I think I can clear this up. The TV movie Are You in the House Alone? is based on a book by Richard Peck, a Judy Blume-esque writer. In it, a high school babysitter keeps getting spooky phone calls that ask "Are you in the house alone?" Turns out that the spooky phone calls are coming from a guy she knows, who at one point comes over to her house and rapes her. Because he has high social standing, no one believes her.

It's similar to When a Stranger Calls in that the teen babysitter gets creepy phone calls with a scary tag line (which was something like "Have you checked the children?" in the case of When a Stranger Calls), but in When a Stranger Calls the creep murders the kids, whereas in Are You in the House Alone? the creep rapes the babysitter.

I haven't seen the movie for Are You in the House Alone?, but seeing as how the book traumatized me when I was an impressionable young teenager, I won't be rushing out to find it any time soon.

Jeebus and Alliterator, those links are FABULOUS.

topic? I got nothin'.

for now... mwuahahahahaha!

Heh. You know that's exactly how I would translate it, right? Oh, turn the channel? It's really graphic? In that case, I must watch. And then promptly hate myself for it. Much like clicking on spoilers in this thread, eh?

Is one of those (Are You In the House Alone; When A Stranger Calls) the one where the guy later stalks the sitter and hides in the brickwork of her apartment? I saw that home sick with a sitter and never got over it....I swear I could never have exposed brick.

Never seen that one, but it reminds me of a scarring episode of Columbo where they couldn't pin the murder on the main suspect because they didn't have the body. Columbo, being ever so clever, sent a message to the dead person's pager watch. Well, I think the suspect was doing home renovations; turns out the body was plastered up inside the bathroom wall. Freaked. Me. Out. I was rather young, and I kept wondering if maybe we had dead bodies stuck in our walls.

alliterator, I laughed so hard I cried off all my mascara.

Seeing that Rudolph pic on the previous page reminded me of a childhood trauma. I was terrified of the Abominable Snowman, but when they knock him out with a big rock and Herby goes at him with his dental tools -- I swear to God I didn't get that it was his teeth that they removed. As a little kid, I saw Herby walking between the Bumble's legs holding a sharp, snippy tool, and from that I thought they had done some kind of horrible impromptu castration-type surgery on his nether regions. Which is weird, because I was really young and had no actual knowledge of such things. It was all very confusing to me at the time.

Chinkygirl, the tiki doll looks much less scary in his beach wear, until you see the ginormous blood splattered spear he's holding! Sheesh. I must admit I admired his trim little waistline.

Yea for that old commercial! I feel much better.

In terms of Rankin-Bass puppet-animation holiday specials? Nothing, and I mean NOTHING will ever be as scaring as seeing Nestor, the Long-Eared Donkey kneeling in front of a mound of snow that used to be his mother, crying his little eyes out. Good. God.

Nevermind that the story takes place in Jeruselem- where apparently snowstorms are not only common- but HUGE. It broke my little heart when I saw it all those years ago. Apparently, that scene's been cut now. At least when it's broadcast on TV.

Snuggles vs Teddy from AI: Snuggles creeps me out. But, I like Teddy. Why? Personality. Snuggles is a cutsey-wootsey, imperious jerk (just look at the way he treated that puppet porcupine). Teddy, on the other hand, is a loyal, resilient little sad-sack who just wants to be loved, dammit!!! Or at least not tortured by children who own him ("MOMMY!").

The anti-Snuggles links warmed my heart. Thanks! (when that commercial aired on TV it totally faked me out the first time I saw it. I remember laughing pretty hard).

ChinkyAngel, thanks for the links of Lil Zuni!

[Thurston Howell III voice] screamapiller, dahrling, I'll see you down by the banks of the Styx for our usual cocktail. And how we do love to toast the new arrivals, eh lovey? [/THIIIv]

FfrauleinN, There was some news a few months ago about a body that was found inside the walls at a club. I just googled it and couldn't find anything. But it happened, right? I'm not just confusing CSI with real life again?

Gah! That sounds so familiar, but I can't remember where I saw it or what it's called. Isn't the guy made up in full body makeup to look like the brick wall so that he's completely camoflaged while against it?

cheryl1213, you're describing the best part (IMO) of the sequel When a Stranger Calls Back. And for those of you who haven't seen it, it's much scarier than it sounds.

ETA that scarletine is right on the money too

Sleestak Hunter, I feel your Nestor pain. He dosen't come up as often as the nefarious tiki doll, but a looong time ago (and perhaps in the C........s specials thread) there was much discussion of the poor longeared donkey with a popsicle mom. I think the frozen mom donkey was edited out, but there may be another Xmas donkey special.

I've worried about being walled up alive since reading The Cask of Amontillado as a kid. I was seriously freaked when it happened to fanatical preacher played by guy from 90210 on OZ.

I felt so sorry for poor Nestor. I cried and cried everytime that movie was on. Once I got a stuffed donkey that had floppy ears and I named him Nestor. It made me feel better that I was able to give him hugs and cuddle with him while watching the movie.

