Conquer Club

Overall I think this is an interesting topic since everybody has their own idiosyncratic fears. I am rarely scared by by horror films in general, but one that has always gotten me is Steven Kings Rose Red. I think its a combination of A.) Seeing it for the first time when I was 10 and thinking my house would attack me for a few weeks, and B.) It's not an actual person/monster causing all the ruckus, but a house itself, which is supposed to be a shelter/safe haven.

Which horror film manages to invoke the most fear into your psyche?

Not technically a movie by my family has a board game called Nightmare which has an accompanying video cassette (it was the 90s). The video itself was pretty freaky (to a 6 year old), but I literally could not be in the same room when the advertisement when the game's sequel, Atmosfear, came on.

And you want to know how much it's affected me? I felt the need to look behind me every five seconds while searching for the video.

The original "Woman in Black" scared the beejesus out of me when I was a kid (for those that haven't seen it it's 45 minutes of build-up for one big scare then about 30 minutes of wind-down ending with another slighly smaller creepy-as-shit moment) - haven't watched the remake with Harry potter in it though.

Also got creeped out as a kid by an old Hammer Horror - think it was called "Murder Express" or something about a monster with glowing red eyes killing people on a train, but that was because I'd just inherited the TV from downstairs when my folks bought a new one and it was remote control, and when it sat on standby it had 2 red LEDs lit up just below the screen - couldn't sleep that night til I got up and turned it off completely.

Don't really get scared by modern horrors, though I did do an all day zombie film marathon not that long ago and then went outside at 4am for a ciggie when the world was quiet, I smoked fairly fast and got back inside quick as I could because the silence was eery as hell.

It's the movies that can plant an idea or an image in your head that you can't get rid of. Often times they'll create a legend right along with the image. Movies like Nightmare on Elm Street, Pumpkinhead, Nosferatu, Metropolis, Candyman, the Blair Witch Project, these have all created accompanying legends that scare you by daring yourself yourself to test the legend long after you've seen the films. Great Horror really, IMHO, has been absent from film for a while now in favor of gorrer or stupid teen movies. There hasn't been a movie that makes me afraid to go to sleep, or look into a mirror.



