Which horror movie that you weren't supposed to watch terrified you the most?
Posted by Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 100 comments
When I was 8 (maybe 9?), I was sleeping over at a friend's house and her older brother and his friend rented Nightmare on Elm Steet 1. I was NOT supposed to watch horror movies, but her parents didn't seem to mind so we absolutely did. The scene with Tina in a body bag did my head in so bad it still haunts me. For months, I would wake up in the middle of the night and be terrified that I was actually still asleep and dreaming. I couldn't run to my parents room because I couldn't tell them I'd watched it! I'm pretty sure I never made up for the sleep deficit that movie caused me.
Plane-Fan9006@reddit
Children of the Corn at 9 years old in 1984 at the Skyview Drive-In in Lancaster, OH.
Late showing sitting on top of my neighbor's van surrounded by cornfields.
Still can't watch it.....NOPE!
pinchenombre@reddit
For sure Nightmare on Elm Street 1. Watched when I was about 6 I think…. My mom knew, she watched it with us. Didn’t sleep again until I was like 12.
Adept_Discipline1000@reddit
"IT" by Steven King.
Can't stand seeing clowns since.
noonesaidityet@reddit
The kids movies in the 80s were terrifying enough that when I finally saw Exorcist at like 8 or 9, it didn't really bother me.
EuphoricCrashOut@reddit
I can't remember the name of it but it haunts me.... it was some show or movie where a guy was cut in half on a bed?.. and these two hot chicks were 'sharing him' (no it wasn't a porn lol) since both of them had to have him? I think they chainsawed him in half to 'split him' or something?
pennylanish@reddit
Gremlins when I was 5 or so. I think my parents thought it would be a cute muppet style Christmas movie. It was not. The shadows and sounds were the worst. Pretty sure that's when I developed a fear of the dark
DocWednesday@reddit
Gremlins was definitely not a movie for kids but they marketed it like one. I was about 7 and I remember all the toys, kids books, etc. everywhere. We even had plastic McDonald’s cups. The pod things that the green gremlins hatched out of still make me want to vomit in my brain to this day. It went over my head at the time but I saw the scene years later where the girl character talks about how her dad died and it was disturbing.
pennylanish@reddit
and the way no one really reaction to that story. To be fair to my parents, they had just immigrated to the US and wanted to surprise me with a treat. I think I didn't go to another movie until I was in high school.
DocWednesday@reddit
I think a lot of parents were duped.
fyrefly_faerie@reddit
This. Although I loved the sequel which was much more silly.
pennylanish@reddit
I loved the sequel and the setting was overwhelmingly bright and very mall culture/corporate 90s/referential humor.
Mad_Zone_@reddit
This was the exact same movie that terrified me when I was about that age. Didn’t sleep for months.
Jonestown_Juice@reddit
Anything to do with religion. Stuff like The Omen or The Seventh Sign. My parents used to send me to a fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist church on Sundays as free daycare (they weren't religious and never went to church) and they filled my head with all kinds of crazy stuff. They had me believing the world was going to end at any moment.
I guess the bright side of this was that it set me on a journey to learn all I could about religion. Once I read The Bible cover-to-cover I could see that it was clearly bullshit.
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit (OP)
Hello fellow Southern Baptist trauma survivor. My parents were all in. Don't allow the devil in, pray the demons out of this or that... plus as if the infighting on theology within the church wasn't bad enough, I went to Catholic school and had religion classes and Mass every Thursday. Then in high school, I started hanging out with a Jewish friend and had so many questions for her family. I probably annoyed the shit out of them since they were mostly just culturally Jewish, but they were kind about it. That's when it all started feeling a really off. I took a religion in late antiquity in college. Mind blown. Finally found my own peace with it all in broadly Christian faith by my 30s.
Appropriate-Food1757@reddit
Nightmare on Elm Street 3 when I was 6 was the worst.
Into-the-stream@reddit
Mine was nightmare on elm street 4, also at 6. I hate horror movies now though. Can’t even handle a mild jump scare of any kind.
