Movies/shows that traumatized you

When I was really young, I remember my mother left me alone in the house on a dark rainy day. The television was on and some version of "Hound of the Baskervilles" was playing (not the Cushing version). Seeing the sight of that demon dog streaking across the field after a helpless victim scared the shit out of me.

The only movie that ever freaked me out good was Kubricks' The Shining. My dad took me to see it when it was in theatres so I was a youngin at the time. I was born in 71 and I think it hit theatres in 79 but I'm not sure. Anyway the bathroom scene where Jack is dancing with that really hot chick only to look in the bathroom mirror and see her all decayed and shit. woah, that scared the living crap out of me and I was afraid to go in the bathroom for weeks after that. That is where my love for horror all began, dear old Dad.

I saw Suspiria at the Drive in with my folks when I was little. Man that movie scared the crap outta me.

Oh ya, when I was little I used to watch Night Gallery when it was on TV. MANY nightmares as a kid from that one. I went through quite a few night lights

I'd have to say Creepshow 2. The Raft fucked me up. I swore to never go skinny dipping in my lifetime. I got over that pretty quick, but I couldn't handle both the Raft and that Hitchiking story. That movie freaked me out. I can't even tell you why.

- Fixxxer

Hands down...Amityville 2. Scared the living piss out of me back in the day. Still think it has its chops.

BAYWATCH NIGHTS Season 2 when it tried to be an X-Files clone. I have yet to fully recover from such dialogue as:

"What am I worried about? Its Mitch Buchanan. He's in a boat, on the water."

Or watching Hasselhoff suddenly turn into MacGyver while fighting a blob-like creature by building weapons out of ordinary kitchen items. Or doing a rip-off of SPECIES and having the alien fall in love with Hasselhoff.

So much pain...

Scariest tv experience of my life was The Man Who Saw Tomorrow with Orsen Welles narrating. I was 8 years old, and to watch something about Nostradamus' predictions for the future totally freaked me and my sister out. Of course now I know that Nostradamus was a con artist, but then, with Welles voice behind it for authenticity, it tore me up. Anyone else remember this one?

Worzel Gummidge.

As a kid, I can remember watching BAD RONALD and being very scared ... The film was scary , but what I believe really bothered me was the abandonment/loss aspect ...

There were lots of great films I saw on TV back then that have stuck with me: LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH, NIGHT GALLERY ( the ep with Roddy McDowell ) and one called NIGHT TERROR w/ Valerie Harper as a housewife who witnesses a murder of a highway cop, only to be persued by the killer ... What scared me so much about that one was that the killer used one of those trecheotomy/voice boxes that are held up to your neck to produce sound ... yikes, I hated that ...

And as a pre-teen, sitting in the theater hearing " Jason was my son, and today is his birthday " come out of Betsy Palmer's mouth really scared the crap outta me ...

I was, uh.. A very emotionally sensitive child. And constantly exposed to Horror, so I have a lot of trauma going on..

When I was small, one of my babysitters teenage kids had rented A Nightmare on Elm Street. All was fine until Freddy popped up behind Tina, and my poor, fragile mind was torn to pieces..

There's one episode of Tales From the Crypt that I can vaguely remember, but it scared the absolute shit out of me. Something about an ice-cream truck. I think the guy that drove it around had a siamese twin stuck to him? I'm not sure. I avoided ice-cream trucks after that.

The worst trauma came from Creepshow 2. The HITCHHIKER. Auugh.. I couldn't sleep at all after I saw that. A few weeks after seeing it, as we were heading to church, my insane grandfather picked up a hitchhiker. This guy looked pretty scary, too, and I was sitting beside him. I started crying and the guy looked about ready to wig out, so we dropped him off. I still can't get into a car without looking under it.

Also, those McDonalds commercials from the 80's really, really scared me. I'm being absolutely sincere. I -hate- clowns. And that damn Hamburglar.

Hellraiser ALWAYS fucks me up. And that episode of Get A Life in the haunted house.

LOL, that's too fucking funny!

