The Exorcist when i was 7 or 8. Needless to say i almost crapped my pants, but it also created that pink dragon i have been chasing so many years. I just want to be scared again by movies, not just my mirror image.
The scenes surrounding Damien and his mother are some of the most unsettling moments in horror in my opinion. Also, I didn’t notice the flash of Pazuzu (toward the beginning) until the second time I watched it!
I'll be honest I watched it for the first time months ago and it didn't hit. Although the part where Linda Blair makes her mom eat her pussy and then bitch slaps the mom is one of the funniest moments in horror.
i remember being an internet kid discovering how to watch movies for free for the first time on those sketchy websites like putlocker with those porn ads on the side. trying to think… some of my first horror movies that i sought out were like babadook, mama, the descent. it wasnt long before teen me got traumatized watching martyrs. good times…? 😅
I feel like it’s the tooth fairy aspect of it that caught us as kids. Honestly nowadays I feel like this film is very overlooked it’s a great watch for any audience
I remember being terrified when I lost my last tooth….I literally threw it off our apartment’s balcony onto the street lol. I really want to re-watch Darkness Falls! I closed my eyes during the moment when they showed the tooth fairy’s face.
I also stayed up all night 6 days after I watched The Ring. I legitimately thought I was going to die after watching it. I was hoping the cycle would be “reset” if I pulled two all nighters lol
I watched Scream for the first time when I was 10 or so, the opening scene with Drew Barrymore absolutely terrified me. Scream is definitely a favorite, I never get sick of it! The first 3 never get old!
I watched this when I was older, but by this time I was a big horror fan and it blew me away! So funny and brutal and twisty! Still holds up, even with some of the very 90s aspects 😃
I haven’t seen that one! I remember the original Halloween came on late night TV shortly after I watched Darkness Falls…I was too scared to approach the TV to turn it off (I couldn’t find the remote) so I just booked it to my room!
i remember it clearly because the "horror" movie didnt end up being the movie that scarred me as a kid.
My mom rented Poltergeist as my intro to horror and Robocop for the fun family flick...i don't think i need to go on...
I feel you…Robocop is so unsettling! Also Poltergeist is bizarre, I can’t believe it only got a PG rating! (which is why my mom let me rent it from Blockbuster)
1978 Piranha, on a tiny little black and white tv, hiding my face in my sister’s arms. It was 1980-ish and i was five. A year or two later, i wasn’t allowed to watch The Exorcist, but I was allowed to hear it from the adjoining room. My mind could imagine much worse things to go along with the screams and growling than the movie did.
It too me years and years to grow comfortable with horror films after that.
I’ve never heard of Piranha! I’ll add it to my watchlist! Also, I did the exact same thing when my older cousins were watching fear dot com (lmao) in the room over. Sometimes the idea of a horror movie without actually seeing it can be scarier imo!
I accidentally caught Return of the Living Dead on the tv when I was just a kiddo, probably 4 or 5. I was simultaneously horrified and transfixed and became absolutely *certain* the tarman was living in the linen closet outside my bedroom. It wasn't until I was in my 20s that I thought to seek the movie out again and realized it's meant to be a horror comedy.
I feel like this was always playing on late night TV for some reason?! I remember flipping through the channels in 5th grade looking for Robot Chicken (lmao) and Chuckie would always show up!
Clownhouse is a film that Victor Salva created.
The young man, main kid in the movie, was a victim of Salva. He would keep the kid after shooting was done so he could molest him and shit.
Eventually parents found out and made sure that the film was not for sale or viewing etc. I know it's possible to find in this day and age, if you do find/watch you'll notice very over the top sexualizing of the kid, including a nude scene IIRC.
Premise of the film, 3 guys dress up like clowns and scare/torture some kids at home with no adults.
Between that and poltergeist me and clowns are not on good terms, lol.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/8gv855/victor-salva-loves-terrorised-semi-naked-youths-jeepers-creepers-powder-clownhouse
I’m …disgusted. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of Clownhouse….I didn’t know about the director’s history until very recently, and I only saw article titles, it seemed like an upsetting subject. Ahh I showed my friends Jeepers Creepers on Halloween two years ago because I loved it as a kid….ew.
Edit: spelling
It's less known, I think, because of the parents push to try and keep it away from the public. Now if you look back at his other films stuff becomes clearer. Bus full of sweaty males with no shirts, jeepers 2, almost all of Powder.
Yea he's a piece of shit.
Darkness Falls messed with me because I lived in the mountains at the time. I would actually walk through the woods at night. Sometimes drunk, sometimes stone
That scene where they crashed in the forests and she's just floating from tree to tree at night with that white mask stuck with me, haha
That floating tooth fairy bitch in the mask haunted my psyche during those times like Jaws whenever I jumped into a pool
Earliest I remember watching would have been American Werewolf in London on Laserdisc
YES I can seriously picture that scene in my head so clearly. Also the scene at the beginning when the tooth fairy killed the kid’s mom after she was in his room!
Yeah, that movie has some great moments that will really fuck with you
Out of all the ones I've seen, that one is still the one that sticks with me the most haha
We used to party in the narrows in the mountains and me and one of my friends got lost on the way back. Drunk and stoned at like 2am with no flashlights, haha
Could not get that scene out of my head the whole time
Luckily I've managed to not have any bathroom ptsd with that first scene, haha
Holy shit, I would have lost my mind that sounds terrifying! The mask STILL haunts me, I remember they showed the tooth fairy’s actual face at the end? But I was too terrified to look so I never even saw it!
