Thursday, June 10, 2010
What freaked you out as a kid and still freaks you out?
So Scary Manilow and I were discussing video box art that freaked us out as kids. His was WATCH ME WHILE I KILL and my seminole freak out was 2000 MANIACS. Oh, the blood! I decided, after much wine with my gay, that that would make a nice blog post. What do you guys think? What was the worst video box art for you? What freaked you out the most? What unspeakable things laid in that VHS tape that got your pulse racing? Did you ever watch the movie? Were you disappointed? Did it live up to it's expectations? Sorry, I teach school - I have to ask constant questions. This was the one that did it for me -
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Probably the cover that made me the most uncomfortable was the one for Deliverance, and that was after actually seeing the film up too late one night when I was eight. That hand coming out of the river! My aversion to camping was solidified with that one image!
ReplyDeleteThe other one that freaked me out was the cover to The Last House on the Left, specifically because there was a big warning that they "refuse to show any images from the film because they were so extreme" (or something along those lines), and I remember walking past it again and again making the exact same face Pee-Wee Herman makes when walking by the snakes in the pet store. I don't know if it lived up to expectations by the time I saw it at sixteen -- it wasn't *scary*, exactly, but it certainly confused the hell out of me, and I remember thinking "Why would anybody want to make a movie like this? Why am I *watching* a movie like this?". Still thinking about that one.
i have yet to see a movie that really freaked me out, altho as a 6 y/o i saw JAWS in the cinema and that put me off water for a while. theses days, the only thing that frightens the fuck out of me are tipper gore, televangelists, west memphis, and oprah's studio audience. that's some scary ass shit...
ReplyDeleteA fantastic idea for a post. I distinctly remember being absolutely terrified by the cover of a straight-to-video movie called "Ticks" when passing it in the video store and also the Topps Trading Card poster for "Gremlins 2: The New Batch." Possibly two of the least frightening films of all time.
ReplyDeleteI was a wimp.
Well I'm sure that would have freaked me out as a kid as well.
ReplyDelete@db. Your poor eight year old self! That hand coming out of the water - too freaky!
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, those 'too graphic to show images' got me all the time. I think my video store had a copy of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE like that. You know I've never brought myself to watch that one? I have a copy and I've never watched it.
@stonerphonic. JAWS is a good one, too. I think it's probably one of the most resounding scary movies of all time.
@Adam. I laughed out loud when I read your comment! The Topps trading card poster for Gremlins 2? Too funny. I have a copy of TICKS around here somewhere - isn't Alfonso Riberio in that shit? j
@Chuck. I actually tracked down that specific copy of 2000 MANIACS cos that was the one in my video store as a kid. I absolutely had to have it - it brings back such god memories. Or bad ones, but in a good way :)
Phantasm. I don't know why, but I remember seeing it in the video store and it keep freaking me out. It seems like a bad choice but I was to scared to watch it.
ReplyDeleteVHS tapes aside - I have to mention a TV movie. Brian Clemens' THRILLER was a British series from the early 70s, each episode is a 70 minute stand alone TV movie. In 1977, Swedish television aired an episode called I'M THE GIRL HE WANTS TO KILL. I was nine and it scared the shit out of me. But not only me - it freaked EVERYBODY out. Kids and adults. People still talk about it. "Remember that thriller 35 years ago? About the psycho stalking a woman in an office building?"
ReplyDeleteRecently, somebody uploaded that show on YouTube (search for the title). I watched it. It was...
...pretty bad.
Hands down The Company of Wolves. A wolf's snout coming out of some dudes mouth? Yowza!
ReplyDeleteFinally watched the film for the first time a few months back. Some interesting scenes but on the whole, pretty boring.
@Pidde. Wow, that sounds kinda of like the same experience a bunch of us had with DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, a really twisted, but by now hilarious, made for TV movie from the seventies. I think I reviewed it here on the site.
ReplyDelete@Cortez. Yep, that's a good one too! GOTHIC always freaked me out as well - that man creature posed over the bed of the dead (?) woman all nakey? I still never saw that one either. Looked way too taboo, ya know!
Looking this list over, and reflecting on some of the other VHS covers that ruined my childhood (and inspired my adulthood!), I realize that we all must have grown up in towns with AWESOME video stores. What video store would carry titles like these nowadays?
ReplyDelete@Scary. I know! Excellent point. I grew up in a small suburban town outside Richmond, VA, about forty five minutes from the 'city' as it were and my local video store was part of the chain Movie Time Video. But they had all this shit! I actually wound up working there along with my brother in high school and when the store closed, I took most of the horror section with me. It was the beginning of my ever-growing collection.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't have video stores yet when I was a kid, but one time I was with my mother while she was buying a paper at a corner news stand in Atlantic City. There was one of those lurid detective mags displayed, and the cover had a color illustration of this buxom woman holding an axe, stnading over this terrified looking shirtless guy with his bound hands resting on a tree stump. I asked my mom why she was doing this, and my mom said, "she caught him playing with his bird." I was probably 6 or 7 at the time. Looking back, I think the fact that Mom would say that is way scarier than the image.
ReplyDelete