I'm glad I'm not alone on Creepshow 2. The Raft made me shit, but the Hitchiker did me in. I saw this right when it came ot on video, so I can't tell you how old I was, but holy f*ck! Was I really freaked-out after watching those two. Even with that lame cartoon in the movie, the Raft and Hitchiker over-powered the goofiness of the cartoon.

"Thanks for the ride lady! Thanks for the ride!"

FUUUUUUUCCCKKKK. I think I'm going to go relax, make some popcorn, pop in Creepshow 2 and scare the shit out of myself tonight.

- Fixxxer

I've seen a TV show when I was 7 or 8 that really traumatized me but I never could find what it was:

a man had angel wings growing in his back every time he did good, so he started to act evil, and I remember the last image had him showing he had huge devilish horns on his head.

I had to sleep with the lights on for weeks. Does anyone know what it could be?

Agreed. This movie is still hard for me to watch alone at night. The twins in the hallway, the woman in the tub and the elevator blood all freaked the shit out of me, and still do.

Absolutely. Easily the scariest of both the Creepshows' segments, with a "killer" ending, to boot. What made it worse was there was a local pond near my mom's house where everyone went swimming, and it had a raft just like that one in the middle... *shudder*

Wow, you guys are naming all of mine today! This was, hands down, one of the creepiest images I ever saw growing up. The beginning scene in the car, when Dan Aykroyd turns around the last time, was another one.

Funny post, man! I used to love watching this show late at night on Fox. It was so bad it was actually good. Thanks for reminding me!

Ok, now for the few new additions I have, since you all covered so many for me already:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78) - This movie still creeps me out. Great all-around, with the creepiest use of Amazing Grace I've ever heard. Also, the ending will stay with you for a long, long time.

Believe it or not, the horrid Invaders From Mars remake actually scared me when I was younger. The whole idea of the parents being evil, the neck-hole thing, the sand that sucks you under, the frog-eating teacher... When I watched it again, I just laughed.

The ending of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, when all the Nazi's faces melt, disturbed me big-time.

The most memorable, strangely, came from an episode of Dr. Who on TV. All I remember is a guy got infected with something, and he slowly began turning into this giant green caterpillar thing. I'll never forget that. That show was always odd, though, god bless it!

Great thread, WG! You continue to rock.

After watching Candyman for the first time I said the name five times into a mirror and regretted it for years.

I've mentioned this before, but the only thing that really scares me are movies about dolls. Child's Play fucked me up beyond all belief...

Movies:

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Grandpa with the hammer. Ass-clenching fear...

The Exorcist. The crucifix/masturbation scene. Trauma...no words describe it...

Trilogy of Terror. That damn killer Zuni warrior doll. Still scares me.

Phantom of the Opera. Lon Chaney being unmasked...Just terrified me.

I Spit on Your Grave. The bathtub scene...I don't wanna talk about it....

Cannibal Holocaust. The native girl on the spike.... Hurt me...

T.V.:

Stephen King's IT. I was 13, and I've never looked at clowns the same way again...

Salem's Lot. Vampire boy at the bedroom window.

Werewolf. Scared...Oh so scared...

I completely forgot Trilogy of Terror, how could I have done that?! The sequel eats ass though...

The three things I really remember scaring me back in the late 70's were:

1. The Exorcist
2. Last segment of Trilogy of Terror
3. And worst of all... the TV commercial for Magic with Anthony Hopkins and the dummy. I was 4 years old and I've hated dummies ever since.

Quite a few horror movies have gotten under my skin, but nothing that lasted very long. Usually it's too graphic to be considered real.

Except....

Alfred Hitchcock Presents. There was an episode about a woman who falls in love with a ventriloquist, following his performance around from city to city, and then she finally gets to meet him. During a romantic dinner, she discovers that the man is the puppet and the puppet is the man, and flees in terror.

Good stuff.

There was nothing like the bomb scare movies in the 80's. The Day After and Threads both scared the heck out of me when I was little, because people really were afraid that the Russians were going to nuke us all. They had bomb drills at my school when I was in kindergarten, which did little to calm my anxiety.
The only other thing I can remember watching that really deeply affected me in a negative way like that was The Accused. Why everyone is flocking towards Irreversible now is beyond me.

