scary movies Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I'm more than okay. While perusing TV Guide, I found a little -- shall I say -- flick, starring a one miss Dolly Parton. Meow! Yeah, it seems she made a racy film called The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. -- Venture Brothers

Some films just aren't what we expect. Sometimes we're misguided by a name, sometimes by faulty assumptions. In our youth, some things just go right over our heads. We groove to Grease as young tykes, then grow up and realize how utterly sex-filled and dirty the film is. We (or at least me) watch Dolly's whorehouse movie over and over and don't realize how misleading the title is (hey, I was 6 or 7!).

But sometimes we're caught off-guard in the worst possible way, traumatized during our youth so much that years later the memory is still burned into our brains. Entertainment Weekly threw up a list of 29 films their readers saw when they were too young, and it got me thinking about my own scarred adolescence.

I have this theory that everyone was freaked out by something in their childhood, something that haunts them for years on end. My younger brother used to burst into tears if anyone so much as mentioned the Incredible Hulk (and boy, is he glad I just revealed that to the world). I have one friend who can't bear to watch balloons float up into the sky, and he's blocked out the memory of why that is, exactly (maybe his parents broke up while he was watching The Red Balloon?).

Me, I spent years traumatized by Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Patrick Walsh has already mentioned Willy Wonka in his brilliant post on non-horror movies that scared the crap out of him as a kid, but for me it wasn't the tunnel scene that did me in. All I remember is seeing a kid (Augustus, as it turned out) falling into a chocolate pond and getting sucked up a tube with a look of abject horror on his face -- and I ran from the room in a blind panic. From then on, even thinking about the movie made me shudder in fear; and when I finally forced myself to watch it just a few years ago, I felt 100 percent vindicated. Man, that is one creepy flick.

Celebrities aren't so different from you and me. Recently, in honor of Halloween, we asked a bunch of them what movie freaked THEM out when they were kids, and their responses were immediate, sometimes surprising and always interesting, even (or especially) if it wasn't a horror movie that haunted them -- Michael Douglas, for example, couldn't shake the memory of his father, Kirk Douglas, playing Vincent Van Gogh. But their confessions included tons of classic and obscure horror movies, too. Which movie makes Ellen Page cry after sex? Who spent their childhood terrified of Stephen King's clowns? Why did Cate Blanchett spend years avoiding swimming pools? Perhaps most interesting is that so many of them were allowed to watch horror movies when they were so young. Quick, someone call protective services! It's not too late, Adrien Brody!

Check out our lineup of movies that scared celebs when they were kids, and see if any of their fears match yours. Then let us know: Which movie from your childhood still makes you break out in a cold, cold sweat?

Several "Top 11" lists over at BBspot. Some of them are funny, but some of them you'd really have to be a geek to get, which I guess is the whole point.

My favorites? Netscape From New York, I Know Who You Hacked Last Summer, The House on the Hill Without Broadband, Das Reboot, and Rocky Horror Powerpoint Slide Show.

If someone could explain Mad Vax Beyond PDP-11 though, I'd appreciate it.