Baby’s First Horror Movie

Kristin Nilsen 0:00

Welcome to the Pop Culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who are still worried that the call is coming from inside the house. Yikes! Terrifying.

Carolyn Cochrane 0:14

We believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters, and images, and if we don't talk about them; they'll disappear like Marshall, Will, and Holly on a routine expedition.

Michelle Newman 0:26

And today, we're saving the first scary movies you dared to watch, and the countless terrifying things that have been living rent-free in your brain and under your bed for decades,

Kristin Nilsen 0:37

like sharks under your bed, under your bed. I'm Carolyn. I'm Kristen. Happy spooky season, everybody! I think we can all agree that Halloween in the Gen X era was almost godly in the way that we revered it, which is why we. I'm just figuring this out now, which is why we threw ourselves into Halloween for our children. That's why Halloween is as big as it is right now. It's because of our Halloween experience and how we approached it when we were kids. It was Halloween was second only to like Christmas in terms of the holiest days of the year. We invented

Michelle Newman 1:11

it basically. We

Kristin Nilsen 1:11

invented Halloween. Yeah, yeah. And even as we aged out of trick or treating, there was still an age appropriate outlet for our spooky vibes, which was made possible by the golden age of horror movies, according to Screen Reflections. This was my this was what I was thinking. Like this is the golden age of horror movies, right? It turns out everybody else thinks so too. Screenreflections.com says this: Nothing will likely touch the definitive auteur-driven golden era of horror that was the 70s and early 80s. We're talking The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jaws, Halloween, Alien, The Shining, to name just a few. And everybody our age has a horror movie story, possibly because that was possibly because that first horror movie you saw permanently scarred you because you were too young, and your parents didn't know you had seen it because you sneaked into the theater or you saw it at a sleepover. So when you woke up in the middle of the night with nightmares, you had no one to go to because it was a big secret. I don't know. I'm just riffing here, but it probably sounds familiar to a lot of you. So instead of asking our followers what was your favorite horror movie? We took it one Gen X step further and asked, "What was your first horror movie? Because this was a rite of passage that belongs to our generation. Even though horror movies are kind of having a moment right now, the current horror movie landscape is just structured differently than it was back then. I don't think our kids have a first horror movie. It just isn't set up like that anymore.

Michelle Newman 2:44

Well, and the movies that we dared ourselves to watch, and I say dared ourselves to watch. I don't know if I'm speaking for you guys, but that's how I had to watch them. But the the ones that we did during our childhoods, and most likely at a sleepover, we'll talk about that in a minute. They gave us every single thing we needed to fill our nightmares for life.

Carolyn Cochrane 3:04

Yeah, I

Michelle Newman 3:05

think like things that have stuck with us, and we know this to be true because we're going to share some stories from listeners who say there's still things like they check the shower before they get in it. This kind of stuff, right? The knife wielding boogeyman or like mat, you know, all the different masks that they all wore, chainsawed to. toting cannibals, you know, like the hulking, and they were always like kind of the hulking, silent guys, right? And the masks, the hockey masks. But and basically, I would like to throw in all clowns, all clowns. Yes, great, all of them. But another thing I'd also add is a long list of seemingly innocuous things these movies made us and me especially scared of forever things that you might not think of, like TV static or drains, bathtubs, air ducts, rocking chairs, right, telephones. But for me, two things in particular, and that would be fog and high tide, because for me, you guys, my very first scary movie, and it was almost like an obsession, weirdly, was Stephen King's screenwriting debut, and that was 1982's Creep Show. Did you guys see that?

Kristin Nilsen 4:14

I didn't see Creep Show. I mean, because I really was a scaredy cat. The only time I would go to something like this is with the Stein girls,

Michelle Newman 4:22

of course, of course. Can't go

Kristin Nilsen 4:24

even have to say that. Yeah, that is a slip. If they weren't going to Creepshow, I wasn't going either.

Michelle Newman 4:30

You know what? I know that. I feel like just on a side, Stein Girls aside, our T-shirt. So our newest T-shirt, and listeners, if you'd like a Pop Culture Preservation Society T-shirt. Go onto our website. We have a little tab that says shop, but we have these ringer T-shirts that are really cute, and they have a little the your Gen X childhood and a podcast tagline on the back. I think then there should be a little asterisk, and then the little tiny asterisk underneath it. It should say sponsored by the Stein girls. Oh

Kristin Nilsen 4:56

my god!

Michelle Newman 4:57

Because the podcast after. In season 20, there's not one season that's gone by that you don't mention the Stein girls at some point. The influence they had on your life was incredible. Or tagline, so

Kristin Nilsen 5:09

I saw it with the sign. I saw it with the Stein girls.