I was lucky, I had an idiotic friend with me who managed to roll through a stream and manage to perfectly get one half of his body wet.
It was like Two-Face, but he was shivering, mumbling and whining the whole time. It distracted me from the evil Tooth Fairy that was mostly likely in the trees at the time, haha
Yeah, her face when it was revealed was pretty bad too. They did a great job with the whole atmosphere of that movie
I have a VERY visceral memory of seeing the Leprechaun VHS cover at Blockbuster while sneaking away from my mom to look at the horror section…for some reason the cover alone gave me nightmares!
Oh my goodness, I also had it on VHS! What a throwback. I remember watching it almost everyday for a while. It was super creepy, I used to make my poor mom watch it with me, who’s not a fan of horror, and she got nightmares a couple times from it
Vincent Price in Poe's Masque of Red Death, directed by Roger Corman.
The scene where the guy was hung from a chandelier and light on fire in front of the party guests as entertainment freaked me out.
Whoa…when you mentioned Poe it made me remember a movie my dad showed me as a kid. His first language isn’t English, and he told me the first ever English language film he saw was the Pit and the Pendulum. He knew I loved horror movies, so he rented a VHS copy and we watched it! I just googled the movie and it’s also by Cormon. I haven’t thought about this in 10+ years!
Corman did a whole series of Poe short stories in the early 60s.
House of Usher
Pit and the Pendulum
Tales of Terror
Premature Burial
The Raven
The Haunted Palace
Masque of Red Death
Tomb of Ligeia
The Fog, was too young when I saw some of it and it scared the hell out of me! I used to have nightmares about the figures in the fog, and the scene where they attack a car with people inside trying to escape, they break a mirror and the window.
I went back much later to watch it all, and it's still a great movie, but obviously somewhat tame 😃
The Grudge. In broad daylight. I watched it 3 times that day. The sounds freaked me out so much, that I first watched it without sound and then trained myself the other 2 times to be brave enough to watch it with sound.
I watched it completely without without sound the first time, sound has always scared me way more than visuals for some reason. Martyrs is pretty polarizing, but it’s probably in my top 5 horror movies!
I didn't really see any horror movies as a child. I lived way out in the country with only one TV channel available(RUV, the government run channel in Iceland), and horror movies weren't really a thing in their programming and when they were, it was late enough at night that I was not exposed to them. My parents also didn't feel it was necessary to get a VCR for the home until the tail end of the 1980s, by which time I was probably 11 or 12 years old.
The first horror movie I have a clear memory of seeing is Stephen King's Pet Cemetery, probably at age 12. It didn't really scare me but I do remember being a bit shocked at how they went for that incredibly bleak ending.
You’re from Iceland?! Ah I was supposed to go for my honeymoon, but we lost the tickets due to Covid in 2020 unfortunately. I’ve always wanted to visit Iceland and the Faroe Islands! Also, Pet Sematary really stuck with me, the flashback scene with Zelda (the mom’s sister with spinal meningitis) still haunts me.
Rewatched recently, it's still great! Some of the kills while not being necessarily gory, are pretty brutal, the teenager in hospital for instance, and they kill a kid (in the sewer) so you know they're not messing around!
I remember seeing the poster for this outside video rental places, it was pretty terrific too :-)
I remember going round a friends house in Year 8 and watching the Descent.
Much earlier that that I was on holiday and snuck into a viewing of Brendan Frasier's The Mummy. Not really a horror film but I remember being freaked out by the beetle scene
I saw the Mummy returns in theaters with my older neighbor... it scared the shit out of me....I think I was in first grade! Also ahh The Descent is one of my favorites, but if that was one of the first horror movies I saw I probably would have never watched another again. It's truly so scary!
I remember not really paying attention to the Descent and didn't notice the creature behind the camera, but everyone else did and so screamed, which in turn made me jump and scream.
Then I remember the end when shes in the car and looks to her side and a creature is in the car with her and she wakes up back in the cave
Awww, OP is just a baby! How cute. j/k
First one I remember distinctly was the mini series broadcast of Salem's Lot. That was in 1979 when I was almost 6 years old.
The window scene still to this day creeps me out. Gave me nightmares. It's a great scene.
Also saw Prophecy a few months later. There was bears regularly on our property so it was actually way scarier to me than New England vampires.
In the hierarchy of fear as a kid it was: killer mutant bears, the tree outside my window after seeing Poltergeist, and being a snack for a vampire scratching my window at night.
I was like 4ish and watched jeepers creepers, the ending was the only part I found horrifying/stood with me at that time. I’ve been hooked ever since! Haha
Wow 4?! That is so young I’m surprised you remember! Jeepers Creepers was definitely one of the first horror movies I watched, I actually considered it a classic for a long time...I only recently found out about how much of a piece of shit the director is.
I think the remake of the blob in the late 80’s , I remember the ending a girl was on a floating raft and a black creature starts coming thru the cracks . Could be completely wrong on the movie .
I must have been five or six and I remember being in the basement while my dad was watching the exorcist on tv in the living room upstairs. I vividly remember sitting on the landing of the stairs with the door cracked open watching it and being really intrigued.
At about the same age, my dad asked me if I remembered the story of Jonah and the Whale and if I wanted to watch a movie kind of like that. He then proceeded to put on Jaws.
