images from pop culture that frightened you as a child

(2) On Battle of the Planets, when they pulled off Zoltar's mask, it was "revealed" that he was a she (or was it?), and the Great Spirit thing came outta nowhere to save Zoltar's ass.

(3) Some really cheesy horror film, where this horseman comes out of nowhere and chops off some guy's head (you see the guy's shadow, and the head getting lopped off).

(4) Gene Simmons wasn't scary, just goofy.

(5) When I was seven and the NYCPD had just arrested Son of Sam (my grandmother made us stay up and watch this).

(6) Another NYC metro-area specific incident: "Chiller Theater" on Channel 11, with this hand (with six! fingers) sinking into quicksand just after grabbing each letter in the word "C-H-I-L-L- E-R" and some creepy voice going "Chiiiiiiillller! (Years later, I worked with a lady whose first name was Csilla [it's a Hungarian nane, if y'all care], who said she used to get teased in grade school because of "Chiller Theater").

Pop answer: I remember being very scared of Top of the Pops in the early/mid-seventies, I guess the bands must have been Led Zep, Deep Purple, etc etc. Actually, it was a combination of horror and abject revulsion. I was scared by the Sensational Alex Harvey band on the Old Grey Whistle Test, also.

The Mad Hatter in the batman telly series frightened me, dunno why. The surrealist paintings my parents insisted on hiring from the library (is that pop culture?)

I am yet to recover from any of the above.

Not pop culture, but my parents had a papier-mache lion's head in the house, which scared me. Also scary was dragon puppet my mother made; it kept me from going upstairs alone.

The evil doll Dido in 'A Candle in her Room' by Ruth M. Arthur;

The boulders with eyes in 'Marianne Dreams';

A woman in one of the Green Knowe books who turned down the last cake then made it slither across the table and into her handbag when the grandmother wasn't looking.

At primary school we were shown this TERRIFYING little UNESCO movie abt the scourge of leprosy in the third world, blimey. What I recall: small African kid wandering unaccompanied through gleaming hospital, opens door to see sisnister doctors operating: it was like Coma on the Congo. Needless to say I nevah gave a penny!!

That reminds me, Miss Havisham in the old B&W movie of 'Great Expectations.'

She terrified me.

'Johnny couldn't see the danger in flicking rubber bands. Now Johnny can't see at all.'

Ozzy Ozbourne, but now I wuv him (or at least Black Sabbath).

My sister and I also had a mad ritual of hiding behind the settee when Morph threw a tin of paint at the camera at the beginning of every episode.

Pop culture in the North = ACE!

In primary school (aged 5-6 maybe) on more than one occasion several classes were for no particular reason were dragged to the school hall to watch this video (NB there were video players in the classrooms) called, I think, The Gazump. It was a poorly drawn cartoon about a big brown slug-thing that went around swalling ("gazumping") things. I think it was the sound of the word that scared me most, and it was said repeatedly. Gazump. Gazump. Gazump.

I remember overhearing this horrible (NB v.horrible, don't read on) Radio 4 story about a prince who was into thinking so decided he didn't need a body, so got the palace rats to eat it. He then decided he didn't need a head either, so got the rats to eat that, leaving only his brain, which the maids decided was a shrivelled prune and threw away. Yuk.

also, the abcs spelled out in fireworks on sesame street.

That's just cruel. Childhood is surely scary enough without being shown films relating the horror of the house market and unscrupulous estate agents. Did they make you watch instructional videos on filling in your tax return too?

Chilling as a small child:

The Shadow in "Hope and Keen's Crazy Bus". Who was he? What did he want? Why won't he go away?

A bizarre public information film about railway vandalism done in the style of a game-show. "Congratulations to the blue team - that's 100 points for a direct hit to the driver!", cue numbingly brief image of BR employee with blood pouring from face wound after rocks smash through his cab window.

1/. thee dark spirit of deep water, old canals, rivers etc. A frightening apparition, like one ov Sauron's DARK RIDERS OV MORDOR. Typing this, I PH££L tha PH££R!!!!!

2/. |\/|4k3 sur3 j00 +ur|\| j0r heater 0ff B4 going t0 b3d @ |\|!GH+. Trax0ring shot ov burnt-out childrenz b3dr00m, with disturbing soundz ov children's voices put thru echo + reverb.

| D0|\|'+ +H!|\|k !'LL b3 sl33p!ngx0r well tonight U fux0rz.

land of the lost

Ooh yeah, my parents spend far too much time watching those indistinguishable (though snappily named) shows at 8:30 on BBC2/C4. "The Glump", maybe. A G word, anyway.