DBE113301@reddit
The Fly. The arm wrestling scene. I still can't watch that scene to this day.
catplumtree@reddit
I don’t know how old I was when I first watched Fire in the Sky but I do know I was too young.
Crafty_Original_7349@reddit
Cat People. I snuck out after the rents were asleep and watched it (scrambled, because my dad was not about to pay for HBO) because I thought it was going to be about people turning into cats.
I was so very wrong, and oddly enough I was also right.
GreatHuntersFoot@reddit
Killer Clowns from Outer Space
GSV-CargoCult@reddit
Killer Klowns! I almost bought it this weekend when I was in Fopp lol
GreatHuntersFoot@reddit
Yes! With 2 Ks. Gave me nightmares forever
Servilefunctions218@reddit
I loved that movie! So hilarious 😆
Crazydiamond450@reddit
Fire in the sky
halfcabheartattack@reddit
this one got me too
1980powder1980@reddit
I had repressed the memory of this trauma-fest of a movie until now. I couldn't sleep right for a week.
S_A_R_K@reddit
That eyeball scene
burnumd@reddit
Not a horror movie per se, but after seeing it the first time at a sleepover, I always had to skip past the Large Marge sequence in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure for a long time
False_Ad_5372@reddit
Not a movie, but my dad used to let me watch Hitchcock reruns and then send me to bed when Ray Bradbury Theater came on afterward. I would sneak back out and watch from behind the door. There’s still a couple episodes that freak me out to this day 30+ years later.
misterlakatos@reddit
That's definitely USA.
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit (OP)
Oof you just reminded me of Tales From the Dark Side and Twilight Zone.
IndomitableAnyBeth@reddit
Would that I knew. It had a scene in which a hand came up "out of the ground" and grabbed someone's leg. I think it took place in a city and it may have come up out of a drain or manhole. That scene was at night, very blue.
The movie wasn't Carrie. I don't even know if it was a horror movie proper. I was 3 or 4 and that was what was on the screen when I'd come out of my bedroom to ask or ask for something. I recurrent nightmares for years about a zombie hand (not that I know this one was) grabbing me in the street and dragging me under. I'd asked my parents to let me stay and watch till the scene changed (which it soon did) to emphasize the unreality, but they refused me. Alas!
Overall_Falcon_8526@reddit
The Day After.
Thick-Frank@reddit
Does Jaws count as a horror movie? That fucked me up good.
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit (OP)
Yes! Especially when you're 5 and your sister tries to convince you there IS such a thing as a carpet shark.
Groovychick1978@reddit
Being a big sister was fun
🤣🤣🤣
Nerdmitage@reddit
I grew up on a lake so can you imagine? You can be told that sharks can't live in fresh water lakes and pools but kid logic will not believe you! It took water loving me YEARS to not think twice or three times before swimming anywhere at all.
Heaven help the children who are currently watching Sharknado unsupervised with an older cousin right now because at least ours were water based!!!
cobalt-radiant@reddit
I don't think I would have called it horror, but Netflix does. I just watched that with my boys last night. They're 11 and 13 so they loved it!
Groovychick1978@reddit
The Exorcist.
I think I was 6 or 7. I snuck out the back door and crept up on the front porch to watch through the front window. Noped the fuck out when Reagan came down the stairs backwards.
Except, it was dark as fuck on the side of the house, and I could not make myself walk into the back yard to get into the back door.
I had to knock on the front door, and ask to be let in!
Busted.
idealzebra@reddit
Pet Sematary at a fourth grade sleepover and honestly I'm still not okay. I've never been able to bring myself to watch it again.
misterlakatos@reddit
I read the novel when I was 14. I strongly advise against every picking up that book if the film bothered you.
