Formative Experience: What Was Your First Movie Scare?

The House on Haunted Hill was my first real fright at the movies. In the fifties we didn't have an 'R' or '18' certificate but instead we had 'X' rated. The Odeon cinema where I saw this film had rigged up high wires over the audience and when the scene came on where Vincent Price reels out the skeleton from the acid bath, a full size skeleton frame came whizzing over our heads and everybody screamed their heads off. It's quite funny now to remember this episode, but at the time it was most scary. It was ideal for constipation sufferers!

the first movie to really scare me was Lebithan, but the oldest had to be the classic Nosferatu.

I was scared by "The Mummy" (the original Boris Karloff version) when I was a kid. The scene where he is being mummified alive really scared me, as did the one when he comes to life again and suddenly opens one eye.

my first movie scare was spycho when it firat came to the theartre in the 60s i was working on a country station and we had just got home it was pitch black outside and i was dying to go to the loo and there was no outside lights to the house i had to sneak out and i couldnt get back inside quick enoughas i heard a noise in the dark i was only 16 at the time i am 66 now

Back in the 1950's, my older brother rented movies on 16mm sound film (Ideal Pictures, Richmond, Va.) that the family watched in our basement. The image of Sabu encountering and battling the giant spider in "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940) remains unforgettable, riveting, and thoroughly frightening in my mind. Each time I see it now on DVD or TCM, I recall the moment with a mixture of nostalgia and lingering uneasiness.

must have been about 8 to 10 years old, abbott & costello meet fraankenstein was my first horror film. it was chicago, 67th stony island, jackson park theater. my mother told me not to go, but i went with a couple of friends, year was around 1950.it scared the s-t out of me. I remember a kid running down the isle screaming, and when the coffin opened, wow, I got the heck out of the movie also.I never liked horror movies after that, and really have never been a fan of them cause of that incident. worked for star-lite drive in for a couple of years in oaklawn,Ill. and watched physco for 2 weeks, and that got to me,when i would close the drive in alone at 3:00 a.m. in the morning and heard the wind blow the paper cups over the field it really got creepy. and was sure glade to get in my car and get out of there. that was 1959. I still don't watch creepy movies.

I have rarely found myself frightened by what happens on the screen. I have found myself startled during a film: the scene where, thinking things are finally over, a very menacing Alan Arkin springs out by the light of the refrigerator trying to pounce on the vulnerable blind Audrey Hepburn in 'Wait Until Dark.' This film was part of a film series we had in high school, and we all jumped. We watched it several times over the weekend, and even when we counted the scene down we still jumped.

I was physically and emotionally drained watching 'Black Hawk Down.' Saw (the first) had some pretty intense moments. Heck, on that note there were some pretty good moments in 'Shaun of the Dead.' Still, films were never quite real. My family had sat me down at a young age to watch newly released to the public footage from NAZI concentration camps, and no fictional film ever equaled the horror of that.

My first fright experience was Psycho, when Vera Miles went to the fruit cellar and touched the rotted face it scared the stuffing out of me.Sir Alfred new how to do it.

The original "Thing" with James Arness as the huge and scary alien scared the Bejesu mout of me.
I was 10 and my bedroom was at the end of a long (to me) hall,which terrified me because of the scene in the film where the monster came down a long hall when he attacked the good guys. I had to sleep in my parents room for days.

When Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" was released, my mom took my girlfriend and I to see it at the local drive-in. I was probably five or six at the time. When they showed the scence where Jessica Tandy's character finds her neighbor in his bedroom on the floor with his eyes pecked out....I was absolutely horrified. That night after going to bed I had a horrible nightmare about that same scene, and woke up my family screaming and crying. I will never forget it!!

I thought it was just me, too! Darned right, those freaking flying monkeys almost scared the life out of me.

I refuse to watch "The Wizard of Oz", "The Birds" and the "Halloween" movies. My boyfriend at the time insisted on a double-date to see the first "Halloween"; I closed my eyes through 90% of the movie. If I had known how freaky it was, I wouldn't have watched "The Shining", either.

