The first kind of scary movies I saw were mostly Universal monsters and some Toho rubber suited city stompers. When I got to be around 9-11 my parents let me some more horror type films. Some like Halloween and the Omen are still close to be as scary as I thought when I first watched them as a kid. Others impacted me then, but when I viewed them later they didn’t quite hold up. Here you go.
Burnt Offerings- I remember getting home from soemthing in a storm when I was ten and this was on tv. The ending is what stuck in my head for years. Over the next decade or so my memories made me believe it was one of the scariest films ever. I finally saw it again on cable probably 15 years later. The cast includes Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Bettie Davis and Burgess Meridith so a good cast and the ending still helf up. However most of the rest of the plot was just okay. It has some holes and it just goes around not really going very far for a while. An okay movie but not the horror classic I once thought it was.
The Sentinel-This one came on when I was 8 or 9 I think on a Saturday and my parents let me see it. It’s about this building that’s like a gateway to hell and the dead come back up ewww. Well the scene I really remembered was the main character coming into her apartment in the dark and finding an intruder who chases her and turns out to be dead and gross. I bought this on dvd for maybe $5 probably 5-6 years ago. That scene is still kind of scary for the mid-70’s, but the rest of the films is very average as it feels the story isn’t quite developed enough for the length of the film.
Children shouldn’t play with dead things-This was on late night in the summer of 1981 and my dad let me see it. Of course it was another three years before I’d see Night of the living dead so this was kind of my introduction to the living undead. Oh amn I was so into this cult/wake the dead/no escape film. I saw it years later and it’s alright, but not hardly the undead thriller I saw it as through 11 year old eyes.
The Manitou-No it wasn’t followed by Manithree or Manifour. I saw this when I was maybe 11 and remember this woman’s back surging with some evil inside her and it made me cringe. I remembered very little else about the film, but I saw it again like 11 years later and was so bored with it.
Grizzly-I saw this one on a Friday night with my dad probably a year or so before I saw Jaws ontv. So this may have been the first 70’s giant size animal gone wild film that I took in. Oh my goodness a giant grizzly is just slashing campers to bits and no one can stop this hairy juggernaut. More than a decade later I bought the VHS tape from the bargain bin. Is it fun? Yes. Is it scary? Not so much nor is it grea, but it’s likable enough. It just wasn’t the furry killer I saw it as years earlier.
Lasers, monsters and barbarians oh, my! 