Scary Movies: Experiences

Remember ' Bloody Mary'? We would always go into the bathroom with a candle and look in the mirror and repeat' Bloody Mary' like a hundred times. That's so gay. The only reason that even freaks people out, is because after looking at your face for that longin the mirror, you're bound to look weird after awhile. You're eyes start playing tricks on you. You're like," Who's that bloody hag in the mirror?! Agh!" Ah..it's just you.

Ha ha ha.
That's weird, Sades, we have the same story around here now.
At least, when I was in third grade.

I remember though there was even more attached to it, yes, the mirror, the candle, but you said Bloody Mary three times, turned around once said Bloody Mary another three times and then clapped your hands three times and something or someone was meant to stab you in the back -- out of nowhere. Of course, not ever ever clapped three times. We all used to think the kids who clapped twice were brave....


Another Urban Legend [this one had me freaking for weeks afterwards] was that a man and woman were driving along a country road when they ran out of gas [how convinient]. The guy said he would walk to town and get some petrol, and he went and they locked all the doors so she would be safe and she slept all night in the dark with no problem and in the morning she woke up and he still wasn't back. She turned on the cars radio and they were talking about a serial killer on the loose, a guy who would murder people with his incredibly long fingernails [sigh]. And that night he still wasn't back and she was getting worried. Then a police car drove up behind her, but she only noticed it when there was no one in it, and she couldn't see the cop. Then there was a knock on her window, and thinking it was the cop she got out....

...and on the roof of the car was this man with long fingernails with her husbands head impaled upon them, the killer slowly chuckling and chewing the guys ear.



I was scared shitless of everything and everyone for weeks on end. In the end my best friend had to talk me into believing that the story couldn't be true because a serial killer doesn't kill people.


It kills cereal. Like breakfast.





My secret shame.

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SilverB, that is very cute but those urban legend freako stories had a huge impact on me as a kid....in particular the one where an old lady sits in her rocking chair and is accustomed to her old dog licking her arm/hand as she hangs it off the armchair and rocks herself. the radio reports a mental psycho (there's always a mental psycho on the loose in these stories) is out and to be careful...the old woman has her eyes closed as she hears the radio report and feels her dog licking her hand/arm as usual.............dunh dunh dunh dunh dunh dunh.....untill she looks down and ........IT'S THE MENTAL PATIENT LICKING HER ARM!!!!!!! screeeeeeeeechhhhh.....i could never once walk up the steps from my basement as a kid...i had to run as fast as i could because i feared what was behind me as i left the room....had to turn the light off and beat the devil outta' there- always thinkin' there was some "mental patient" down there about to grab me...and....and....and....lick me or something! yeeeeegads! these days, i don't have a basement thank god!

bigval, i think i'm scared of you

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on dance seul, on dance seul.....

For about two months after the death of Princess Diana my youngest brother wouldn't go to the toilet in fear that she would be sitting behind there ready to grab him....

...I still find walking alone in the dark, especially along roads, somewhat terrorfying.


Mind you, this ain't about urban legends or personal scary moments in our pasts. It's about films.




Movie moment, eh?
I found "Stir of Echos" rather chilling when I saw that last year. Nothing that kept me awake, but that song...oooh, whever I heard it it sent a shiver down my spine for weeks.

The Bloody Mary thing, I always thought was stupid. I wouldn't do it, though, just because I don't want to mess with that stuff...for all I know it's some kind of satantic spell...or, more likely, it's based on some kind of ritual, but all twisted around due to the childish tendency to exaggerate.

The mental patient crap freaks me out. I hate the stories where the person has a close call with some kind of dangerous person, but doesn't find out until later...like the guy with the hook. Or how about the the with the babysitter? THE CALL IS COMING FROM UPSTAIRS! AHHH! That still scares me...especially when I'm babysitting.

When I was a kid there were two movies that scared the crap out of me.

Cujo - That dog freaked me out man.

When a Stranger Calls - When the cops say the calls are coming from inside the house, I about fainted in fear.

I remember the Bloody Mary, "Hook", and other stories, and they would freak me out, especially the Bloody Mary thing..I didn't like being in the bathroom with the lights off looking at the mirror.