I also mistakenly watched the film at a young age and it freaked me out. Such a dour and depressing experience.
idealzebra@reddit
I read the book after because I thought, how scary could it be? I was a 10 year old idiot.
misterlakatos@reddit
That was one of the worst reading experiences I have ever had. I was pretty unhappy at 14/dealing with the transition to high school and low self-esteem (1999-2002 was generally an unhappy time). That novel did not help at all. My mom said it horrified her since I was around Gage's age when she read the novel.
Anyway, I did make peace with it by looking up the filming locations. I have been to Maine several times and it is cool to see where it was filmed/what those locations look like today: https://www.thennowmovielocations.com/2017/05/pet-sematary.html
Outrageous_Low6506@reddit
Hellbound Hellraiser 2, I'm still terrified of Pinhead
misterlakatos@reddit
I watched that film once in middle school and never again. Really fucked up.
Gwendolyn-NB@reddit
Aliens... gave me nightmares for YEARS after watching it.
Now, it's just another movie. But my son is completely into the Alien franchise so its been awesome to introduce him into that.
misterlakatos@reddit
"Aliens" is one of my all-time favorite science fiction/action films. I was obsessed with it in middle school and I really worshiped the movie. Once I became a parent I revisited it and the LV-426 subplot really bothered me on so many levels. Just dark and depressing, and really reiterated how evil Weyland-Yutani was.
Adrasteia-One@reddit
Oh crap, this one terrified me when I accidentally saw the queen spear Bishop. My dad was watching it, and I just happened to walk into the living room when that scene came on.
LLPhotog@reddit
This happened with the stomach bursting scene in Alien. My parents were watching it with my older sister. I was sneaking a peak from the kitchen and that scene absolutely traumatized me but I couldn’t say a word or I would be busted.
misterlakatos@reddit
Yeah this happened to me when I was 4 or 5. Absolutely stayed with me.
My dad later showed me "Alien" and the entire movie freaked me out, though I became a huge fan (same with "Aliens").
DJSfromthe1900s@reddit
My brother is 7 years older than me, so when I was 8 and we were on summer break he would walk to the local video store, rent a horror movie, and we would watch it multiple times until it needed to be returned, either that day or sometime in 24-48 hours, but always during the day so our parents wouldn't know. This was a routine for a few summers. I think Nightmare on Elm St 1 and 3 hit me the most, but we watched just about everything the store had. I was also scared of the scene in The Gate where the corpse busts out of the wall. Our 1860-built house had a long wall to my bedroom that I always imagined had a corpse in it.
cloisterbells-10@reddit
Watching "My Bloody Valentine" whilst growing up near an abandoned/decommisioned coal mine didn't help my sleep as a child.
MikeOak1@reddit
Phantasm
High_Speed_Chase@reddit
Sci-Fi Horror - Event Horizon.
I was 17, home alone, at night. Best worst decision of my life.
blacktrufflesheep@reddit
For me, it was an episode of Amazing Stories. A guy has a preminitory dream of a plane crashing into his house. He wanders around the yard surveying all the carnage. For months after that, I either slept in my parents' bed or with the light on
AlaskanPotatoSlap@reddit
Arachnophobia.
DandyLionsInSiberia@reddit
The first film that truly terrified me as a kid?
One that got properly under the skin ( not just made me jump) , was the TV adaptation of IT. (Though calling it a film feels too polite; it was more like a fever dream spliced with a schoolyard dare.)
Looking back now, it’s less horror and more a warped coming-of-age story, a dark, sticky-fingered Stand By Me with supernatural rot creeping in at the edges.
It’s about friendship, fear, and the way childhood innocence curdles when you realise the monsters aren’t under your bed, they’re in your head, and maybe inside your friends too.
But at the time, none of that nuance mattered!
There was only him, Tim Curry’s Pennywise, grinning like the devil had joined the circus. .
He wasn’t scary in the usual way, ..not the mask-wearing, knife-wielding sort. He was worse.
He was funny. He enjoyed it. That grotesque glee, that cabaret of cruelty,..made him more menacing than any serious horror villain ever managed to be.