Michelle Newman 5:12

That should just be it. Yeah, I saw it with the Stein girls. I'm very much the same. I think when we start talking about this list of movies that people shared, if you all aren't shocked that I'm going to say I've never seen it. I've never seen it. It's because I would not put myself through it, right? But for some reason, this one that I comes to my memory as my first one, I have like a tie, but creep show, and I feel like is it was it more accessible because of the whole comic book angle slant to it? So I don't remember seeing this in the theater. I I know I've seen it at sleepovers, and once it hit cable, I had to text my sister and say, "Was that one of like the five video discs we owned? You know, like I told you, we had one flew over the cuckoo's nest. I think we had Arthur, probably had Annie Hall, probably nine to five because I watch that all the time, and maybe Creepshow. I don't know. All I know is that there are a couple of the segments in Creepshow that have stuck with me. Just a little bit of a backstory. So, like I said, this was Stephen King's screenwriting debut. It was his first full screenplay for a feature film, and it was an homage to the 1950s EC horror comics like Tales from the Crypt. He was really infatuated with those, which makes a lot of sense, right? If you remember, Creepshow was five segments, five different little like mini movies, and then in the middle was animation. Like it's like the comic book the little boy's reading comes to life. Okay, and he didn't just write it; he's in it. He's the title character in the Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, which was actually adapted. Stephen

Kristin Nilsen 6:46

King is in it.

Michelle Newman 6:47

Yeah, he plays in the first in the second segment is called the Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill, and he adapted that one from his short story called Weeds, and he's basically the old country bumpkin. He wears these overalls, and he like touches a meteor or something, and then his whole body, kind of throughout the segment, becomes eaten by this like alien moss. He starts growing like big green, almost like giant green, like plants come out of him and stuff. Carolyn, yeah, that's my other

Carolyn Cochrane 7:18

thing. It's the talking animals, and it's like growths and things on people and bumps and you can watch

Michelle Newman 7:25

the whole thing on YouTube, you guys. But it is kind of weird and it is kind of fun though because you can tell like oh yeah that's Stephen King but also one thing I didn't know until like four days ago, his son is the little boy at the opening and closing segments. His son Joe Hill, who grew up to become a horror, a very successful horror novelist as well, he's the little lispy boy. He's reading his comic book in bed, and his dad comes in and he's like, "Give me that trash! And he, you know, he's just the very stereotypical, mean, just horrible dad. And he like he's like gonna almost like beat the son. He takes the comic book and he throws it in the trash, right? And then the camera kind of pans in on the trash can, and now the comic book is coming to life. So there's five segments, like I said. There's Father's Day, which stars a young Ed Harris, the one I just mentioned with Stephen King. Something to tide you over, which is the one that has lived in my brain for you know my God 48 years. How many years would that be? 44 years.

Kristin Nilsen 8:25

44 years. Let's do

Michelle Newman 8:26

the math. Yeah. Okay. And especially anytime I'm at the beach. But that one stars Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson, and Galen Ross, and she went on to become a documentary filmmaker. The four the fourth one is called The Crate. That's Hal Holbrook and Adrienne Barbeau, and that one has like a monster in it.

Kristin Nilsen 8:41

Adrienne Barbeau. Oh,

Michelle Newman 8:43

she's like a scream queen in the in the 70s, right? And then there's a last one called "They're Creeping Up on You, and like I said, the one though that I will always always remember, and listeners, you probably will too. But it's called "Something to Tide You Over, and it's basically about Leslie Nielsen as kind of this psychotic husband who finds out Ted Danson and his wife are having an affair, and so he goes to Ted Danson's pad. Also, in 1982, there were like life plants. Everyone had plants in their apartments. We did in our house too, right? Spider plants. Lots of plants. Yeah, ferns and spider plants. Yeah, and Ted Danson's, you know, in a robe. Anyway, he accuses him. You've been having an affair with my wife, and Ted Danson is kind of like, "Listen, she doesn't love you anymore. She loves me. And he's like, "Well, you should watch this. And he hooks up Ted Danson's TV, takes his VCR tape out, and he has a live feed going somehow because Leslie Nielsen is also very tech savvy. So somehow he has a live feed on to the beach, you know, and all Ted Danson sees is his his beloved Leslie Nielsen's wife, and she's buried up to her neck in the sand, and the tide is starting to come in. Have you guys never seen this? No, no.

