I watched Jaws on TNT yesterday afternoon - damn, it's still good.
I remember the first time I saw that movie - it was in Bakersfield of all places. I was 14 and in Bakersfield with my friend Joann and her family. I'm hard pressed to think of another movie that has had such a long term effect on my behavior. Can anyone - even 32 years later - swim in deep, dark water without hearing that music and thinking about what lurks beneath you?
Other movies that I remember from my youth as being very, very scary include Psycho, the Birds, and the often overlooked, but fabulous, Wait Until Dark, starring Audrey Hepburn.
More recently, I thought the Blair Witch Project was scary, (though I wanted to like it and be scared), as was the Others, which I was watching one night, at home, alone . . .
What movies have sent chills down your spine?
posted by Diane at 6:56 AM
19 Comments:
The first scary movie that I can remember watching was, don't laugh, the Wizard of Oz. That scared the crap out of me..I remember hiding behind my grandma!
I still get scared watching Jaws. Even the barrels popping up to the surface scare me!
"We're gonna need a bigger boat."
kat - hey the witch and the flying monkeys are very scary!
lynne - classic line!
I liked the Blair Witch Project too. Although the effect that turned my stomach was not the story line, but how it was filmed with those hand held cameras.
A scary move from my teen years that effected me at the time was the original Halloween.
To this day I am terrified that if I look out a window at night I will see some huge creep in a white mask thanks to Halloween.
The Exorcist. It profoundly affected me.
NY Kat - When I was a psych major in college, we had a guest lecture from a child psychologist who said the Wizard of Oz was the #1 movie terrifying to children. Between the flying monkeys and the witch, kids were traumatized right and left. Maybe it should be rated PG?
My favorite thing about Jaws is that it spawned those "land shark" skits on SNL.
LA - I remember a Jaws skit on the Carol Burnett show with Tim Conway fishing for shark in a bathtub!
la, lynne - another thing about the Wizard of Oz. It was the first widely released movie in color - at least according to my mother - and imagine how wonderful it must have been for the people in the theaters when Dorothy walked out of the house into the vivid colors of munchkinland. I know it was the first movie in color my mother saw. And according to her, the whole theater gasped!
Not just color... TECHNIcolor!
My first comment was eaten by blogger
I agree with ny kat about the Wizard being the first scary movie I watched, but the tornado got me, I wasn't bothered by the witch or the monkeys.
As for Jaws, I never saw it in a theater. I vaguely remember it coming out--I think it was the summer after I'd graduated from high school. I went on an overnight canoe/fishing trip on the Black River. My girlfriend at the time went to see Jaws with friends. She was scared and later spoke about being worried about me (thinking a shark might swim 75 miles up the river to attack my boat). After I got home, I wanted to see the movie and she wasn't going back to see it, so I never got around to watching it until I saw it on TNT.
When I saw Jaws for the first time it was on TV. I didn't know, but everyone was waiting expectantly for a certain moment. They got their payoff, when the guys eye floats out of his head, I screamed.
Its still a terrific movie. I especially dig the clothes and hairstyles. So 70's.
As for my first scary movie: Carrie. On TV. My mom warned me not to watch it. Shoulda listened.
http://wbztv.com/local/local_story_226132540.html
I watched Silence of the Lambs in the basement of my empty house when I was nine. That left some deep psychological scars.
When A Stranger Calls (the 1979 version, not the 2006 one) and When A Stranger Calls Back were staples at pre-adolescent sleepovers. Creepy!
When I was a kid, I saw The Birds about a week after being pecked on the head by a vicious mockingbird.
20 years later...I still have a major phobia of birds.
Scary, scary movie! (I like Jaws, though!)
I would have been more scared by Blair Witch if it had culminated into anything interesting. The Others also creeped me out, as did the Sixth Sense. And I freaking love Jaws. Look at the young Richard Dreyfus! Potergeist scared me when I was a kid, too.
Where the guy started pulling the skin off his face.
My dad, in one of his classic great parenting moves, let me watch The Exorcist with him when I was little. No wonder I'm such a freak.
Jaws and Halloween are definitely the two that scared the crap out of me.
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