He didn’t just frighten you; he flirted with your fear, teased it, made it feel almost intimate. And that’s what made him so terrifying, the first monster who didn’t chase you, but waited, knowing you’d come back on your own...
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit (OP)
You put me right back in to my memory of It. Hopefully, you write your own these days!
bassjam1@reddit
E.T.
Actually my parents tried showing it to me but instead I sat on the stairs in the other room and cried because they wouldn't turn it off.
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit (OP)
😆 You sound like my son. My husband and I are big horror fans and our son was 100% NOT for many years. We tried to let him watch Monster House when he was around 5, and our adorable little guy stood up about 5 minutes in with his back to the screen and said, "Sorry guys, I just can't do this." 🤣🤣 One of my favorite memories.
dryheat85000@reddit
Candyman. Bees and mirrors in the dark still creep me out big time.
alien-1001@reddit
Hearing Cabrini green makes me shudder.
alien-1001@reddit
It was the bathroom scene for me. I was young and kind of didn't understand what was going on, but I was terrified.
StaceyPfan@reddit
Tony Todd was my sexual awakening.
_dangling_participle@reddit
Candyman for me, too! Also the og Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Traumatized within 20 minutes and hid in the kitchen.
swiwwcheese@reddit
Poltergeist was the first to give me post-movie kid trauma, and later A Nightmare on Elm Street, which was the epitome of horror at the time, I think
Living in Europe I believe I've seen Poltergeist on TV, then A Nightmare on Elm Street on VHS which was certainly the uncut version since it was the only one available at the time
I was a little older when I saw the latter but that was still quite overkill for a kid
That said, those two movies probably help developing my taste for horror films lol
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit (OP)
I was waiting for this comment. Fast forward to teen/adult me and I am a huge horror fan! Love love love anything scary, creepy, and especially terrifying... except body horror. Not a big fan of body horror at all.
pinelands1901@reddit
The Blob (the 1980s remake). I'm still creeped out by clogged sinks.
h4nd@reddit
exorcist, age 6 or 7
False_Profession_975@reddit
Maximum Overdrive
Especially the scene with the lawnmower.
RepresentativeRun71@reddit
I had to scroll too far down for this. Crazy that we actually have autonomous robot lawnmowers and self driving vehicles.
BigBoxOfGooglyEyes@reddit
I was 9 when It with Tim Curry was released. Back then, I'd sneak down the stairs after bedtime and hide behind the couch while my parents watched grown up TV. I could position myself just right to see the TV without them seeing me. I made it to the part where Georgie sees Pennywise in the storm sewer before hauling ass back to my room and pulling the covers over my head. Still can't stand clowns.
Independent_Wish_862@reddit
Arachnophobia. It scared me so much that when I went back to watch it again decades later I was suprised at how bad the effects were and it took on a comedic tone instead.
SpaceLemur34@reddit
Poltergeist, at 6.
Compannacube@reddit
Same here.
mstermind@reddit
Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness". Something about that movie scared me to the core when I watched it as a kid.
icct-hedral@reddit
That’s a good one. The dream transmissions with that voice still creep me out.
mstermind@reddit
Yes! And the ending sent real chills. My friend didn't seem to understand what happened so I felt pretty smart at the same time.
Golden_Enby@reddit
Oh god, where do I start? My mother was way too lax with allowing me to watch things I shouldn't have.
One of the earliest horror movies that stuck with me for decades was Arachnophobia. I will never watch that movie again. Cheesy horror or not, it's a terrifying movie for those of us who don't like spiders. I've been working on trying to get over my fear for the last decade with a tiny bit of success. I can handle jumping spiders now. My fiance doubted me when I said the movie is horrifying, so I had him watch the original trailer. He could barely get through the first 15 seconds, lol.
Let's see... Alien, Pinhead, The Shining, The Thing (1982), Halloween, Scream, and I'm sure there were others that I'm not remembering at the moment.
Simple-Chemistry-878@reddit
Poltergeist, Friday the 13th, Jaws, nightmare on elm street.