Kristin Nilsen 9:58

I mean, I'm not going to now,

Michelle Newman 9:59

and I. I will say too. I was very surprised that only one person in the hundreds of comments we got mentioned creep show, and they mentioned the roaches, and that one's called "They're Creeping Up on You, and that one is awful and terrifying too. There's like 2000 roaches in it, and it was terrible. But anyway, so he's like, "What have you done? What are you doing? Take me to her right now! So they get in Leslie Nielsen's jeep, and he takes him to the beach, and he walks him out on the beach, and he sees a big mound of sand and a shovel, and he thinks she's down there. So he goes running down there, but when he gets down there, he just sees another hole dug in the sand, and he looks at it and he's like, "What? And then of course there's like a tripod. It's like the most basic, rudimentary what they've made try to look like, how he could possibly be live streaming this in 1982. He literally has like a TV cart with a little like black and white TV on it, and he he's like turns around and Leslie Nielsen's like get in the hole and he's like I won't do it and Leslie Nielsen has a takes a gun out of his sock you know and he's got a gun on him, and the next thing you see is just Ted Danson buried up to his neck in the sand, and the TV is there, and Ted the tide he has to be watching. She's further down the beach somewhere where the tide is coming in more, and she's like, she's like, you know, the water's coming in, and she keeps just like spitting it out, and then all of a sudden he he he keeps looking at the ocean, and he sees the waves getting closer, and he realizes it's about to happen to him. So then, the waves start coming to him, but he's watching. He has to watch her like die, basically. Then Leslie Nielsen goes into his house, and then he has like six TVs, and so he can see her feed, and he can see Ted Danson's feed, and then it can be like watching a game show on one of them, and he can be all this stuff, and he has cameras all over his house. Mixes himself a drink, watches them both die, goes to bed at night, wakes up in the night. There's a sound in his house, and he doesn't know. Well, he's what's what's going on. He goes, he checks all his cameras. Everything's okay. Then, of course, as you do when you get woken up in the middle of the night by a terrible sound, he takes a shower, and he gets in the shower, and then when he comes out, he still hears. Well, Ted Danson and the wife are now dead zombies, and they've come back. They've got like seaweed hair, and but they're really actually very scary. Like that part is scary, and then it's the whole thing where he tries to shoot them, but you know they're zombies. They you know they just he can't die. The way the whole segment ends is Leslie Nielsen buried up to his neck in the sand, and there he has to die that way too. The zombies are scary. The whole tense thing, where he's someone's in the house, someone's in the house. That's scary. You guys, nothing has stuck with me though for this long. Is just the thought of being buried up to your neck in sand, and having to wait for the tide to come in. You

Kristin Nilsen 12:44

guys, imagine filming that. Imagine being Adrienne Barbeau or Ted Danson and filming that segment. Well,

Michelle Newman 12:51

Adrienne Barbeau's not in that one, but she's gonna come back in another one. It is so terrifying, and I don't think since 1982 I've ever been to the beach one time without that scene going through my head. So, you know, it might not be the first horror movie you guys think of when you think of what was my first horror movie, but it's the one that has stuck with me the most. And I think it also is one that little Michelle, you know, at age 1213, could dare herself to watch. You're going to hear in a minute. I was not about watching any type of Halloween Friday the 13th thing, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but that one was a little more accessible, if that's the right type of way to put it, with the comic book thing, and they were very short. Each one is only like 15 minutes, so I feel like the reason that one stuck with me is because it was so accessible. Well, and I

Kristin Nilsen 13:42

think the imagery is really important because I'm wondering if that's the reason that these things, quote unquote, stick with us. Because for me, I'm I now as an adult, I realize I'm not going to watch X because I'm afraid of what image is going to get stuck in there. What image do I not want to have visiting me? And so I think that's the case for when you're really little and you're a really visual person and you see something that you can't handle, and you didn't process it. Now it's still with us.

Michelle Newman 14:11

Also, that one was like such a specific type of like torture. You know, if you watch these slasher movies where they just come and knife someone and they kill him. This one, I could like imagine the torture of it, and so that's why it was so disturbing to me. It

Kristin Nilsen 14:30

taps into a different kind of fear. Yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 14:32

yes, exactly. That was one of the things I was thinking about when we were talking about doing this episode because there are different kinds of scare of scary to me. You know, there is the gory whatever. There is the are you in the house alone kind of thing. There's the jump scare. There's just the creepy with like whatever you said, seaweed and all that stuff growing out of people. Yeah, and for me, it's almost like what you just said, Michelle. It is. Something that one can kind of maybe happen, like those are the legit scary ones. Like I know that there's not going to be some guy with a chainsaw and a mat. Like those things, I just don't want to. Or zombies, yeah, right, exactly. But the thing that could kind of happen, those are the ones that really creep me out and stick with me and what I remember. So when I was going back in my memory to what is that first one that I couldn't shake that like stuck with me, and I will tell you, it is actually the Bad Seed, the original 1956 black and white movie that scared the heebie-jeebies out of me. You guys, I was probably maybe eight or nine years old, and here's how it happened. Oh my god! I agree. First of all, let me tell you a little bit about the movie. So, have you guys seen it? No, I haven't. I haven't seen it.