[quote]Return of the Living Krak:
Unfortunately, it does seem "cheesy as fuck" now. As for the alien design, as far as I can remember they're pretty goofy as well. Big green blobs on two legs, I think. I should rent this again, just for some perspective on what I thought was scary. The last time I watched it, I think I drifted between feelings of boredom, disappointment and amusement at the silly goings-on.

Werewolf Gurl, you should definitely give Twilight Zone: The Movie a look. It's not consistently great, but there are some creepy moments to be sure. The update of the airplane episode works better than the original, as the "gremlin" no longer looks like a giant teddy bear with buck teeth.

I saw a movie starring Vincent Price once that I believe was an anthology, with the central idea being that there was a club where investigators into the paranormal got together to share stories of their experiences. In the first story, a woman and her boyfriend come up with a scheme where she seduces this rich, eccentric guy who turns out to be able to destroy things with his mind. He really loves the birds in his huge yard, and when a cat gets at them, he fries it. That's scared-shitless part number one for young Saucy. He just looks over, enraged, and suddenly the cat is a smouldering pile of tarry black stuff.

Eventually the rich guy finds out the woman is just trying to rob him. The boyfriend comes back to their apartment one day and the woman won't look at him. Finally she turns around, imploring him to love her still, and her face is just gone. The shot of her advancing on the camera, arms outstretched, freaks me out just thinking about it. My imagination may have edited this in, but I think her blonde hair had been streaked this sickly green, which for some reason added to my terror. The other thing that really got me was that she didn't have a mouth any more (or anything, really), but she was still talking.

Someone needs to mention the "IT" miniseries. I won't tell you how old I was when it first played on tv, but I'll tell you I am really embarrassed at how much that clown scared the hell out of me.

For anyone curious, I just looked up the movie I was talking about, and it's called "The Monster Club." Looks incredibly bad, too.

Some of the stupist things stick out in my head as scaring the hell out of me. I remember that Halloween Three and those bugs coming out of the kids masks. That left such a mark on my soul.
The second is going to make me sound like a real dumb-fuck. FOr ages one of the scariest things that I could think of was the intro to that dumb Nick show "Are you Afreid of the Dark." YOu have not idea how many nights that kept me up. The intro was even scarier then the show itself ever was.

Lots of things got me back then, and still do. The Raft, truely is scary. Some of the shit in Halloween 3....mainly the "mis-fire", and the test of the masks near the end. I love that flick...i remember seeing a show a long time ago in which a man sat in his big leather chair and never got up, and one night, his wife comes home and he has melted into the chair, just his face and arms coming out of it, and he's shrieking for help as the credits start to roll....gah..... anyone recall something like that?

The dog wearing the the mans head in "Invasion of the Body snatchers" (78) always kinda creeped me out.

Also too, any movie that dealt with people getting assaulted, killed, whatever while they were sleeping always fucked me up.

When I was six, me and the older brothers watched "The Amityville Horror" on HBO and the intro scared me for days after that. I thought someone was going to come into my room and shoot me.

The part in "Halloween" when Micheal comes into the bedroom draped in a bedsheet. YIKES@!

To this day, I can not in any way sleep with any of my limbs dangling over the side of the bed or have my feet exposed.

Remember, covers repel monsters.

..The higher thread count the better. wink

Tremors... I was ten years old when I first saw it. For weeks afterward I slept on the second story in my house (my bedroom was on the first story) and I would only walk on the pavement hoping the monsters would hit their heads hard if they tried to get me.

I feel the same way, Krak. I miss the more innocent days when it didn't take such extremes to scare or shock me. I agree with you about Signs, even if I didn't think the movie itself was that great. There were some moments (all those you mentioned) where I actually felt like a kid again, not knowing what was going to happen, and being nervous as hell. It was great! There's nothing more exhilarating than feeling totally at the mercy of a director, I think. The only other recent film to do that to me was The Ring, which had some very disturbing images. If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking it out. I really need to see the original, though, as I have a feeling I'll like it more. Asian horror is my latest obsession.