Perhaps, but the fuss that surrounded its broadcast would seem to indicate that:

[i] this was a major production of some kind, not a PIF quickie [ii] it was its first showing

Unless I can find out some more info about this "Finishing Line" thing that Robin referenced, I can't be sure.

Some of the scenes from _Suspiria_ (which I saw when I was 14 or 15) make me cringe, too - the barbed wire part, or that scene near the end where she discovers the secret door & stuff. I also have weird associations w/ various horror flick video tape boxes (from browsing the stacks @ local video stores - _The Beast Within_, _Demons_) - imagination is a powerful deceiver, quoth some person.

And the song "Eli's Coming" by Three Dog Night. Just who is Eli? An abusive boyfriend? A pissed off drug dealer? Satan? Who, Laura Nyro, who?

2. The eerie sheen of Jeff Goldblum skin.

3. Whenever I visited my grandparents' house, I would be afraid of any TV programme featuring an interracial cast. My grandpa was a horrible racist and upon seeing people of different skin colors get along amiably on screen he would vent his rage on me in a very physical manner. One crisp autumn eve he happened to flip to Different Strokes and ended up giving me four sharp elbows to the base of my neck, followed by a figure-four leg-lock which he held for 2 hours, nearly crippling me forever. Just last year I hired a few hip-hop graffiti kids to deface his tombstone with the actual "Tombstone" logo right off the pizza box. Hooray for multiculuralism!

Also: Pink Floyd's The Wall album cover, especially the mammoth anuses. The Eagles’ "Hotel California." ("They stab it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast.") An episode of Fantasy Island involving a woman returning to the haunted house she grew up in, only to find her toys coming to life, including a marionette tearing off his strings. Kept me awake for MONTHS. An animated version of the Grimm story The Seven Ravens which involved a little girl cutting her finger off to save her brothers from a spell. A traffic-safety film shown to my entire elementary school that had a scene with a young Asian girl getting run over by her school bus. To my immense humiliation, I got so freaked out by it that I had to BE TAKEN OUTSIDE The beginning of The Electric Company: it was just too loud, brassy and sassy for me to handle.

When I did the initial research for my The Rock Machine Turns You On! mixtape, I found a startling number of reminiscences from people who claimed that the end-bumpers for Screen Gems and Filmation television shows -- with their colorful geometric animations and early electronic music -- would frighten the shit out of them as kids.

Dave: that would be The Tomorrow People, right?

My older brother was an unruly kid. For a while, every week my mom would drive him to one of the ritzier parts of Long Island to see a child psychologist. This happened when he was, oh, I'd say from when he was eight 'till he was ten. What went on during those sessions remains a mystery to me, except for one detail.

The shrink made a deal with my brother. If he behaved, the shrink would give him copies of Playboy.

My brother behaved.

Until, of course, he found other ways to get copies of Playboy.

Anyway. My brother's Playboys scared me deeply. I sensed this smug, downright mean attitude in the magazine. One article stands out in particular. The writer took pictures of famous naked women, and switched around parts of each women's face with their naughty bits. I don't remember seeing the actual results, but there was an illustration, and in the middle of one woman's face was what I suppose was a highly schematic vagina: a big, fleshy screw-shaped item where a nose should be. It seemed awfully cruel; plus, there was the whole thing about me (already) being attracted to people of my own sex, yet feeling expected (by the culture, by my brother, etc.) to find what I was looking at REALLY GREAT even though it felt REALLY WRONG.

MR NOSEYBONK FROM JIGSAW!!

(research has shown that I am not alone in being terrified as a 4-year old by this speedfreak with the giant expressionless face)

I think I mentioned on another thread that I spun Prince's "Darling Nikki" backward for the "secret message". Lost a few nights sleep over that.

the theme song seemed real real mystical to me.

http://www.subvulture.com/archive/melting_nazis_indiana_jones.jpg

I loved Moondial - I had presexual crushes on just about every character in it.

(and I've *never* actually visited the place it was filmed at, even though it's only about 90mins drive from here)

im still terrified, but for different reasons entirely.

Also:

http://www.wibbly-wobbly.co.uk/bs.jpg

cos they used to beat each other up with big hammers and things while GRINNING MANIACAL GRINS all the time! The gleeful violence of it just used to freak me out.