Thanks, killershrew, for the heads-up. Ya know, I've read some of your posts, and MAN, am I glad you and I weren't the sleepover-on-the-weekends sort of friends in grade school. Your tv experience is just creepy. I'd have been very much afraid to hang with you at a younger, more impressionable age.

Same goes for the rest of you freaks.

Hee! (Keep it comin')

Thanks! Given how badly it scared/scarred me, I ought to know its name!

Apparently at Studio 54 back in the day, a guy got stuck while trying to sneak in through the air conditioning vent and died. I think something similar happened a few years ago at another New York club, or maybe the person fell down an air shaft this time.

The babysitter getting phone calls is a classic urban legend. Here's
Snopes's version.

And it's Christmas in June with the popular Santa in the chimney.

Snopes also has spider stories and all sorts of scarring stuff.

Related to that (sort of): Very recently, my dad tore apart the walls in my room for renovation purposes and after scraping off layers of wallpaper, we found that some kid drew an ambiguous blob person and labelled it "Mr. Fatty". It was so ridiculous, but it scared the crap out of me for some reason, lol.


Hee! He is rather trim, isn't he? In fact, he looks like he definitely has abs of steel!

Or abs of teak, at the very least.

Argh! thinkcwik! Not bugs!

The earwigs aside totally brought back one of my most "scarred for life" experiences.

Animated short: the silverfish. In the middle of the night a silverfish crawls over a sleeping man and works its way into his ear. When the man wakes up he feels something itchy and shoves his finger into his ear, sending the silverfish into his brain and killing him. This does not begin to express the creeping horror of that film.

Cannot. Stand. Silverfish!

Ugh! Silverfish are indeed freaky.

alliterator, the Snuggle commercial is priceless! I remember it when it aired. Good times.

cree.peee.

OK, I know this will probably kill most of you (or at least send you under your desks), but the mere mention of the movie Magic sent me out looking for a creepy picture of the dummy to share... and I found this article called Deadly Dummies, and I'll warn you right now some of the pics are pretty damned terrifying. After seeing this, I spent about 15 minutes staring at the Hello Kitty website as an antidote.



Oh, yes we do.... {does that cute little nose-wrinkle smile thing of Lovey's}

Slightly OT: Hee! I couldn't help but notice you guys talking about Snuggles. I have a toy of Snuggles, one of the old ones, not the newer ones...and it's very frightening. For some reason it's deformed, so it looks like Snuggles has his mouth curled up into a snarl. It's pretty scary. Whenever I go to my friends' house I bring him with me. (They call him Demonic Snuggles.) It's SO funny.

What I want to know is why the dummy from "Soap" isn't mentioned on that website? All dummies are freaky.

Just like clowns. I say avoid both at all costs.

I may never sleep again.





Oh God, why did you have to bring up Nestor? (sob!) I see this movie every year - I know it's coming on and I know it's going to make me cry, but I can't not watch it. I'm like BioGal, I had a stuffed donkey that would occupy the center of my bed and sleep with me every night until New Years to stop the Nestor sadness. Now I'm gonna have to go up to the attic.....

::clicks 'Deadly Dummies'::

GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! I wish you could see the horror that's permanently etched into my face! That's it. I'm never sleeping again.

::climbs under desk, goes fetal::

::Clicked on Deadly Dummies, now Googling "Therapists, Psycho"::::

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Now I'm going to have horrifying flashbacks of the TZ eppys with the Ventriloquist and Dummy, and the one with Billy who sends everyone out to the cornfield except the last guy who ticked him off -- he gets his head put on a bobbing jack-in-the-box.

::trying to grab laptop from under desk::

whimper

Alexandria Bay, thanks for the much needed laugh! This sentence cracked me up to no end.

Especially after I was goofy enough to click on the link so generously provided by ChinkyGirl of that horrifying tiki doll. Laugh all you want, but his teeth scared me so much, I couldn't look at all the pictures. Thanks a lot, ChinkyGirl, you sadist!

After looking at those pictures, I think I'm officially scarred for life more on this thread than anything I've seen on TV.

By the way, Word to Threve - both clowns and dummies should be avoided at all costs!

I'm not even going to click on Deadly Dummies. Nope, can't do it, too afraid. Maybe I'll ask my husband to do it later. Mock me if you like, but I've been freaked out enough for one afternoon.

blocked writer, even scarier than the teeth on the doll? Imagine those choppers in Karen Black's face, as she's crouching on the floor and holding a giant kitchen knife. It's terrifying. (I found a web site not too long ago that had pretty much every scary '70s horror movie, both TV and big screen release, written up... I slept with the lights on that night.)

Another freaky dummy was the one from Buffy The Vampire Slayer's talent show episode.

screamapiller, can you post the link to that website of 70s horror films?

What can I say? I have a strong masochistic streak...

