Asklemmy

I wasn't too young but I am Legend left me depressed for days. I even read the book because I needed to process it. I still have flashbacks to will Smith talking along with Shrek. I should probably go watch it again now that I'm older and see if it hits differently. It was not the zombies but the deep deep loneliness that got me.

There's a shitty horror flick called The Hand from the early eighties. Michael Caine is in it, hamming it for the paycheck I suppose but still kinda cool even if the movie is pretty bad. Anyway, there's a terrible effects shot of the titular crawling hand pushing its way through the plumbing in a shower, and I still sometimes have nightmares of that scene decades later. 5 year old me was not ready.

So...yeah, I was watching Tales from the Crypt when I was like 9.

A Nightmare on Elm Street.

I was 8, my Mom said I wasn't allowed to watch it. I watched it at a friend's house.

I was so sure that night that Freddy was going to grab me through the bed like he did to Johnny Depp that I went to my Mom in her room and admitted to her that I watched it then promptly vomited on her due to the accumulated fear.

Grave of the Fireflies. I was around 24 years old.

Kids, the movie from the mid 90s where a New York teen is trying to bang virgins and spreading HIV. Freaked me out.

Arachnophobia

"Akira" when I was 10-ish. Wanted to check what this anime thing was about, was not prepared for nuclear blasts, and people becoming giant body-horror amoebas. Still, it was a good intro into anime, along with Dominion Tank Police (another hilariously not-for-10-year-olds number). And set the bar way too high for most other ones I watched later.

Edward Scissorhands.

Don't know why. And I didn't even see it for that long, but something about the makeup, music, general ambiance, the scene when he's offered normal hands, it affected my child self profoundly. To this day, I can't watch the movie without feeling very anxious. My partner has tried to watch it with me a couple of times and I just can't.

This is gunna sound stupid, but "Tales from the Hood." At the end of that movie, where you learned all the guys are already dead, in hell and the guy telling the stories is satan just scared the absolute shit outta me.

American History X. Curb stomping was a lot for 13 year old me to process.

Final destination

Saw

Bridge to terrabithia

Wasn't really to young but didn't know what to expect and got emotionally crushed by accident. Just heard it was a good movie and put it on one evening.

Tons of horror movies.

My friend found a bunch of vhs tapes that his dad hid, and we would watch them together. We were both around 8 or 9, and we watched various porn tapes, and stuff like Heavy Metal and other R rated stuff. The stuff that really gave a lasting impression in my mind's eye though was a collection of actual deaths caught on tape called "Faces of Death" and a movie called "Pink Flamingos". Ill always remember aligators ripping a paraglider apart, and the chicken scene from pink flamingos. I rematched it when I was older and it didn't seem as bad as I remembered, but it's not a great scene to have stuck in your head...

Now I specialize in making horror illustrations lol.

Event Horizon. I saw the first half as part of the second half of a double feature at the drive-in theater with my family. I think Men in Black was the first feature. I was 9 when I saw that topless dead woman scene. It's such an underrated movie.

The Exorcist. I was about 8 years old. It was on tv one Saturday night. At church the next morning I had a bunch of questions and needed some consoling.

Nothing But Trouble

Not exactly a movie, but a cartoon series.

It was that episode of Power Puff Girls where they went to a dystopic future and everything was a hellscape dominated by Him. That episode made me think about my mortality and future regrets.

A hokey 80s movie called "The Guardian". Its not scary at all but there was a tree with a face on it, and it hit me at the right age and scared the bejesus out of me for some reason. I don't think I understood the plot at the time, just scary tree face.

Threads, not a good movie for 5 year olds.

The trailer for Aliens was my introduction to the notion that maybe monsters could get through locked doors!

As an adult, it's one of my all-time favourites.

The Mangler. It's a B horror movie and some of the graphics, which I won't spoil, were more than my 7 year old brain could reconcile.

Saving private Ryan at ten years old.

Jurassic Park 3 when I was 9 for a friend's birthday. I had nightmares about dinosaurs for weeks. I'm not really haunted by it any more but the scene where the skeleton in the parachute swings out of the tree is seared into my brain.

E. T.

I don't care that it was rated P. G., they killed my friend and I was just as sad as Elliot. The tubes and the quarantine were absolutely terrifying to me as a child and even seeing clips nowadays gives sends a shiver down my spine. Just sadness and fear.