And the Tweets on top of the pops too, doing the birdy song. Again, it's the kind of psychotic cheerfulness about them that makes them frightening, I think.

otm.

more proof that god is way creepier than the devil.

it freaked me out and i never talked to that girl again.

I was also scared of the United Artists logo and the way it slowly, painstakingly turned to reveal its full-frontal view to the audience.

http://www.accconline.com/download/prom/prompics/ mimansm.jpg

http://www.goodlogo.com/cases/michelin/ad.jpg

I also saw Tommy at a young age & found it terrifying - never seen it since. My older brother was a big Who fan & all their songs scared me to death - Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy was just one portrayal of childhood misery after another, it seemed to me: Pictures of Lily, Substitute, I'm a Boy, Happy Jack, Boris the Spider etc

The cover of "If you want blood" by AC/DC scared the bejesus out of me when I was 12.

I had a huge book about Unexplained Mysteries - usual Reader's DIgest nonsence.

http://i22.ebayimg.com/03/i/02/62/8b/e6_1.JPG

The section of demonic possession scared me loads, and there was a picture of a demon holding a book (I think it was one of those medieval engravings) that was REALLY scary - I had to jump over the page. I don't think I ever read anything on that page.

OMG JOHNNEY ME TOO!!! What terrified me beyond logic was the story in that book of a teenage gril (from Germany, or Holland, or something) who was horrifically "possessed" and ended up dying. I couldn't even open the book in case I opened it at that page.

Was the TV series anywhere near as good as the books?

(which weren't scary at all, but were very good indeed)

the tv series is broadly adapted from the books. MUCH scarier than the books (from memory) - i have only read the Weathermonger though.

That, and the fact that whatever movie that followed that UA title sequence was going to be Eyes of Laura Mars or something.

When I was very young, there was a segment on "Sesame Street" wherein James Earl Jones (wearing a red t-shirt) barked whatever today's letter was (or something), and I was fuckin' sprint out of the room with all speed in abject horror.

For a long while, I was also hugely creeped out by....

http://www.shop4photos.net/graphics/254/254719.jpg

Alan - it's a DVD that plays in a player. Looks fine, though pretty compressed. I think the compression used just makes my multiregion player hate it. What a drag.

Woodcuts.
Yes. What really got me was when PBS would play a Domenican chant and put a woodcut on the screen, perhaps to illustrate some great seafaring accident during the settling of the Americas. Chilling!

At the end of the 22nd century Alisa Seleznyova, her father Professor Seleznyov and pilot Zeleny go on a space expedition to find rare animals for Moscow Zoo. On the way they seem to encounter a mysterious conspiracy led by Doctor Verhovtsev against legendary Two Captains Kim and Buran. The only clue is a talking bird Govorun that our heroes accidentally took possession of.

The United Artists logo. The way it would turn, excruciatingly slowly, around to face you...

http://www.hydepark.co.il/hydepark/uploaded/021029_215614-95_Bohemian%20Rhapsody.jpg

Floaty faces on black background = bad

Everything about it. Paul Williams' floating head, the guy with the make-up, the 1/8" patch cables, and especially the Phantom's scary head gave me nightmares.

http://www.phinnweb.org/pic/drado.gif

pulled people into its maw with its tentacles and then spit out BURNED UP SKELETONS. Freaked my shit right out when I was like 7.

x-post, yeah, jaymc, and that Star Trek episode where the kid with all the Billy Mumy powers makes the women's face disappear. Gah!

http://www.nancynall.com/archives/struwwelpeter.jpg

bryan otm too. i think my dad had a poster for that or something.

http://img342.imageshack.us/img342/440/poltergeisttitle6jc.jpg http://img312.imageshack.us/img312/9447/poltergeist8gu.jpg

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/1231/empirestrikesbackwallpaper40xk.jpg

http://img320.imageshack.us/img320/5798/wotw14jl.jpg

my god, that is cuet.

Pretty much anything from that version, actually, since it was very heavily implied that Wonka had had the children killed.

http://img332.imageshack.us/img332/6831/blessthishouse7hi.jpg

I hated walking past the mall's movie theater when this thing was hanging outside of it.

I was terrified of Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor when I was very little. It was the fact that he would fall on the floor and then turn very slowly around and he was a MONSTER!!! For years after I was afraid to fall asleep facing a wall in case I turned back (to camera?) and I was a MONSTER!!!!!