The best way to get over the Tiki doll fear? I think about that stupid noise he made when he was trying to kill Karen Black. He sounds like a high pitched Cookie Monster.

COOOOOOOKIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

screamapiller, I remember that scene with Karen Black with those TEETH! It has been a while since I saw the movie, but all the pictures and posts have refreshed the horror in my mind. Wasn't she waiting for her mother to visit?

Can't look at the web site if there's a link gets posted. I must resist, otherwise it's like picking a scab. As it is, it'll take me quite a while to recover from the close-up pictures of Tiki Doll's open mouth and those 2,000 or so teeth! (Unless, as I suspect, I'm scarred for life, and will never recover from the sight.)

-

TudorQueen, damned if I can find the thing, and I spent nearly an hour looking... I did, however, come across a site that has some scary screencaps of the Doll and Karen with the teeth, but it's entirely in Italian, whcih I can't read.

blocked writer, IIRC Karen was waiting for her mother to arrive. So she could KILL HER! Mwuahahahaha!




BWAH!

I think that's the original House on Haunted Hill, starring Vincent Price.

I remember a movie I saw on tv when I was about 12 or so.It's a British movie Called Five million or billion years to earth.It's about a subway being built in Londan and they discover a spaceship thats been underground.Not your normal aliens, but ant-looking ones.Eventually, they overtake the city and in the end there is this giant ant face overlooking Londan, and its controlling the people.Being twelve, the face looked like the devil to me.That night I woke up screaming and it took hours for my mom to calm me down.A few years ago It came on tv and I taped it and showed it to my son.He loved it.I lost the tape and i'm still looking to find it somewhere in stores, the net or tv.

Those old Vincent Price movies scare the bejeezus out of me. There was one (I think it was called Wax Works) where these kids went to a wax museum and the statues came alive.

House of Wax. My father remembers seeing it in 3-D. There's actually a moment when one of them is behind you. Creepy.

Okay, there was one Millenium episode where Frank Black keeps on seeing the numbers 666 every where (like something he buys at the market is $6.66 and the only channel he can get is channel 666) and there one scene where this claymation devil appears on his television screen laughing. It just freaked me out so much - the face was so creepy! Turns out it was from some stop motion movie called The Mascot, aka The Devil's Ball, by Ladislaw Starewicz. You can see clips of the Devil here. And here is the clip that freaked me out. It still does. Brrrrr.

Oh, yes, that movie is simply terrific! Although it's really a B-movie, it's extremely well-done--more of a B+ movie. The original British name of the film is Quatermass and the Pit. Its usual American title is Five Million Years to Earth. The alien grasshopper thingies scared me as a little kid, but it's the acting that really sells it to me nowadays. When the one workman describes his vision of the aliens--phew! It shows up on AMC once in a while. You can also find it at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon in DVD and VHS. Well worth looking for.

It was really bothering me that Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey had escaped me - until I watched it. Wanna?

Heads-up: The segment referenced upthread about Nestor's mom dying to save him is dead-center in the list. Brenda Vaccaro does the voice of Tilly. Hee!

Now... The Little Drummer Boy. Saaaaad. Segments 9 and 10 make me unconsciously screw up my face, all pained, while I'm watching. Yeah...I don't think you have to be a small child for that one. There's a little wrap-up of the whole "hate's no good" theme at the end of the film that is quite sweet.

*sniffle*

I've seen that silverfish cartoon and I think it's called The Silverfish King. I mentioned it once in this thread. I thought he jumped out a window at the end to stop the horrible pain. I also think he was a corrupt Senator or something, but maybe I'm making that up.

Hey! Click at your own risk, you know the rules! But, actually...it's very true. As someone on this thread once pointed out, I must be really depraved, because I've been posting the creepiest links lately! ;)

Ok, does this Trilogy of Terror thing ever air on television? Or DVD, even? I seriously want to watch this thing and see how the tiki doll, like, creeps her out and stuff, to get the full effect!

Oh, and I'm not too depraved to admit that I'm really afraid of all bugs/insects, and right now, it's spider AND silverfish season in my house, it seems. Ugh...

No one loves Snopes? Oh, well. Here's a vaguer than vague, yet scarring, memory. It was one of those Art Clokey Gumby things, but not with Gumby, I think. It was a little boy and he took over a planet...I've blocked this because it was creepy. All I really remember is a planet and this little boy, enormous, on it. Kid may have had pointy teeth and a toy train.

This is like stump the experts.

Don't feel bad I am afraid of woodticks and moths. EW!

The things that I cannot watch or even really think about are any movie or tv show about someone being burried alive. Not just like the Edgar Allen Poe variety, but even the ones where someone is kidnapped and they are put in a box with X amount of oxygen and water. There was one movie where a busload of kids were kidnapped and buried that I started watching until I realized what was going on. (Shudder)

That was based on a true story. The movie you (almost) saw was They've Taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping.