The very first English horror movie I remember is Evil dead and the absolute hype surrounding it. There were stories of people dying of heart attacks after watching that movie. We borrowed a deck player to watch the movie. I don't remember much but I remember a girl pulled by the vines and someone's feet with cracks on the sole. What is your first horror movie that you remember?
The Evil Dead?!? Terrifying! Geez, we saw that one at the cinema! We were all peeing-our-pants screaming like little 11-year-old girls! 🤣
Years later I met Ellen Sandweiss (she needed copies of her headshot). I'd recognized her from The Evil Dead and she seemed embrassed!
It wasn't a horror movie per se but E.T. scared the living shit out of me when I was 5 years old. Every time I got sick I was scared some G-Men were going to abduct me and do experiments.
The Gate.
The scene with the construction worker traumatized me. Being scared of shit under the bed or in a closet was one thing. Zombies coming out of walls and mirrors was a whole new way to be terrified of everything around me.
Alien. I was way too young for it and didn't dare watch it all the way.
I did end up becoming a horror movie fan, a shitty local channel seemed to give free rein to some bloke so after midnight they showed all sorts of horror movies. Lots of Full Moon Features movies. I've been hooked ever since.
I would have been watching a selection of the old Universal flicks from the '30s - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy etc - on TV from a fairly early age, growing up in the '70. I really don't know when or exactly what would have been my first though. These would have been joined by some of the Hammer and Amicus productions a little later.
I do recall staying up alone - at an age when staying up alone was just about allowed, but still a novelty for me - to watch what was perhaps the UK TV premier of The Omen (1976) on a crackly black and white set in a dark room and being blown away by it. I became obsessed with the whole biblical Revelations mythos side of it for quite some time after. It certainly had me reading more of the bible than endless Sunday school ever had.
Candyman. Saw it as a kid, and frickin loved it. I think I compared any horror to it afterwards without realising. Funnily enough as an adult I still love it.
Philip glass score and the urban, racial, lower class angle certainly help a lot.
Saw the recent sequel and liked it too.
Nice, I just did a double feature of Candyman (1992) and Candyman (2021) last night. The original definitely holds up and is one of the best horror films of all time IMO, probably my favorite of the 90s.
My mom let me watch children of the corn when I was about 5. I still love horror to this day. It became our thing.
Mine was 'The Green Slime,' a Japan/Italy/US production that I saw when I was 4 or so. Wasn't really that scary, but it was my first introduction to the theme of 'microorganisms as monsters.' Later, when I was about 10, my dad took me to see 'Alien.' Both these movies really rammed home the importance of good hygiene, lest that infection grow into a planet-devouring monster.
The first one that was deliberately a horror film that I can recall is seeing the very start of Aliens on tv and getting to the point where the soldiers discover the woman who gets chestburst, then immediately shutting the tv off and going to bed.
There must have been some scary childrens movies along the way but thats the first one I can remember that was too much for me.
The Burning. I want to call it a Friday 13th part 2 rip-off but they came out the same year so that's not terribly likely I suppose. So maybe a bad Halloween homage that takes place at summer camp.
lol Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. I was however old a person is when they're in kindergarten. My mom let me pick out "a scary movie" from the video rental place, and that's what I chose.
Not too many visits after that, though, my mom bought me a VHS copy of the original Night of the Living Dead. I still have it!
