Posted on 10/28/2011 6:27:39 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
Okay, we are coming into Halloween Weekend leading into Monday. I expect a whole bunch of horror movies on the tube during the next few days. So my question to you is what is the SCARIEST movie you ever saw and why?
I'll lead off by telling you the scariest movie I've seen in the past few years. I found it to be even scarier than "The Exorcist." In this case it was a movie I saw on the tube about a week ago called "The Last Exorcist." It was filmed as if it were a documentary following a Louisiana Preacher by the name of Cotton Marcus who is something of a con artist. He doesn't really believe in possession by the Devil but he will perform exorcisms because he claims the fraud will actually make people feel better. Of course, he also collects money for his phony exorcisms.
The documentary style film starts off low key but ends up with a truly frightening ending that I won't spoil by giving it away. However, the thing that scared me the most is that the 14 year-old girl, Nell Sweetzer, who was supposedly possessed by the Devil draws a picture of the cameraman getting his head chopped off. The cameraman tells the preacher that he doesn't feel comfortable being around a girl who drew such a picture of him but the preacher tries to sooth the camera guy by playing down the idea that a mere girl could harm him. From that point on, you just KNOW that the cameraman had better SPLIT that scene immediately. What really made it scary is the way the girl when demonically possessed kept focusing in her eyes on the cameraman...sometimes with a wicked smile. That really creeped me out. I have to admit that I had a hard time getting to sleep after watching this flick.
I kept expecting something insightful from Silence of the Lambs... Just B-grade crap with A-List talent.
There are some more realistic movies that disturb me more than scare me....
The original Scanners flick, nothing else is even close.
Now, I’d pay $13 to see that! Or $18 to see that in 3D! :-)
As a child, “Invaders from Mars” (the original). It gave me nightmares for years...
I thought you meant Obama when you typed Bambi.
The scariest imaginable movie would most likely be “I Was a Teenage Earl Warren”—This really was a movie, made by Occidental College students in 1971. However, the title scared me away.
I saw The Blob when I was just a little guy......couldn’t sit on the pot for weeks, thinking about the monster coming up from the plumbing.
Oh yeah.
For me it was “The Ring”.
If that was the purpose, it didn't work with me when I saw it in 1957. However, when I saw it again for the first time in more than half a century, it made me angry. Disney's version of Bambi heavily distorted and dumbed down Felix Salten's original story. I recommend that before you see the movie, read the book--and make sure you read the translation by Whittaker Chambers--yes, that Whittaker Chambers!
The Exorcist when I was eleven years old. For a couple of weeks, I did not look forward to bedtime. Those nightmares were no fun.
The Blair Witch Project creeped me out, especially at the end. Also, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original) and The Others. It seems funny now but when I saw the original Friday 13th in high school, the last scene where Jason comes out of the water made me almost have a heart attack. I slept in my parents room, on the floor, for a couple of days after that one.
BTW, I read in an interview that the reason people looked so terrified during the chest-burster scene was because Ridley Scott didn't tell anybody that something was going to burst out of John Hurt's chest, and that people would be splattered with (movie) blood!
Mark
Yep, that is the one I saw when I was eleven. Watched it with my older brother. So scared I could not stop watching even the commercials. It was brutal.
PJ, I saw that movie, “The Last Exorcist.” It was creepy. Another good documentary style movie is “Death of a Ghost Hunter.” It was very scary.
Yep!
I had a blessed childhood. In the late 1970s, at great expense, my parents bought a VCR and my mom, a huge horror film buff, had no problems letting me stay up late and watch the stacks of videos she'd rent. Many of these 70s films hold a special place in my heart for scaring the crap outta me as a child. Phantasm is one of them.
Fast forward 20+ years later and I'm a grown man spending some time with my younger teenage cousins. I rent Phantasm promising them a good scare. Instead, they laughed throughout the film, regarding it as one of the stupidest movies they'd ever seen. Sadly, I agreed with them.
Like so many of these films, it just didn't hold up over time. Silly acting, pacing and music. I guess it should've not been revisited as an adult and better left to terrified childhood memories.
I still think Rosemary’s Baby is the scariest... with The Exorcist a close second.
Mark
The Blob by the Five Blobs (1958)
This was one of the first chart successes of Hal David and Burt Bacharach.
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