Saturday, October 25, 2008

Movies that scared skid marks into my underwear.




Alligator, 1980.


Halloween is right around the corner and that got me a thinkin' about some scary movies I viewed as a child. Now I can't recall if I actually saw Alligator in the theater ( I would have only been 4 years old), or if I witnessed the terrifying 36 foot long beast up close in the comfort of my own home. Regardless, this movie scared the living daylights out of me as a tiny. One of the three or four films that gave me relentless nightmares for what seemed like years.

The film is a bout a baby alligator that was purchased at a Florida tourist trap. The family returns home to Chicago and flushes the little gator buddy down the toilet. 12 years go by as the gator feeds on animal carcasses loaded with an experimental growth hormone. The beast grows to be 36 feet long and terrorizes the Chicago sewers. The movie stars Robert Forester, and he's pretty much a bad ass.




When a Stranger Calls, 1979.

Now this one I did see in the theater, and frankly, I don't know what in the hell my Mom was thinking. This film features the classic urban legend of the babysitter and the killer upstairs. The babysitter in this case (a very obnoxious Carol Kane) receives haunting phone calls from a man that repeatedly asks her the question "have you checked the children?". Fuck.

The police trace the phone conversation to inside the house, and just as the young babysitter tries to escape, she sees the shadow of the killer at the top of the stairs. She attempts to run out the door and is met by the police chief. The children are of course dead, and the killer is sent to a insane asylum. Fast forward seven years and the roller coaster of horror starts all over again. Scary shit man.



The Haunting, 1963.

This is one of my Dad's all time favorites, and I actually watched it with him when he rented it on beta max when I was a kid. Thanks for the memories dad, and the blood curdling nightmares that followed. Sheesh.

During an investigation of the paranormal, Dr. Markway believes proof of the supernatural can be found at the old Hill House mansion. One of the characters, Eleanor, becomes the focus of the evil tricks of the haunted house. She lusts for the attention that the house affords her and she is drawn deeper and deeper by its sinister forces.

Got any movies to add to the mix? Let's hear about the scariest films of your childhood.

3 comments:

theryanburk said...

I remember being particularly terrified by Stephen King's Silver Bullet. But I don't think anything beats my all-time favorite slasher flick, the first Halloween (1978). Holy shit is that scary.

Casey Brewer said...

Oh yeah, that Halloween would make my list for sure. I was Michael Myers for Halloween a couple of times. The wheel chair was rad in Silver Bullet, even if it was pretty light on the scares.

theryanburk said...

How that werewolf couldn't manage to kill a kid in a wheelchair is beyond me.