Pet Semetary scared me when I was little. That cat was freaky.

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

There's like a line for me. There's pleasently scared, and then over the line is unpleasently scared. Texas Chainsaw Masacare crossed the line, Excorsist crossed the line...I can't handle satanic crap. Like those Hellraiser movies, where like people are being skinned alive and s*** like that...what's the fun of having those images rattling around in your head at night... MOMMY!!!!

I LOVE THIS THREAD........ scary movies work because they play on what already scares us....initially as kids. i used to run at night....when i was in highschool and our "blocks" were four miles around!- out in farmland with lots of cornfields...just go out at night and walk next to a corn field sometime!! it''ll freak you out....and i bet very few people would venture into the cornrows in the dark of night. and double !!! just ask Bigval.

commish, your post says; "how about the the with the babysitter".....i know it's just a typo but i needed to rag you about something.

oh, and commish, i thought it was hilarious when you gave Holden an all-capped warning to QUICK POST AGAIN, YOU'RE AT YOUR 666TH POST!!

the whole concept of having someone already in your house works well in freaking us all out...our homes are our havens ....the scary sh*t is SUPPOSED TO STAY OUTSIDE!! and the "crazed animal" concept works because we are surrounded by domesticated animals that we have learned to trust...if neighborhood dogs go crazy, or the family cat--we are in big trouble! Pet Cemetery scared me too....but not so much the cat......it was the little boy (Gage) after he was brought back......how silly to be scared of a toddler ..ooooohhhhh, he's gonna hit me with his tiny fist!! yet, the evil element of having been brought back from the dead, makes this little harmless boy become a much bigger force. think of the movie The Village of the Damned....eeeeeeekkkk - evil kids!! or how about The Bad Seed?.....little sociopath "rhoda" ..evil from day one. didn't mean to jump into a whole deal about evil kids.....just sort of went in that direction. this is a fun thread!

one last thing to add; when we were kids we played a game outside in the dark of night...called "BLOODY MURDER"... i can't imagine parents being too happy about that being screamed out in the night by a bunch of kids these days, but i have great memories of this game...it was a type of tag and when you came across whoever was "it" you had to run like heck screaming "bloody murder!". ahhhhhh, those were the days before we all heard about REAL bloody murders on the news every night.

The book Pet Sematary was incredibly creepy. But I don't think it translated well onto the screen at all. (King's writings either hit dead-on or miss entirely when put on film.)

I was totally creeped out by Blair Witch. Friends and I used to goof around with camcorders (and before that, my dad's 8mm home movie camera), so it all seemed too real to me. Pleh.

I never get scared (except at the moment of impact) by monsters and unreal things, supernatural things. But real-life psychos and murderers, etc., really creep me out.

I'm old enough to have seen the original "Halloween" movie (with Jamie Lee Curtis) in the theatre. Two friends and I went. I drove my mom's car. There was a rule to always lock her car, and I did when we went in. I KNOW I locked it.

But, when we came outta the theatre, totally creeped out and looking over our shoulders, one of the doors was unlocked. We were so incredibly freaked out -- we kept checking and double-checking the entire car (floor, under seats, in trunk), to be sure no one was in it. We even got down on the ground and checked to make sure no one was clinging to the underside of the car.

(shudder)

That's still a scary movie. Great early use of fear without goriness, of camera angles and "boo!" scares.

Oh, I also remember being scared outta my wits when reading The Exorcist. The movie was probably only as scary as it was because I'd read the book. Same with Jaws.

Silence of the Lambs creeps me out too, but I've learned to handle that one.

Linda (looking over her shoulder now that the living room lamp went off a few seconds ago--because we have a motion sensor on it and I FORGOT!)

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i'm so glad to see a little revival of this topic........scary stuff was always my favorite untill you couldn't find "scary" without all the gratuitous gore and T&A visuals...........i know all scary movies don't stick to that formula/subgenre, but i kinda stopped looking. now my favorite genre is mystery/psych. thriller as it is with books. but i'm always game to check out a scary movie i haven't seen. i've said my piece about Blair Witch (1)........but don't know anything about Blair Witch 2....so somebody tell me if it's worth renting.........and how it's different from the first one.