I had a clown like the one in Poltergeist, did not like it.
anonymoususer98545@reddit
i was maybe 5 or 6 and it was "Children of the Corn." i had seen a ton of age inappropriate things already (thanks absent parents and oblivious grandparents, lol) but that one just really, really messed me up! i honestly can't watch it to this day as silly as it sounds. And i know that it's cheesy by today's standards but, woof, it was SO terrifying to little me that it borrowed into my brain hardcore.
StaceyPfan@reddit
I didn't start watching horror movies until my mid teens. That being said, I watched most of the classics in my late teens/early 20s. Watching Candyman at 16 only showed me how hot Tony Todd wasm
But...
At the same age, I watchedI, Madman. This movie is completely fucked up. It's a good movie, but it's definitely extremely twisted.
Stevey1001@reddit
Exactly the same for me. I was 9ish
S_A_R_K@reddit
The tales from the crypt tv show our babysitter made us watch. It was an episode where someone gets drowned and comes back to life. They keep shooting it and water leaks out while it keeps walking. Had nightmares for weeks
Flat-Flounder-9034@reddit
IT, Poltergeist, Critters
andybrwn@reddit
The Birds
badteach248@reddit
My father let 7 year old me watch poltergeist. Terrible decision on his part. I was shook for months.
StonedWheatThicc@reddit
Poltergeist. The skeletons in the swimming pool gave me nightmares for years. Now knowing all the deaths and crazy shit that happened behind the scenes, it makes even more sense why I found it extra creepy!
instant_ramen_chef@reddit
The toy clown attack scene made me hate clowns. My sister had some harlequin porcelain dolls. Those met an "accidental" end.
instant_ramen_chef@reddit
When I was 11ish, I was asleep on the couch at my grandma's house. My uncle cane in and decided to put a tape in... it was a little movie called "Phantasm". While asleep, I coukd hear the movie. My dreams started to follow what was being heard. If you've seen Phantasm, you know its a crazy plot. So I wake up in a jolt from that nightmare. I rub my eyes and see my uncle sitting watching a movie. I sit there and start to watch too. After a short period of me still being half asleep, I start to realize what im watching was my dream. Cue one 11yo panic attack. I dont recall the freak out. I just remember the terror of the realization. My uncle likes to tell the story. He says I started crying and flopping around. Said he and grandma calmed ne down by giving me juice. I've seen the movie a few times. Don't watch it high.
VVrayth@reddit
I saw the original Child's Play when it first premiered on cable, when I was 9. I was terrified to sleep in my room because I thought my toys were going to come to life and kill me.
International_Mail44@reddit
I watched one of those beheading videos and instantly regretted it. I thought it would be like the movies one swing of the sword, but they used a rusty dull knife instead. I was fucked up for days.
WheelLeast1873@reddit
Alien
bonborVIP@reddit
I legit can’t remember anything other than that the killers (I keep thinking clowns but I really have no clue), and one scene includes a shot of the breast skin, nipple included, hanging on the wall. Obviously removed off a body. Somehow I still get the vibe of being terrified of the movie. I was maybe 8-11 years old, somewhere in that range.
🤷🏼♀️
triggeron@reddit
The Gate
iheartbaconsalt@reddit
Cujo. I was 8. WOooo it got me.
WileyPap@reddit
One of my earliest memories is a movie marathon of Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Children of the Corn.
The memory stuck earlier than most because it was regularly refreshed by the nightmares I had for years after. Fore some reason it's not an unpleasant memory, my brain filed 'waking up movie-scared' under 'fun memories'.
osddelerious@reddit
For some reason, IT in 2017 freaked me out. I was 38. I tried to avoid the basement.
write_rite_right@reddit
Oh God The Shining. Still can't watch that movie.
taleofbenji@reddit
I saw a couple of minutes of The Shining and it was highly traumatizing, even though I didn't really see anything terrible happen. Just the overall mood was enough to give me nightmares.