Also Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. Top tip for nine year-olds: don't leave the tape of this playing when you go to sleep. You will wake up and be terrified.

Does anyone remember the film Magic. The commercial with those's dummy face and eyes absolutely terrified me as a child. Not that I was afraid of ventriloquist's dummies, but I would literally run out of the room rather than see it.

Only now do I learn that Anthony Hopkins was in it.

another possible usual:
the evil flying dwarf from 'the singing ringing tree'

some dr who:
the cybermen - first remember some (1966) episodes involving them attacking a base in antarctica; also remember the later (1968)disturbing pictures of them walking through London...

only time i found daleks scary = one of them rising up out of the thames like a submarine surfacing

(i even found the 'yeti' things scary at the time: classic big hairy monsters skulking around in the london underground tunnels - but seeing a photo of them yrs later they look ridiculous, whereas cybermen are *still* a bit scary (am looking forward to their reappearance in the latest dr who, but also fear that they may be spoiled by too much redesign)

BUT scariest thing on dr who ever: in spring of '68 eps 'fury from the deep' there was a never-speaking tall and cadaverous bloke who killed ppl by exhaling toxic gas at them, while looking (i hope this works) like THIS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mrquill.jpg

other stuff:
the sinking of the Titanic in the film 'a night to remember'

first scene i saw of someone sinking in quicksand - flailing and still shouting even as you saw his mouth & nose get covered/filled with the horrible liquidy earth, his eyes still wide with fear... the fear of drowning i had already developed was now stirred by being on any non-paved/concreted LAND as well as on water

any old dinosaur/lost world scenes where someone would be almost eaten by a PLANT (there was also one film where there was some horrible surrealist nightmare of a cave or tunnel opening which seemed to have these black furry tentacles growing out of the walls, and which uncurled/unfurled to grab ppl as they tried to get through)

oh YES phil d !
that space 1999 thing was horrible !
(i think something about it maybe subliminally reminded me of the tentacular things i just mentioned above)

even about 10 yrs ago i was walking along a beach while the tide was out, and started to get a paralysing FEAR OF SINKING into the sand

i was in blackpool though so it might have been displaced wishful thinking

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/Mandalion/AdoptKurukuMove.gif

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/Mandalion/AdoptKurukuZapMove.gif

He still scares me!

http://www.phil.stubbs.btinternet.co.uk/pix/jabber/jabx02.jpg

The whole thing.

http://images.dvdempire.com/gen/movies/443648h.jpg

http://www.wtve.com/childrens%20shows%20images/New%20Zoo%20Review.jpg

http://www.yarnivore.com/francis/archives/images/GuySmiley.jpg

The Master of Horror unleashes everything you were ever afraid of...COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL!

Argh! No!

(shudders)

(not the book, which I'd never seen before. Just his picture on the Candyland board)

also, sunny otm with pirhanna. i never even saw it and it frightened me just hearing about it from friends. i thought about it every time i was swimming in a friend's pool. it seemed very possible that pirhanna could travel though the sewer and into the pool and devour me or at least gnaw on my dangling extremities.

and...
http://noel.simianzombie.com/movie_anamericanwerewolfinlondon3.jpg
before i ever saw the movie, i saw this in a preview and had extreme nightmares and developed a whole evil story line based just on the image

and i'm sure pink floyd's 'the wall' got mentioned somewhere up there

a friend of the family used to 'babysit' my brother and i on friday nights. thing is, she worked at the food place at a drive-in theatre so the babysitting involved my brother and i watching double features in her car while she worked. thats where i saw it. i was 5 or 6 at the time and for months afterward woke up in the night convinced pirhana were swimming around my bed.

oddly, 'jaws' never scared me at all. id think being attacked by a shark was probably a whole lot more likely than pirhana in southeast australia.

Brrrrr.

Yeah, also with Time Bandits. the face coming at the camera, etc. But the kid losing his parents at the end made me never watch the flick ever again.

It didn't help that my elementary school would routinely use that flick as a student babysitter(another fave from that era: The Electric Grandmother).

Who remembers the Twilight Zone movie?

http://gnumoon.blogs.com/./photos/uncategorized/gremlin.jpg

saw this when I was 8 and FREAKED MY SHIT OUT.

i was a dum kid.

I saw an episode of Spiderman on the Electric Company one time that terrified me. He was crawling around, doing his Spiderman thing, and suddenly he started looking right at the camera. I thought he was looking at me. Suddenly he wasn't Spiderman anymore. He was trying to communicate with me. I ran out of the room screaming.