Yes, the boogeymen in "The March of the Wooden Soldiers" were frightening. My first recollection of film fear was probably "The Wizard of Oz", but I remember being frightened by Charlie Chaplin in " The Kid", I was very young and I still can picture a close-up of his tortured face when they try to take Jackie Coogan away from him. Not understanding the story the scene and his reaction was alarming, what a great film.

The scariest movie I saw was Frankenstien with Boris Karloff. I was only about 8 or 9 at the time. After seeing it I was forever afraid of the dark & hearing strange noises. Even now if I hear something, I HAVE to go find out what made that noise. A little while after seeing that movie, I was walking home - at night - by myself and thought I saw a white spot in the air by a house. I screamed bloody murder & took off running! I saw a lady come to her door to see who screamed but I never stopped until I got home. By then realizing it was a dog I had seen. Movies about zombies also scared me to death!!

I was maybe in the first grade when a noise woke me up. I went to investigate and found my father watching TV (black and white of course). The movie was about a group of people stranded in a jungle on top of a plateau with dinosaurs attacking them. I had nightmares for YEARS after, even was afraid to go out in the back yard at night until I decided to make "friends" with my dream "monsters" and they went away. Been fascinated by the beasts ever since . . . and I'm 64! But I could never discover that movie again, at least the version I "recalled" watching from the hall.

To Robert:
The film you recalled so vividly is no doubt "Murders in the Rue Morgue," the 1934 horror classic based on Edgar Allen Poe. It starred Bela Lugosi and a young Arlene Francis. One of the writers was John Huston. It takes place in Paris, even though everyone speaks English of course!

To Cat:
The movie you remember is EITHER 1951's "Lost Continent" with Cesar Romero and Hillary Brooke, OR Irwin Allen's "The Lost World," the 1960 motion picture starring Michael Rennie, Jill St.John, David Hedison and the great Claude Rains. This was a color remake of the 1925 silent "Lost World" animated by King Kong's Willis O'Brien.

The first movie that scared me as a child was believe it or not - Attack of the 50 foot Woman. It wasn't the woman that scared me but rather, the space man who came out of the sphere. I'm now 60 and when I watch that movie now - bad special effects, the space man is someone who is simply super-imposed on the screen and he looks just like Dwight D. Eisenhower (it isn't him though). Fond memories and the bloggers comments remind me of how I perceived this movie as a child vs now.

KONG!!!

Val Lewton's THE CAT PEOPLE and THE LEOPARD MAN.

I'm with Carol! WGN in Chicago used to show "Creature Features" every weekend, and the first time I saw "Dracula," man, that creeped me completely out! Renfield and that goofy laugh after eating those flies--EWWW!, Lugosi and those eyes-- I haven't seen it since! Christopher's comment on "Wait Until Dark" -- I jump at the same scene every time I see it!!!

None of my own memories of movie scares, but do recall my daughter's terror of Jaws and not ever wanting to go swimming even in the lake. We could touch her off by just making the "bum, bum-bum, bum, bum bum" sound that indicated the shark was present. THEN, my granddaughter was terrified of Jumanji. We could touch her off by miking the sound of of jungle drums. Mean grandma had to add to it in buying her the Jumanji board game that Christmas. Now we all laugh at it all. Funny how the movie or tv screen can really upset your psyche. I'm still waiting to find my own scare from a movie or tv show, sigh, maybe there's no one out there to come up with something scary-disgusting is what I see more often in those things meant to shock us

Easily recalled. In 1946 when I was 10 years old, against my wishes I accompanied my father one winter evening to a showing of THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE at at the old World Theatre in downtown Minneapolis. I'd begged him to take me to an Abbott and Costello feature playing concurrently at a nearby house, but disliking the team, he refused, and because he was bigger than me he had his way regarding what we were to see. Well, the picture was scarcely underway when a theremin began its eerie wail, a staring eye filled the screen and a crippled girl was murdered in her hotel room by an unseen killer hiding in her closet. That, the recurring staring eye, more otherworldly theremin sounds, the old victorian mansion and its rear stairway spiraling down to a shadowy cellar where a second murder later took place, all combined to scare the living daylights out of me, and I spent much of the film's 83 minutes with my hands clapped over my eyes and hazarding peeks at the screen from between my fingers. Worse yet, the cellar of the ancient duplex where my family resided at that time bore striking similarities to the one in the movie, and thereafter nothing could persuade me to venture there alone, even in broad daylight.