The original Ring is worth the effort. I like the American version a lot, but I'm like you, I'm into the Asian films these days, and they seem to take horror to a different place than we do. I'm thinking of the gritty 70's horror movies like Don't Look Now and Burnt Offerings. Westerners haven't made those kind of slow burn movies in a long time.

I saw Jaws at the drive-in and it scarred me for life. Anytime I'm swimming in the ocean that damn theme song pops in my head.

Jaws scared the shit out of me as a little kid, which is funny, as I was and am really into sharks.

other flicks that scared me as a kid...

The Exorcist

The Shining

The Day After (you're not the only one, muncie girl. I kinda compare the nuke scares of the 70s/early 80s to the TV news these days... what all the talk of imminent terrorist strikes is doing to little kids must be exactly what Al Qaida wants. but I'm digressing)

Young Sherlock Holmes - the scene where the girl has the drug in her and she wanders into a crypt (I could be wrong about the details here, it's been ages since I've seen it... when will this be on DVD?).

yay, Werewolf Girl!!!!!!!!!!

I wonder if it's just that movies aren't as scary anymore. I've been mildly freaked out by just about everything mentioned. I'm sure if a good scary movie came along I might at least jump or something. Session 9 freaked me out a little and Audition really freaked me out and I saw that for the first time like a year ago or something. I have the original Ring on VCD and it did nothing for me, in fact I thought it kind of sucked after all of the hype. I haven't seen the American version yet so here's hoping. I don't know it's 1am.

[EDIT} It's 1am!

hmm.. well the exorcist and the ring are difficult for me to watch.
When i was little Child's Play!!!, the idea of doll getting up running around and killing people, yikes!!!...when it cameon network tv my family watched it downstairs and i stayed upstairs and watched the wonder years or something...my younger brother slept with a doll that night!!! he put a doll next to my bed also! i immediately grabbed it and put it in the closet across the house and barrcaded the door...pet semetary freakedme out while little also...i always used to run and jumpinto bed afraid that gage would slice me with that scalple...man i need to read more i'm having trouble trying to spell simple words..oh and i couldn't watch E.T. till 2nd grade!!! that sound he made made me want to run away and hide

Krak pointed out the childhood trauma thing, so.. I've got some more recent ones I remembered.

The House on Haunted Hill. The remake. I'm such a pansy. Anyway, two scenes really messed me up good. You know that head-shaking ghost? I saw it, went "OH FUCK!", and covered my eyes like a little girl. I have no idea why I had such a sissy reaction to THAT.. Then I seem to remember one ghost on a video screen, but I'm not sure. He was walking along, and.. his motions were all herky-jerky. Something about unnatural movements just weird me out. Seeing someone have a seizure does that to me, too. It just ain't.. right.

And Jeepers Creepers. The scene where that nasty truck keeps assaulting the car. Guh. Again, I don't know why it freaked me out, but I left the room for a little while. Could have something to do with my whole wrecking phobia.

Trilogy of Terror! I can't BELIEVE I forgot about that! In fact, I think my mind purposely repressed it. My aunt gave us that movie when I was -tiny-. It messed me up worse than The Hitchhiker. I was just sitting there watching it, then out of the blue.. That damn doll! I burst into tears, shrieked, and ran blindly from the room. I had nightmares about those glowing eyes and those TEETH for -months-. I need to watch that again.. So that's why I have such an unnatural aversion to those tribal dolls.

I have you special people to thank for remembering the worst experience of my childhood.

You poor, poor souls. I feel you pain.

My trauma comes from an evil sibling. As a young kid, my older sister asked me if I wanted to watch a funny movie with her. Being the dope that I was (am) I said, "Sure". Turn out she was in the middle of watching 'Poltergeist', and what I saw was a guy peeling off his face. I immediately shut my eyes and hid under a pillow. A good bit later (she wouldn't let me off the couch, flexing that big sister muscle), she said it was over. I opened my eyes to see a swimming pool full of rotten corpses.

After that, I finally left. But it was a great while later until I could watch a horror movie.

