I, like many kids was prone to nightmares as a child. I had such an imagination that i would have visualizations even when i wasn't asleep of creatures that were in my room and what not. I can't say for sure that I actually wasn't actually asleep and just dreamed my own bedroom into the dream as well, but it sure as crap seemed real to me. I believe it is called sleep paralysis and it can happen to people right before they fall asleep or just as they are waking up. Some of these events from when i was very young still send chills down my spine today.
I was very aware of my "condition." Yet, In my continual pursuit of self destruction, i still insisted, despite these horrible nightmares, on watching films that I knew were going to give me a bad time in the bedroom. Here are some of the ones I remember vividly as contributing to my own night terrors.
Dreamscape
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Now why on earth would a walking scary-as-hell snake man give a 6-year old nightmares? I can't imagine why? The only reason that I had access to this film was because one of the neighborhood kids had a father with a massive betamax (you read that right) collection. I was intrigued by the cover art. I was haunted by the "snakeman" for months afterwards.
I recently went back and watched this film and even though it had a relatively impressive budget for 1984, it looks like hell and is very boring. It even had a young Dennis Quaid in it.
This was only the second rated PG-13 movie to hit theaters but this is only a factor because the rating system wasn't a thing prior to around that time.
The Dark Crystal
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Not a great deal of this film is actually very scary. However, there was something very haunting about one particular Skeksi named "Chamberlain" (I think.) He had this sound that he would make ... "hMMMmmmmm" and he wandered around and for some reason that resonated into my dreams. Because this was a Henson production, my parents thought it would be safe for the overactive imagination of their "nighttime troubled" son. Oh, they were terribly wrong about that.
Chamberlain haunted me for quite some time after that.
Consequently, The Dark Crystal is one of my all time favorite films and as I am sure you heard, the recently released an entire Netflix series, which is just epic and you should check it out.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
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This one is probably a bit more understandable seeing as how the entire premise of the film was that a guy attacks and kills you in your dreams. It's a rather brilliant storyline actually... one that they took too far over the course of the next couple decades as they proceeded to make 9 of these damn things. This was definitely not parent approved, but the kids at my school would reference it and I found it in the ol' Betamax collection and I just couldn't help myself.
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The scene where a bodybag is being drug down a school hallway by apparently nothing at all, is one of the creepiest scenes in all films ever (it's on many top-ten lists on the interwebs) and that one still kind of haunts me today.
Oh, by the way, this was Johnny Depp's first film ever.
There's a number of other ones such as Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, IT (with Tim Curry), and one particular flashback scene in Pet Semetary
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you're only in the movie for like 25 seconds... thanks for the nightmares
I now watch scary movies all the time and the only time in recent years when i had to turn a movie off in the past decade or so was with Ju-On. To my credit I did live in an isolated house in the middle of the jungle at the time and it was pretty damn dark outside so well, we have to make exceptions.
I would be interested to know the movies that properly scared the crud outta you. I'm not talking about recent films, but movies that you watched at probably too young of an age to be able to process it properly.
You and I share a common terror in A Nightmare on Elm Street, the original of which is still nightmare fuel even today. Other childhood scares include my introduction to the Friday the 13th series with number 7, a massive "NOPE!" moment during Prom Night III: The Last Kiss where a bitchy school office worker is doused in battery acid, and an utterly terrifying segment of Fantasy Island entitled "The Nightmare", where a woman re-lives a nightmare she's had since she was a child where her room is suddenly engulfed in flames and all the toys start screaming and flipping the hell out.
I too was a kid with an overactive imagination, and there were plenty of things that would have sent me into r/NoSleep territory, many of which aren't that scary when looked at in retrospect.
Most recent movies to get me were The Mist from 2007, and The Fourth Kind from 2009, which were both done just well enough that I still can't get some of the visuals out of my head more than ten years later.
what a great response, especially since I haven't seen many of the things you are referring to. That Fantasy Island sequence gets a big agreed from me but especially because of that damn clown in it.