Michelle Newman 15:50

But when Rob Lowe did a remake of it a few years ago, I it looked intriguing. Yes, and then I was like, no, I don't want to watch that. Well, let's not put any

Carolyn Cochrane 15:59

images in her head. You need to watch this one because the scariest images, you guys, are the ones you create in your head. They're not the ones that they, because I can tell you in this movie there are no scary images at all. There's nothing that you would like look through your fingers, be like, "Oh no, don't go, don't open the door, or whatever. Nothing like that. It is all what you imagine as the story plays out. So I'll just be very brief in my description. Imagine a little adorable eight-year-old girl, pigtails, blonde as can be, cute little dress, petticoat. Mom, you look so beautiful today. Oh la la. Okay, that's our main character. Her name is Rhonda, but Rhonda is also a cold-blooded killer. Yes, she is. She is a sociopath. Okay, there no there's no monsters. There is no gore. There is just little Rhonda in her little Mary Janes, and the realization when you're eight or nine, thinking one of my classmates could be evil because it could like kill someone. So here is what makes it so interesting, and this can maybe tie in a little bit with our Gen X parenting episode. I watched it with my parents late on a weekend night. So I don't know if you guys remember, but you know how like the networks would have like after the nightly news would be on on the weekend. It would be, you know, movie a lot of black and white. Lots of times, like yeah, the late late late movie or whatever. And it would be black and white, and oftentimes it would be a scary one. So in this case, my mom must have seen that the bad seed was going to be on like on a Friday night at 1030, and you know what? She and my dad got so excited because they wanted me to see it with them. They love this movie. Yes, you guys. Yes, they pop popcorn. They we all sat together on the couch. This is like a family story now. I mean, it is for whatever reason they thought I was old enough to watch it, and

Kristin Nilsen 17:58

and also it's 1030 p.m. By the way,

Carolyn Cochrane 18:00

yeah, it's so and you have to go to sleep right, but it's on Friday, so it's like it's kind of the way they would the must have framed it was well popcorn. It's kind of scary, but we'll all be together, and Dad and I love this movie, and blah blah blah blah blah. So, you guys, it is scary AF because of all the things I just said, it is like unbelievable. It is this manipulative little girl, and she tell you know she drops these little hints where you're like, I think she murdered a classmate. We actually find out she's murdered several people, but you just know. And then there's a there's a scene where they're they live in an apartment building and they have like a caretaker, and he is you know kind of overall wearing kind of maybe I don't know for lack of a better work maybe a little bit slow just whatever he does the yard the lawn he takes does the trash and everything and the story-the main story-is that this little boy has died on a field trip. He drowned, and it's everyone thinks it's accidental. But the the landscaper janitor guy, he doesn't really think that, and so he's talking to the little girl, and he says, "Oh, basically, they found weird marks on the boy that died, so they found weird marks on his hands and on his face that happened to match the taps on the bottom of her tap shoes that she wore on the field trip. So the janitor guy says, "I know where your shoes are, and she she says, "No, you don't. You're lying. And she said he says something like, "Oh yes, I do, and she said, "You can't. I threw them down the incinerator so they would burn. So right now he's-he didn't know for sure, and then he says to her, "Well, I saw something in the incinerator, and I took them out, and I have your shoes. And then this girl, and this is the line that my family will say forever: she turns from the pigtails. Everything and she gets his face and she says, "Give me back my shoes, Leroy. And she says that over and over and she gets closer and closer and he's like, "I was only kidding. I didn't have your shoes or whatever. Give me back those shoes, Leroy, in her like big petticoat dress with her pigtails coming down. Oh my god! And let me just say, Leroy is not long for this world. I know you know that. You know that right away. She sets him on fire. I know. Oh, Drew Barrymore Firestarter. Yes, yes, yes. And so it is super scary. And what's so interesting was that it's based on a novel. It actually went to Broadway. I know. Well, you know that they tap shoes and head together. There's going to be a big dance number around. I don't think there could be any musical parts to it. But what was interesting in the Broadway show and the book, the ending is different than the movie, because in the book and the Broadway show, the the mom mother dies, the little girl lives. Okay, and we and that's the end. So you don't know what happens. Well, there was this code, believe it or not, it had name like the Hudson Code or the Harris Code in Hollywood, that any movie, like especially if it was a child, and this goes to Kristen when we talked about how children needed to be seen and not heard, and there basically had to be punishment. If a child did something wrong, there had to be punishment. You can't let the child get away with anything. And in this case, they're going to get away with murder. Well, that ain't happening. So nobody thought this movie could be made, but the writer of the book and the Broadway show concocted a different ending where he the little girl gets struck by lightning at the end. I'm not really giving anything away, but a lot of other people die too. But it was so interesting because they had to rework that for these standards in Hollywood because children needed to, you know, basically be punished for their bad deeds, she

