Which movies scared the bejesus out of you when you were a child

I don't recall the name, but there were Indians, lots of fires, and guys with each leg tied to a separate bent tree. That's all I remember except they didn't like it when the trees were released. I was not older than five at the time.

When I was about 8 I was watching an American movie on TV with my father. A gangster is finally caught by a (decent) police officer when he is lying wounded on a railway track (Chicago El? NY elevated?) and rather than surrender the criminal deliberately places both hands on the live rail and electrocutes himself. Much smoke from hands which is the final shot. It made me feel a bit creepy, that's all. My father was a senior (real) engineer with the London electricity utility, on the high voltage side of things. He explained to me that movies tended to get electrocutions wildly wrong; too much flashing and sparking, he supposed this was for dramatic effect, and that touching a live rail at around 600 volts DC would just silently cook you like in the movie. I subsequently became very interested in electrical engineering. I used to eye live rails nervously after that (they have them in the southern part of England).

I should mention that the above film was black and white and possibly made late 1930s or early post war.

One image that stands out was the end of a film, watched on an old black and white telly, where the hero and villain are fighting on top of a tall building, maybe a skyscraper, in some American city, (sorry to be so vague).

The villain falls off the edge, but instead of falling to the ground he falls into some sort of neon advertising feature and gets sucked through all the different chambers of said neon feature. It was the bizarre nature of the death that made it stick out.

To this date I still don't have a clue what the film was called or even if it was a film, and not a TV series, I saw it sometime in the 60s.

Not 'scared' but... my 21y o daughter is a third year med student aiming to be a surgeon so not generally squeamish at all - I remember being a bit shocked by how pumped up she was after her first cadaver dissection. But the one thing she can't cope with is vomit - and I only discovered this evening that the main reason for that was me letting her watch Monty Python's Meaning of Life as a child. I suggested she watch the M. Creosote vomiting part again on youtube so that she could see it from an adult perspective but she only lasted a minute or two and was clearly upset by it.

Carnival of souls.

Trailer

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q0w_4vaGqD8

Full film

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wa9f-5bgd0I

The Canterville Ghost. I saw it on an old black and white tv. I was fine until the ghost appeared holding his head under his arm.

Good-bye. Didn't see the rest of the movie.

I can't believe you said that.

It was the first thing I thought when I saw the title of the thread.

My parents had gone out, leaving my brothers to take care of me. They of course snuck out to be with friends.

I think I was 6? 7?

This was me afterwards

I remember that. But I can't recall anything else. But I'm thinking it was a Tarzan movie. I remember there was a lot of cheering when the trees were released.

I have told this elsewhere on a2k. I don't recall first time I saw Snow White, but I was told I was frightened by the witch. When I was big enough to walk to the neighborhood theater on Saturdays, for the kiddie matinee, they slipped the original King Kong in on us. The kid next to me jumped up and ran. I had to watch the entire film using peripheral vision, once Kong came crashing through the trees to take away Faye Wray.

For me, the documentaries before the movies, no one of them specific in my memory, probably thank goodness. We lived next to an airfield in my early years, not that I saw all those in the early forties, while moving through being a todler, when we were there, but later on.

My dad did access the air footage for Twelve O'Clock high, editing, which I did see at some point, don't remember when. My memory of anxiety is not that film but the early news reels pre movies.

For me, the documentaries before the movies, no one of them specific in my memory, probably thank goodness. We lived next to an airfield in my early years, not that I saw all those in the early forties while moving through being a todler, when we were there, but later on.

My dad did access the air footage for Twelve O'Clock high, editing, sequences, which I did see at some point, don't remember when. My memory of anxiety is not that film but the early news reels pre movies in theaters.

Definitely not Tarzan. This one was in the northeastern United States, possibly prerevolutionary. Couldn't have happened in the Southwest. No handy trees.

Chamber of Horrors ,1966. Yeah, I was an impressionable kid. The scene that stayed in my mind was when the bad guy fell out of the train into the river handcuffed to a heavy object. He had an ax in one hand and used it to cut off the other hand.

This movie has just as much action as the previous films. Tarzan fights an alligator after saving a baby deer. A tribe of Africans capture Captain Fry’s group. They tie one of his men up to two trees, and pull his body apart. Of course they do not actually show it, but you can tell it is what happened.

http://www.threemoviebuffs.com/review/tarzan-escapes

I KNEW it!

Still not the one I saw. Remember, that was back in the '40s.

Bambi.

I was eight. My father worked at RKO then and brought a copy home. I don't remember what room the screen was in or if my apartment building friend, Carol, was with us.

As usual, since he died early for me, I'd like to revisit, was he showing me life?
What did my mother think (they were quite different)?

I'm not sorry I saw it, and I didn't know the word bejesus back then, but I remember being horrified. I think I got that that was a real possibility.

The Haunting of Hill House--the SFX were novel by the standards of the early 196os, and I was not sophisticated in the experience of such effects. I watched the entire filum, but it seriously creeped me out.

horror movies never really scared me per se, but some of the more recent ones have grossed me out
to the point where i rarely watch them any more...

but the nightmare scene in Fiddler on the Roof scared the crap out of me when i was a wee lad...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o2gISJYwQU