I was also terrified of Revelations. Not really pop culture, except that the reason it scared me so bad was because my mom was reading all these freaky 70s end-of-the-world books at the time, and they became strangely intertwined with the bible (GWB scares me for this reason).

There were a few things that frightened me that caused fascination, and later on: Love. Ozzy Osbourne was one of them, and Dr. Who (Tom Baker era) was the other.

Great thread!

The only thing that I can remember -really- clearly though is:
http://movies.monstrous.com/pictures/alien_movie_monster_10.jpg

Freakin' Cocoon!
Ughh!

One scene in particular: Creepy Steve Gutenberg skulks around and for some unwholesome reason hides in the pretty girl's closet and peeps at her undressing. Sort of titilating, oh yes, though I wasn't quite sure why yet (I was indeed young!)
And then... the skin... came off! AND THE SCARIEST THING IN ALL OF THE WORLDS WAS REVEALED! GLOWING! A DEAD, BENIGN-YET-TERRIBLE EXPRESSION ON ITS FACE! FLYING RIGHT AT STEVE/US!

Too much!
"V" never scared me half as much.

haha.

more please.

ALL OF THEM

http://www.toonhound.com/inle.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/jholbo/nutwork/images/Woundwort.jpg

Surely all the Doctor Who and Stephen King ones don't really count, because you're supposed to be afraid of them?

Anyway, for me it was Queen.

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Arena/5518/queen61.jpg

They scared the bejesus out of me.

Yes, I posted a Bohemian Rhapsody still upthread somewhere.

We are of an age.

Do you, or does anyone else, remember a clown who used to have a show on BBC children's programming in the 70s? I think his name was something like Charlie Corelli. Anyway, apparently I used to be frightened of him and his programme, because it mainly consisted of people hitting each other, and I couldn't understand why people would be so horrible.

Charlie Caroli.

He is still going - I saw him at Zippo's circus a couple of years ago. Catchphrase - "Right Children!" "Right Charlie!"

Oh Christ! Here he is!

http://www.cancerappeal.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/3D4F901D-612E-4C95-9B5D-E65D041449EC/0/circus04.JPG

Run away!

I loved Charlie Caroli as a kid. Went to see him at Blackpool Circus and everything.

Charlie Caroli.

I can't find an image of him, which is just as well. The thing I used to hate about his programme was that it seemed to be nothing but week after week of Norman Barrett and his performing fucking budgies.

xposts

Oh god, the budgies! NOOOOOOO!

I loved those budgies too! Norman Barrett was ringmaster at the circus.

I thought Dr C must be mistaken. I've managed to Google Charlie Cairoli - we was spelling his name wrong - and he died in 1980.

http://www.charliecairoli.com/new_page_1.htm

(I seem to remember somebody, maybe a son?, taking over the persona tho.)

This thread is making me really sad now for the days when Blackpool was the most magical place in the universe before it got ruined by pissed-up scum.

xp Perhaps it is his son, because the picture I found was certainly taken after 1980. Isn't that what they do, anyway, these CARNIES?

Yes it was his son I think, but his son is pushing 60.

The ringmaster at Zippos is still Norman Barrett, or at least it was when I last went, 2 yrs ago. Norman still looks exactly the same as in the 70s.

http://www.zipposcircus.co.uk/photos/photnor.htm

Still going

Sweet. Norman Barrett is Rock and Roll.

His budgie show is still flippin' dire though.

I don't get the budgie hate. I also keep thinking about Freddy Parrot Face Davies. 70s TV could sustain 2 budgie acts, apparently. (Insert Adam Faith joke here.)

This thread is making me really sad now for the days when Blackpool was the most magical place in the universe before it got ruined by pissed-up scum.

-- Noodle Vague, Monday, 21 May 2007 08:33 (1 hour ago) Link

When would this have been? About the 1890s?

Blackpool was still lovely in the 70s you heathen.

I prefer Greenwich.

I mean people were pissed-up, no doubt, but they weren't scum. Last time I went was 2001 and it broke my heart.

Oh yes, I went to a wedding in Blackpool in the early 1970s and my family still talk about it as the most drunken time they ever had ever. And they liked a drink. Freud wrote of Blackpool "I would sooner live there than here (Vienna) rain, fog, drunkenness and conservatism notwithstanding,". Probably.