Does anyone know the name of a TV movie that I believe starred Basil Rathbone where he was being hunted by Nazi's or some war situation and to hide from them he was in his home and he 'went into the picture' on the wall for safety? Don't know if it was a TV movie or one of the 'thriller' type programs like 'One step beyond' or 'Tales from the Dark Side or Rod Serlings' series....Please help me out with the name of the movie.

John Anthony, Thank you so much for that information! That movie has such an interesting concept. I'm going to try and find the Night Gallery Series to get that movie....On Night Gallery I also liked the one with Roddy McDowall where someone was coming to the door to murder someone in the house and everytime he walked past the painting on the stairway wall it changed and showed the intruder getting closer and closer until there was a knock at the door....I believe that is how the story goes! Thanks again for the information.

Horrors of the Black Museum. I saw this as a Saturday double feature with some other horror movie. It was released in 1959, but being from a small town it may have been a year later showing up at our theater. It scared me so badly I don't even remember what the other movie was.

The House of Wax--the first shop of Vincent Prices' burned face. Saw it in 3-D I was 6 at the time.

Since my family were always seeing scary movies, and loving them, I was introduced to the horror genre at a very early age. On television, what really scared me was the program "The Outer Limits." On film, I think the first movie that really frightened me was "The House of Wax" with Vincent Price.
One thing I wanted to mention about "The Wizard:" I also was scared at certain pieces of the movie. The one point where I had to hide behind the couch was when Dorothy looks into the witche's crystal, calls for Auntie Em, and instead sees the Wicked Witch making fun of her; and then zooming into a big close-up of her face cackling and laughing. For years I felt something was wrong with me, because this scene always terrified me, and I don't know why. I was relieved to read Aljean Harmetz's "THe Making of the Wizard of Oz" which says that that scene is the most terrifying in the movie for a child. IT doesn't frighten me much anymore, however, there is still that tingle of fear that I feel when I view that scene.
My mother always was scared of "The Haunting" directed by Robert Wise. Even though it frightened her SHE ALWAYS HAD TO WATCH IT. She used to turn up the sound when I was in high school and watch it when I was trying to get to sleep and study for the big test that would always follow Halloween in certain classes back then. However, that movie is definitely scarier when you HEAR it, rather than SEE it. The film is not only a masterpiece of cinema, strangle it is also a masterpiece of radio. You are not alone in your feelings for "The Wizard of OZ."

I've been a horror-scifi fan for as long as I can remember. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney & LC Jr., Vincent Price; I lov'em all. Alien, The Thing, The Tingler, Psycho, Freaks; bring'em all on. But can only remember being really scared once. I first saw The Exorcist in my mid 20's and it frightened me to the soul. I spent weeks thinking to myself, how could something so horrible happen to a 12 yr old child, who had never really done anything bad.

It's NOT scary anymore. In fact, now it's silly.
Anyone remember Legend of Hellhouse, with Roddy McDowell(and whoever else was in it)?
It USED to be terrifying, gory, boogy boogy boooogy!
We kids were talking about how scary it was in front of our dad...
'Um, guys? Ever think of WHY he was killing people?' he asked
''Cause he was a wierdo?' we responded
'Uhm,no....that wasn't the reason. Go watch it again, and see if you figure it out.'
we did.
'HE KILLED PEOPLE BECAUSE HE WAS SHORT!' we all wailed.
and that was it.
never watched it again.
The death of the formerly scary movie.
sigh

I can't believe I'm the first to mention this, but Gene Wilder in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" scared the ever lovin' crap outta me as a kid. The guy just let kids get knocked off one by one and isn't worried about it! Then you got a double dose of wetting your pants by the random footage on the boat ride (A chicken's head getting cut off? Big, weird bugs walking on someone's face? THIS is a KIDS MOVIE??!!).

