Our Halloween series focuses on horror films and our hopeless draw to what scares us. For this kick-off post, we welcome Geoff to SpoutBlog. As one of Spout’s creative directors, Geoff has already gotten his hands messy with everything behind the scenes, but he can’t hide back there forever… -Kristin

In light of our upcoming national celebration of spookiness, we took a random sampling around the Spout campfire, asking, “What was the first (or most memorable movie) that had you scared s***less?” The results and discussion around the films were very telling. At our formative years in life, many of the cinematic images that terrified us Spout folks defied the logic of our then immature minds.

Other horrific images we saw on film were stored, and projected into the possibilities of real-life terror in our waking, alone moments; our most memorable scary moments were scary because our minds rationalized, “This could happen…”

What’s also interesting to note is the absence of bloody, grisly hatchet-bearing type horror in our informal poll. Maybe because we avoided it, or perhaps because it lacked the believability factor that our freaky minds latch onto. Regardless, fear–and, in general, emotion and it’s intrisic ties to movies–can’t be underestimated as a possible lynchpin connecting people and films.

At Spout, we’re exploring these connections and working hard to bake them into our site. But it will take the community’s shameless sharing of fear, joy, pain, disgust, gutbusting laughter, and inspiration to make Spout really work.

Here’s what we have for you. Do you have any experiences to share with us?

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

- Something about the way the mother was pulled in through a window going horizontally defied logic. Also, the scene where Freddy in sihouette is walking down an alley and his arms stretch longer than natural, with claws scraping against the walls had me frozen in fear.

- When your dreams start to be able to hurt you–now that’s scary. And as a kid, hiding under your covers seemed like protection. But in this movie, that’s not even safe anymore.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

- The scene where the toilets fill up and spew black goo really scared the [crap] out of me.

It’s Alive (1974)

- It was the TV ad for this flick in 1974 with a single claw hanging out of the baby carriage had me imagining the claw appearing everywhere (behind my pillow, at the end of the hall, etc.).

Poltergeist (1982)

- I watched it at the movie theatre and refused to put my feet on the floor for fear of someone grabbing them and ripping me out of my chair. “Come to the light, Caroline…”

- I hid behind the couch at my Aunt’s house catching snippets while the adults watched… I think I was 4 or 5. Couldn’t sleep for a week, wet the bed, woke up screaming… disaster.

- For me, the worst scene was the clown puppet…makes my skin clammy to this day.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

- I crapped my pants cause I was leaving for a hunting trip the next day and had to sit in the woods alone for about 5 hours a day. I think it was the camera work…not really knowing what was going on…just hearing stuff in the background when they ran through the woods.

Carrie (1976)

- The prom scene where the bucket of cows’ blood came cascading down on Sissy Spacek.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

- The scene where the child catcher came into the town with the net. Terrifying!

The Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

- Larry Drake, who played Bennie on LA Law, plays a similarly disposed person who hides inside of a scarecrow from a half-dead ghost/killer with a pitchfork. The camera angle as he looks out through the holes in the mask in terror as his slayer approaches him is perfect.

Dreamscape (1984)

- Dennis Quaid is a child psychologist experimenting with swanky new technology which will take him into his patients’ dreams. Obviously, these kids suffer from chronic nightmares. Super-scary stuff. All I have to say is “The Snake-man.” As I analyze myself, I realize I had a mortal fear at age six of a being which was part-man, part-snake. A giant white snake is a Jungian archetype for the monster/strength a boy must master to become a man. When you put arms and legs on the snake and it chases little boys around trying to eat them, it doesn’t represent so much a passage into manhood as it does a scaly, white-boy-mutilator.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

- I was 7 when it came out and my parents took me to see it. I was fine until the little guy turned all white and sickly and we had to leave the theater because I was so scared. Ever since seeing that movie I have had a fear of closets, piles of stuffed animals and Reeses Pieces.

Jaws (1975)

- When I was a kid, we had goldfish. When they died, we flushed them down the toilet. My older brother used to tell me, “That’s what happened to Jaws–that’s how he got to be so big. His parents flushed him down the toilet and he became a huge fish underground.” I think I was 8 when I saw Jaws in the movie theatre. I learned to “squat” shortly therafter.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

- It’s the story of an ex-con who endears himself to a widow with two kids because he thinks she has money stashed somewhere from a robbery her deceased husband committed. Mitchum’s character shared a cell with the husband and when released presents himself to the family as a preacher. He’s sweet to mom but terrorizes the kids on a regular basis. I saw this film in college but it was still scary to me to think about how a stranger could come into your life and and turn your world upside down. The idea that what’s so obviously wrong to you is not always apparent to others is a very powerful idea. Good won over evil in this case but I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I wanted those kids to know that we knew what a creep Robert was.

Signs (2002)

- I walked out of the theater into the cool, crisp, dark night spotted with tiny bright stars. The world was different, I could feel it. I let my mind think about those crazy aliens taking over world. I had to. I knew if I didn’t let my mind think about it that I would be spooked by every little thing–branches blowing in the breeze, a quiet click in my car, the too quiet darkness of my house.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

- I had nightmares about that whole flick! Especially the oompa-loomas freaked me out with their orange complexions.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

- You’re all going to laugh, but this movie scared the crap out of me as a kid. Flying monkeys? That’s just not natural.

- I think those gray flying monkeys in bellhop costumes are universally scary.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

- The giant squid. Repeating nightmares that the squid eats my dad. Some very expensive ship-to-shore phone calls to try to get me to sleep through the night. But I don’t think I did until Dad came home again. Kind of typical Navy kid problem, I’ve since learned.

Back to the Future (1985)

- Not the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but I remember being, as a very young lad, absolutely terrified of the scene in which Marty puts on the radiation suit and blasts some Van Halen from his walkman in his future father’s ears to wake him up and scare him into asking his future mother to the prom. I avoided wearing my headphones in bed for a long time after seeing that scene out of fear that I would be awakened with screeching hammer-on guitar licks and then open my eyes and see man in a yellow suit trying to talk like Darth Vader.