Blackpool has always been full of drunks but that doesn't stop it being magical. Kids still love it.

Also - 2001! It's all changed since then, they've got new rides and everything.

I think I'm just mourning my childhood.

The first episode of "The Changes" - people going mad and smashing up TVs, cars, and anything else technological, then the main character (a little girl) becoming separated from her parents as they tried to flee London.

When Prince Adam turned into He-Man, my 3 year old self thought he was being set on fire!

Think someone already said Pink Floyds the Wall. But in particular, the marching hammers. And there was a section on the Another Brick video showing a playground with the hammers marching in the background.

As a kid I actually thought that whole album was just about school, with all the Scarfe artwork on the sleeve being of different types of teachers.

Rofl at myself

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=ak3z2Pm7Iwg

The video for Tom Petty's Don't Come Around Here No More scared the bejeezus out of me - especially the scene of Alice-as-cake with slices being taken out of here abdomen.

Also: The Dumbo pink elephants; the yup-yup bugs from Sesame Street; various Scooby-Doo monsters; and, on down the road a bit, the Shining twins (which, unbeknownst to my parents, I caught on television way too early in life)

http://www.mexicanpictures.com/headingeast/images/abominable.jpg

Two things spring to mind.

1. As a hyperactive child, growing up during the mid-late seventies in the UK I would get up very early in the morning and turn on the tv even though there was nothing actually broadcasting, and this used to scare the hell out of me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMrbxYrMmOc

And I can see judging by the comments I was not alone, I think part of the reason was that it used to just cycle around and around.

There would be a couple of minutes of silence and then that awful jingle, then nothing, then the jingle again until some smooth BBC voice would announce a programme.

When I first heard the Conet Project I recognised some of that uneasiness in the signifying jingles they used on some numbers stations.

2. The last four minutes of Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds, absolutely trouser threateningly horrible to a 5 year old.

I can see what you mean about the Open University thing.

There were a few things which used to terrify me when I was a little 'un in the early 70s. Firstly, those trade test transmission things that would be broadcast on ITV in the mornings, telling you about work that was being done to transmitters in Chorley or whatever - I seem to remember they had graphics of transmitters and a big IBA logo (could be wrong) and it all seemed technical and scary. They really did my head in.

And another one - my parents had a Music For Pleasure album of "Peter and the wolf" and the album cover gave me nightmares. It was this bloke (the narrator) sitting behind a papier mache display of the story - animals, woods, wolf etc. Something about the look on the man's face and the music itself did it for me. Even now, I've got the main theme going through my head and it's sending shivers down my spine - that was very strange music for kids. A few years ago, I found a copy of this album in a charity shop and bought it. Haven't played it though - still too scared.

Finally, on a side issue, does anyone know where I can get a full version of "Bart" by Ruby? For people of a certain age, it's a very evocative piece of music. Ah, schools and colleges...

the OU thing is like something out of the prisoner

I can see what you mean about the Open University thing.

I can't. It's quite calming.

Isn't there another thread like this, where recently people were talking about that woman getting turned into a robot in Superman 3?

various Scooby-Doo monsters

I was so scared of Scooby-Doo that I would scream whenever it came on tv.

Also, I made my mom leave the theater during Ghostbusters beacuse I couldn't handle it. I was 7!

I was also scared of the United Artists logo and the way it slowly, painstakingly turned to reveal its full-frontal view to the audience.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Sunday, April 17, 2005 8:32 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/LvSjhJM.jpg

Go ahead. Click on that.

outstanding thread

visually
- commercial for that beauty and the beast tv show that involved someone hallucinating spiders in a baby’s crib
- the bike/clowns scene in pee wee’s big adventure
- Nick at Nite commercial for I Love Lucy reruns that played creepy theramin music while showing various clips of Lucy pulling weird faces. I love this show but this commercial freaked me out.

musically:
- the intro to “tusk”
- the Todd rundgren song “lockjaw”

I’ve been a real shitstick on ilx this morning so that’s it for me today <3

Now that I think of it, there was this opera-singing orange on Sesame Street that got to me at a tender age.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, December 4, 2001

This always creeped me out.