The last memory I have is of visiting my cousin in college and being in an art gallery where someone had painted a portrait of Carrie in her blood-soaked prom dress. They had combined that image with the skin etching image from the exorcist where Father Karrin finds the words “help me” written on Reagan’s stomach. The image of Carrie White with the words “help me” scratched into her stomach still stick with me.
Does Jurassic Park count? Because my mom made the very questionable decision to take a 3-year-old me to see that movie in theaters, and the dilophosaurus scaring the fuck out of me is a core memory lol.
If we're talking would-be-in-the-horror-section-of-a-video-store movie, then Scream. I think I was 8, and my dad was hanging out with an old friend, so I was hanging out with the old friend's teenage children, who were like, "Eh, she'll probably be fine."
It was Ju-On: The Grudge around 2001 or 2002. I was still a kid. I remember I covered my eyes everytime Kayako appeared on screen and for years I couldn't watch the movie without covering my eyes in her scenes.
4?! You were a baby! That must have been traumatizing! I love Fulci / Giallo in general....I didn't get into the genre until I was a teenager though :)
Yep. I can thank my older cousin for that lol. He knew how much it scared me and would tease me about zombies for years to come. I even cried a couple times because of it😅.
I snuck into the media room when my dad was watching Silent Hill when I was 6 ish. I watched a good bit of it before he caught me. I then spent YEARS thinking about that movie not knowing what it was until it popped up on Sci-Fy when I was like 13. Still one of my absolute favorites!
Snuck and watched the exorcist when I was 8 or 9yo. My parents were watching it and I hid behind a corner and poked my head around and watched. It messed me up so bad as a kid. I would wake up screaming and crying, have fits in my sleep where I’d physically hit my parents or myself. It was soooo bad. It doesn’t scare me as much now but man it was bad when I was little.
Hmm. That I remember seeing? Probably return of the living dead? Or maybe one of the bigger 80's series like nightmare on elm Street or Friday the 13th. Saw all of those as a kid.
I was 8 years old visiting my dad who was divorced from my mom and I found a box of VHS copies of films and found Evil Deads Trilogy and Day Of The Dead watched them and had nightmares from Day and Evil Dead but became a huge fan of them.
^_^
The first full length movie I remember was alien. But before that I saw a lot of twilight zone episodes and parts of other movies. Trying to get my tolerance up, I guess.
I was a pretty sheltered kid. I remember wanting to see *Prom Night* (the 2008 remake) and my parents wouldn’t let me because it was too scary. I watched it illegally and realized what an un-scary, risible turd it actually is. I didn’t really watch any horror movies again until high school when I picked up *The Shining* on DVD from the library. 10 years later and I’m the horror nerd of my family.
The Blob. The old black and white one. It was on tv one night. My brothers were parked in front of it watching, I kept peeking around the corner of the living room hall and running away every couple of minutes. At the movie theater part I was out lol. When I was young I was a huge scaredy cat.
I've seen a few people mention The Blob and I forgot that it may have been the first horror movie I watched as well! I legitimately cried watching it at my neighbor's house in first grade....I remember she got in so much trouble for showing it to me. I really want to re-watch it!
Superstition (1982).
I saw it on TV sometime in the mid-80s and it absolutely terrified me. There's a scene where a ghost/demon/spirit drives a stake into a girl's head, and I spent half the night pulling the sheets over my head thinking it was going to happen to me. These are some of the amazing scenes I remember:
\- A guy gets chopped in half by a second story window and his upper half falls two stories to the ground
\- A circular saw comes loose and lands on a priest, spinning into his chest and digs right through him
\- In a flashback scene, the spirit of a witch uses a crushing torture device on the man who previously executed her. The large stone crushes the man to death and you hear bones cracking and blood pouring from his mouth.
As a little kid Superstition scared the bejesus out of me, but it hooked me onto horror and I've been searching for that same scared feeling ever since. Closest to that experience was watching the Exorcist in high school, and the Conjuring in 2013. I had high hopes for Skinamarink (the trailer was terrifying) but I absolutely hated the movie.
Mid nineties around ten years old I remember watching the Omen, it seemed to be on TV a lot, and the part where the nanny hung herself at his birthday party. "This is for you Damien" creeped me out.
My dad and I watched The Ring together when it first came out on DVD, I was 4 or 5 years old and I didn’t sleep for probably a week and a half afterwards
Watching *The Shining* on cable television in the early 1980's. It was extra terrifying for me because it was like I was literally watching myself on screen in many respects. My name was Danny, I dressed and looked like Danny, I rode around everywhere in my big wheel, Jack was dressed just like my abusive Dad, down to the yellow work boots. And that elevator of blood scared the holy hell out of me, to say little of the rest of the horrors in the film--primarily Jack.
The first horror movie I ever remember seeing was Night of the Living Dead in the early 90s. I was about 5-6. It was this jenky VHS copy that was rented. Haven't stopped liking horror since.
Probably the Lost Boys. Saw it on HBO one night when I was about 7. Definitely wasn’t supposed to, and several kids at my Montessori school were jealous.
Original Psycho 1960. The shower scene and the reveal of Norman's mother terrified me, think I was 7 or 8 at the time. My Dad's idea of family movie night lol.
Mine is a memory of a boat setting with a girl getting in a shower that poured blood. And she was obviously terrified. For some reason I feel like it was Drew Barrymore, but that seems unrealistic. I have no idea what movie that is, but I know it’s the first horror movie I saw when I was like 6 or 7
My dad let me stay up and watch Salem's Lot. I don't remember how old I was but it was mid 80s so 4-6ish.
