Recommend a scary movie that others might not have seen

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CoriSCapnSkip

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Jan 16, 2015
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Very nice to hear you mention the Green Knowe books, CoriSCapnSkip! I loved them as a child, and they are in a beautiful little area just outside of horror, where ghosts mingle with magic and the eternal fears of children (the deaths of parents, being sent away, etc)... I haven't seen From Time to Time, but the BBC produced a TV series of The Children on Green Knowe when I was little, and it was lovely! Here it is -


Wait Till Helen Comes sounds like the type of thing I would enjoy too, judging by your description. ("A lot of people's favourite scary kids' book..." Superb!) Thank you for letting me know about it! I'll watch it and make a full report. :)

Thanks, I learned about the Green Knowe series through the PBS educational series Cover to Cover, where I discovered many lifelong favorites. I did not know of any filmed versions besides From Time to Time. If you like, I can make a thread in the books section about scary children's literature with descriptions and recommendations.
 

CoriSCapnSkip

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Jan 16, 2015
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The public’s response was enormous, primarily outrage. People just did not expect tricks of this kind from the TV in those days, which was largely responsible for the incredible shock and fear which it caused. Programmes had to be broadcast quickly in which BBC executives apologised indirect by explaining the artistic effect they had been aiming for. The newspapers spoke of nothing else, and one poor, intellectually disabled young man actually committed suicide, unable to quite believe that it had been fake.

At school on Monday morning, my friends were all saying that they had “known it was fake all along” and “hadn’t been scared at all.” I said so too, which was the biggest lie I had ever told! At the time, I thought I was the only one of my friends who had been fooled. Now, older and wiser, I look back and realise that most, and probably all, of them had been lying too. It is tempting to say that this was my generation’s equivalent of the notorious War of the Worlds radio broadcast, except that nowadays we are told that stories of people’s reactions to The War of the Worlds were exaggerated, created by journalists after the event, and that most people at the time knew they were listening to a play. How much truth there is in this, I couldn’t possibly begin to say. What is certain is that Ghostwatch fooled millions, and gave them the type of fright known only to the victims of the most horrendous crimes. Which is really what I look for in a good film, you know? :)

Wow, thanks for telling about that! I never heard of it. About The War of the Worlds, it's hard to know how much was true and how much was exaggerated. We had a book purporting to tell of widespread panic, even two people committing suicide, but of course the book was by the man who wrote the radio script and would want to promote the idea of the radio play causing that much stir. It did cause some and there was a TV-movie around 1975 about the phenomenon. Orson Welles, with wide-eyed innocence, pretended ignorance of the mayhem in the streets, but of course bulletins were being brought to him as the show aired. My dad told a lot of stories, some of which apparently had some truth to them, and he said he was in a church service that evening when some poor soul burst in screaming about the Martians invading. The minister calmly responded, "If that is so, I can't think of any better place to be than here." The radio play made use of the hysterical delivery style of the reporter witnessing the crash of the Hindenburg, and the Tom Cruise movie used touches straight out of September 11.

Some people first heard of Pearl Harbor on the radio--for instance, my mom, whose family habitually listened to a Sunday music program, and a lady who was an organist at the church we attended for years. The organist's father turned to her and said, "You know what that means? This means war, kiddo!" My friend George was too young to remember hearing of Pearl Harbor, but was told later his father completely freaked out and charged about the room smashing every item made in Japan. This so frightened the dog that it grabbed George by the diaper and dragged him under the bed! Television personality Jack Paar told of a conversation between himself and a friend where one said, "Everyone's talking about this place Pearl Harbor, I never heard of it, and you don't suppose this is another one of those jokes?" and the other answered, "No, I think this one's real."

A movie Picnic at Hanging Rock was done as if presenting actual events surrounding the disappearances of a teacher and several students in rural Australia in the early 1900s. When a title at the end stated it was fictional, my parents were so mad they screamed! My mom watched it again not long ago--I wouldn't, considering it a waste of time--but she said it was pretty good. "Hanging Rock" is apt as the story leaves the viewer, and, in the book's original edition, the reader, hanging! Basically, it concerns a region where the land itself is such a powerful force the puny trappings of civilization cannot stand against it. The final chapter was rejected, but the rest of the book published without the ending, and the movie also filmed without the ending. Years later, it turned out the explanation was of a paranormal or fantastic nature and the book was reprinted including the final chapter.

