Ask Lemmy

@Suck_on_my_Presence There was a German kid's TV show, an episode in which to the protagonist the following happened: he woke up from a strange dream of a swamp, middle of the night, room half dark and all, and he found himself half-eaten by the nightmare's crocodile that had leapt onto his bed. Out of his dream. Very scary!

The crocodile could be talked to, though, but his legs were already fully inside the thing so he could not move much at all. Talking was all that was possible, eliciting answers and conversation, and some reasoning about "let me go" and "why even ask" was done. In the end, that saved him, literally the talking himself out of it, the croc let go and disappeared. I had replays of that scene for months after.

The Mummy. It wasn't the titular character. It was the scarabs.

TELL THEM LARGE MARGE SENT YA!

Yes, the danger must be growing For the rowers keep on rowing And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing

In hindsight, it was irresponsible to watch Robocop as a 10-year-old.

Gremlins, when they transformed

Return to Oz

Childhood trauma all over the place...

Who framed Roger rabbit, the scene with the judge guy putting a shoe cartoon into the acid barrel.

When I killed your brother, I talked...JUST. LIKE. THIIIIIISSSSS!

Ugh... I grew up during the 80s with absolutely no parental oversight. I was allowed to read and watch whatever I wanted. Ton of slasher and horror movies, though 3 fuuuuuucked me up. Friday the 13th - Jason, Child's Play - Chucky, and the most impactful being Nightmare on Elm Street - Freddy Krueger.

At a 6 year old sleepover, the host father rented Nightmare on elm Street for a bunch of us little dudes. Half way through the movie, i got up and dressed out of my pajamas and walked home. I had nightmares for years about Freddy, chasing me in our basement around the oil heater. Fucking traumatized.....

The Adventures of Mark Twain from 1985 has a scene where Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher enter a sort of pocket dimension and meet a stranger who is just a robe holding a mask. The stranger claims their name is Satan. Satan creates a doll sized castle and gives the children clay to make people. After the people are made Satan gives them life and all 4 characters watch the clay people for a little while. Then Satan calls them insignificant, annoying, and worthless before he smashes some with his hand, lightning strikes other clay people, and the rest get swallowed up by a sinkhole along with the castle. While this is happening Satan's face/mask distorted and twists until it resembles a skull.

I saw this movie while spending a weekend at a family member's house as a kid, maybe somewhere between the ages of 5 and 7 (it was an old movie then). I woke up in the middle of the night and this movie was put on while I was left alone in the living room. I don't remember anything else from this movie, but it definitely fucked me up

Watership Down

Was fucked up for a child to watch. My parents thought it was going to be a harmless animated movie for children. I watched it again as an adult. It is still fucked up.

1. Signs - the aliens terrified me and I was scared walking to school for a long time
2. The scarabs from The Mummy - I thought they would come out from under the sink and the closets to eat me alive

The Dark Crystal. Creepy fucking muppets.

@Suck_on_my_Presence Jaws did, I lived near a lake. Took me a while to realize the lake was really much too small for sharks, but the movie gave me vivid dreams.

Alien terrified me, as the house I lived in had long dark hallways where those beasts or eggs could hide. Saw the film when video2000 and Betamax were still competing. I never found xenomorphs in my house and terror faded, but the franchise stayed with me including Disneyfication.

What actually scared me more was Poltergeist. What a terrifying world, house, family, setting, glow from behind closed doors and the TV sucked you in to the other side.

In general I never cared much about scary movies, but there is ONE SCENE (in an otherwise crappy movie) that left a strong impression on me.

In the movie "Signs", there's a moment when the news are showing footage from an alien sighting in Brazil. Usually, whenever a US movie tries to depict another country or culture, it ends up being so poorly done it's almost like a caricature. But not this one...

The scene is from a birthday party, and every little detail is so authentic that, as a Brazilian, it's immediately obvious that it was actually recorded in Brazil, at someone's actual house.

It's shaky footage from a camcorder (remember those?). There's the party decorations, the kids' hats, the car outside, the voices (which are intelligible Brazilian Portuguese, not gibberish). Everything felt so real and familiar, I could swear I have been in that exact party at some point in my life. And then the alien shows up and HOLY SHIT did that scare me!

My parents thought it was a good idea to let me (9) and my 12 year old brother watch Poltergeist while they were out at some social event.

That movie damaged me. I love it now though.

The Air Conditioner in The Brave Little Toaster.

To be clear, it still terrifies me.

I enjoy the rest of the movie but this is one of the greatest horror sequences ever. A remake that truly surpasses the original.

EDIT: I have to give a shoutout to the movie that had the most real world effect on me. That would be Arachnophobia. I couldn't function normally for months. Sitting on the toilet. Putting my shoes on. Sticking my hand in a bag of chips. I was a wreck.