There's this true story, a genuinely true story, about the Goodbye Man. In the 1950s he was an orphan living in a halfway home. He had no family, and no prospects of adoption because of a condition known as albinism. He grew up angry and disenfranchised with people as a whole species, as you could expect from a poor orphaned albino child. One day in his early teens he set his own room on fire trying to fake his own death, and then he hopped a railroad car out of town. He was caught, and brought back to the halfway home, where he escaped again just days later. This time, he got away for a very long time indeed. Growing older and wiser while riding the rails, he worked as a traveling laborer, and became well known on the work circuit because of his skin color. But he also picked up an unusually astute interest in the occult and dark magic. He stopped in the libraries of the towns he worked in and borrowed many books on the subject, but he was never known for stealing a book. In fact, despite the rough up-bringing, he was known as a very decent fellow.
In the late 1960s when he was only in his 20's he abducted and ritualistically killed a boy. He saved the boy's organs, and dumped his body in a rail yard where he knew it would be found. To him, it was wrong to hide the body, because he didn't want the boy's parents to spend their lives worrying about where he was. If you ask me, it would have been better to never know. The Goodbye Man (so named because Goodbye cars were his favorite-sounding cars to ride) used the boy's dried and preserved organs to make a doll, a doll that he claimed allowed him to communicate with the spirit world. With his psychic link to the spirit world secure, he began to speak to devils. He did not regard these devils as actually evil, only as indifferent creatures who had wisdom he needed. Finally having a source for the knowledge he wanted, wisdom that simple library books could not provide, he sought to apply it.
He killed more children. He enlarged his doll with their organs. He was not afraid to tell other traveling laborers about his doll, or it's purpose, and that marked him as a freak among the rambling workers. Yet nobody knew what the doll was actually made of until after just before his death. Many people to this very day claim to have seen the dry-fruity looking doll themselves. But the police never found it.
Nobody knows exactly how many people the Goodbye Man killed. What we do know is that he killed at least four children, and two rail-hoping hobos before he was killed himself. There came a night when he asked the Old Timer (permanent resident of a Jungle) if he could sit at the Jungle Fire. The Old Timer was rightly afraid of the Goodbye Man, and this VooDoo doll that he spoke to when he was alone, so he said yes. There were two other Migrants boiling eggs over the fire, and they were not afraid of the spooky albino. They began to taunt the Goodbye Man. And I say that they began to taunt him because as soon as they had uttered a few insults, the Goodbye Man pulled out a knife and stabbed them both until they were dead. He stabbed them repeatedly and ruthlessly. The Old Timer witnessed the murders, but was too paralyzed with fear to intervene. His own declaration to the police was thought to be worthless, such was the amount of fear he felt. But that was later, and the murders are first.
After killing the two migrants by the Jungle Fire, the Goodbye Man performed a cutting ritual on their corpses. When he had finished he spoke some words over their corpses and turned to the Old Timer. The Goodbye Man spoke with him calmly and told him that he had to go to the police, to tell them what happened. He confessed to killing four children to satisfy Demons and to finish his doll, and he confessed to killing the two Migrants not because of their insults, but for his final ritual. He then asked for the Old Timer's diary book, and upon having it delivered he threw into the fire. As it burned, he told the Old Timer a very weird thing. He said "don't ever think about what happened tonight, and don't ever think about me, or I'll come and find you. My spell is complete and I don't have to hurt anyone again, I can just get on a Goodbye Car and ride the tracks forever. That's what I want. But if someone keeps thinking on me and what I've done then my soul will be bound to come and find them, at least, so long as my doll remains behind. Don't hold on to any thoughts of this anymore. Thoughts of me are the things that may bind me to you."
At this, he shoved off the Old Timer, who ran and ran until he reached the police station. What had happened would make no sense to a veteran police officer, and the story coming from a mad-with-fear Hobo only served to make the story less believable. The Old Timer rambled about a shape-shifting albino Demon in his Jungle! As a simple caution a junior police officer went with him to his Jungle. That's where they found the mutilated and unrecognizable drifters, but they didn't find the Goodbye Man.

They caught up with him in the night at another railroad stop in a simple sweep. He attempted to flee and was shot trying to swim across a river by some police on a railway bridge. His body was fished off of a rock the next morning, but his doll was never found. The Old Timer himself was considered mad with hysteria by the police, so his testimony wasn't used. He was set free and was found dead a few weeks later, tied to the top of a Goodbye rail car. The skin on his back had been flayed off, and his feet were terribly burned. The terrible story he told before he died stayed with the junior police officer however, and that is the version of the story that I tell you.

I agree with the absentness of most good horror recently, but I saw Sinister recently and it was pretty great for today's standards.

As for old movies: the 90's remake of House on Haunted Hill always got me when I was young along with Candyman for the reasons that JB stated. Nice analysis.

BMO

The ol' Hitchcock classic 'The Birds' terrifies me personally reflecting my phobia.I can barely look when Tippi Hedren is being attacked by a flock of them..'shivers.'

The Evil Dead

this movie scares the shit out of you,
i think i was 16 when i was watching it with a friend,
he knew the movie, and when things got rough , he just left the room,
leaving me behind in the dark room ,
i was scared to leave the room,
and paralyzed after

AslanTheKing wrote:The Evil Dead

this movie scares the shit out of you,
i think i was 16 when i was watching it with a friend,
he knew the movie, and when things got rough , he just left the room,
leaving me behind in the dark room ,
i was scared to leave the room,
and paralyzed after

Horror films only; no comedies please.

ikiru

The Invasion with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig scared me. I was watching it on tv and couldn't wait for the commercials to get some relief from the scare. I couldn't sleep for hours and I woke up screaming. I was 22. Scariest shit ever.