Kristin Nilsen 22:01

needed a timeout.

Carolyn Cochrane 22:02

Yes, and then the weirdest thing of all about this whole movie, you watch it and you see her get struck by lightning and everything, and then because it had been a play, at the end of the movie they decide to do like a curtain call, like they do in a in a play. So they bring everyone out, and everyone's like laughing, and then the mom in this like gives the little girl a little like tap on the butt, like you're getting a little spanking. All the actors come out and take bows and are laughing, which is so weird because you just watch this really scary movie and then the girl got struck by lightning, which was kind of a fear of mine. Like everything in this movie could kind of maybe happen in real life, and then all of a sudden, I think my parents were probably watching me, like, "Oh, what is she going to think? Yeah, come out. Like, oh, wasn't that fun? And you guys, it doesn't. And they are because they did the same thing to me with the invasion of the body snatchers. Also,

Michelle Newman 22:54

this does not track. This does not track with everything we've heard about your parents, like not allowing you to watch, you know, Laverne and Shirley or whatever. You could watch

Kristin Nilsen 23:04

soap or His company. You gonna listen to that song by Billy Joel, right? Right. What the fudge? Really? I know. No,

Carolyn Cochrane 23:12

I think they thought maybe because it was black and white and like olden day stuff, like that it couldn't be scary. You know, because when we're comparing it to some of the stuff that was out in the '70s, and you know they're going to the movies and watching The Omen and The Shining and stuff, so they probably think, "Oh, this is a fun as a little girl in it. Like it's not that scary. And of course, who knows how long it had been since they had seen it? But I just remember them being so excited to show it to me. So it's not like taking your kids to see I don't know some movie that you love like the Apple Dumpling Yang. That was just it. That was like like the Apple Doubling Gang. Yes, and so I just had to laugh in a way, but know that it has left such an impression in our family that sometimes, like if my sister would have something I wanted, I'd be like, "Give me back my sketch Leroy or whatever it just lasted. Yeah, did you did you

Michelle Newman 24:06

guys make sure and show it to Ronnie then? Two years later,

Carolyn Cochrane 24:09

we must have because I'm sure we probably all my mom and dad and I all sat down like it's Ronnie's time to do the initiation. Initiation pop the popcorn. Let's do our Jiffy pop and we're gonna watch this incredibly scary movie, and it's some families

Michelle Newman 24:24

watch the Sound of Music each year. Wizard of Oz. Your family is like, it's time for the bad seed. Yeah, and it

Carolyn Cochrane 24:30

is really scary. So if you haven't seen it, go watch it because again, the scary movies are the ones that it's written so well and that you just you make it all up in your head, and that's scarier than anything you can see because

Kristin Nilsen 24:44

totally agree. But for everybody,

Michelle Newman 24:46

that's good. That's a good distinction. Like there's scary movies and there's slasher movies, right? Well, it's different. Yeah, I think they're totally different. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 24:53

I totally agree. I don't like

Michelle Newman 24:55

either of them, but right, a psychological thriller. So I like to this. Yeah, I will watch.

Carolyn Cochrane 25:00

Yes, I think that's it. The psychological thrillers are the interesting kind of ones that it's like a bruise. Like you want to watch it, but you kind like you keep pushing on the bruise, even though it kind of hurts. Yeah, but I met the

Michelle Newman 25:13

scab. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 25:13

I did want to share because I thought this was kind of cute and interesting. But I asked Andy. I thought, well, what was your first? I think I said horror movie, and then he's like, I don't know. And I said, Well, scary movie. Like, what was the first movie that you remember being really scared of? With he did not miss a beat. He told me exactly where he was and what happened. He said, Snow White. He said, I saw it in the movie theater with my mom. Yes, that witch came on. They had to leave the movie theater.

Kristin Nilsen 25:39

It's too much.