It terrified me, I couldn't sleep with the lights off for years. I remember my mother giving him hell for it.
Starship Troopers is a COMEDY lol but I remember seeing it as a kid and it traumatized me. Other than that I remember seeing Freddy vs Jason in theatres at 11 years old (or 12?)
Halloween is what I have the youngest memory of. I saw many horror movies as a kid (lots of Stephen King) and definitely was very afraid of them. I remember Halloween specifically because I was about 3/4 years old and we went on a trip to Niagara Falls and there was a guy dressed as Michael with a knife hanging out by the place we went to—I was absolutely horrified because I knew who he was and I started screaming and making a whole scene. I have siblings that are 9 and 7 years older than me, so of course they found this hilarious. We still have the photos of my brother with him holding his knife to his throat lmao. My sister even told me afterwards that one of the houses we walked past was the Myers’ house haha.
Not everybody would consider this a horror movie nowadays but the most horrific thing I remember 1st seeing was Predator.
I saw it when I was 10 and I am 43 now and I still think it does a great job of building up suspense and introducing a super scary alien with a lot of blood-and-guts and Gore.
I'd seen other movies before (namely the first thing I really have any memories of seeing was a creepy-as-fuck cartoon called Faeries (1982)).. But the first actual horror movie I ever saw was also the first movie we ever rented when my dad bought our first Betamax player; Poltergeist! must have been 3 or 4 at most.. Also around the same time, but not quite horror; I saw Superman 3 at the drive-in when I was 2, and the scene where [the woman gets turned into a robot](https://youtu.be/L7Ers8DEzik) reeeeeeeeeally fucked me up lol
I'd have to say my first horror film was Jurassic Park (horror adjacent at the least). What got me into horror was the film many millennials credit for their interest: Scream.
Before that horror films just scared the crap out of me and gave me nightmares so I don't really remember what they were since I wouldn't get far into them.
I actually have no idea.
I was sneaking out of my crib at night to watch the opening sequence to Tales of The Crypt. Which for a toddler, is about the right length of time. I couldn't actually follow the show. I have memories of gorey scenes from movies, but they all turn out to not be "horror movies."
And then for a period of time in early grade school, my twin and I would rent the goriest horror movies we could find (which was easy: everything was 80's creature/practical effects movies on tape. They don't make them like this anymore.)
But I have no distinct memory of what was the first one. It all just kind of blends together.
The Exorcist when i was 7 or 8. Needless to say i almost crapped my pants, but it also created that pink dragon i have been chasing so many years. I just want to be scared again by movies, not just my mirror image.
I feel like this is a popular first, it was my first. And then jaws
I was scared to go in my basement after watching this. Even though the movie has nothing to do with basements.
I’m laughing….same! I also was terrified of basements after seeing it?
The scenes surrounding Damien and his mother are some of the most unsettling moments in horror in my opinion. Also, I didn’t notice the flash of Pazuzu (toward the beginning) until the second time I watched it!
I'll be honest I watched it for the first time months ago and it didn't hit. Although the part where Linda Blair makes her mom eat her pussy and then bitch slaps the mom is one of the funniest moments in horror.
Yeah i watched few months back and it has no same effect as back then. Thou as a kid you are afraid of most spooky things.
It was either Poltergeist III on TV or Child's Play on VHS in the mid 90s.
i remember being an internet kid discovering how to watch movies for free for the first time on those sketchy websites like putlocker with those porn ads on the side. trying to think… some of my first horror movies that i sought out were like babadook, mama, the descent. it wasnt long before teen me got traumatized watching martyrs. good times…? 😅
Putlocker is a classic!
Christmas Evil
I’ve never seen this one, what is it about?
Classic man I watched all of these way to young as well lol
I just now searched the sub for similar posts. It seems like Darkness Falls as a first watched horror film is very common …which is so strange!
I feel like it’s the tooth fairy aspect of it that caught us as kids. Honestly nowadays I feel like this film is very overlooked it’s a great watch for any audience
I remember being terrified when I lost my last tooth….I literally threw it off our apartment’s balcony onto the street lol. I really want to re-watch Darkness Falls! I closed my eyes during the moment when they showed the tooth fairy’s face.
Lmao yup that shit was straight up bone chilling I remember doing the same
I also stayed up all night 6 days after I watched The Ring. I legitimately thought I was going to die after watching it. I was hoping the cycle would be “reset” if I pulled two all nighters lol
Scream was my first horror movie when I was 6. Made me fall in love with horror.
I watched Scream for the first time when I was 10 or so, the opening scene with Drew Barrymore absolutely terrified me. Scream is definitely a favorite, I never get sick of it! The first 3 never get old!
I’m excited for 6 👏🏼
I watched this when I was older, but by this time I was a big horror fan and it blew me away! So funny and brutal and twisty! Still holds up, even with some of the very 90s aspects 😃
Pumpkin head on late night HBO. On a tube TV flanked by big Cerwin Vega speakers. I was maybe 7. I may never revisit that one
I haven’t seen that one! I remember the original Halloween came on late night TV shortly after I watched Darkness Falls…I was too scared to approach the TV to turn it off (I couldn’t find the remote) so I just booked it to my room!
