This may be a post to older peeps, but open to all peeps.
Just wondering, growing up and you saw scary horror movies, what terrified you? like made you near well, shart ones pants? but then today if you watched it be like, why was I scared? Okay reason I saw older viewers as back in my day movies were scary esp at a young age where no one really cared what you saw lol. So here are mine, Childs Play, Kolobos, Dolly Dearest, (Also not horror but a scene in Jaws where Quinn gets bitten in half and blood comes up and also from Willow with the witch waking up at the end lol)
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i like scary movies but hate jump scares so any jump scare heavy movie always got me.
The funny thing that the scariest thing for me that I sometimes still think of was not a horror movie but the first episode of the Moomin (1990) animated series. The scene where Moomintroll hid in the magicians hat and it changed him to look like a real troll. When I saw that as a kid it was the scariest thing for me. Nothing else in the series really ever made me scared but that scene where he gets changed and nobody believes him to be Moomintroll until Moominmamma finally walks in and reassures Moomintroll that she of course regonizes her own son. Maybe you could say I have minor athazagoraphobia that I myself realized having because of that scene in kids show.
I also did not like to watch the X-Files tittle sequence. Mainly because of the music made it eyrie and specifically the spot where the human siluette falls into the hand print something in that just made me feel uneasy.
Like I never had big problems of watching horror or scarymovies myself.
The sight of blood made me squeamish. Real blood still does sometimes.
One odd one was Earnest : Scared stupid. Like mentioned in the post I would find it laughable today but the troll turning kids into little sculptures was intimidating.
Then there was a movie called The Gate, pretty rare to see nowadays but the entire thing is on youtube. Probably my favorite horror movie.
Another memorable mention was the Tiki man from Trilogy of Horror. Chases the woman around her appartment and she can't figure out a way to kill it.
Then i dunno if u've heard of a movie called Creepshow by Stephen King, but that was another movie with multiple short movies, the one that branded itself into my memory for over 2 decades without even knowing what the movie's title was, was the part with the teens going on a raft and they get attacked by a sentient black acidic sludge that picks them off and dissolves them one by one with similar effects to The Blob.
And lastly one that also took me many years to figure out the name but remembered the dolls in it quite well, was Puppetmaster. That one with the drill head creeping around the house going after people's ankles lol I never forgot that guy (got the whole collection not even realising there were like 9 movies lol)
Yes! Someone else watched the gate! That was the first horror movie I've ever watched, and it terrified me when I was young. Just don't rewatch it. It DOES NOT hold up.
More ambient stuff that's closer to something that feels like it "could" happen… Jump Scares are forgettable and common most of the time unless done really well… I still think about the more uncanny movies I have seen: Lake Mungo, Noroi, Blair Witch, and generally just the films that give a long and lasting sense of wrongness… Noroi actually kind of felt more or less real with the particular found footage style and there's a couple of scenes I will never forget.
Honorable Mention: Specifically the Fourth Kinds theater trailer… I didn't find the movie to be very good at all but the trailer still creeps me out.
W Mention! I feel like The X Files still hold up, and even surpass more modern Extraterrestrial horror, it's just extremely good at being uncanny to the point of actually making me uncomfortable.
'Fire in the Sky' really creeped me out as a kid. Beyond that not much scared me persay, as most horror movies didn't use the atmosphere of tension. Aliens did a good job but turned into more of an action flick.
These days movies like Audition spook me. But back then? Not a whole lot. Puppetmaster was weirdly scary for how stupid it was in premise.
I had no idea there was a sequel for many years lol
Critters gave me nightmares once when I was little 🤣 which is crazy because I grew up on a lot of horror like Alien and Evil Dead