Scariest. Movie. Ever.

[veronicamars]

Basically any horror movie made in the 70s. The Hills Have Eyes freaked me out like no other. The Gates of Hell and Dr. Butcher also send me.

[mrsbootsie]

Coneycat said:

The Changeling. George C Scott and a sad, angry ghost. A friend of mine hyped this movie to me for fifteen years as the scariest movie ever and I figured that nothing could live up to that hype. Then I watched the video on a wee little tv and was scared speechless by it. Especially after the friend who made me watch the thing went home and left me alone in a basement apartment. Aah!

Coneycat: the red ball!! *shudder* One of the truly scary films of all time.

I need to add a few more....
CrawlSpace Klaus Kinski as your landlord, need I say more?
Alien and Aliens, freaked me out then and now.

And more recently The Grudge. I know, I know, but horror movies rarely make me scream, out loud in a full theater, and whimper things like "I don't want to see anymore/I want to go home" while covering my eyes. I'm not a wuss, and I love to scare myself, but damn, this movie scared me to death!

[veronicamars]

Psycho-the whole film is disturbing.

[Smilla]

Basically any horror movie made in the 70s.

Oh, yes, I feel you there. What is it about the 70s? That was a pretty creepy decade overall.

[vacationland]

What is it about the 70s? That was a pretty creepy decade overall.

Truer words were never spoken, my friend. The '70s were just inherently creepy. Worse, they weren't just creepy in retrospect, as one might think from seeing the pop culture artifacts of the time...nope, they were creepy in real time.

Seriously, those of us who were there knew there was something just...wrong...lurking under the shiny, happy, polyester surface. From the early, Stepford Wife-y years to the drugged-up mid-decade (where junior high kids avidly swapped dog-eared copies of Carrie and Audrey Rose and crappy V.C. Andrews incest-fests), to the coked-out, discofied, Halloween-meets-Amityville Horror-and-has-a-Damien-the-Omen-child-together-on-Friday the 13th end of it. Bleh.

For me, the scariest horror films were the ones I saw when I was younger, less jaded (or aware of special effects, anyway!), and more vulnerable. I always have a certain distance from the subject (no suspension of disbelief) as an adult, but as a teenager? I was scared out of my frickin' mind when I watched Psycho on TV one night when I was babysitting in jr. high. And I could barely breathe during a showing of When a Stranger Calls--the first, best example of the now-tired "...the killer on the phone with you is in the house with you right now!" cliche...it was new back then and scary as hell! The whole theater (filled with teenage babysitters and their dates) gasped and shrieked. Another one that freaked me out back then? Magic, with Anthony Hopkins and Fats, the creepiest ventriloquist's dummy EVER. I still shudder thinking about it, even though...yeah, I know, it's a dummy. Trust me, it was scary!

The last movie to really scare the crap out of me was Silence of the Lambs. I had a few shivery moments during The Sixth Sense but it wasn't the creeped-out, hold-your-breath fright of my younger days. The last time I held my breath during a movie was during that night-vision goggles scene in Lambs. Eeeeeee, creeeeepy!

[ernestine]

Ooooh yes! When a Stranger Calls! That movie scared me to death, and then I had a stupid sister who used to crank call me when I was babysitting just to freak me out further. Really scary movie.

[angel17987]

"The Ring" absolutley terrified me. I couldn't sleep for seven days because I was convinced that I was going to die and on the seventh day after I saw it I was on pins and needles. It seriously traumatized me and I was 19 years old.

[Deleted]

What is it about the 70s? That was a pretty creepy decade overall.

I don't know if the atmosphere caused the serial killers, or if the serial killers caused the atmosphere, but from the Tate-LaBianca murders in August of '69 until the very early eighties, there was a huge influx of serial killers. I'm sure the music didn't help. "There's a killer on the road/His brain is squirming like a toad..."

[goggle]

I don't think it's supposed to be scary at all, but I couldn't sleep after watching Donnie Darko. Frank is the scariest thing ever.

[vacationland]

Yes indeedy...the '70s certainly heralded the rise of the celebrity serial killer. There had been a few before (Boston Strangler, Ed Gein*) but the '70s gave us a particularly evil group, including:

Ted Bundy (handsome serial killer next door)
John Wayne Gacy (an EVIL BIRTHDAY PARTY CLOWN)
The Hillside Stranglers (California serial killing duo)
BTK (though he was more of a regionally famous killer)

Plus '70s serial-killer Superstar David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz. His murders were nightly news all summer in '77...even in backwaters hundreds of miles from NYC. We were all shocked when he turned out to be a nebbishy postal worker. I don't know what we were expecting--a satanic-lookin' freak who actually did take orders from a dog, perhaps?


*without Ed Gein, there would be no Leatherface/Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Norman Bates/Psycho, or "Buffalo Bill"/Jamie Gumb in Silence of the Lambs. Dude did sick things with dead bodies and skin after he killed 'em.