Volcano (1997) terrified young me. How could anyone sleep peacefully when lava could just appear out of nowhere?

Needless to say I never lived even remotely close to any kind of geologically active area, let alone a volcano.

Eh, showing my age.

Watership Down

What an awful movie for a kid to see.

I saw Robocop too early.

The Boddiker gang scared me to death. Way more than ED209. Not so much because of the violence and gore, it was the (new to me) idea that people could enjoy hurting others. I found that profoundly disturbing.

Darkness falls.

It's a movie about the tooth fairy but the tooth fairy is actually an old woman who used to collect the teeth of the children in her village until the townspeople burnt her alive and then she became a spirit who was essentially the tooth fairy but if you ever saw her she'd kill you.

It's cheesy as hell but it was terrifying when I was younger

That fucking computer from Superman III, jesus christ my parents should not have let me watch that when I was, like, seven or eight.

I saw The Thing (1982) when I was 10 and it terrified me for years. Its my favorite horror movie now.

Watership Down and Gremlins.

Also, the Bunyip song from Dot and the Kangaroo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXikpns1bog

Don't laugh guys.

Howard the Duck.

Edit: Relooking at it, totally justified

The Borg.

I watched Star Trek as a kid with my grandma on our local TV station. The Borg were always so scary to me because not even the super advanced Federation could defeat them. And the assimilation they did of stripping away who and what you were was terrifying.

Then First Contact came out and I learned that they just as vulnerable as anyone else to a 45 ACP and that was alright.

When I was young, but not that young, there was a show called Duckman or something like that. I didn't get the channel at home, but I was sleeping over at a friend's house, and he got this channel, so it was on late at night.

In the episode the main character breaks up with a woman, and she's like stalking him for revenge or something, I don't remember the plot. But in one short scene he's taking a bath to relax after the stress she's been causing him, and she pokes her head up out of the bath water with crazy eyes and then pulls him under.

There was something about that I very much didn't like. That was the only episode of the show I ever saw, but I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a burnout comedy ala Beavis and Butthead or something, and I don't even think this particular moment was meant to be scary. It was probably meant to be exaggerated and silly. But the crazy lady coming out of the water where she shouldn't be able to be? Nope.

That fucked me up, on and off, for years. I'd just be laying in bed, and then the image or even the concept would come to me, and I'd feel uneasy. Despite not being in a bath at the time! Ugh.

When I killed your brother, I talked just. Like. THIS.

The air conditioner in The Brave Little Toaster

I think it was from one of the Creep Show movies, Tales from the Crypt, or a similar collection, but a short about teens on a raft on a lake being picked off by some kind of black slime/algae thing. Never been comfortable swimming in lakes since

It wasn’t a movie per se. I thought it was when I was a kid, though. It’s an episode of “Friday the 13th: The Series” called “The Executioner”.

I was like maybe 6 or 7 at the time.

It starts with this guy in prison you see them take him to the electric chair and attempt to execute him. They botch it and the warden or whoever pretty much goes “oops, well by law we did technically carry out your sentence so you’re a free man now”

He then goes on to become a dentist and uses a “cursed electric chair” as his dentist chair to take revenge on the world.

This gave me a real fear of going to the dentist on top of just being a kid and being scared to go. Still hate going to the dentist (who doesn’t I guess)

I used to play Myst at the time and that even made me feel uncomfortable in the Time Machine room with the dentist chair at the first island.

edit: I watched it again as an adult and it was corny as hell

There was an ad on TV for Knorr's soup when I was a toddler, and the big vegetable scarecrow character with the black hat scared the absolute fuck outta me. Just look at this cunt:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMzia7sJtVM

Like what was I supposed to take away from this? That a scarecrow is alive and knows when it's being looked at, and only then will it stop coming after me? And it eats its own flesh in soup-form? The fuck? 😭

At the height of the cold war, 87 or 88 iirc, a movie came on HBO called Dreamscape. It's WW3 imagery really blew my mind, I recall having dreams about it for ages. I'd turned it on because a few weeks before I'd really enjoyed Innerspace with the same lead actor, but this was a bit different lol

I don't remember my age, but Spirited Away absolutely fucked me up for a little while. I felt like I was in that world and was terrified of No-Face eating me up. Legitimately had nightmares... It doesn't seem that bad rewatching it but it was not good for my younger mind.

The Day After 1983

I was around 10-11 years old. the whole fuckin movie terrified me.

The Brave Little Toaster dream scene for sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEdZh8a4ZvE

Unfun fact, the creators of Return to Oz researched the top psychological fears of children and carefully built their movie around them.

Saw it on TV in the basement alone on a Saturday, and it is one of the most unsettling things I've seen to this day.

Terminator 1

Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead!

This fucked me up more than any monsters... This thing just has one mission and it's relentless