Taking off from another thread, what is the scariest movie you ever saw?

[BusynMember]

To me horror movies aren't scary. Murder movies and psychological thrillers can scare me. Horror is so obvious. JMO

 

[svengandhi]

I saw the original Halloween at the drive-in the night it opened in 1978. It scared me so badly I made 3 guy friends walk me to the ladies' room AND scope it out first. They actually did it!

The Birds scared me when I was a kid. Then, I watched it with MY kids and they laughed. When Suzanne Pleshette (or maybe it was Michele Lee, I always got them confused) was lying on the ground and the birds were pecking at her, daughter said - "Look, mom, her eyes are moving!"

Marathon Man terrified me because I knew there really were evil Nazis still living in NY. It didn't help that I worked and went to school in the Diamond District at that time. Same with Boys from Brazil, even though they all looked like Greg Brady with blue eyes.

Other than that, I adored horror movies when I was younger, I always watched Chiller Theater. Starting with the Friday the 13th series and Freddy Krueger, they got so gruesome and bloody that I can't watch them anymore.

My kids think that "Day of the Triffids" and "Village of the ****ed" are still truly scary.

 

[donna723]

I've never been a big fan of the violent, bloody, gory, slasher-type movies. To me the really scary ones are the more psychological thriller types like the Hitchcock movies were. As many times as I've seen it, I can still hardly breathe during certain parts of "Rear Window", even though I know exactly how it ends. And another really good one is "Cape Fear", whether it's the old original version with Robert Mitchum or the later re-make with Robert DeNiro. Both are equally evil and threatening and will have you double-checking your door locks and windows for days after you watch it!

 

[busywend]

You just reminded me that there were a few Twilight Zone episodes that actually freaked me out a bit.

 

[BusynMember]

I was a kid during Twilight Zone and sometimes I couldn't sleep after watching them.

 

[Star*]

My life with the x was the worst thing I ever saw. Since then? Nothing scares me. Before that? Creature from the Black Lagoon. (I married Creature that acts like a Baboon) coincidence? I . Think. Not.

 

[witzend]

As many times as I've seen it, I can still hardly breathe during certain parts of "Rear Window", even though I know exactly how it ends.

We went to see Rear Window - a family favorite - at a movie theater in PDX that runs Art Movies Foreign Films and revivals. The entire audience gasped out loud when Grace Kelly was caught in Raymond Burr's apartment. Loved it!

Hitch had such a wry sense of humor. While Rear Window is about looking out into the private world of others, Shadow of a Doubt (his own favorite film and one of mine) is about others coming into your private world. There are several great shots of them walking up the sidewalk to the house with the front door open, with the same people in the house and the same people outside of the house, and how the vantage can be completely changed by what you know about who is inside your home. I've watched a hundred times, at least.

I could never watch Stage Fright more than once. It was just too heartbreaking. I love Sabotage. I think the ending was very daring, but Hitch said that he went too far for the audience at the time, and they didn't like what built up to the conclusion.

 

[DDD]

I truthfully "fired" a live in babysitter who was an expectant Mother because she was SO dumb that she had my three children stay up to watch "The Birds". Yikes! I figured that is she was "that" dumb my children were not safe! DDD

 

[donna723]

Witz, if you're a Hitchcock fan you should see "What Lies Beneath" with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer! It's a modern movie, several years old now, but was deliberately made along the lines of a Hitchcock movie. My son and I saw it in the movie theater when it first came out and both of us thought it looked like a movie that Hitchcock could have made - then found out later that it was intended to be that way. No outright blood and gore, no real violence, just heart-stopping suspense and subtle things that will scare you silly and stay with you! Things like Michelle Pheiffer seeing fleeting images of a ghost-like girl appearing in their home, then finds the bathtub suddenly full to overflowing with water. And when she leans over the tub to pull the plug, she sees not only her own reflection in the water, she sees the reflection of this girl right behind her! Doesn't sound like much but the way it was done is terrifying! This scene does for bathtubs what "Psycho" did for showers!

 

[scent of cedar]

Both husband and I thought 'Salem's Lot was the scariest movie we'd ever seen. Here is an interesting thing: Scary movies run a fine line between scaring us and making us laugh. Remember the old Frankenstein, and Boris Karloff??? Bella Lugosi, and the enslaved-by-his-own-wish-for-Eternal-life, bug-eating Dracula's assistant?!? You never do know whether to laugh or believe it for a minute, or what! But horror movies, and slasher movies, even those crime shows on television where they just have to show something horrible?

Yuck.

Dexter is horrifying, to me.

I like my horror with a good dose of humor thrown in. Or ambivalence.

Remember when the vampire in 'Salem's Lot bops the parents' heads together? Now, THAT was scary. And yet...horrifyingly funny, at the same time. And then, the poor priest loses his faith, and so you KNOW it wasn't funny...but, still....

Ooo. I'm going to have to watch that movie, again.

Barbara