I can't believe the thread has got this long and no one's mentioned the clown from Poltergeist. Talk about your childhood trauma.

"Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me."

I used to watch a TV show on weekends called "Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected"--it wasn't Twilight Zone or Night Gallery or anything, and in fact most of the eps. were just twist-ending kind of things rather than horror...but one image from an episode I remember freaked/freaks me out:

This young man in financial trouble meets a crazy old gambler at a spa, and the old man offers to make some trivial bet (whether he can light a zippo lighter 20 times in a row without missing fire) with him for $500,000 or something--and if the young man loses, the old man gets to chop off his pinky. The ep. is kind of slow, with the young man and his girlfriend talking about whether he should do it, if he would really miss his pinky or not, what they could do with the money. Anyway, just at the end he's decided to do it, and he's stopped by an old woman who bursts in and tells him not to bet, the old man is broke and clinically insane. They lead him away muttering, and she explains that he used to be rich, but she won it all from him a year back. As she reaches to get the lighter off the table, you see she has only 2 fingers and a thumb--that image of that wrinkled, claw-like hand...it made me shudder. They obviously got a real amputee to do it.

The opening titles of that show were freaky too-- a shadowy carousel, lights on the screaming horses' mouths.

I think the opening of the series "Hammer house of horror" scared the SHIT out of me. It was so scary looking at my age. It's just like a logo with all these lights around it. but it scared me.

Nope--absolutely sure it was "Tales of the Unexpected." I used to time my weekend around it (back in the day before VCRs, even! wink

Poltergeist scared the livin begeezus outta me as a kid. I remember my mom taking me to see it in the theater as a child and being totally terrified. I think I watched the whole thing through my fingers. I had nightmares for years to come. I've been a rabid horror fan ever since. I still hate clowns. *shivers*

I consider myself pretty grounded and a lover of films. But Killer Klowns from Outer Space has got to be the scariest fucking movie ever made!! I couldn't sit through this in the middle of the day sandwiched between my parents on the couch!
That whole sucking the blood through the crazy straw thing was pure evil. As was the man-puppet police chief! Holy shit! I just crapped my pants thinking about it! And was it just me, or were those pies they throw at the end killer pies that melt your body (even though they didn't show that happen)??
End all, be all of horror films. And thank jeebus that it was only a film...

Clowns are just damned scary in general.

There's an excellent DVD edition of Killer Klownz from MGM's Midnite Movies you can get for under $10, if you're into that kind of thing. One of my fave cheap-o discs.

I don't have a clue. I've checked the year and I think I've seen it on TV around 1987 (which makes me a little older than 7 by then...)

There was an episode of the "New Twilight Zone" from the 80's..not the one with Lazy eye Whitaker, but from like 1986-1987.
And one of the Episodes was called "Night Crawlers". Story of this guy , all dishevelled and exhausted looking, comes into an allnight diner and sits at the counter.
People thinks he is a bum and prety much pay him no mind. But he has a secret.

He was part of a military elite group, black ops, super secret, even your mother don't know who you are, group. And one night he fell asleep on his watch on a very dangerous mission and the rest of his group (called the "night Crawlers" were killed. He was the only one that made it out alive...

But when ever he falls asleep, they come for him and try to take him with them over to death side. So he has remained awake as long as possible, but he does eventually pass out in this diner at ngiht full of the usual cast of late night misfits, and then the assault starts.

Just remember the Zombie Night Crawlers with machine guns blowing the hell out of the diner and the patrons...

Very creepy episode. Only one from that times series that I remember being any good.

later
Tony D

also lost sleep over
End of Blair Witch, Session 9, The Island(I was 7), Jaws, Let's Scare Jessica to Death...and more that I cannot think of right now...

Ghostwatch --the british "War of the Worlds" type halloween broadcast. I knew it was fiction when I popped it in the DVD player, and I DID lose sleep over it. And I'm 31 years old. eek!

It was one of those things for me, like the Blair Witch, that just got creepier the more I thought about it. Even in daylight I was getting the shivers.

But maybe that's just me.