Yes, The Thing is a remarkable scary movie with the kind of staying power that only John Carpenter and few others can produce. Plus, it's got Kurt Russell in it...Hello? Kurt Russell?

The exorcist, house of 1000 corpses, and....seriously now Pee Wee Herman, I watched Pee Wee Herman film as a child and slept outside my parents door for about three weeks, I was terrefied.

IT also scared me as a child but not so much now....

Pee Wee Herman was the stuff of nightmares. Did you ever watch Pee Wee's Playhouse? There was this disembodied glowing green head in a box named Jambi and people sang when he came out to play and he was often heard repeating the phrase "Meka Leka Hi Meka Hiney Ho"...ok I don't want to talk about this anymore...

Holy shit! I've gone about for years assuming I hallucinated Tourist Trap -- nobody saw it on late-night cable, apparently. I can't tell you anything about it save for my viewing it in the dead of night, creeped out by dolls with an agenda. Chuck Connors, I think. Weird. I'll have to see if this one's on Netflix.

Just watched The Descent last night. Very effective. The claustrophobic feel got to me after a while. A good scare, LOTS of tension, equal amount of blood.

Well, I mean listen, I'm more or less a grown man now so I don't go around being scared of movies all that much anymore. But if anyone, even more or less grown men such as myself, should say that they're not still scared shitless by The Wheelers from Return to Oz then they're totally lying. Those guys nearly ruined my childhood

The Thingis the only horror film I've seen that scares the crap out of me. This film completets it tasks better than what most horror films this decade tries to.

There are some films that one might see and think, if that were cast any different it would have been crap. I get that impression when thinking about Carpenters The Thing.

I just spent a good chunk of time looking for this thread to mention The Wheelers. Damn you Kyle... That and the headless queen.

Also wanted to throw out the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Gmork from The Neverending Story. Those characters really creeped me out when I was younger.

And thank you guys...read through the thread and added a few recommends to the Netflix queue.

The 2007 version of "Funny Games", most recently.

I'd probably put "The Exorcist", "Alien", and "Aliens" up in the top.

And at the time, when I was only 12-13, I decided to watch "The Ring" on my couch, by myself, in the dark. When Samara comes THROUGH the TV.....wow. Again, I was 12 or 13, but still, I still think that movie is creepy and massively underrated, although I realize I might stand alone there.

Also, when I was maybe a little older, the ending sequence of "Saw" was extremely disturbing and distressing .

No...not alone. That movie set a mood...and it totally creeped me out throughout. I don't care that the ending was a bit of a cop out, the entire film had a tone and feeling about it that affected me. Hell...the damn phone ringing. Still to this day, if the phone rings late at night, you know, when it shouldn't ring...

Alien: This experience was like slowly sliding down an ever tightening tube. Tension just built and continued to build.

The Thing: Kept me in a state of suspense throughout. Probably the best I've seen

1408: Good atmosphere, a sense of foreboding throughout most of it.

The Descent: What can I say? This is Jaws in a cave. (with a box of scraps)

Jesus Camp. The only thing more terrifying than the sheltered, narrow-minded, outdated, dogmatic views of religious fundamentalists (of ANY religion) is seeing adults who hold these views brainwashing children with them.

One scene that really got me is right in the middle of One Hour Photo. It's the one where Robin Williams is walking through the house.

The Descent is the most recent movie that really go me, although 1408 is really effective.

Yeah I thought 1408 was pretty underrated as far as horror films go. It had the same claustrophobic feel to it as The Decent (although not to the same degree I admit) and Cusack did a remarkable job of carrying this film almost single handedly.

Paranormal Activity freaked the bejeezus out of me, it honestly made The Blair Witch Project look funny in comparison. Filmmakers have been trying to copy Blair's success since it came out in '99 with films like Cloverfield and Quarantine, but Paranormal actually did it and better. The slow build up was fantastic, but the two scenes that really did me in were That movie was genuinely terrifying and I cannot wait to watch it again.

There's an entire site dedicated to childhood memories/trauma over specific scenes in movies.

I remembered a scene in a film, I must have been 3 or 4 when I saw it on television, wherein a little girl pulled off her teddy bear's eye and the bear started to bleed. Scared the shit out of me. It was in 'Still of the Night', a forgotten Meryl Streep film from 1982. I found that info out right here:

http://www.kindertrauma.com/

As a rule, I get creeped out more than scared exactly but as a result, horror films have never been my thing.
Blair Witch stayed with me for a while(especially after seeing it and going to a family cabin in the middle of nowhere a few weeks later). However, the movie that scared me the most at any point in my life would be The Shining. When I was about 6 or so, my brothers were watching it on VHS. They are 8 and 10 years older than me respectively and well, I was a bit of a pest to them at the time. I wanted them to play with me and I didn't take no until one of them roughed me up a bit. This led to a a lecture from my mom for them to include me(she was unaware of what they were watching, only that I wanted in). So they did. And moments later I saw the little girls peddling down the hallway for the first time. My brothers repeatedly whispered REDRUM in my ear and i was sufficiently freaked out. Now the part that really got to me was my brothers decided to exact revenge for their lecture they had to endure, so when I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom as I always did and looked at the mirror above the toilet in my sleepy stupor, I saw MURDER in the reflection written in what looked like blood to a 6yr old. Of course the "blood" was red lipstick as my brother had scrawled REDRUM on the wall across from the mirror. As i screamed and ran into my parents room, my brothers sprang into action and quickly erased their prank leading my parents to believe I had a bad dream despite my arguments to the contrary. It wasn't for about 15 years that they would admit to having played the joke on me. As a result, even as a teen when I passed a house on my block whose window in their basement door was broken(in which they would place a cardboard head of good old JACK in the hole like he looked crashing through the door on Olive Oil) I would walk past really really fast cause I got the chills. I couldnt bring myself to watch the film again until my mid 20s.

The Exorcist -- mostly because i built it up in my mind before seeing it.

Blue Velvet -- mostly because everyone in that movie is effing insane.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) -- mostly because of its tonal quality. i had this clinched feeling throughout the whole thing.