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.

It was Hellrasier, I think I was about 8-10 YO. DirecTV was a curse and a blessing.

I think it was It (the Tim Curry version), I found it very scary

Crowhaven Farm, I must’ve been 5 or 6 years old. The scene with the door gave me nightmares for years haha! I was so young I had no idea what the movie was, and as I grew older I kinda forgot about it. I only had that scene in my head and one day I googled the description of my memory and found the movie! It’s still pretty effective if you ask me. I love these old made for TV movies from the 70s :)

For me it was Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight. Billy Zane fucking terrified me as a little kid with how evil he was.

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.

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!

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!

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.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3

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.

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.

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.