I saw The Tingler as a kid and it was the scariest movie I remember seeing. I didn't see it again until 40 years later and wondered what the fuss was about.
Share your childhood memories of movies that scared the hell out of you!
- Thread starter Tribble puncher
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Steven Spielberg's Duel (1971) made-for-television movie starring Dennis Weaver. I was a very young boy watching it with my family in '71 when it debut on network TV ABC. I remember thinking the truck driver was going to be a monster.
I thought he WAS one. Literally. (Didn't the driver 'bleed' some thick black goo at one point?)
I don't remember that.
But this is where I'm obliged to point out that "Duel" was written by Richard Matheson, based on his short story of the same name. And I don't remember anything about the driver being an actual monster in the original story, although, to be fair, I haven't read it in some years.
It was the longest time before I could bring myself to watch the scene with Marion in the chamber full of mummies in Raiders (I was fine with the face melting for whatever reason.) When my sixth grade class watched the movie just before summer break, I conveniently left the room for a bathroom break shortly before the scene started. 
Same with Donovan "choosing poorly" in Last Crusade (I remember shielding my eyes when I saw it with my older brother at the theater in the summer of '89) although when I finally did, it was like wow, these special effects really didn't date well, did they.
Same with Donovan "choosing poorly" in Last Crusade (I remember shielding my eyes when I saw it with my older brother at the theater in the summer of '89) although when I finally did, it was like wow, these special effects really didn't date well, did they.
A lot depends, I suspect, on the circumstances under which you first saw a movie. Watching a movie on TV on a sunny Saturday afternoon is not the same as, say, watching "Planet of the Vampires" late at night when you're babysitting for the first time and all alone in a house full of strange creaks and noises . . . ..
Not that this ever happened to me.
Not that this ever happened to me.
I remember spending the night at a friend's house who had HBO. We watched Alien and The Shining. There was a third we wanted to watch and never made it. Every light in the basement stayed on all night long.
The flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz terrified me as a kid.
I was ten when ET came out. I was a sensitive kid and had nightmares for about two weeks afterwards. My sister and I slept in a bunk bed and I was in the top bunk, and I used to dream about ET's stretchy neck and him looking at me in my bunk. I'd wake up screaming.
The Alien movies always give me nightmares whenever I watch them. Prometheus didn't, but I spent too much time in the theater being annoyed by the hackneyed plot to be scared.
The Alien movies always give me nightmares whenever I watch them. Prometheus didn't, but I spent too much time in the theater being annoyed by the hackneyed plot to be scared.
Alien didn't bother me, but the ending of Raiders gave me the heebie-jeebies for a while.
I think that was just the oil from the truck's engine.
I was a very young boy when I saw DUEL so the way Spielberg shot it made me wonder if the driver was even a real man. I thought it was going to be a monster or skeleton creature.
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Thant could have been anything after the crash--oil/blood diesel mix...dripping around the tires.
We did see the drivers beefy hands for a bit towards the last. That's why Weaver's character was bummed even though he "won."
I took Weaver's character--and his lack of movement--as a type of wake.
Maybe the drivers wife left him. Maybe he was damages in some way.
Anyone can be a monster behind the wheel. We see the other car as the enemy. Very easy to do.
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I myself had a dream of an awful mass murder. The house was filled with body parts--but...on top of that....there was a feeling of evil and wrongness there. I've seen gore. Books on Forensics I bought from estate sales. So it wasn't just body horror.
Yet when the suspect was brought out, it was just a fat man in an old wife-beater. There was something else with him--in the dream. Call it the Spirit of Cain if you like. His crime was to be the first murderer--Abel's sin--to be the first victim. There was an interesting painting by Barlowe about what the first demon would look like. When does an anthropoid--in killing another--when does it become murder?
The sense of horror largely vanished when I saw the perp with his head down, before I woke up.
What Duel did was to capture that sensation...
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Or saving him from the EM radiation causing impotence. Though, I think it's a 13" TV.
Yet it looks so fake? The melting faces are clearly made of plastic.
Perhaps so, but it's just the melting. - Anything to do with eyes too usually makes me a little squeamish too.
By bizarre coincidence I have a 13" TV beside me and I think you are probably right. lol
I am just saying that Alien is much scarier. It almost feels like something that could happen to us.
Yeah, 13" is really only the screen size (diagonally) and there was at least 4" on the side of the ones I had for the dials and a speaker.
Is yours at least color?
It's a mint Sony Trinitron with S-Video that I've been keeping around to hook up to classic game consoles but I think it's a pipe dream that I will never actually find time and motivation to do.
I'm not sure. Perhaps it's also because the Alien is a much more physical threat (and theoretically possible to counter - well, if you don't stick your head too close to things you've never seen before) so it didn't bother me as much. I'm not saying it's logical, but that's how it felt at the time
Perhaps if I'd seen the Elm Street movies, I'd find them scarier too.
Of course it's mostly a matter of opinion.
Also Sigourney Weaver (when she was possessed) in Ghostbusters and Imhotep (The Mummy) in his mummified form.
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