This is why the second amendment is so important. When the government comes for you, you need the ability to defend yourself.

The Mothman Prophecies.
I usually find horror movies hilarious, but that one creeped me right out.

Haggis_McMutton wrote:ikiru

Haggis wins this topic. Ikiru is one of the few dozen of films I own.


--Andy

THE WEDDING PLANNER

pimpdave wrote:THE WEDDING PLANNER

I'll see that and I'll raise you the Bratz movie.

As an 8 or 9 year-old, Child's Play scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

Sometimes, when I get up to take a piss in the middle of the night, I will have flashbacks of Paranormal Activity.

Halloween did it for me. For months after seeing it, I was lookin' around every corner of my paper route to make sure the boogeyman wasn't lurking there.

Spoilers
Oh ya, Paranormal Activity was an instant classic, and yet I know so many people who got bored with it and didn't finish it. That's the thing with an American audience, they're stupid. Lots and more people disliked the camera style, and so they just lost interest in the film before the crazy sh*t happened.
To me, this was another horror film that got the idea right. In this movie you don't see any monsters, no unstoppable killers,... you just feel something is wrong... And the next thing you know you're being drug out of your bed by an invisible demon. That's a fantastic idea to terrify your audience with, because what person hasn't had a creepy feeling in a dark room? Now every time you get an eerie feeling you're going to think about that invisible monster dragging you to hell. That's great.

The first time that I ever watched the Evil Dead I remember so freakishly watching that possessed woman crawl over the ceiling and hide in the upper corner. Meanwhile Ash looked for her hiding behind furniture and such in that big open room. You could see her crouched up there, waiting, but Ash was clueless as to where she could be, and it created this terrible tension that I can still feel. Ugluglglg creepy.



Ikiru was scary?

I'm not ashamed to say that the other night I watched The House at the end of the Street and enjoyed the cliche scary moments.

Drag me to Hell is amazing combination of horror and fun.

I've never been a fan of horror movies really. I just picked up The HOuse at the end of the Street to see Jennifer Lawrence.

I can't think of a movie that's ever really scared me. The X-Files intro is about the closest thing I can think of. Creepy music.

BigBallinStalin wrote:

AslanTheKing wrote:The Evil Dead

this movie scares the shit out of you,
i think i was 16 when i was watching it with a friend,
he knew the movie, and when things got rough , he just left the room,
leaving me behind in the dark room ,
i was scared to leave the room,
and paralyzed after

Horror films only; no comedies please.

It's a homedy movie.

-TG

Juan_Bottom wrote:Ikiru was scary?

Guess it depends on the definition of scary.
Not scary in the "aahh it's a decapitated head" way, but scary in the "that actually represents the life of many people and it mind end up being mine as well" way.

Not sure if Ikiru was the best example of this, but it's the closest one I could think of. If we were allowed to put in books, I'd say The Tartar Steppe. That one really brings on the existential despair for me.

Psycho.
Four decades after I saw it I still sometimes have to swing the shower curtain back to check. Granted, sometimes my imagination worries about something in a mask (Halloween-like) but it's still the old "crazy dude swings knife at the vulnerable" that began with Psycho.

stahrgazer wrote:Psycho.
Four decades after I saw it I still sometimes have to swing the shower curtain back to check. Granted, sometimes my imagination worries about something in a mask (Halloween-like) but it's still the old "crazy dude swings knife at the vulnerable" that began with Psycho.

All this time I have imagined you as a supple, nubile 17 year old and I was just waiting until you turned 18 to proclaim my desire.

DoomYoshi wrote:

stahrgazer wrote:Psycho.
Four decades after I saw it I still sometimes have to swing the shower curtain back to check. Granted, sometimes my imagination worries about something in a mask (Halloween-like) but it's still the old "crazy dude swings knife at the vulnerable" that began with Psycho.

All this time I have imagined you as a supple, nubile 17 year old and I was just waiting until you turned 18 to proclaim my desire.

Do you live in a hotel and sometimes dress as your mother?