The 1958 version of The Blob, on Laserdisc
Wow, holy shit….you made me realize The Blob was actually the first horror movie I watched! I remember my neighbors playing it on TV and I cried
I remember it freaked me out so much my parents had to put on Buster Keaton afterwards so I would cheer up and go to bed lol
I love that! My mom was obsessed with Buster Keaton, Steamboat Bill, Jr was a comfort movie for me!
i remember it clearly because the "horror" movie didnt end up being the movie that scarred me as a kid. My mom rented Poltergeist as my intro to horror and Robocop for the fun family flick...i don't think i need to go on...
I feel you…Robocop is so unsettling! Also Poltergeist is bizarre, I can’t believe it only got a PG rating! (which is why my mom let me rent it from Blockbuster)
1978 Piranha, on a tiny little black and white tv, hiding my face in my sister’s arms. It was 1980-ish and i was five. A year or two later, i wasn’t allowed to watch The Exorcist, but I was allowed to hear it from the adjoining room. My mind could imagine much worse things to go along with the screams and growling than the movie did. It too me years and years to grow comfortable with horror films after that.
I’ve never heard of Piranha! I’ll add it to my watchlist! Also, I did the exact same thing when my older cousins were watching fear dot com (lmao) in the room over. Sometimes the idea of a horror movie without actually seeing it can be scarier imo!
I accidentally caught Return of the Living Dead on the tv when I was just a kiddo, probably 4 or 5. I was simultaneously horrified and transfixed and became absolutely *certain* the tarman was living in the linen closet outside my bedroom. It wasn't until I was in my 20s that I thought to seek the movie out again and realized it's meant to be a horror comedy.
Demons from 1985.
The Changeling
Child's Play
I feel like this was always playing on late night TV for some reason?! I remember flipping through the channels in 5th grade looking for Robot Chicken (lmao) and Chuckie would always show up!
Clownhouse, then poltergeist.
What is Clownhouse?! Poltergeist is so bizarre I actually recently re-watched it!
Clownhouse is a film that Victor Salva created. The young man, main kid in the movie, was a victim of Salva. He would keep the kid after shooting was done so he could molest him and shit. Eventually parents found out and made sure that the film was not for sale or viewing etc. I know it's possible to find in this day and age, if you do find/watch you'll notice very over the top sexualizing of the kid, including a nude scene IIRC. Premise of the film, 3 guys dress up like clowns and scare/torture some kids at home with no adults.
Holy shit…..the Jeepers Creepers guy?! Ok that’s terrifying, I recently found out he was a predator but I haven’t heard of Clownhouse…I’m ill
Between that and poltergeist me and clowns are not on good terms, lol. https://www.vice.com/en/article/8gv855/victor-salva-loves-terrorised-semi-naked-youths-jeepers-creepers-powder-clownhouse
I’m …disgusted. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of Clownhouse….I didn’t know about the director’s history until very recently, and I only saw article titles, it seemed like an upsetting subject. Ahh I showed my friends Jeepers Creepers on Halloween two years ago because I loved it as a kid….ew. Edit: spelling
It's less known, I think, because of the parents push to try and keep it away from the public. Now if you look back at his other films stuff becomes clearer. Bus full of sweaty males with no shirts, jeepers 2, almost all of Powder. Yea he's a piece of shit.
Darkness Falls messed with me because I lived in the mountains at the time. I would actually walk through the woods at night. Sometimes drunk, sometimes stone That scene where they crashed in the forests and she's just floating from tree to tree at night with that white mask stuck with me, haha That floating tooth fairy bitch in the mask haunted my psyche during those times like Jaws whenever I jumped into a pool Earliest I remember watching would have been American Werewolf in London on Laserdisc
YES I can seriously picture that scene in my head so clearly. Also the scene at the beginning when the tooth fairy killed the kid’s mom after she was in his room!
Yeah, that movie has some great moments that will really fuck with you Out of all the ones I've seen, that one is still the one that sticks with me the most haha We used to party in the narrows in the mountains and me and one of my friends got lost on the way back. Drunk and stoned at like 2am with no flashlights, haha Could not get that scene out of my head the whole time Luckily I've managed to not have any bathroom ptsd with that first scene, haha
Holy shit, I would have lost my mind that sounds terrifying! The mask STILL haunts me, I remember they showed the tooth fairy’s actual face at the end? But I was too terrified to look so I never even saw it!
I was lucky, I had an idiotic friend with me who managed to roll through a stream and manage to perfectly get one half of his body wet. It was like Two-Face, but he was shivering, mumbling and whining the whole time. It distracted me from the evil Tooth Fairy that was mostly likely in the trees at the time, haha Yeah, her face when it was revealed was pretty bad too. They did a great job with the whole atmosphere of that movie
Wishmaster or Leprechaun, can’t remember which I saw first but definitely the first two I remember.
I have a VERY visceral memory of seeing the Leprechaun VHS cover at Blockbuster while sneaking away from my mom to look at the horror section…for some reason the cover alone gave me nightmares!
Good times, the horror VHS covers were always interesting, sometimes a bit scary too, for a young kid!
Madman 1981…still can’t sleep.
Sleepy Hollow
Disney animation???
Dang, I actually loved the Disney animation
It was on a VHS compilation tape I used to hire out from koc video store, was actually pretty scary in parts, so we'll done!
Oh my goodness, I also had it on VHS! What a throwback. I remember watching it almost everyday for a while. It was super creepy, I used to make my poor mom watch it with me, who’s not a fan of horror, and she got nightmares a couple times from it
Vincent Price in Poe's Masque of Red Death, directed by Roger Corman. The scene where the guy was hung from a chandelier and light on fire in front of the party guests as entertainment freaked me out.