I'm writing down those other films because I haven't seen all of them yet. I'll at least look up the highlights.
As a kid, I too had freaking nightmares, embarrassingly Even now when I am 22 I face nightmares when I watch a scary movie. and hell that snake was shitty scary.
I could relate to you on this.
Keep flourishing.
Believe it or not one of the scariest I can remember is from when I was really little. It was Mickey's Christmas Carol. The ghosts and stuff scared the crap out of me as a kid. It was just really scary. The other one I can definitely put my finger on is an old movie called Fortress. I think it is Australian and these guys kidnap a bunch of school kids. They are wearing these creepy masks and it freaked me out. You are right, that scene from Pet Semetary is horrible though I didn't see it until I was much older. I was also really freaked out by Event Horizon, but that was mostly because of the gore not the actual scares. I had never seen a movie quite so gory up until that point.
ah yes, Event Horizon, that came a bit later than the ones that are on my list but i do remember the costumes and gore as well as the eerie aspect of being in space, was really creepy.
Christmas Carole got me too, but not the Mickey one, it was the one starring George C Scott and of course the ghost of the future is always the scariest.
A Nightmare on Elm Street - yes! my nightmare too;)
and Poltergeist! the music was terrible....
Poltergeist is a good choice. I think everyone was afraid of televisions with no signal after that movie. Of course TV's haven't done that "grey screen" in a really long time.
I was watching it alone at night in the darkness! a little girl! I was looking around all the time but it was so magnetic I couldn't stop:)
A Nightmare on Elm Street STILL scares the crap out of me now! 😅
lol, yeah, I think the only thing that has changed about the fear factor is that most of the special effects look very dated, which is perfectly acceptable.
The Nightmare on Elm St was fantastic.. the scariest movies I remember.. The Exorcist.. the original... shit you pants scary... 2nd choice.. The Shining... a Stephen King novel made to movie starring Jack Nicholson.. also scary AF
i remember reading an article about how the Exorcist had some scenes in it that were actually considered too creepy and had to be removed before it was allowed to be released.
Are you in the me 40’s? The reason why I asked because when I was around 7 or 8... nightmare on elm street gave me the creeps for weeks 😂😂😂
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good work detective. Yes, that is correct.
Oh memories you have awaken...
I was a child when Chucky was a hit ...
We had tape videos at that time (but not at home), so when the parents were at work or outside, my friends would call me and we would see all kind of thriller movies together.
Chucky, Freddie and more, would haunt my dreams ever after!
haha
The funny thing is that I still cannot watch thriller movies
ah yes, i had forgotten about Child's Play, that is another series of films that started out pretty epic but then just got more and more ridiculous. If i am not mistaken they recently did a reboot also.
I don't think I would ever watch that again, but you got to admit that it was pretty scary for its time
Thanks for replying to me :)
my pleasure. I try to interact with everyone if their comment makes sense. This entire platform is much more enjoyable if we actually interact with one another :)
My older sister watched a lot of horror movies that I ended up seeing snippets of as a 6 or 7-year-old...I had nightmares for YEARS after she watched Puppet Master and Child's Play.
yeah, that sounds about right. It doesn't take much exposure for someone that young to create horrible situations in their very active imagination. My first exposure to "Freddy" wasn't even that long, but in my mind Freddy was looking for me from just one scene that i had witnessed as a young kid. :)
It was just one short scene in Puppet Master that did me in, too!
Oh God! That snake man.. The horrors. I would never have remembered that terrifying thing had I not seen this post. Thanks for bringing that nightmare back. haha!
lol, yeah. That was definitely the scariest part of the film and surprisingly realistic considering the obvious limitations they faced in the early 80's. The other nightmares in the film were things like being afraid of heights but those scenes actually look extremely fake today. :)
This movie was horrifying, but sooo good! Another one that had a similar effect on me, but came out years later was Serpent and The Rainbow. 😰
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