Carolyn Cochrane 25:40

Yeah, it's super. He was hysterical, and his mom had to take him out. And you can see that. Yeah. So there's all different ways that we could be frightened as kids, and one, your parents can walk you right into it. My

Michelle Newman 25:54

parents are popcorn. Well, we're gonna read, listeners. A lot of you shared a lot of stories about your parents being responsible for your long-lasting fear, and we'll get into that in a minute.

Kristin Nilsen 26:05

If it's not the Stein girls, it's your parents, right? Okay. Before I get to my first official scary movie, I want to tell you about my first horror movie experience. Okay, because it traumatized me, and like I said before, I couldn't, I I couldn't tell anybody because it was secret. It happened when I was very, very little, and I'm still traumatized by the image that was that burned itself into my little kindergarten brain. I sneaked out of bed and I parked myself on the shag carpeting and squinted through the slats in our louvered bi-fold doors that shut off our our family room where the babysitter was watching TV, and she was watching an old black and white sci-fi horror flick that I cannot find on the internet. I have tried for years. I have tried because this movie is stuck with me for over 50 years, and the last scene of that movie was my first horror movie image that you can't get out of your head that it visits you while you're trying to go to sleep. So I'm going to describe this scene, and if you know, listeners, if you know what this movie is, you have to tell me because it's been following me since 1974. So in the last scene, the evil queen of some spooky space colony had been killed finally, like ding dong, the witch is dead kind of thing, and they ceremoniously are carrying her body through the town, with her head like lolled back, her head is hanging back, and her eyes are open. That's important because remember when you're a kid, when you think people die, your eyes close. Nope, they don't. And this is when I was like, "What? Your eyes stay open. So her eyes are open, and there's blood trickling out the side of her mouth, and a courtier is of some kind is following behind her, carrying her eggs, basically in an egg carton. Like he's following her with an egg carton, and I was like, "No, she lays eggs, no, and there's the blood dripping out of her mouth, and I just like got up and I ran back to my room, and so in my searching for that movie, and of course I never told anybody. I can't tell my parents. I can't be like I'm scared of the blood dripping out of her mouth and the queen who lays eggs because then because I wasn't supposed to be up. So in searching for that movie, which I've been doing for years, every year or so, I try and like let's see how my googling is this year. If I can come up with something different, yeah, the queen who lays eggs, the movie that always pops up, and this is not it. The movie that always pops up is the movie Them. It's not it. But when I asked Mike what his first horror movie was, he immediately again no hesitation, just like Andy, them, it's them, and he was scarred. The first one is always the hardest, right? And this one was by accident, which happens when you happen to catch movies on TV, right? His house was empty, nobody was home. He remembers distinctly the sound of the lawnmower because his dad was outside mowing the lawn, and he couldn't look away, even though he was horrified. This is them is basically about giant ants, horror like oh giant ants, and all they did was put a camera inside one of those ant farms that you get at at the hobby store. I

Michelle Newman 29:20

had one. I love that. That's all they

Kristin Nilsen 29:22

did, and that was the movie. But it scarred him for life. Oh, them. Okay, so if you know of the movie with the queen who dies and she lays eggs and has a blood sugar, you know what it's sounding like

Michelle Newman 29:31

to me. Are you sure it wasn't? So my sister and I used to kind of torture ourselves by staying up super late at night in the summer and watching the Twilight Zone. I was just gonna. It sounds like a Twilight Zone type. It was the end of an episode because of course you lost me at the hat lays the eggs because then I all of a sudden I'm in Twilight Zone territory. Yeah. So if

Kristin Nilsen 29:49

it's if you guys know of a Twilight, somebody out there is a Twilight Zone episode. I mean episode expert. Somebody out there, yeah, is a Twilight Zone expert, and they are going to know every episode. And if this was an episode. Need to know. Not that I'm gonna watch it again, because I can't. I can't do it. So my first official horror movie was the Amityville Horror, thanks to, of course, the Stein Girls. The Stein Girls. Yes. And my parents never ever would have let me see something demonic or satanic or never never never never never. And I'm pretty sure it was rated R. Also, oh,

Carolyn Cochrane 30:22

it was as my first rated R movie. I've shared that my life. Oh, and she still has a little ticket stuff. So for

