Scaredy-Cat Confession
I love horror movies (and no, that's not my confession). I've been watching horror movies since I was a small child. I loved Freddy Krueger and the Crypt Keeper. I remember watching Critters over and over on cable. The violence never registered on my radar; I loved the way the bounty hunter's face kept changing. My dad let me rent a schlocky, gory (and yes, cheesy, because this was the eighties) movie called Slaughter High and I watched it alone--as an eight year-old.
Thing is, those movies didn't really scare me. One or two very specific things freaked me out a little (Marty's laugh at the end of Slaughter High, for example, made me hide behind the recliner until the video tape stopped playing and it rewound itself). But for the most part, no. Not too scared of them.
I don't remember ever having a nightmare about Freddy or anything else in those horror movies.
Know what I did have nightmares about as a kid?
Yep. And not because it was an awful movie, and not because it starred Richard Pryor. No, because of the scene at the end when Annie Ross gets turned into a scary-ass cyborg.
GAH! I can't even look at that without shuddering. I RAN into the kitchen and HID during that scene the first time. And every time after I watched that movie on television, I hid. I hated that scene, but I loved Superman, so I'd watch any of the movies.
*shivers*
So that's my big Halloween, Scaredy-Cat Confession.
What's yours?
Thing is, those movies didn't really scare me. One or two very specific things freaked me out a little (Marty's laugh at the end of Slaughter High, for example, made me hide behind the recliner until the video tape stopped playing and it rewound itself). But for the most part, no. Not too scared of them.
I don't remember ever having a nightmare about Freddy or anything else in those horror movies.
Know what I did have nightmares about as a kid?
Yep. And not because it was an awful movie, and not because it starred Richard Pryor. No, because of the scene at the end when Annie Ross gets turned into a scary-ass cyborg.
GAH! I can't even look at that without shuddering. I RAN into the kitchen and HID during that scene the first time. And every time after I watched that movie on television, I hid. I hated that scene, but I loved Superman, so I'd watch any of the movies.
*shivers*
So that's my big Halloween, Scaredy-Cat Confession.
What's yours?
Comments
Zelda from Pet Semetary. What didn't help was for a few years she worked in a Nursing home and one of the residents was just like Z. It didn't help. The only thing that has done is rewatches with me when I keep calling Zelda Michael. That made her laugh and when she also noted that it was played by a guy Zelda lost her fear ability.
As to me its Clowns, I hate the buggers and its not just ol Pennywise thats done it. The freaky makeup, the big boots I want to punch the hell out of them. Who the hell thought it would be funny to get them in for kids parties?
I used to buy Tales from the Dark Side comics when I was little & hide them inside Archie comics so my parents didn't know. I was sneaking horror books (The Others - sigh) off my parents shelves by the age of 10.
When I was 13, I babysat my cousins (both under 2). My aunt & uncle had just moved - there were no curtains on the windows yet. Don't know whose brilliant idea it was to dump me 40 miles from home, alone, overnight with them at that age....My reading material? Salem's Lot. LOL. I didn't get much sleep. I still make sure my curtains are drawn before I go to bed (shuddering just thinking about the tapping).
And then there's spiders...evil things. Yeesh. Totally irrational fear of them.
The spider in Arachnophobia scared the hell out of me too. Glad that wasn't in 3-D.
The ghost librarian scared me at the beginning of Ghostbusters for a long time, though now I aspire to be her when I die. I want nothing more than to stack books vertically when I'm a ghost. :) Or reorganize bookshelves by color.
The thing that freaked me out most I think was inspired by Labyrinth. I don't think it was something that was scary on film, exactly, but I was terrified of something dragging me to the world under my bed until college, and even now, I prefer to not step up to my bed in the dark.
When I was a kid, the opening to Tales From the Darkside freaked me out. The guy talking, the spooky music, the scenery. Yikes.
So if Coraline had been made when I was a child, it would have freaked me right out.
I also remember a picture of a 120-whatever year old lady in one of those Time/Life Science books that used to creep me out so much I didn't even want to touch the page.
And spiders. There's whole scences of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings I've not watched because of the spiders. The big-arse spider in Arachnophobia didn't scare me really - it was obviously a mechanoid. The little ones that got people in showers and stuff, however... *shudder*.