5 Movies That Scared Me When I Was Kid

Horror films were a big deal for me as a kid. I loved getting scared, having nightmares, hearing spooky tales. It was a great thrill. These films are all ones that profoundly scared me when I was a young boy, for one reason or another. They may not be great films, or even all that scary to me now, but I remember them vividly having an impact on me.

1 Jeepers Creepers

What scared me the most in Jeepers Creepers was the monster itself, the "Creeper". He drove a scary truck, wore a costume that hid any defining feature, and when you got underneath that he had leathery skin, cunning eyes and a mouthful of sharp teeth. He carried an array of grisly weapons to murder his victims, and even worse he would eat them. After eating his victims' bodies, he would regain a part of their flesh into his own and grow more powerful. It was eyes most of all that terrified me - those knowing, seeing eyes. As a young boy, it felt like he could see me.

2 Jaws

In Jaws, I felt a terror that was like being in the movie. The scene where a young boy is on a yellow flotation device and gets attacked, and all the beach patrons flee from the water, left me feeling sick. Then, even worse, the mother screaming his name looked almost exactly like my own mother, and she was crying, "Alex! Alex!," which is my little brother's name. It was horrific. This may have been my first view of of real gore as well, when the boys get attacked and you clearly see a human leg float down to the sea floor, trailing a path of bright blood.


3 Event Horizon

I don't remember much from my first time seeing Event Horizon, because I never got to see it all. As the terror built and I grew more scared, the film became almost to much for my childhood imagination. At one point my mom covered my eyes and I heard a family member say, "Oh my God, he's cutting his eyes out." My adolescent imagination was off to the races after that, and, horribly, my mom sent me to bed without knowing what happened next. Years later, when I watched the film in full, it was still a horrific sci-fi flick (and still really good, probably Paul W.S. Anderson's best work) but it did not have the same impact on me as it did back then.

4 Demon Knight

Another film about scary demons that terrified me as a boy. This time, Billy Zane is unleashing a pack of bloodthirsty demons on a group of innocent travelers. The demons are the main thing that terrified me. They shambled along the dark hallways, with glowing eyes, and dark oily skin, looking to eat people. Only the Blood of Christ could prevent them from entering doorways. The demon within Zane's character also tricked his victims into succumbing to death, by lying to them with false promises. This was a terrifying idea, and I had nightmares for a long long time. 

5 The 13th Warrior

This isn't really a horror film per se, but like Event Horizon, I never finished the entire movie until I was older, realizing it wasn't as scary as I once thought. Early on in the movie a group of Vikings find a family grotesquely murdered in a cabin in the woods. Their bodies were brutally torn apart. This was horrifying to my young eyes. Soon after, on a foggy night, the Wendol attack the group, and I distinctly remember one of the animal-carcass-wearing enemies grabbing the head of a Viking and twisting it off like a cork. The decapitated head is shown in gruesome closeup being carried around like a trophy.

Honorable Mentions:
Scream
The Ring
Surviving the Game
Poltergiest