Kristin Nilsen 30:27

sure, the Stein girl's mom took us to that movie, and I did not ask my parents if I could go. And researching for this episode was incredibly difficult because revisiting the Amityville horror shook me in the exact same way that it shook me in seventh grade. All I did was open Wikipedia. That's it, and I saw a mugshot of a man that I've never seen before. I don't know. I mean, but I know who he is. I know exactly who he is, even though I've never seen that picture before. And I had to look away. I literally, I averted my eyes. Avert your eyes. Don't look. Then I scrolled down, and there was a photo of the house from the Amityville horror. And I was like, scroll, scroll, scroll away, scroll away. I was like, get it off my screen. Get it off my screen. That house also appeared on the cover of the book, which meant I had to be very careful when I was reading the book not to catch a glimpse of it, and if you recall, the side of the house had these like quarter circle windows in the third floor, side by side, and we're gonna get to that in a minute. What we saw in those windows in a minute, but just no, just scroll, like scroll for your life, keep going. So I felt that exact same fear that I felt when I was 12 years old, and so after that, after I felt that was my Wikipedia fear, I decided a it's okay if I just rely on memory for this episode instead of research. Oh yeah. And b if if I do have to research something, make sure that Mike is home. Do not do this when you are alone in the house. So the movie of the Amityville Horror came out in the summer of 1979, and it followed the publication of the best-selling book. Which often, that was very often the case in the 70s and the 80s with horror movies. They followed the publication of the book. Did I read that book? Of course I did, because why? Because I wasn't terrified enough. I don't know. I have no idea. And it's the story of George and Kathy Lutz moving their family into this big, beautiful Dutch colonial home in Amityville, New York, which is a real place. And shortly after moving in, terrifying things start happening to George and Kathy Lutz that are assumed to be related to that horrible first scene with the son going from room to room to room, killing his family, like blood dripping down the walls, ghostly voices telling them to get out. The babysitting sitter getting locked in the closet and losing her shit in the most hysterical way, which made it really hard for me to babysit after that. The swarm of flies in the middle of winter, and worst of all, their daughter's imaginary friend named Jody, who was a demonic pig with red glowing eyes. This is what you see in those two windows, in those two quarter circle windows, the glowing eyes of the demonic pig named Jodi. And there was music that accompanied every time they showed those glowing eyes. There was music, and it would go ah ah ah. And the Stein girls would sing that music to me to scare me. Oh, I know it's evil. And also remember, if I'm getting something wrong here, remember that I could not research this because I am afraid. So I am doing this permanently. So the Lutz reach out to a local priest who confirms that there are evil spirits, and he tries to exorcize the spirits, and he gets slapped in the face by an invisible force, and that's when the ghostly voice says "Gut out, which becomes a famous part of remember Eddie Murphy's. What is Eddie Murphy's? Delirious. Eddie Murphy's stand-up show called Delirious, where he's like, "Get out. I'm not going to do the bit for you, but you remember, then maybe the priest dies of graphic and violent death. I'm not exactly sure because again, I'm not checking.

Kristin Nilsen 34:05

I think the reason, again, Carolyn, to your point, this movie terrified me so much is that it was presented as a true story, as if James Brolin and Margot Kidder really lived in that house and got terrorized by the ghosts of a murdered family, and the book was written like a true crime novel. This was a true crime novel. This is where my terror came from. It's scary because it's true. That means it could happen to me. Shockingly, other people have lived in that house since someone bought the Amityville Horror House and moved their family into it, and they have reported that absolutely nothing odd or gruesome has ever happened in their house. The people who lived there before the Letzas also reported zero haunting, no zero blood dripping down the wall. So this is where we start to get accusations of storytelling that came out after the movie was released and started terrorizing people with their. With its, you know, this could happen to you experience, the original crime, the murders of an entire family, did happen, but there are lots of accusations that the Lutzes made it up and fed it to the author of the book. I mean, keeping that up for a book-that's a big lie. But then to keep it up for a major motion picture, I don't know. Good luck with that. And now it is widely accepted that the entire story of the Amityville horror was fabricated by George and Kathy Lutz, which would have been great for me to know in seventh grade. That would have been very helpful. Yes, oh yes, right. He's in the garage.

Carolyn Cochrane 35:47

Wow. Well, yeah. Then they went and got in the big bucks. That reminds me of those parents that supposedly sent their kid up in that weather balloon a few years ago, or whatever, and that he was like in the garage or something in the garage attic. He'd fallen asleep or something, but yeah, yeah. It's so it's all made silly. There's one. There's one. Again, those are that I want to talk about. But I like how you said

Michelle Newman 36:10

you're kind of sad. I'm like, I don't

Carolyn Cochrane 36:11

know. It's so intriguing and kind of if I.

Kristin Nilsen 36:15

So like I said above, we asked our followers on social media to let us know what the first movie was that scared the bejesus out of them? How old they were, what the lasting effects were, and the amount of and the amount of very specific memories we got proves that these people understood the assignment. We got so many responses from people.

