books/films/tv shows that TERRIFIED you as a child and were DEFINITELY trying to (and maybe you shouldn't have been exposed to at that age)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Thedayafter.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_%28TV_miniseries%29

boring answer, but definitely Jaws. to this day have a bit of a shark phobia.

http://www.fuddytv.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/scary_stories1.jpg

pretty sure everyone has a "shark phobia" btw, that's like having a "serial killer phobia"

when i was in about 3rd or 4th grade i had this bright blue carpeting in my room and every night for about six months i went to bed thinking i saw a shark's fin patrolling the area around my bed.

tbh it was more the drawings in the "scary stories" series that freaked me out.

i'm still freaked out by those drawings

http://i1.iofferphoto.com/img/item/108/015/531/tGbNjEP7xXsOAGs.jpg

Most of these no. But one episode (maybe a Legend of Sleepy Hollow deal?) scared the shit out of me and I couldn't sleep for two nights.

re: shark phobia, when i was a kid i always assumed a shark would eat my legs in the middle of the night

My mom let eight-year old me sit and up and watch this with her

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_T3lzrzH2fMo/SV6hJ-EuVAI/AAAAAAAADfo/u1Wi9wJx7Js/s400/american_gothic.jpg

read this when i was about 11 or 12 and the phrase "blood in extraordinary quantities" can still give me the shivers:

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/6632/picture2hfd.png

still traumatized by RETURN TO OZ.

also clive barker's books of blood around the same age. a recent re-read as an adult proved what a...variable writer barker could be, but "pigs blood blues" still gives me the heebie jeebies.

return to oz: YES.

tbh it was more the drawings in the "scary stories" series that freaked me out.

― strongohulkingtonsghost, Tuesday, September 1, 2009 3:13 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm still freaked out by those drawings

― Ømår Littel (Jordan), Tuesday, September 1, 2009 3:15 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

QFT!!!!!

I don't have a shark phobia . . . I've scuba-dived with sharks in the water and it never bothered me a bit. Granted, little black-tip reef sharks, but still.

Anyhow, back when I was 10 and my sister was 12 (1979) we asked to be allowed to watch "The Exorcist" on TV with my parents. (Keeping in mind this would have been the edited-for-TV version.) We got as far as the first time the doctors see Linda Blair convulsing on the bed, and her eyes roll up white and her throat bulges out. My sister and I made it from the living room to her bedroom down the hall without our feet ever touching the floor, I think.

This scared the hell out of me when I was nine or 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6qDqdYY6-Y

1. The 1972 version of Tales from the Crypt when I was seven or eight, particularly the Monkey's Paw story, because of the screaming, still-living severed head floating to the bottom of the river.

2. The Exorcist when I was about 10, which resulted in many sleepless nights during which I lay on my bed waiting to be possessed by Pazuzu himself.

3. The god damn Day After when I was 11, which basically destroyed any chances at nightmare free sleep until I hit high school.

http://theinvisibleagent.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/shatner_twilight_zone-719871.jpg
tbh i'm still scared of it

this is a bit too big to post
http://badgas.co.uk/shite/nightmare.jpg

list of movies my parents let me see way earlier than was probably considered "good parenting":

- halloween
- the shining
- silence of the lambs
- jaws
- night of the hunter
- texas chainsaw massacre
- the day after
- the exorcist
- rosemary's baby

Oh, and when I was like 8, my mom was reading "Helter Skelter," and I picked it up and paged through the photos in the middle of the book, and slept with the lights on for about 2 weeks afterward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Cm4Cy3rxs

The trailer makes it look like a goofy, albeit v. strange comedy, but this movie scared the shit out of me when I was little.

also night of the living dead.

and cosign peanut butter solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asO97gdn2oo

Oh, and when I was like 8, my mom was reading "Helter Skelter," and I picked it up and paged through the photos in the middle of the book, and slept with the lights on for about 2 weeks afterward.

Ha, I did this with Clan of the Cave Bear when I was about that age, and while it didn't scare me, the parts I read were definitely o_O

I extracted revenge on my parents for all of the early exposure to horror movies by turning into one of those broody, creepy kids who read nothing but horror novels and watched only horror movies and had posters of Freddy Kruger and Frankenstein and the Cure on her jr. high-era bedroom walls, such that they were pretty sure they had ruined me forever.

bunch of stuff in the probably common "watching horror films with unconcerned older brother" category, but one thing that sticks with me is the possessed little girl raping her daddy in, I think, The Amityville Horror. Sheeeeeeeeeit.

I love the Peanut Butter Solution!!!! It creeped me the hell out, too (though I always still kinda had a soft spot for it). Between the completely bonkers plot and the pubic hair humor I think it holds up really well.