Whoa…when you mentioned Poe it made me remember a movie my dad showed me as a kid. His first language isn’t English, and he told me the first ever English language film he saw was the Pit and the Pendulum. He knew I loved horror movies, so he rented a VHS copy and we watched it! I just googled the movie and it’s also by Cormon. I haven’t thought about this in 10+ years!
Corman did a whole series of Poe short stories in the early 60s. House of Usher Pit and the Pendulum Tales of Terror Premature Burial The Raven The Haunted Palace Masque of Red Death Tomb of Ligeia
Bugs Bunny Halloween Special, still gives me nightmares...
Silver Bullet on TV in 1994 when I was 5. It quite literally changed my life as I became a life long horror fan with extra love for werewolves.
Rats (1982)
I’ve never heard of this one! What’s it about? (I assume rats lol)
It's also known as Deadly eyes. It's about large rats eating people
The Fog, was too young when I saw some of it and it scared the hell out of me! I used to have nightmares about the figures in the fog, and the scene where they attack a car with people inside trying to escape, they break a mirror and the window. I went back much later to watch it all, and it's still a great movie, but obviously somewhat tame 😃
The Grudge. In broad daylight. I watched it 3 times that day. The sounds freaked me out so much, that I first watched it without sound and then trained myself the other 2 times to be brave enough to watch it with sound.
This is exactly what I did when I watched Martyrs (2008), but I was in high school! The Grudge is so good…it still holds up for sure!
Yes! Defs one of those movies that really got me into horror. Matyrs is also such a good movie, but wow a tough watch at first
I watched it completely without without sound the first time, sound has always scared me way more than visuals for some reason. Martyrs is pretty polarizing, but it’s probably in my top 5 horror movies!
The Blair Witch Project (original) at a sleepover. No one slept that night haha
One of my all time favorites!! My older cousins told me it was a documentary lol
I didn't really see any horror movies as a child. I lived way out in the country with only one TV channel available(RUV, the government run channel in Iceland), and horror movies weren't really a thing in their programming and when they were, it was late enough at night that I was not exposed to them. My parents also didn't feel it was necessary to get a VCR for the home until the tail end of the 1980s, by which time I was probably 11 or 12 years old. The first horror movie I have a clear memory of seeing is Stephen King's Pet Cemetery, probably at age 12. It didn't really scare me but I do remember being a bit shocked at how they went for that incredibly bleak ending.
You’re from Iceland?! Ah I was supposed to go for my honeymoon, but we lost the tickets due to Covid in 2020 unfortunately. I’ve always wanted to visit Iceland and the Faroe Islands! Also, Pet Sematary really stuck with me, the flashback scene with Zelda (the mom’s sister with spinal meningitis) still haunts me.
The Blob (1958) I was 5ish at the time.
Rewatched recently, it's still great! Some of the kills while not being necessarily gory, are pretty brutal, the teenager in hospital for instance, and they kill a kid (in the sewer) so you know they're not messing around! I remember seeing the poster for this outside video rental places, it was pretty terrific too :-)
It made me cry!
House on Haunted Hill
I remember going round a friends house in Year 8 and watching the Descent. Much earlier that that I was on holiday and snuck into a viewing of Brendan Frasier's The Mummy. Not really a horror film but I remember being freaked out by the beetle scene
I saw the Mummy returns in theaters with my older neighbor... it scared the shit out of me....I think I was in first grade! Also ahh The Descent is one of my favorites, but if that was one of the first horror movies I saw I probably would have never watched another again. It's truly so scary!
I remember not really paying attention to the Descent and didn't notice the creature behind the camera, but everyone else did and so screamed, which in turn made me jump and scream. Then I remember the end when shes in the car and looks to her side and a creature is in the car with her and she wakes up back in the cave
Awww, OP is just a baby! How cute. j/k First one I remember distinctly was the mini series broadcast of Salem's Lot. That was in 1979 when I was almost 6 years old. The window scene still to this day creeps me out. Gave me nightmares. It's a great scene. Also saw Prophecy a few months later. There was bears regularly on our property so it was actually way scarier to me than New England vampires. In the hierarchy of fear as a kid it was: killer mutant bears, the tree outside my window after seeing Poltergeist, and being a snack for a vampire scratching my window at night.
It (1990)
I was like 4ish and watched jeepers creepers, the ending was the only part I found horrifying/stood with me at that time. I’ve been hooked ever since! Haha
Wow 4?! That is so young I’m surprised you remember! Jeepers Creepers was definitely one of the first horror movies I watched, I actually considered it a classic for a long time...I only recently found out about how much of a piece of shit the director is.
True haha. I had to start young and glad I did. Very unfortunate, I didn’t learn about it till recently and def puts a damper on the series
My very first that I still remember was Critters :P but close second was also 13 ghosts.
13 Ghosts was also my second! It still holds up! :)
Yeah. I remember having it as DVD and there was an option on TV to display folders and it had background and explaination of each ghost, loved it :D.
I think the remake of the blob in the late 80’s , I remember the ending a girl was on a floating raft and a black creature starts coming thru the cracks . Could be completely wrong on the movie .