Of course, once I got older, I found him to be hysterically funny, not frightening. An added dimention is watching it without sound - suddenly, forced to just *watch* it, I noticed for the first time how incredibly SAD Wonka looked in most of the film, like he was just ready to lay down and die. Which he WAS, in a sense, as he was looking for an heir for his company.

One of my earliest movie memories, at age 5, is of the scene in "Pinnochio" when Monstro the whale comes rushing straight toward the screen. I'm pretty sure that was the last time I found myself in sudden need of dry trousers. Six years later I watched the original "King Kong" by myself, in a darkened TV room at my aunt and uncle's house, and was frightened nearly out of my wits by the scenes in the jungle with the dinosaurs. I watched "Kong" again earlier this year -- once more by myself, once more in the dark -- and those scenes still grabbed me at age 61. I guess some things we never outgrow.

The first film that really frightened me was "The Canterville Ghost, which I saw a child with my then single uncle, who thought it was funny. I was ashamed of being so frightened, to
watch supernatural happenings. My fear must have lasted close
to as year when I imagined the ghost hanging on the hook where we hung our coats...Years later, when I watched it again, I finally understood why....Elaine M. Starkman

I am a big, overgrown sissy so I have been terrified my whole life by different movies. Of course, the flying monkeys were one of my first scares and the second one was the witch in Snow White, especially when she gave Snow White the poisoned apple. I literally ran out of the theater.

Then there was the terrifying scene in The Leopard Man where the young Mexican girl is forced to travel in the dark to go to the grocery store. She has been terrified of the killer leopard in the area, but the mother forces her out and locks the door. The innocent girl is followed by the leopard and as she bangs on the locked front door, her blood comes pouring out under the door.

Later in life, The Thing, House of Wax and the original Invasion of the Body SNatchers caused many sleepless nights.

When I saw The Exorcist years ago, I actually had to move in with friends for a week because I was so absolutely frightened and I begged them to keep their bedroom door open and the lights on...and the poor newlywed couple lost all intimacy. All movies about the devil terrify me, including all the Omen films and a movie called The Mephisto Waltz, especially a scene where Jacqueline Bisset summons up he devil to do her bidding.

my first movie scare came during The Window with Bobby Driscoll, whom I remembered from Song of the South. I was roughly the same age as Bobby (and therefore the character of Tommy), so I related to Tommy and sympathized with his predicament of being locked in his room. I was mildly anxious when the key in the lock and he was abducted by Paul Stewart, but my nervousness turned to fear when the cab stopped at the tollgate and collector didn't believe tommy when he claimed Stewart wasn't his father. When Stewart then told Tommy he was going to get a good "shellacking" when they got home, I became terrified. My dfather had used that word with my sister and me many times (though he never actu-ally touched us) and I was always fearful that one day he would make good on his threat. i was in my 30s when i next saw The Window and still had a [less] visceral reaction to that scene.

FLYING MONKEYS!and all of the above.

"The Haunting of Hill House" - terrified me - when she goes to bed that night and is talking to the woman in the next bed (she thinks - actually the woman hadn't come to bed yet) and puts her hand out to hold the other woman's hand in friendship - she (Julie Harris) finally looks down and sees that the "hand" she holds is not there and she is holding something else! I have kept my hands under the blankets most the rest of my life - Julie Harris stars.

bride of frankensteing when man falls in the celler of the burned out windmill. the thing them and tarantul and good nod to the oringinal black lagoon creature. i remember being bored alone watching tarantula and going to sit down front and then running up back when the monster showed up

It was Dracula & Frankenstein for me in the late forties. Kids could get in in those days. (U.K.) They really gave me the creeps!.

I have to say the 1937 showing of Snow White when the witch suddenly appears at the cottage window and offers her poisoned apple. I still recall running up the aisle to get out of there.I was 5-6years. Number two would be the sudden appearance of the alien creature in the doorway in "The Thing from Another World"-1951. I was teenager.