The Night Stalker!

I slept with a Pooh Bear teddy bear draped across my neck for months after seeing this movie.

http://www.vampirefilmfestival.com/Vampires_on_the_Tube_files/Night%20Stalker.jpg

haha my "all black and nothing but 'devil music'" phase in junior high also showed my parents what they had wrought.

- most of the scenes in "Poltergeist", particularly the child-eating tree, the clown puppet, and the dude who pulls off his own face
- the reveal of Norman's mother in "Psycho" (still the only part of that movie I've seen)
- the pictures in "Helter Skelter"
- the "'Salem's Lot" miniseries
- "Threads", much moreso than "The Day After"

http://www.unhappymeal.net/gif/large-marge-animated3.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLsONa3gKIQ

Speaking of all black and nothing but devil music.

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1629/sc27zy8.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v706/Golding/Stephen%20Gammell/8bad1ecf.gif

oh man how could i forget the PREACHER IN POLTERGEIST 2.

hahahaha Mr. Yuk! that shit made me cry

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"
preview for "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"
"Jaws" poster
this epidsode of Star Trek:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW1vXu4aWfU

crimestoppers, particularly the theme tune

Oh shit, yeah Salem's Lot... wow. I totally remember the scene where the two guys are driving the truck with Barlow in his coffin in the back. Creeeeeepy.

Kindertrauma posted a nice tribute to Rev. Henry Kane of Poltergeist II fame.

The fact that I so thoroughly missed the boat on Scary Stories makes me very sad, even though it was probably for the best.

i've said it before, but SYBIL -- i saw it when i was 9 or 10 and there's nothing supernatural about it, but good lord is it terrifying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJ94wVaUdU

The end of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" where Christopher Lloyd is revealed to be a toon and starts speaking in the high-pitched voice. Loved the rest of the movie, had to leave the room when that bit came on.

also "borrowing" my mom's copies of "it" and "the stand" around age 11.

Speaking of Star Trek, that moment in the episode "Charlie X" where he made the one woman's face disappear! That scared the living bejesus out of me!

Also, this, from Space:1999:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tbXhu09m5s

I was spending the night at my grandma's house when I was a kid, and I came downstairs to find people (aunts? uncles?) watching this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvUJBcuLl6U

did they turn around and NOT HAVE MOUTHS?

The end of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" where Christopher Lloyd is revealed to be a toon and starts speaking in the high-pitched voice. Loved the rest of the movie, had to leave the room when that bit came on.

Properly frightening. The 80s was full of stop-motion animated freak-outs, see also Ghostbusters and Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

I saw Poltergeist when I was 8 and after that I couldn't even piss without someone in the same room as me for a year. We were having a pool put in at that time (lol Florida) which should have been awesome but...

god, scary stories to tell in the dark. i read that book in second grade and had nightmares for, like, a million consecutive nights. my parents found out i had read it because it was on my second-grade teacher's bookshelf-for-students and they asked her to remove it. i was sort of embarrassed but also, like, yeah, wtf lady?

that picture max posted of the lady with the rotting ace made me sob hysterically in the middle of the night.

i hate that fucking book.

Hahah yeah Greg! The stop sign! was based on that ad where she shrieks "DARREN!!!" as they drive right through a stop sign in the country in their Kingswood. Those ads were all pretty grim. I think some of them are on youtube!

what about speed cameras

The movie starts with a crew of people working on a boat named Bumpo. Led by Captain Nolan (Richard Harris), the crew is looking at a great white shark for a local aquarium, but a scientist named Ken (Robert Carradine) is being targeted by the shark. A killer whale comes and kills the shark, subsequently saving Ken. This switches Nolan's target to the killer whale and whilst he is on the journey with his crew, he tries to capture what he believes to be a male whale, but mistakenly harpoons a pregnant female whale. She tries to commit suicide on the propellers, but Nolan and his crew get the whale on board. Due to the extreme stress she is under,she unexpectedly miscarries, which shocks Nolan. The crew hoses the dead baby whale overboard as the male watches on, seemingly anguished and infuriated at the deaths of his mate and baby.

On the TV at a neighbor's house while his redneck dad made sloppy joes. Responsible for me not eating sloppy joes for years and not eating PB&J for several months (some of the gore reminded me of the way jelly leaks out of the side of a PB&J sandwich).

I was probably 5 or 6 at the time.

I remember that! Dunno where or when I saw it, I think I just stumbled upon that particular scene while channel flicking. Pretty freaky.

Creepshow, the Father's Day episode. "Bedelia! Where's my cake!!" Schlocky but way too scary for the ~10 year me.

