why not sharks?!
October 4th, 2020 at 4:41 PM ^
I think being truly scared by a movie for any time and when you saw it age-wise is important. Jaws is my ultimate scary movie as well. I've only seen it once, but I'm 52 and don't like any water i can't see the bottom of and the very thought of being in the water at night... Just no.
All because of a stupid movie 30-40 years ago. No scary movie bothers me as an adult because most of them are illogical and ridiculous. As a young teen anything is possible.
October 4th, 2020 at 7:36 PM ^
I completely agree. I remember watching Children of the Corn around 10 years old, and refusing to go in a corn maze for several years afterwards. I told my parents it was because I thought it was "boring", but really I did not want to go in. It was not until Field of Dreams came out that I felt fine to go in again.
October 4th, 2020 at 11:12 PM ^
I can be in a swimming pool and worry, but that's also thanks to one of the Sean Connery James Bond movies where a guy goes into a swimming pool, and the villain opens a trap door and sharks swim out into the pool and attack the guy.
October 4th, 2020 at 1:57 PM ^
I pretty much stopped watching scary movies in the 90s, but back then it was Blair Witch project, John Carpenter's The Thing, the Shining, Event Horizon
More recently a date took me to see Lars Von Trier's Antichrist - odd pick, guess she wanted to see what I was made of
Also there was that 1 minute short with the light switching on and off looking down the corridor, fuck ever watching that again
October 4th, 2020 at 2:05 PM ^
Blair Witch for me as well but mostly because when we came home from seeing it we had no power and had to light some candles around the house. The mind plays funny games when it comes to flickering, candlelit shadows......
October 4th, 2020 at 3:03 PM ^
every room has at least 4 corners*, and what if when you look, there's someone standing in the corner? i couldn't close my eyes to sleep for 2 consecutive nights. that ended my scary movie patronage.
(*unless of course you live in some weird ass house with round rooms)
October 4th, 2020 at 5:18 PM ^
I hated Blair Witch SO much. I was so excited to see it and when I saw it had basically devolved into unlikable people bitching at each other in the woods, I basically got pissed and started rooting for the witch/serial killer/whatever the fuck at the end. I mean I grew up camping and backpacking, unlikable people bitching at each other in the woods was basically my childhood.
October 4th, 2020 at 5:42 PM ^
Blair Witch freaked me out bc when it came out it was only playing at this one independent theater in Mpls and I saw it then. A few weeks later it became more commercialized but seeing it at that time was freaky. I did hate all the characters though.
October 5th, 2020 at 6:12 AM ^
Blair Witch was really creepy for me as an adult. It was Amityville Horror when I was a kid (I saw it at the theatre when I was 6 years old - different times I guess!)
For some reason I was a bit creeped out by The Craft.
I don't remember being too creeped out about this one, but there was some level of creepiness to Jeepers Creepers.
October 4th, 2020 at 1:58 PM ^
Paranormal Activity. We watched it at the theatre when it first came out. People were literally running out of the theatre in fright.
October 4th, 2020 at 1:59 PM ^
After the OSU game the past two years, I spent the rest of the day watching horror movies in the other room until I stopped screaming and chilled out.
October 5th, 2020 at 8:00 AM ^
Okay, lock the thread. You win!
October 4th, 2020 at 2:03 PM ^
When I was a kid, Fire in the sky scared the shit out of me!
October 4th, 2020 at 2:47 PM ^
Communion got to me pretty severely as a kid.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:04 PM ^
The Ring It was dark and novel at the time.
Non-mainstream: Begotten (1989) you cannot unwatch that.
October 4th, 2020 at 9:08 PM ^
begotten is probably the most visually disturbing film i've seen
very high iq pick
October 4th, 2020 at 2:05 PM ^
Detroit Lions Football
October 4th, 2020 at 2:06 PM ^
eh, too predictable.
example: just before the Aaron Rodger's bomb to beat the Lions a few years back, I told my wife "here comes a touchdown". Once it happened, she looked at me quite shocked. I simply said "I've been watching the Lions for a long time..."
October 4th, 2020 at 2:07 PM ^
Wait Until Dark, 1967
Get Out, 2017
October 4th, 2020 at 3:08 PM ^
Us for me. Looks like Jordan Peele has carved himself a nice niche.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:14 PM ^
Movie: Event Horizon.
I know it wasn't asked but one of the scariest books I've ever read was Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. It's kind of a lost classic. It's a folk horror, slow burn, but the ending/payoff is one of the most disturbing things I've ever read.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/816085.Harvest_Home
I believe it was made into a miniseries in 70s. Not sure if it's still in distribution.
October 5th, 2020 at 3:27 AM ^
Thomas Tryon! For me, it was his novel The Other, a psychological thriller about a pair of unusually close good/bad twin boys living in a small, not-as-idyllic-as-it-seems Connecticut town in the '30s. The book was great. It was also made into a movie – a low-key and disappointing one (for me), but worth a viewing. The last sentence in your first paragraph describes The Other to a T.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:14 PM ^
Keeping up with the Kardashians.
October 5th, 2020 at 10:36 AM ^
That show sucks but I will admit I watched a couple episodes to look at Kim. They’re finally ending it.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:18 PM ^
It. I was thirteen at the time. Couldn't sleep for two days and I still don't know how it ends.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:23 PM ^
I thought the book was overrated. Never saw either the Tim Curry movie or the new ones.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:28 PM ^
I can make it through King's writing fine. It was the 2-part VHS for me. Made it through the first, but when the second started with the suicide, I was done.
October 4th, 2020 at 5:23 PM ^
The book was too long and is most effective as a nostalgia vehicle rather than a horror piece, which is a common problem for King. His son has that issue as well. Nos4A2 should have been fucking terrifying and all I wanted was for it to end after page 500.
October 4th, 2020 at 6:23 PM ^
It was definitely too long. I liked everything else of his that I've read but that one was just a big miss. Not trashing him by any means. What he's accomplished as an author is epic.
Having said that, Joe Hill really is not a good writer. I respect him for not taking his dad's last name so as not to appear to be riding his coattails but... nobody would care about him if he weren't Stephen Kings son. I gave up on The Fireman because it read like it was written by a 16 year old, and there was no way I was trudging through 800 pages of that.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:31 PM ^
It hasn't ended yet!
October 4th, 2020 at 3:15 PM ^
This was and is the only horror story that leaves me feeling uncomfortable. Coulrophobia.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:18 PM ^
The Strangers freaked me out. I imagine if I had watched it during the middle of the day it wouldn't have been so bad, but viewing it late one night added to the creepiness.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:38 PM ^
This was another series in which I liked the sequel more
October 4th, 2020 at 2:18 PM ^
Silver bullet
October 4th, 2020 at 2:34 PM ^
I would've guessed you'd have picked The Shining.
Side note - I thought Dr Sleep was even better than The Shining, and one of the best movies of 2019.
October 4th, 2020 at 8:25 PM ^
The shinning wasn’t that scary. Silver bullet was written by Steven King. That movie scared the shit out of me.
little known to me at the time, should have been much more scared of the Stand.
October 4th, 2020 at 2:20 PM ^
It's a video game but it's called P.T. Was supposed to be a little teaser for the new Silent Hill game on PS4 that has since been cancelled but man was it terrifying.
October 4th, 2020 at 9:14 PM ^
PT was fucking wild. You get around to playing Death Stranding?