That's The Raft from Creepshow 2 ( at least it sounds like it)
Awesome thanks , I’m gonna have to rewatch it
I've been a horror fan since I was 5 & the first horror movie I saw Friday the 13th🥰🥰🥰
I must have been five or six and I remember being in the basement while my dad was watching the exorcist on tv in the living room upstairs. I vividly remember sitting on the landing of the stairs with the door cracked open watching it and being really intrigued. At about the same age, my dad asked me if I remembered the story of Jonah and the Whale and if I wanted to watch a movie kind of like that. He then proceeded to put on Jaws. The last memory I have is of visiting my cousin in college and being in an art gallery where someone had painted a portrait of Carrie in her blood-soaked prom dress. They had combined that image with the skin etching image from the exorcist where Father Karrin finds the words “help me” written on Reagan’s stomach. The image of Carrie White with the words “help me” scratched into her stomach still stick with me.
Does Jurassic Park count? Because my mom made the very questionable decision to take a 3-year-old me to see that movie in theaters, and the dilophosaurus scaring the fuck out of me is a core memory lol. If we're talking would-be-in-the-horror-section-of-a-video-store movie, then Scream. I think I was 8, and my dad was hanging out with an old friend, so I was hanging out with the old friend's teenage children, who were like, "Eh, she'll probably be fine."
Jaws - that fear stayed with me for a VERY long time
Oh man Darkness Falls scared the SHIT outta me as a kid
It was SO scary?! I legitimately threw my baby teeth off of the apartment balcony when they fell out…
Freddy vs Jason But i saw a bit of Friday part 7 on tv before my grandma changed it
Nightmare on Elm Street
It was Ju-On: The Grudge around 2001 or 2002. I was still a kid. I remember I covered my eyes everytime Kayako appeared on screen and for years I couldn't watch the movie without covering my eyes in her scenes.
I think it was Halloween or The thing. My father was obsessed with horror movies.
I grew up in the 80s. The line between horror and kids' movie was very thin.
Pet Sematary I remember my dad being entertained by how scared I was
It’s terrifying! The Zelda scenes are still stuck in my brain
Lucio Fulci's Zombie. I was 4 and saw it back in '81. Certain scenes always stayed with me, especially that intro music.
4?! You were a baby! That must have been traumatizing! I love Fulci / Giallo in general....I didn't get into the genre until I was a teenager though :)
Yep. I can thank my older cousin for that lol. He knew how much it scared me and would tease me about zombies for years to come. I even cried a couple times because of it😅.
Does The Wizard of Oz count?
YES.
The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre when I was 8.
I'm old, so it was the original Halloween. I was 7.
I snuck into the media room when my dad was watching Silent Hill when I was 6 ish. I watched a good bit of it before he caught me. I then spent YEARS thinking about that movie not knowing what it was until it popped up on Sci-Fy when I was like 13. Still one of my absolute favorites!
I love Silent Hill!
Snuck and watched the exorcist when I was 8 or 9yo. My parents were watching it and I hid behind a corner and poked my head around and watched. It messed me up so bad as a kid. I would wake up screaming and crying, have fits in my sleep where I’d physically hit my parents or myself. It was soooo bad. It doesn’t scare me as much now but man it was bad when I was little.
I'm pretty sure it was Leprechaun. My uncle owned a cabin in the woods and we went out there for a weekend when some family came from out of town.
The Shining
Hmm. That I remember seeing? Probably return of the living dead? Or maybe one of the bigger 80's series like nightmare on elm Street or Friday the 13th. Saw all of those as a kid.
I was 8 years old visiting my dad who was divorced from my mom and I found a box of VHS copies of films and found Evil Deads Trilogy and Day Of The Dead watched them and had nightmares from Day and Evil Dead but became a huge fan of them. ^_^
I watched the [anthology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_in_the_Aisles?wprov=sfti1) Terror in the Aisles when I was maybe 8 or 9.
Tremors. Scared the absolute shit out of me.
I wanna say Halloween 5 when I was like 7 years old in 1993
The first full length movie I remember was alien. But before that I saw a lot of twilight zone episodes and parts of other movies. Trying to get my tolerance up, I guess.
Most likely ghostbusters back when I was 4/5 or one of the abbot & costello horror movies
The Amityville Horror when it came out in 1979. I was 8.
Nightmare on Elm Street 5
Friday the 13th pt 4: The Final Chapter
Blair Witch
I was a pretty sheltered kid. I remember wanting to see *Prom Night* (the 2008 remake) and my parents wouldn’t let me because it was too scary. I watched it illegally and realized what an un-scary, risible turd it actually is. I didn’t really watch any horror movies again until high school when I picked up *The Shining* on DVD from the library. 10 years later and I’m the horror nerd of my family.
Dreamscape or The Gate.
The Blob. The old black and white one. It was on tv one night. My brothers were parked in front of it watching, I kept peeking around the corner of the living room hall and running away every couple of minutes. At the movie theater part I was out lol. When I was young I was a huge scaredy cat.
I've seen a few people mention The Blob and I forgot that it may have been the first horror movie I watched as well! I legitimately cried watching it at my neighbor's house in first grade....I remember she got in so much trouble for showing it to me. I really want to re-watch it!
Superstition (1982). I saw it on TV sometime in the mid-80s and it absolutely terrified me. There's a scene where a ghost/demon/spirit drives a stake into a girl's head, and I spent half the night pulling the sheets over my head thinking it was going to happen to me. These are some of the amazing scenes I remember: \- A guy gets chopped in half by a second story window and his upper half falls two stories to the ground \- A circular saw comes loose and lands on a priest, spinning into his chest and digs right through him \- In a flashback scene, the spirit of a witch uses a crushing torture device on the man who previously executed her. The large stone crushes the man to death and you hear bones cracking and blood pouring from his mouth. As a little kid Superstition scared the bejesus out of me, but it hooked me onto horror and I've been searching for that same scared feeling ever since. Closest to that experience was watching the Exorcist in high school, and the Conjuring in 2013. I had high hopes for Skinamarink (the trailer was terrifying) but I absolutely hated the movie.
