Nightmares for life

I made a HUGE mistake last night... I watched a documentary on UFOs and aliens. Which resulted in a horrible nightmare that Tyler was actually an alien, kind of a Mothman-like creature, and he would turn into an insect-thing when noone was looking. Pretty traumatizing, but at least it gave me "inspiration" for this post.

Remember those horror movies from your childhood that scarred you for life? At the time, you probably wanted to prove to your parents or friends that you weren't a "baby", you were "tough", you wouldn't be scared. Then you had to hide the fact that you were pants-pissing terrified. That, or you ran screaming from the room and hid under the blankets in your parent's bed. (Trapper and I did that after our parents let us watch a certain Stephen King movie, thanks Mom and Dad! I'm sure you two were giggling about it as Trap and I cried in your bed!)

Its kind of funny that I can get so traumatized from certain horror flicks, and yet Tyler and I have the entire Stephen King DVD collection. There's definitely been some movies that, as an adult, have given me horrific-ly realistic nightmares, so I'll include those on the list as well. Hope you have a diaper on folks, 'cause you're about to be scared shitless... (lol)

We'll start with horror movies that changed my childhood, and not in a good way...


PET SEMATARY
Trapper and I thought we were tough, we thought we could handle it... we thought WRONG! At first, we were okay, the movie didn't seem that bad. But once things started happening, it became a test of endurance. If we showed our terror, the parents would never let us watch scary movies again. When the scene with the dead guy came on (the picture to the left there), we were DONE. Ran screaming and crying from the room to the only 'safe' place we could think of - Mom and Dad's bed. Which, at the time, was a waterbed.
"Shhhhh Trapper, be quiet, don't move, I think I hear that dead guy coming up the stairs!"
"Ohmygod, I think he's in the room with us!"
"Quit moving, you're making the covers shake, he'll see us!"
"Beau, I think I feel him crawling on the bed, its shaking and moving! Wwwaaaaaaaaa!!!"
"MOOOMMMMMMM!!! DAAADDDDDDD!"
To make matters worse, our terror was so immediate and obvious, that we provided our little brother Levi with excellent blackmail material. He must have been THRILLED to be able to get back at us for all the mean things we did to him. All he'd have to say is "Pet Sematary, Pet Sematary" over and over in a creepy sing-song voice, and we'd promise to do anything as long as he'd stop saying that!! I think it was at least two years before those words lost the power to induce nightmares.


IT
An evil clown that's actually a monstrously huge spider-thing that eats kids? I'm surprised children of the world can stand to eat at McDonald's, seeing that their mascot is a frickin' CLOWN!!! Coulrophobia is an abnormal or exaggerated fear of clowns, and I'm pretty sure this psychosis never existed until that movie came out. When someone says the word 'clown', can you honestly say that THIS isn't the image that comes to mind?



CHILD'S PLAY
I was in elementary school when this movie came out and I can remember my friends talking about cool and funny and scary it was. It was all anyone ever talked about. I suffered from nightmares for almost a month, where the Howdy Doody-looking doll would chase me around the house with a knife. Here's the funny part though: I'd never even seen it! (It wasn't til many years later that I could bring myself to watch it, then it was like, "I was afraid of this?!") Something about the idea of a DOLL, which any girl has tons of, trying to kill their owner because it has the soul of a homicidal maniac, that's true nightmare material. Didn't matter that I hadn't actually seen the movie - just the idea was enough.


FIRE IN THE SKY
I was never terrified of aliens before this movie. To me, they were cute little green men, kind of like The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones. Oohhhhh, but THIS movie... One scene in particular sticks with me to this day: the abducted guy is on the alien ship, strapped to an examining table, and the aliens shower him with this weird dust that immediately turns into a thick rubber skin that gets tighter and tighter, suffocating him. They rip a hole in the plastic by his mouth so he can breath, then they poke holes by his eyes so they can... *shudder*, they can *dry heave*... poke an extremely long, sharp needle IN HIS FRICKIN' EYE! I don't think it actually shows the needle going in the eye, the scene just cuts off after you see the needle getting closer and closer until its just about touching the eyeball. So you're left imagining what happens next. I know for a FACT that this movie traumatized Trapper so badly, you couldn't even say the words 'alien' or 'fire in the sky' or 'eyeball' around him, for like five years! And the fact that its based on a true story is enough to make a person need therapy.


NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
Okay, so I know a lot of you have awesome memories of this movie, its probably your all-time favorite. When it came out, every single kid dressed up as Freddy for Halloween. It was a staple at many slumber parties, which is where I was lucky enough to see it for the first time. Or not. I'll explain. It was grade six and my best friend Christine was having a birthday sleep-over, there was about 6-7 girls there. We'd rented movies and I was out-voted when they wanted to get it. So they popped the movie in the VCR (remember those?) and everyone settled in to watch. But not me, oh no no nooooo. I curled up on the couch under a blanket and pretended to be sleeping. Really I was trying to distract myself from the sounds the movie was making by reading an Archie comic (another 80s childhood staple). Didn't work though. They were all laughing hilariously at whatever was happening while I was seriously debating having my mom come pick me up.
ON A SIDE NOTE: Did you hear they're remaking Nightmare on Elm Street with Freddy being played by...(drum roll)... Billy Bob Thornton?!? Yeah, that was my reaction too.


Now for the movies that have traumatized me, as an adult...

13 GHOSTS
Seemed okay, didn't think it would be all that bad. 13 ghosts locked in a house trying to get out, sounds like the average ghost movie, right? The opening scene had warning signs flashing in my mind, "Stop! This is not an average ghost movie! This ghost is totally evil and insane and... wait... ohmygod, the ghost just KILLED that dude! Can ghosts do that? Holy shit...!" And it just got worse from there. I did not sleep that night, the next night, or even the next week for that matter. After we rented it, Tyler went out and actually bought the damn movie and I'm not kidding here, it took me OVER A YEAR to grow some balls and open it. I don't mean open the case, I mean take off the plastic wrapping. Yes, that's right, it sat in the cabinet completely unopened for over a year because I couldn't bear to even look at it. God, its like Pet Sematary all over again....


THE GRUDGE
See that pic? Enough said.









THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS
I know, this movie came out in the 80s but I didn't actually see it until I was almost 20. Tyler and I were living in Red Deer (Gunnar was a baby), in a 2-storey apartment that used to be a doctor's office back in the day but was converted into three levels for renters: the basement, the main floor (where we lived) and the top level. We had these HORRIBLE neighbors that lived below us, at first we called them the "pig people" because they were gross, fat, ugly, missing teeth and they sat around getting drunk all day and lived off welfare. Plus, they were really mean and scary and the disgusting woman would always come up and bang on our door and try to burst into our apartment because she thought we were being too loud. Uh, sorry chick, but we had a baby! You can't muzzle a baby. We absolutely hated them and vice versa, even had to call the cops one time it got so bad. So one night we'd rented the movie People Under the Stairs because we thought the title was funny and appropriate to what we were going through. Turns out I was completely traumatized by the movie itself. The premise is that this couple, who seem to be model neighbors and citizens, have been kidnapping children for years because the wife wanted to be a mother. Only, something would be "wrong" with each child (like, they cried because they wanted their real parents) and they would lock the kid in the basement and go out and kidnap another one. A little boy sneaks into the house and discovers all these really gross zombie-creatures in the basement; eventually he sets them free and rescues the current child from the evil parents, yadda yadda. But look at that picture up there, that's what goes through my mind when I think of this movie. *shudder*


HANNIBAL
The ginormous hog that eats the guys face, Hannibal Lecter
frying up and eating the dude's brain while the dude is sitting there and talking! There's many other scenes from that movie that have traumatized me but those two were the worst. I dare you to watch that movie and not have a nightmare. Try it.

SWEET DREAMS, EVERYONE!

Muahahahahahahahah!!