Staff Participation: First Scary Movie Memories

In honor of Halloween this weekend, I asked the crew here at EB a couple questions surrounding their first encounter with the horror movie genre, and who scared the crap out of them as a youngster. Check out their responses below, and let us know in the comments what your first scary movie was and who kept you up at night in fear.

Nick, Associate Editor:

“I never really watched scary movies when I was little, but the first legitimate movie that kept me up at night was The Ring. The images on the video and the fly transferring from screen to reality really creeped me out, along with the nose bleeds. Around the same time was when I first saw The Exorcist, and when Regan becomes possessed and starts freaking out and spins her head…terrifying.”

Ana, Staff Writer:

“The first scary movie I saw is a toss up between Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. I was the sweet age of 6 when my father thought it was a good idea to let me watch both of these movies.

As a kid, Freddy Krueger scared the crap out of me. It also did not help that my father owned a Freddy mask and would purposely scare me as a kid. The idea that Freddy’s skin looked burned and he had knives for hands was scary enough. Also, the fact that Freddy could make your worst nightmare happen was scary. I was terrified of going to sleep. I was also afraid of the dark. I actually still am afraid of the dark. Jason was not too bad, he just walked really slowly with a machete. He seemed like a big doof with a hockey mask.”

John, Staff Writer

“Honestly I don’t really watch a lot of scary movies. I take them the same way I take my games, if there’s a monster stalking me I want to be able to shoot it right in the face (or use an axe if pushed). That being said, the first thing I remember scaring the absolute crap out of me was when I was a little kid and, believe it or not, it was on a kids show. You remember that old muppet-type show Eureka’s Castle? There was a halloween episode of that I watched when I was like 4 or 5 and it scared me so much I still remember it now. I don’t even know what it was, I even rewatched the episode on YouTube the other day and there’s nothing there that’s exteme for a kids show, but it full on freaked me out. I think maybe it was just the first time I’d seen things like the “What are you doing? Run!” trope and my imagination did the rest of the work for the puppeteers.

Scary movies in general I still don’t really get, not that I don’t find them scary (I watched The Grudge with my cousin and didn’t sleep for like a week) just I’ve never found that enjoyable really. As I say, give me a weapon and a one liner any day!”

Matt, Editor-in-Chief:

“First movie I remember being scared of was Ghoulies:

The character that scared me were those damn dogs at the end in Ghostbusters, believe it or not. Also the Xeno from Alien. I was way too young to watch films like Alien, and even though Ghostbuster is a comedy when I watched it, I was still scared of the damn dogs. I credit most of this to the fact that I lived in an isolated part of the house as a kid, so I was super scared of the dark and always thought an Alien or Ghostbuster dog was going to come into my room and eat me.”

Justin, Associate Editor:

“My first scary movie was Scream, but the movie that scared me was The Descent, because it plays on my overwhelming fear of claustrophobia and being trapped. For books, the scariest is Stephen King’s anthology All Dark, No Stars. There is minimal supernatural elements which makes it even more frightening. Scariest things to me play off of my real fears and not goblins or ghouls.”

Amanda Russell, Staff Writer:

“The scariest movie I’ve ever seen (probably) is Poltergeist. The original, not that lame 2015 crap. I first saw the movie when I was about 7 or 8, so obviously that scared the literal sh*t out of me. I couldn’t watch TV alone for almost a year because of obvious reasons. There was one scene in particular that I can still remember, and that’s when Carol Anne was first taken from the poltergeist. Everyone else in the house is caught up in their own problems, then the girl’s closet door opens, and everything starts getting sucked up into it. Then, eventually, she’s pulled from her bed by this ominous white light, and gets trapped in another realm. Thus commencing the rescuing of her. Besides that creepy medium woman, that scene still gets to me this day. Call it cheesy, but I find it terrifying.”

Keith, Associate Editor:

“Perhaps the first scary movie that I saw was Poltergeist. I don’t remember seeing it, and really only know this story because it’s one of those embarrassing tales that my mom likes to trot out at family dinners and other special occasions (like when she first met my girlfriend). Apparently the Sesame Street VHS that I had been watching ended, and the TV kicked over to broadcast, where Poltergeist was playing. From what I gather, four-year-old me didn’t like that so much and my mom found me cowering under the coffee table an hour into the film.

A character that I can remember terrifying me as a child, though, is Freddy Krueger. Now, I as a young child I had never seen A Nightmare on Elm Street. After that incident with Poltergeist, my parents kept me pretty far away from horror films until I was good and ready to delve back in; however, they couldn’t keep me from coming into contact with this nightmare stalker. My older cousin had a Freddy Krueger stuffed doll that hung out in his bedroom, and one day while we were visiting I unwittingly went into his room to play Super Nintendo with him. Instead of Mario, I was faced with a very different red-shirted and capped fellow, and ran screaming from the room. The doll bothered me so much that I was inconsolable until my uncle promised me that he had thrown it out the window (he hadn’t, the lying jerk, only stowed it away in the closet). This event inspired years of being afraid of Freddy Krueger, until one day I happened upon The Last Nightmare: Freddy’s Dead on TV. Fortunately, by this time Krueger had moved away from his once horrifying self in favor of the campy and goofy villain that he eventually became, and suddenly I wasn’t afraid any more.

I did, of course, finally watch A Nightmare on Elm Street, and it continues to be the pinnacle of 80s horror in my mind, and in retrospect I can certainly say that my childhood fear of someone like Freddy Krueger was more than justified.”

Happy Halloween from Entertainment Buddha!

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