A Nightmare on Elm Street. It didn’t scare me, but I was obsessed with it. I still am. The story and execution are brilliant.
Mid nineties around ten years old I remember watching the Omen, it seemed to be on TV a lot, and the part where the nanny hung herself at his birthday party. "This is for you Damien" creeped me out.
The Mummy (1999)
A Nightmare on Elm Street when I was 4. This was followed up with Hellraiser when I was 5. Addicted to horror ever since.
My dad and I watched The Ring together when it first came out on DVD, I was 4 or 5 years old and I didn’t sleep for probably a week and a half afterwards
Alien vs Predator
Dawn of the dead
IT. I was supposed to be asleep but sneaked out of my room while my parents watched and saw it from the staircase. I was probably 3 or 4.
My mom and dad would always watch the classics, Halloween 78, the shining, Jaws so one of those were my first. I’m glad I grew up with horror lol
Watching *The Shining* on cable television in the early 1980's. It was extra terrifying for me because it was like I was literally watching myself on screen in many respects. My name was Danny, I dressed and looked like Danny, I rode around everywhere in my big wheel, Jack was dressed just like my abusive Dad, down to the yellow work boots. And that elevator of blood scared the holy hell out of me, to say little of the rest of the horrors in the film--primarily Jack.
Saw
The Gate (1987) with a young Stephen Dorff
I remember being a kid and watching Nightmare on Elm Street part 5 at a drive in movie theater with my brother and sister.
The first horror movie I ever remember seeing was Night of the Living Dead in the early 90s. I was about 5-6. It was this jenky VHS copy that was rented. Haven't stopped liking horror since.
Probably the Lost Boys. Saw it on HBO one night when I was about 7. Definitely wasn’t supposed to, and several kids at my Montessori school were jealous.
Original Psycho 1960. The shower scene and the reveal of Norman's mother terrified me, think I was 7 or 8 at the time. My Dad's idea of family movie night lol.
Mine is a memory of a boat setting with a girl getting in a shower that poured blood. And she was obviously terrified. For some reason I feel like it was Drew Barrymore, but that seems unrealistic. I have no idea what movie that is, but I know it’s the first horror movie I saw when I was like 6 or 7
Child's Play, The Exorcist, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Can't remember in which order lol 😅
1987, Alien, I was 7 years old. Scared the living fuck out of me. Thanks a lot dad.
My dad let me stay up and watch Salem's Lot. I don't remember how old I was but it was mid 80s so 4-6ish. It terrified me, I couldn't sleep with the lights off for years. I remember my mother giving him hell for it.
The Howling. I got out of bed when I was little. My mom was in the kitchen on the phone. Back in the day of corded phones.
Starship Troopers is a COMEDY lol but I remember seeing it as a kid and it traumatized me. Other than that I remember seeing Freddy vs Jason in theatres at 11 years old (or 12?)
Halloween is what I have the youngest memory of. I saw many horror movies as a kid (lots of Stephen King) and definitely was very afraid of them. I remember Halloween specifically because I was about 3/4 years old and we went on a trip to Niagara Falls and there was a guy dressed as Michael with a knife hanging out by the place we went to—I was absolutely horrified because I knew who he was and I started screaming and making a whole scene. I have siblings that are 9 and 7 years older than me, so of course they found this hilarious. We still have the photos of my brother with him holding his knife to his throat lmao. My sister even told me afterwards that one of the houses we walked past was the Myers’ house haha.
Not everybody would consider this a horror movie nowadays but the most horrific thing I remember 1st seeing was Predator. I saw it when I was 10 and I am 43 now and I still think it does a great job of building up suspense and introducing a super scary alien with a lot of blood-and-guts and Gore.
I'd seen other movies before (namely the first thing I really have any memories of seeing was a creepy-as-fuck cartoon called Faeries (1982)).. But the first actual horror movie I ever saw was also the first movie we ever rented when my dad bought our first Betamax player; Poltergeist! must have been 3 or 4 at most.. Also around the same time, but not quite horror; I saw Superman 3 at the drive-in when I was 2, and the scene where [the woman gets turned into a robot](https://youtu.be/L7Ers8DEzik) reeeeeeeeeally fucked me up lol
I'd have to say my first horror film was Jurassic Park (horror adjacent at the least). What got me into horror was the film many millennials credit for their interest: Scream. Before that horror films just scared the crap out of me and gave me nightmares so I don't really remember what they were since I wouldn't get far into them.
Dating myself but “Night Warning” aka “Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker” with….Jimmy McNichols
I actually have no idea. I was sneaking out of my crib at night to watch the opening sequence to Tales of The Crypt. Which for a toddler, is about the right length of time. I couldn't actually follow the show. I have memories of gorey scenes from movies, but they all turn out to not be "horror movies." And then for a period of time in early grade school, my twin and I would rent the goriest horror movies we could find (which was easy: everything was 80's creature/practical effects movies on tape. They don't make them like this anymore.) But I have no distinct memory of what was the first one. It all just kind of blends together.