Bits in movies that terrified you as a child

[Winston*]

The bit in Hook when a pirate is locked in a box and scorpions are dropped on him.

[Winston*]

The bit in The Witches when Anjelica Huston removes her mask

[Winston*]

The bit in Willow with the two headed monster.

[Yxklyx]

The doll from Trilogy of Terror- though I guess that was TV. The ending of Blair Witch Project hit me really hard - knees trembling stuff after the film and all (was not a child though).

[Scar]

No Large Marge yet?

Can't speak from experience, but that one is usually brought up.

[Winston*]

The bit in Return to Oz where the desert turns you into sand.

[Skitch]

The robot doppelganger in The Last Starfighter. "GO BACK TO SLEEP!!"

[Raiders]

Obvious answer perhaps, but it popped into my head first: the Chernabog in Fantasia.

I also remember being very freaked by Boy (especially in monster-face) from ​Little Monsters.

[Boner M]

The bit in The Peanut Butter Solution between the opening and end credits.

[EyesWideOpen]

The sister in Pet Semetary.

[Spinal]

The bit in Poltergeist with the tree.

[Lazlo]

The bit in E.T. where the dude in the spacesuits come into the house.

[Irish]

The bit in Poltergeist with the tree.

http://i.imgur.com/DBttPjZ.jpg (http://imgur.com/DBttPjZ)

I still fucking hate that clown.

[Spinal]

Yeah, there's multiple scenes in Poltergeist that fit this category.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Chicken gets its head cut off in the tunnel in Willy Wonka. Why...

[Dukefrukem]

This and the feed after midnight scene.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2vw_iYBAyY

and when Freedy Kruger lures the girl who is falling asleep in class and he's dragging a dead body to the boiler room. Ugh!

[Dukefrukem]

The bit in E.T. where the dude in the spacesuits come into the house.

Yup. Good pick.

[Dukefrukem]

No Large Marge yet?

Can't speak from experience, but that one is usually brought up.

Another fucking fantastic pick. Good work guys. I forgot about these movies.

[Ezee E]

I THINK it was a live-action version of Alice in Wonderland or Alice Through the Looking Glass... Either way, a baby turned me into a horse, and I cried about it.

[Qrazy]

The bit in Willow with the two headed monster.

So much this.


Also, much of Earnest Scared Stupid... especially the creatures falling off the tree.

Driving the vehicle through the house in Gremlins.

And finally the beginning of Funhouse. I didn't make it far into that movie as a kid because I was so scarred by what happens immediately after they're stuck inside the funhouse.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Also, much of Earnest Scared Stupid... especially the creatures falling off the tree.

That girl checking under her bed and not seeing the troll and then holy crap the troll's on her bed with her oh my crap.

[MadMan]

Gremlins is my first answer.

Also the head in the boat in Jaws. Still the scariest jump scare ever for me.

Plus when I made the mistake of watching Halloween (1978) when I was in middle school. That movie has always scared me. Oh and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers-I found the idea of people being replaced by pod aliens freaky as hell when I was younger. Still do, I guess.

[Scar]

Watching Alien at a waaaay too young age and having someone jab you in the back during the air duct scene.

[Dukefrukem]

Also, much of Earnest Scared Stupid... especially the creatures falling off the tree.


Oh man yes. It's the nightmares of my childhood all over again.

[chrisnu]

I THINK it was a live-action version of Alice in Wonderland or Alice Through the Looking Glass... Either way, a baby turned me into a horse, and I cried about it.


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

[Watashi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDHBZlSNO6w

[Ezee E]

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

This is terrifying now.

[Rowland]

Not terrify exactly, but two scenes that screwed with me during one of my favorite childhood movies, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins..., came back to me upon revisiting it on Netflix Instant, which I wrote about on Letterboxd:

There's a scene in which a character's prosthetic arm is torn off by a guard dog, which fascinated me to no end as a kid, because I wasn't aware of the existence of prosthetic arms, nor was the quality of my VHS recording clear enough for me to make out the artificiality of the arm; ergo, I thought this character's actual limb was being torn off.

Later in the film, when Remo uses a villain's diamond-studded tooth to escape from a gas chamber, my younger self never caught on to the existence of the diamond (again probably due in large part to the VHS quality), so I thought Remo was cutting through the glass with the dude's teeth, which I found profoundly disturbing.

[dreamdead]

Kinda the old standbys: Heart-pulling scene in the Temple of Doom and all the scary stuff in Gremlins. Also, the nightmare scene in Terminator 2 with the charred bodies blowing up.

I'm remembering some old animated film (apparently not a Bakshi film, though it seems up his alley) where the main characters are turned to stone, and that sense of apocalypse freaked me out as a child. Thought it was Fire and Ice but I'm not seeing any like-minded scenes in the google images here.

[Gizmo]

The first half hour of It, which was as far as I ever got until college.

[chrisnu]

The bit in Return to Oz where the desert turns you into sand.

Mombi is who really creeped me out in that one.

[bac0n]

The parts in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the spiked corpses popped out of the wall.

Also, of course, the melty part at the end.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The bit in The Gate where the kid has an eyeball in his hand and has to stab it. Nightmares for weeks. Also when they pull his friend through the wall. That movie fucked me up as a young kid.

[MadMan]

This is terrifying now.Why the hell was that in a kid's movie? Yikes.

[Rock]

Not a particular moment, but my parents watched Child's Play too many times for me to have been remotely well adjusted as a child. That damn doll...

[Russ]

The doll from Trilogy of Terror- though I guess that was TV.
Even moreso, the bit with Karen Black grinning at the end of it.

* shudder *

The Wizard of Oz - the bit with those flying monkeys.