Blair Witch 2 is about a group of kids who are big fans of the movie and who are well versed in this Burkittsville folklore about the Blair Witch. They shack up one night in the woods with video cameras and wake up drunk the next morning without any clue about what happened the previous night. They watch the footage and its all messed up. The question is what happened that night?

The film explores the first film's idea about whether we create the horror in our own minds. Do our memories play tricks on us? How influenced were they by the Blair Witch phenomenon? We don't know until the film's conclusion whether the Blair Witch is real or whether these kids are insane.

The acting is pretty average and the story is more of an old fashioned horror than the Blair Witch was, with its deliberate shock music overused. But it is definitely an original movie, way better than any other horror sequel and it was unfairly dismissed by critics.

Worth a rent.

But then I'm a Blair Witch freak!

Are you one too Patti?

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I couldn't believe that she knew my name. Some of my best friends didn't know my name.

no bigval........if you remember correctly you threatened me and the other poo pooers of BWP!. but i made it clear i respected the uniqueness of the first one......and believe me, i'm a camper in the truest sense of the word.....the effect of BWP (on me as viewer) was damaged by the Heather character.........i was just so annoyed.
i was asking about the second BWP because if it has a whole new cast, i might just check it out.....if it's recommended AND/OR if you threaten me again. heh heh

are you wearing any clothes yet bigval? it's getting a little bit nipply outside.

Didn't care for BWP. Didn't find it scary, but then again, I grew up in West Texas, I can't relate to getting lost in the woods (we didn't have trees), so it was just a bunch of whiny people yelling at each other. There was nothing frightening in it to me.

But that's just me.

I remember watching the Halloween movies (well, there were only 2 of them at the time) and the first two or three Friday the 13th movies a lot on HBO and the like when I was a kid. While I enjoyed them, they were less scary than they were gross (or startling in the sense that things jumped out and caused me to jump). The only thing that actually scared me from these movies was the idea that someone would put a razor blade in an apple they give out on Halloween (which was a small throw-away bit in Halloween 2).

Now the original Nightmare on Elm Street actually scared me. It was so creepy and unlike anything I had seen before that it really did freak me out. That's about the only horror movie I've seen that actually scared me.

ryan, i'll second Nightmare on Elm Street.......it got under my skin......a direct threat to my safe haven of sleep. but man, those flics are so bloody....i don't think that's such a great thing for kids to be exposed to.......ofcourse its everywhere...but there are more subtle ways to scare and shock. Hitch was good at that.

I never understood why people were scared of The Exorcist. Even when I was a little kid, it never scared me in the least. I was waaaaay more scared of the banana David Bowie was hiding in his pants in Labyrinth.

No and no. Why do you ask?

To me it's that "in your face" demonstration of all of the evil that every preacher since I was a wee lad had ever warned me about; but i was unconvinced that it was the truth. Having seen this film before I was capable of separating reality from fiction I was convinced that the spawn of satan was going to inhabit my body at any given moment. I mean, if it could happen to that sweet little kid why wouldn't one pick me (my prepubescent reasoning)?

I never got over it. I still get the willies when I am alone late at night (you know, when everything takes on that bluish tone), all is quiet and dark, the wind is blowing through the trees.... causing the shadows to dance on the walls... It's almost like when you're watching a scary movie and you get the intense feeling that something is about to happen...

I saw The Exorcist this year actually. So, it didn't really scare me. What scared me though was the fact that this actually happened. FYI - They based The Exorcist on the happenings of a little boy who became possessed in a small town up north long time ago.

the one image that sticks with me from 'The Exorcist' is not the PeaSoup, the possession, or anything about linda blair. It is the stairs outside the house.
The way a rather banal set of stairs can be transformed with such a sense of foreboding and evil was what stuck with me.

There was also the time my telvision exploded while watching it when I was about 13.

'Nightmare on Elm Street' 1 was the only movie of the series that truly frightened me, the fact 'Freddy' could take advantage of you when you are at your most vulnerable, lying prostrate in bed, with psyche open ready for a five finger flaying. They degenerated into a gorefest after that.

how about 'the omen'? Another of the old school chill and thrill scare movies.