Ooh, I like this! Fiona Macrae has a great piece titled, "Movies that scare for life: Viewers left with fears for years." .
Macrae discusses the work of professor Joanne Cantor, who interviewed hundreds of adults to discover that certain films can scar us for life! Of course, Cantor discovered that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho made women afraid of the shower, and that Jaws soundtrack messed with men.
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Then, right up there with Psycho, comes the subject of IT. My mother told me that she has a friend who says she is terrified of clowns because of IT. Macrae tells us, "It, the 1986 film based on a Stephen King novel, shows a clown attacking children in the bathroom, after coming in through the toilet or shower drain. . . It produced extended nightmares, and many children avoided the bathroom after that. For many of these children, fear of clowns extended into adulthood."
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So what are the most frightening films? She listed: Jaws, Psycho, IT, A Nightmare On Elm Street, and Poltergeist.
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The scene that messed with me most in IT the mini-series was when the clown appeared to Bev in the bathroom, spurted a balloon full of blood that could not be seen by adults. What was so scary was that the adults didn't see it!
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Kinda makes me excited about the movie IT that is forthcoming. With a little more budget and a lot more leeway because it will be in theaters, it should be able to mess with absolutely everyone!
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On an even more personal note, though; my own daughter doesn't like clowns because of IT.
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Movies That Scared Me:
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/ As a child, one of the scariest movies I saw was. . . The Martian Chronicles, based on the book by Ray Bradbury. I know, it was science Fiction, but as a child, there was one scene that freaked me out. The astronaut's land on Mars, only to discover their home town, and long lost loved ones. But that night, the travelers are given poison and when they go to bed, the Martian makes himself known. That scene, in a bedroom that looked very much like my own, where a man easily transformed into an eerie, calm, killer Martian kept me up at night. What if a bald, earless Martian came into my room?
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V, the original mini-series, was another scary one for me. When the alien's mask gets ripped off and the reptile underneath begins to stab at the reporter with his long nasty lizard tongue -- that was worth a few sleepless nights.
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Anyone familiar with a little movie titled "Fortress"? It's not an American movie. About an Australian school teacher and her class who are taken imprisoned in a huge cave. The scene where one moment all is normal, then a man with a mask on -- a mask of Father Christmas -- appears in the window. That mask was scary to me. To see a beloved character, Santa, portrayed as hurting children was almost as bad as seeing a eat little Georgie. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091069/.
I was also kept awake by a scene from a Television movie of the Mississippi murders of the civil rights workers. No, it was no Mississippi Burning. But the scene where the workers are pulled from their cars on a dark road and shot actually made me afraid of cars!
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Oh! And there was an episode of Electric Company that had the story of a cackeling ghost that appeared on a doorstep. I was also bothered by a Disney Channel movie where a girl appeared in the mirror. I know nothing of it now, except for the memory of that ghostly girl in the mirror. I wouldn't look in the mirror at night for quite a while!
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Anyone want to share what movies kept them up at night?
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