Pinocchio - the bit with the donkey transformation in silhouette.

Although I wasn't a kid when I saw it, I seem to remember a few bits in Nicolas Roeg's The Witches (like Return to Oz, this one's a bit too terrifying to be successful as a children's film, although that was its target demographic), most of them involving Angelica Huston's character, but it's been far too long for me to recall specifics.

[number8]

When I was 7 or 8 I caught Exorcist III on TV. If you've seen it, you probably know which single shot was seared into my memory for years.

[Ezee E]

When I was 7 or 8 I caught Exorcist III on TV. If you've seen it, you probably know which single shot was seared into my memory for years.

That's literally the only thing I remember from the movie.

[Morris Schæffer]

- The bit where the snakes are coming out of the walls in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the spiders in the beginning which stealthily clung to the characters backs.
- All of Tarantula (1955) Didn't know what it was called at the time, but I was mortified

[Dukefrukem]

- The bit where the snakes are coming out of the walls in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the spiders in the beginning which stealthily clung to the characters backs.
- All of Tarantula (1955) Didn't know what it was called at the time, but I was mortified

Both of you guys who mentioned Raiders... those scenes over the bug scenes in Temple of Doom??

[Spun Lepton]

My oldest "terrified" memories aren't from movies, but TV shows. Specifically, The Twilight Zone.

There was one episode that seems pretty tame now, but holy crap did it scare me. It's from the episode "The Fever," and the scene involves a man being chased by a slot machine. Sounds silly, but they anthropomorphized the machine just enough for it to freak me out.

Another episode called "The Masks," where a group of people had to wear specific masks until Midnight. When they took them off, they all looked like their masks. FREAKED. ME. OUT.

[Mara]

Pinocchio - the bit with the donkey transformation in silhouette.


Yup.

Also, the evil clown fireman in The Brave Little Toaster, most of Pink Elephants from Dumbo, the drowning scene from The Watcher in the Woods, the gollum scene from the animated version of The Hobbit and large chunks of Watership Down.

[Pop Trash]

That's literally the only thing I remember from the movie.

Good times.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH8ynu0jRvY

I'll second the sister from Pet Cemetery as well.

[Dead & Messed Up]

My oldest "terrified" memories aren't from movies, but TV shows. Specifically, The Twilight Zone.

There was one episode that seems pretty tame now, but holy crap did it scare me. It's from the episode "The Fever," and the scene involves a man being chased by a slot machine. Sounds silly, but they anthropomorphized the machine just enough for it to freak me out.

I watched this for the first time a week ago, and I can definitely see this. The slot machine has a just-barely voice that could've been cornball but manages to be creepy.

[Spun Lepton]

Ooh! Ooh! I just remembered a made-for-TV movie that I saw as a young child that scared the poo out of me. It was a movie called The World Beyond (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235068/) and it involved a mud golem. There was one scene where the golem has its hand chopped off ... but ... THE HAND WAS STILL ALIVE!!! Completely cliche, but ... as a 7yo it was serious nightmare fuel.

[chrisnu]

I watched the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead when it came out. That provided some steady nightmare fuel.

[Morris Schæffer]

Both of you guys who mentioned Raiders... those scenes over the bug scenes in Temple of Doom??

Yes. Bug scene is creepy too, but bugs cause mild irritation. Spiders cause death while snakes, certain ones, swallow you wholesale.

Plus, well of the souls and opening of Raiders are better scenes than bug scene in temple of doom which enhances everything, including my fear of whatever beasties happen to be in them.

[Morris Schæffer]

John Lithgow segment in The Twilight Zone: The Movie was pretty scary too I remember. I also recall being horribly disturbed by a Buck Rogers episode called "Space Vampire."

http://24.media.tumblr.com/a6302a9e6b7c5fd7851d204e518285 70/tumblr_mozculaUCh1sqf5tdo1_400 .jpg

Yes, really.

[Sycophant]

- Nearly the whole of Ernest Scared Stupid
- The banshee in Darby O'Gill and the Little People
- The bit in The Never-ending Story II where the boy's memories are being erased
- When E.T. is in the white room
- Parts of probably every Don Bluth movie

[D_Davis]

- The banshee in Darby O'Gill and the Little People


YES! Just coming to post this one. Can't believe someone beat my to it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Thought of another one. The Michael Jackson "Thriller" video. I was inconsolable.

[Raiders]

The spider in Krull for sure. Think I saw that when I was about eight.

[EyesWideOpen]

That Exorcist III scene is only really scary because it gets crazy loud at the end.

[Wryan]

Well, inevitably someone is going to post something that they thought was terrifying only to have everyone turn around and say, "Really? But that was so silly and ridiculous. You can't be serious!" So I guess I'll give it my best shot.

The supercomputer "eating" that woman in Superman III.

I was so innocent.

[Wryan]

Also, this asshole, who does not belong in a children's movie.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mabwjkQDHn1rdutw3o1_400 .gif

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120407132849/villains/images/4/4c/ImagesCAKKQWI6.jpg

Little Monsters.

[Milky Joe]

Yup.

Also, the evil clown fireman in The Brave Little Toaster

good one. that is one freaky-ass clown.

the lightning storm in the forest and the bit in the appliance store are also quite scary.

[Grouchy]

snakes, certain ones, swallow you wholesale
Eh, this is a bit of a myth, you know?

I mean, it can happen, but to swallow an adult male (and most adult women, I guess) it would have to be an exceptionally large constrictor snake. Reptiles keep slowly growing through their entire lifespan, so it's theoretically possible, but ultimately unlikely. Most snakes stay the hell away from human beings unless they feel they're threatened.

If you're a small child or a very short midget, though... well, who knows.