Scenes that scared the crap out of you as a kid.

[Spaceman Spiff]

It's funny to go back and look at movies or scenes that scared you as a kid, only to realize how tame they seem now that you're an adult. We had an HBO/The Movie Channel package while I was growing up, and that was how I saw a lot of movies that I probably wouldn't have been allowed to see.

Horror movies are obvious choices--I was pretty young when I saw Betsy Palmer get her head lopped off in Friday the 13th, which was freaky. (Of course, now it's a chuckle-worthy effect.)

But I remember loads of scenes in non-horror flicks that creeped me out. One example is in Flash Gordon (1980), when Flash had to reach inside that rock and hope he didn't get stung. I saw it dozens of times, but I was on pins and needles every time it came to that part.

The Garthim in The Dark Crystal were freaky, but as scary as I thought they were, I was always drawing them.

I'm sure I'll think of more examples, but in the meantime, let's hear some of yours.

 

[Silvercrest]

A lot of the stuff in Poltergeist.

 

[Timby]

The best example I can recall is the very beginning of Ghostbusters, when the ghost librarian turns into a raging beast and loses her shit, freaking out the soon-to-be Ghostbusters. That roaring face always made me bolt upstairs and hide under the bed.

My wife's starting to get a little impatient regarding this.

 

[DonIago]

When I was 5 or so my parents and I were visiting a couple of friends of theirs. We were all watching tv, and being a five-year old I was sitting up close to the screen.

Hence I got a really good view of the chest-burster scene in Alien.

Years later, not sure whether I'd made this up in my own head, I asked my mom about it. Her response was along the lines of, "Well we didn't know what the movie was about!"

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Ok, please don't laugh at me, because i know the reputation the following movie has around here and I haven't seen it in ages...

But the villian in Howard the Duck freaked me out as a kid. I was really quite young when my parents let me watch it (it was a movie about a talking duck, so what's the harm, right?)
When that scientist guy starts turning into the alien monster I couldn't finish the movie. I tried twice... My imagination of the horrors he might finally turn into was too nightmarish.
Wasn't until I was a teenager and caught the movie on TV that I finally got myself to watch the end which turned out to be not so scary after all.

 

[Psylent1]

3 Million Miles To Earth and the ghostly Martian Locust at the end.

 

[Gojirob]

Do you mean 'Five Million Years To Earth' aka Quatermass And The Pit?

 

[exodus]

Don't laugh but Blackula!!

The scene where the woman wakes up in the morgue and runs down the hallway to bite the doctor.
I swear, that shit terrified me as a kid.

 

[Greg Cox]

Pretty much every scene with the Wicked Witch of the West in THE WIZARD OF OZ . . . .

And, years later, the shock ending of COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE, which was the first GP-rated film I was ever exposed to. (Not really a good movie, but, boy, it scared me as a kid.)

 

[Lindley]

The storm sequence in An American Tail.

To this day I've never finished that movie.

 

[mimic]

Two that come to mind are the trash compactor scene in Star Wars especially when the eye stalk pops up and the dinosaur fight scene in Fantasia.

Not a movie, but my third grade teacher read 'Bunnicula' to the class and from then on I had to sleep with a blanket pulled over my head.

I wasn't a very brave kid.

 

[Shazam!]

A lot of Doctor Who. I remember a scene of 'sea monsters' emerging that I later discovered was from The Curse Of Fenric.

The scene with Seth Brundle's flesh falling off in The Fly.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark face melting.

 

[DS9Continuing]

I hated, HATED the scene in Superman 3 where the bad guy's secretary gets turned into a robot. That scene gave me nightmares for years. I still shudder thinking about it. In fact, I just shuddered right now typing that.

 

[The Comedian]

The scene where the Martian cylinder opens up in the 1953 version of War of the Worlds.

 

[Corran Horn]

I hated, HATED the scene in Superman 3 where the bad guy's secretary gets turned into a robot. That scene gave me nightmares for years. I still shudder thinking about it. In fact, I just shuddered right now typing that.

Boy, yeah, that was freaky. Agreed.

As a young kid I saw the transformation scene in "American Werewolf in London" and it freaked me out. Still never seen the movie.

 

[Vonstadt]

The scene where the Martian cylinder opens up in the 1953 version of War of the Worlds.

This very much this, and when Dr. Forester and Sylvia are trapped in the farm house and the Martian comes up from behind her.

Oh Boy oh Boy. That always got me as a kid. I still feel the 'old creeps' when i see those scenes now

Also the scene in Forbidden Planet when the crew is guarding their ship and its surrounded by forcefields and the invisible Id Monster attacks. Man.....the music and the feel of the whole attack had my head under the covers whenever I would watch it late at night or hide behind whatever chair was available when I watched it with my folks.

Still creepy now to me as a grown up

I snuck into Alien when it first came out, I was just twelve then and boy was I taught a lesson. Though I did all right with the chest burster scene the scene that got me was Dallas in the freaking air shafts!

"NOT THAT WAY DALLAS" ....

Yeppers nightmare city after that one

Vons

 

[byron lomax]

The Christopher Walken alien abduction movie Communion, when he began to have flashbacks of the aliens invading his home, then had a full recollection of his abduction experience. I was terrified of the aliens as a kid, and the surrealism of the abduction scenes made it even worse.

Of course, the abduction sceanario was still new back then, and it was years before it became so standardised and familiar, so it was very weird and disturbing to my 9-year old self.

 

[DeadmeatDiggory]

C.H.U.D. scared the bejesus out of me as a kid, so much so that even though I'm a grown man in my early thirties now, I've never been able to get the courage up to see the film again.

Plus that scene in Flash Gordon where our hero trips in the swamp and gets swallowed whole by that big balloon thingy. I know it seems kinda silly, especially now that I'm older and understand (roughly) how the effect was achieved, but godamn! that creeped me out. Hell, just thinking about it still does.

 

[Gov Kodos]

'The Incredible Shrinking Man' when he fights the spider, the only film that gave me nightmares as a kid.

 

[SchwEnt]

Oh I'll tell ya what scared me...

original The Omen. Scary because it's The Anti-Christ and Biblical prophecy and it's real (you know). "It's all for you, Damien!"
Just the demonic little kid standing there is WAY more scary than slasher gore stuff.

Also extremely scary--
original Planet of the Apes.
You hear that clarion horn and the scream. All the humans dead stop...
scared shitless. Then they start running like hell.
OMG, what could be so terrifying to them??
OMG it's gorillas!! On horses!! With rifles!!! And they are hunting humans!!!

Yeah, that scared me no end. That's what scared the crap out of me as a kid, thinking I was gonna be hunted like that, dragged away in a net by gorillas. Gorillas with rifles. Oh how I loved it so!!!