The two most terrifying movies I have ever seen and that have stayed with me all my long life involved eyes, mad eyes.
The first was during the war years in England. My mother was a lifelong murder mystery fanatic, both books and movies, and in those years where you went, so did your children, there were no baby-sitters. I no longer remember the name of that film, but it involved a manhunt for an escaped murdering psychopath who is finally cornered in a garden shed by the lead policeman, I believe. All is shadows except for the eyes of the psychopath. I have been afraid of the dark ever since.
The second pair of eyes was in Black Narcissus. There is a scene where all you see are her maddened eyes on the screen. Scared me to death. If ever anyone deserved an Oscar it was for that alone. Madness stared out at me, and hatred and delusion.
Was I alone in fearing those eyes?

As a youngster, watching the classic horror movies, i.e.Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, made me hide my face under a pillow. Only the good natured goul, John Zacherly, with his hilarious experiments in the lab, rescued me from a month of nightmares.

While nothing has ever been scarier than flying monkeys, the movie that had the biggest impact on me was 'Strangers on a Train' and the scene at the end with the runaway merry-go-round full of screaming children finally breaking loose and hurling them into the night. That was no mythical monster; it was REAL. Thanks to that movie, I've never ridden a roller coaster or significantly scary carnival ride in my life.

The Exorcist.

I'm another one whose first movie scare was The Wizard of Oz. The first time I saw it was in 1964 when I was eight years old. Even today at the age of 54, seeing the Wicked Witch of the West and the flying monkeys still scares me.

My Dad is a Mechanic and often worked late. I was new to sci-fi films (I was about 6) and the ABC 4:30 Movie showed "The Blob". I had no clue about what the movie was about but when I saw the man under the car and the Blob rolling in, I thought I was watching my Dad getting killed. I was in hysterics. When he came home and heard what happened he just laughed. BTW, I still can't watch that film.

Elephant Walk on the big screen was soooo skary 2 me ~ I can't believe my mom took me to see it. Cheaper than a sitter in those days, I suppose. When I saw The Wizard of Oz on TV - it was the "man behind the screen" that sent me running from the room!

Dorian's picture in the "Picture of Dorian
Grey" in 1945 when I was 8 y/o.

It was the Movie "The Thing" My friend and I went to the movies by ourselves and it was so scarey we had to leave in the middle of the film. My mom was ok that we had left the movie, but my friends mom was very mad because we wasted our money. I think it cost all of 25 cents to go to the movies at that time.

Three movies come to mind. My mother would drop me off at the Riverview Theatre in Minneapolis for double-features to give herself some kid-free time, I guess! I did enjoy going...mostly seeing movies like SOUTH PACFIC - pretty tame stuff. Until one weekend. INVADERS FROM MARS was playing. OMG! Totally freaked me out. Later on - these two were on TV. (I was probably 9 or 10 when I saw all 3 of these movies.) The first was aired during a Snow Day (in Minnesota we have these when the snow is too deep/it's too cold to go to school). The host of the TV Matinee (Mel Jass) came on-air to apologize for airing a more adult-themed movie but there was nothing they could do to change it. They aired THE HYPNOTIC EYE. Again, it was horrifying...still is..I just bought the DVD! Women would mutate themselves - putting a face into a fan - sans the guard; shampooing the hair, only to turn on the gas stove & set her hair on fire; washing the face in acid. The local police noticed a pattern - women who were hypnotized at a show were dying/being maimed. And lastly, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM. I remember one scene, where a package arrives at an apartment. Two women live there. The package is intended for one woman, but the room-mate is dying of curiosity and so she opens the package. Pulls out a pair of binoculars. Takes them to the window and starts to adjust them. We hear a scream and a thud. She's on the floor and then they pan to the binoculars - very long bloody nails are protuding from them. YIKES!!! Every time I see a pair of binoculars, I do a quick flashback to that scene!

I was 6 or 7 when my aunt took me to a movie at the theater in the Oregon Shipyard employees theater. It was the Wolfman. Every time he started changing into the Werewolf I had to hide my eyes.
You asked about our first scary movie not scary movies in general, but Psycho left the most lasting impression with me in that I was nervous taking a shower without thinking about it for awhile.

"The Ghoul" (1975), first scene.
Never saw the second scene until about five years later!

As a child I was taken to see the movie "20,000 Leagues under the Sea - the giant octopus gave me nightmares. Ugh !
And Jaws. It was some time after seeing that movie before I could go swimming in the sea ...