In recent years, the trend has been for fake documentaries. My mom and her brother were totally taken in by Mermaids: The Body Found--in fact, my uncle even yelled at me when I told him it was fake. The same people did a ridiculous program on Megalodons, extinct for well over a million years, having resurfaced, and one about "Vile Vortices" which led some viewers to believe a normally docile pet dog went berserk and killed a child on camera, and that the program was tasteless enough to air his actual death, including repeatedly playing heart-wrenching screams appealing to his daddy for help. When my dad was old and had lost a few marbles following several strokes, he was quite taken in by a fake documentary made to accompany The Blair Witch Project. It was hard to convince him it was not for real. Little wonder nowadays fake news is such a problem.
 

GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
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Cambridge, Ohio
Just tossing this out there, but has anybody seen Trilogy of Terror from 1975?
....hell yes!....scared the crap outta me to!.....
trilogyterror-zuni.jpg
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
15,683
92,168
USA
Rewatched Dead of Night (1945), half last night and half tonight. I first heard about this movie from blunthead , and it's a corker. I found it on veoh last night and couldn't resist watching it again. If you like British anthologies, this is one of the first and one of the best.
 

Holly Gibney

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2016
153
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Thanks, I learned about the Green Knowe series through the PBS educational series Cover to Cover, where I discovered many lifelong favorites. I did not know of any filmed versions besides From Time to Time. If you like, I can make a thread in the books section about scary children's literature with descriptions and recommendations.

I apologise for having taken so long to reply to your very sweet, lengthy and fascinating replies, CoriSCapnSkip! It has been a busy few days... :)
It would be lovely to follow a thread about the Green Knowe books, but please don't give yourself all that work unless you would really enjoy writing about them at length and introducing people to them. Writing can be wonderfully therapeutic and highly enjoyable at times, so you may well want to do it, but please don't do it just for me! You are too good, you know!

A movie Picnic at Hanging Rock was done as if presenting actual events surrounding the disappearances of a teacher and several students in rural Australia in the early 1900s. When a title at the end stated it was fictional, my parents were so mad they screamed! My mom watched it again not long ago--I wouldn't, considering it a waste of time--but she said it was pretty good. "Hanging Rock" is apt as the story leaves the viewer, and, in the book's original edition, the reader, hanging! Basically, it concerns a region where the land itself is such a powerful force the puny trappings of civilization cannot stand against it. The final chapter was rejected, but the rest of the book published without the ending, and the movie also filmed without the ending. Years later, it turned out the explanation was of a paranormal or fantastic nature and the book was reprinted including the final chapter.

In recent years, the trend has been for fake documentaries. My mom and her brother were totally taken in by Mermaids: The Body Found--in fact, my uncle even yelled at me when I told him it was fake. The same people did a ridiculous program on Megalodons, extinct for well over a million years, having resurfaced, and one about "Vile Vortices" which led some viewers to believe a normally docile pet dog went berserk and killed a child on camera, and that the program was tasteless enough to air his actual death, including repeatedly playing heart-wrenching screams appealing to his daddy for help. When my dad was old and had lost a few marbles following several strokes, he was quite taken in by a fake documentary made to accompany The Blair Witch Project. It was hard to convince him it was not for real. Little wonder nowadays fake news is such a problem.

Fascinating to hear all of these stories about Pearl Harbour, The War of the Worlds and so many other things that are part of our history and shared consciousness. I didn't even realise that Picnic at Hanging Rock was originally a book, although I'm familiar with the film and thought it did a good job of creating a convincing and spooky mystery that was all too easy to believe. The last chapter sounds like quite a powerful part of the story - I must get around to reading it one of these days! And you are so right about fake news, sadly... We no longer take it for granted that the things reported to us as facts are at least a "best intentions" attempt at telling the truth, however flawed they may be.