8:50 on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4A4e3-5j3I

It didn't scare me, per se, but wow do I have a perfectly clear memory of seeing that killer whale miscarriage scene on my parents' old TV and being truly horrified and upset about it.

yeah that scene in Orca freaked me out

The Innocents, with Deborah Kerr.
Also, that Space 1999 episode above mentiond scared me to death.

I have also confused but definitely unpleasant memories of Children of the Stones.

This scene in particular freaked me out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmwJ-IB6ceY

I still think its the best ghost in cinema history.

Pretty much directly ripped off at the end of The Woman in Black:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5QP3hRIA0U

Not as scary as this bit though (from 8:20):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=955HKSp2dak

oops, wrong way round. 2nd clip is innocents rip off, first clip @8:20 is scary freaky woah bit.

This book:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YGVLM2i9n6o/SU3Qkdxx0WI/AAAAAAAABJQ/MY8SwhRFzwU/s400/AllAboutGhosts.jpg

and in particular this photo:

http://www.freewebs.com/free-offers/reverend_k_f_lord_monk_ghost_picture_photo-445x434.jpg

The scene from the Wrath of Khan, where the worm/bug/ scary creatures are put inside the guys helmets and they crawl inside the guys ears. That combined with my uncle telling me at night bugs drink from the corners of my mouth, I was terrified of bugs on my face.

I checked out All About Ghosts from the library on a regular basis when I was a kid! Don't remember it scaring me though. Also loved All About UFOs.

Ghosts are pretty scary, man, especially the mean ones, and especially if you're just a kid who hasn't yet figured out that they're definitely certainly probably not real. And yeah I had the UFO one too.

"if you're just a kid who hasn't yet figured out that they're definitely certainly probably not real"

I still have to convince myself totally!

Yeah, Children of the Stones was truly terrifying - the titles alone put me in a panic.
The Wicker Man for kids!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLpcr7KTi9I

The scene from the Wrath of Khan, where the worm/bug/ scary creatures are put inside the guys helmets and they crawl inside the guys ears.

oh, absofuckinglutely! awful awful, aged about 8. my school occasionally used to show films on a big screen and that was one of them - along with this, which is apparently a "parody horror" but is it fuck, it's terrifying when you're 9!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w92pA9VEKAQ

The TV MR James adaptations, especially A Warning to the Curious, which led me to read the equally disturbing stories. Oddly, they were a Christmas tradition in the early 70s, and get repeated regularly at that time of year. As a result I had a pretty nerve-shattering Boxing Day some time in the early 80s.

Around the same age I was also freaked out by lurid horror comics like Tales From the Crypt and a mid-80s TV drama series called Unnatural Causes. Miranda Richardson got tied to the coat pegs in an abandoned boarding school and slashed to death by a creepy yokel with a scythe.

And, as mentioned above, anything to do with nuclear war, especially When the Wind Blows. I read that when The Day After was first shown on US TV someone from the Pentagon or the cabinet had to come on afterwards and explain that the govt was doing all it could to make sure this didn't happen. Which possibly made it even scarier.

whoah i have totally seen that twinkle twinkle little star commercial mentioned upthread, but i am american not aussie so ?

Yay! Someone remembers it! It may well have been a US ad originally--it was by some non-profit anti-war group, I think.

Two more:

The bit in Gremlins where she tells the story about her dad dying in the chimney dressed as Santa.

The bit in Blake's Seven where someone is crawling through the hull of a spaceship, and then a bit of debris punctures a hole in the hull, and it fills itself with foam to fill the hole, and the person's mouth and nose fill with foam and they suffocate horribly.

oh, absofuckinglutely! awful awful, aged about 8. my school occasionally used to show films on a big screen and that was one of them

Hahah holy shit Charlie, did you go to my school!? Seriously - they showed wrath of khan on a projector in the school hall, when I was in year 7 or 8, and that bit freaked me out too.

The Innocents, posted upthread, is amazing.

The Thing... To this day my mum still finds it terribly amusing that, as a 12 year old I couldn't even bring myself to be in the room when it was on. Ironic now as I totally love that film. The shot in Jaws of the crabs crawling over the severed arm that had been found on the beach gave me nightmares for a while.

Children of the Stones traumatised me too. And there are several episodes of Doctor Who that I remember from my childhood that I'm fairly sure I wouldn't want to watch even now. What was it about the people who made British kids tv in the 70s that made them want to totally fuck up their viewers' psyches?

There was some weird soap opera-ish thing from the 70s set in South America before the Conquistadors arrived (they may even have been Aztecs) that I vaguely remember disturbing me greatly as a child. I very probably shouldn't have been watching it. iirc correctly the heady combination of sex, religious mania and death was what did it. I have no idea what it was called.

"iirc correctly"?

Hmmm... Maybe it's too late in the evening for this typing lark...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FAB_mM5ttU
Fortress - Australian tv movie from 1985 where a bunch of dudes in scary masks with shotguns kidnap and torment a classroom of students in the middle of the forest. They showed this shit pretty much unedited as the Saturday afternoon matinee on KTLA and it srsly scarred me for life.

Beware the moon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6PIke8r51E

XP: Ohhhhh shit. Fortress!!! I forgot about that movie! An older friend rented it when our parents were out one night, and I couldn't stay in the room it scared me so bad. That's some bad nightmare material there.

Also: the trailer for "Death Ship" (1980) with the naked woman standing under a shower that splurted blood. GAH!!

That trailer and about 10,000 other horror trailers in the early 80's terrified me so bad...as a kid I was even afraid of the *idea* of horror movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR_midwZ2f0

stole terminator 2 off my parents and watched it alone, must have been 7 or 8. i remember turning it off shortly after this scene because i was too freaked out.

Was Fortress based off that true story, and the teacher and kids ended up luring the crims into a pit that they put home made sharp spikes into and killed them? I read about that in Readers Digest :|

Two films in particular:
Salem's Lot
Ghost Story

Probably not that scary these days but I saw both of these on network TV as a youngin' (<10y/o) and both freaked the shit out of me.

oh yeah the nuke dream sequence in T2 definitely disturbed me, thoug not that much. robots!

"What was it about the people who made British kids tv in the 70s that made them want to totally fuck up their viewers' psyches?"

Because British have a long and noble tradition when it comes to strike fear into young and impressionable minds (and I say this in the best way possible).
Sapphire And Steel was another fear-inducing series, when I was 9 or 10 (I'd like to see those MR James adaptations too).

"I was even afraid of the *idea* of horror movies."

I wasn't particularly... but the snippet of the closet scene from Halloween that Siskel and Ebert showed was enough to scare me silly. Similarly, the part in Alien they played where Tom Skerrit is a blip in the air duct... horrifying by implication.

Oh, wow. Fortress absolutely has to be the movie I saw as a kid and only had vague memories of. Yes, terrifying. I think I saw it on HBO around the same time that I saw the aforementioned Testament, as well as the original Terminator and other things that an eight-year-old should never, ever see. Thanks, HBO!

Also: the trailer for "Death Ship" (1980) with the naked woman standing under a shower that splurted blood. GAH!!

Funny story: This aired on HBO when I was about 11, and my family watched it. Afterwards, I went into the bathroom to wash up before bed, and the hot water coming through the cold pipes caused this ghastly loud noise JUST LIKE THE DEATH SHIP FOGHORN OH GOD IT'S RIGHT THERE. I FLEW out of the bathroom and dove into my father's lap in the living room, scared absolutely shitless.

http://www.eons.com/images/members/2009/5/22/3/0/30870034214247144878_610w.jpeg

This photo is from Dressed to Kill, and I saw it in Newsweek when I was 10 or so. Kept me away from razors, even disposable ones, for a few years.

The VHS cover of The Corpse Grinders

The subway scene in The Wiz

A clip of The Lady in White in which a man gets shot to death in his car that ran on "Stephen King's World Of Horrors"

I recently watched the subway scene in "The Wiz" again and was kind of shocked at how creepy it is.

i don't even remember where i saw the poster for motel hell, but it scared me silly. (never saw the movie.)

http://heim.etherweave.com/weblog/archives/80motel_hell.jpg

The subway scene really scared me.

I woke up one night and went downstairs where my parents were watching The Birds and that kind of wrecked me for a while.

I just remembered, after seeing something on YouTube, how much the whole Carousel/Renewal thing and the crystals in the hand in "Logan's Run" freaked me right out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-MHac98kW0

This one's odd because it's not a book, film or tv show...just movie posters.

These two movie posters were outside a big multiplex in Melbourne when I was about 11...and maybe I'm remembering it wrong because was Blood Diner really playing theatrically in Australia?....but iirc both posters were outside this cineplex and they scared the hell out of my-still-wary-of-horror-movies younger self. Like walking on the other side of the footpath scared.

http://i1.iofferphoto.com/img/item/672/363/86/6EU3Jx98bAnFvIo.jpg

http://www.impawards.com/1987/posters/evil_dead_ii.jpg

...of course now Evil Dead 2 is one of my favoritest movies ever. And that Blood Diner? Never saw it but that poster is cheesy as all get out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qTAHp_ERF4

This came on TV when I was probably 4 or 5 and it fucked me up real bad.