Also: the martians in the Martian Chronicles tv adaptation... there was one with a v-shaped mask that I found especially frightening for some reason.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman used to creep me out ...

when I was a kid there was this commercial that used to play all the time about meth addiction, it was a black and white video of a woman who looked normal at first, until she started taking off her makeup and hair and false teeth, at which point she looked haggard and disfigured, I also remember the music which I think was "Overcome" by Tricky. can't find any record of this online which is fine because I remember it scaring the shit out of me

https://mikeladano.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/sam_2197.jpg

Lots of good examples on this long-running site:

https://www.kindertrauma.com/

Faces at the window at night--particularly the glowing eyes in a commercial for the original Amityville Horror, or an alien looking through a prison window in some Outer Limits episode. I would avoid looking at window at night for years.

I was a major wuss though; I was too scared to ride The Haunted Mansion when I was maybe 10.

Mention of Phantom of the Paradise upthread suddenly brought to mind a shot in the commercial where somebody is just about to get their head crushed in a record pressing machine.

I also couldn't handle gore of any kind until I was in my 30s. The Monty Python Salad Days sketch terrified me. Into my 20s I would make my friends tell me where the bloody bits were in movies so I wasn't caught off guard.

I bought a book in my teens called Movie Fantastic which was mostly photos from sci-fi and monster movies but which included a frame grab from Un Chein Andalui of the razor through the eyeball! Auuuggghhh!! Eventually I managed to glue the page shut without looking at it again.

I had repeating nightmares where I would be watching a gory movie and no matter how I covered my eyes or turned away, I could still see it.

"Lots of good examples on this long-running site:"

"https://www.kindertrauma.com/";

My best friend from high school runs this site. He's the best. We had a store together in Philly in the 90s called REDRUM.

Faces at the window at night--particularly the glowing eyes in a commercial for the original Amityville Horror, or an alien looking through a prison window in some Outer Limits episode. I would avoid looking at window at night for years.

Once, when I was five or six, me, my sister and another pair of siblings stayed at this house with a babysitter while our parents went out on a double date or something.

Apparently, some friends of the babysitter came over and with them, some of their ne'er-do-well teenaged boyfriends who were trying to spook them a little.

I slept through it all, but the next day, I remember my mother telling the other mother that a boy with red hair had popped up in one of the windows and scared one of the teenaged girls.

I didn't associate this with the typical auburn or even orangish shade of what we call a redhead. Instead, I pictured a teenaged boy with a full head of BOZO HAIR.

And that's just one of the kindertraumas I carry with me to this day.

The Raw Power album cover

The original westworld movie poster / face coming off the robot

"The Masks" episode of the original Twilight Zone

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/643/f58/b801d0c0b8e7bae8d7475b38c5dea96d71-24-masks-twilight-zone.rsocial.w1200.jpg

“The Keeper” episode of Lost In Space

and the lobster man from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

The opening sequence of Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977) haunted me for months when I was about 7 or 8 years old, so much so I couldn't watch the rest of the film. The specific image which freaked me out is below

https://i.ibb.co/Xj953Jq/jabberwocky.jpg

Made the mistake of watching this as an 8 or 9-year-old and it's never left me, ugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE8oWEq2c6M

somehow as a small child I always managed to find and watch random age-inappropriate horror movies

the dead woman in the rocking chair in Black Sabbath kept me wide awake for many nights

I don't remember a particular scene, but the titular being of The Creeping Flesh seemed exceptionally awful

maximum trauma points go to Five Million Years to Earth, the US release of Hammer's Quatermass and the Pit, especially for the poltergeist events and telepathic visions of ancient Martian massacres ... things have never really been the same since I ran across that one

Tevye's Dream from Fiddler on the Roof scared the shit out of me, I couldn't go near piles of leaves for years after seeing this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o2gISJYwQU

1. The intro music to Doctor Who

2. The I-beam segment on Sesame Street

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49FBci5D7Ik

3. The Supreme Being in Time Bandits

4. Movie posters for “Deepstar Six” (sea monster) and “Scandal” (scary naked woman)

Ear worms from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

After I was terrified from watching the movie:

Me: [upset] Why did you let me watch this scary movie?

Parents: You begged us to let you watch it.

Me: You are the adults, you're supposed to know better!

The mom's violent enemas in Sybil (which was a TV movie!!) Absolutely had nightmares with her in them.

TV movies responsible for a lot of this. I vaguely remember "David" (1988) being on at a sitter's or something. "The true story of David Rothenberg, whose disturbed father set him on fire." ... what were they thinking with some of this stuff???

I was terrified by a trailer for the Salem's Lot tv series which showed the vampire's face.

https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1568957688ra/28174629.gif