Michelle Newman 36:38

Yeah, the movies definitely did their job right. I do want to start with one though that nobody mentioned, and I can't believe this. And I checked Facebook, I checked Instagram, and Threads. Now, if you did, if you're screaming, I did. It's because I haven't checked in like four days. But this was mine that tied. Remember earlier, I said when I think back to my first, I think of Creepshow, but I also think of this one. And when I look at the date, I'm guessing this perhaps was actually my first scary movie, but I really wanted to talk more about Creepshow earlier, so I did that one. However, this one has definitely stuck with me, and that is 1980s The Fog. Boom, boom, boom. Where I saw it, I have no idea, as usual. So maybe it was later, but I was young. It was definitely before high school, so it could have been like creepshow era. My creep show era. That's you know, like Taylor Swift has all the eras. It was directed and scored by John Carpenter, Carpenter, and this was after Halloween, but before the thing. And of course, who does it star? Everyone, Adrian Barbo.

Kristin Nilsen 37:40

Oh my god! Oh my god!

Michelle Newman 37:43

Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Janet Lee, and Hal Holbrook. Now, if you'll remember from before, Hal Holbrook and Adrienne Barbeau start together in one of the segments in Creepshow two years later. And

Kristin Nilsen 37:55

Janet Lee isn't that Jamie Lee Curtis's mom.

Carolyn Cochrane 37:57

It is, and I tell you from Psycho. I'll tell you, yes.

Michelle Newman 38:00

And I'll tell you a fun fact about that. The Fog famously stars Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, her real life daughter. Obviously, Janet Lee loved Halloween so much, which was two years prior to The Fog in 1978. She loved it so much, you know, watching her daughter basically and they're being terrorized, that she personally approached John Carpenter and she asked him to be in his next movie, which turned out to be The Fog. Real bad stuff happens in that fog, you guys. I just remember a scene where you the fog rolls in too, and it almost like in just like covers like envelops a house, and then you just hear at the door. And to your point, Carolyn, it's a common occurrence. Fog. We all get foggy days. So then you wake up and you're you know 10 years old to a foggy day and makes it even more scary. So I really I felt that that movie was very neglected on this long list we're about to get, and I was very sad because that's one of my earliest, my earliest scary memories is the fog and the fog just knocking at your door.

Kristin Nilsen 39:10

Oh my God! And what a great device! This thing that is so commonplace, but you can't have any knowledge of what comes inside of it.

Michelle Newman 39:19

You can't see it.

Carolyn Cochrane 39:20

Yes, the

Michelle Newman 39:20

fog is so dense, and when we talk about what sticks with you, yeah, you guys know those Minnesota mornings when it's cold, but then you know the weather changes. Like blink your eyes, right? So you would, listeners in Minneapolis, I lived there 25 years, so I had so many of these mornings where you'd wake up and you'd be like, "What the heck? Like the fog was so thick you couldn't see, you know, the hand in front of your face, right? Yeah. And every single time, I thought there better not be any knocking at my door today. I'm very Adrian

Kristin Nilsen 39:51

Barbeau. Yeah, there's Adrienne Barbeau at the door.

Carolyn Cochrane 39:54

Yikes! Yes. Well, this is that's reminding me of Widow's Bay. I don't know if yes, we have one. That, but it's really incorporating a lot, a lot of elements we've kind of been talking about. But the fog is a-it's like a character. You're so right, and

Michelle Newman 40:09

that goes back to me saying these kind of psychological. Like I really enjoyed that, even though I was getting scared. Also, there was so much humor in that. But I know I can watch those. I just don't like the slashery ones. Yeah. What else was on the list?

Carolyn Cochrane 40:23

Yeah, well, the number one most mentioned movie by our listeners was Jaws. That was their number one horror movie, and I don't always think of it as a horror movie. No, I guess it is. But horror to me is those the slasher ones-it's scary. I think

Michelle Newman 40:44

of scary movies. Yes, I agree with you. That doesn't always come to my mind first.

Kristin Nilsen 40:49

But were you terrorized, right? And people were. Yes, when you read our stories coming up, you'll see how people were terrorized, and we were terrorized all in the same way. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn Cochrane 41:00

And you know what? Also, is crazy? Like they made a toy from it. I know. You know, choose your lane, people. You're either terrorizing us, or you want us to play the game Jaws. The

Michelle Newman 41:11

game Jaws, but also the little figures. Can you imagine? Like, play with these in the bathtub, honey. Yeah, and probably again goes back to the parents. In fact, Carolyn, we should ask. Let's ask your mom. Did she give you some Jaws figures to play with in the match?

Carolyn Cochrane 41:26

Well, that was one I wasn't allowed to see. You know, I think you remember me talking about. I knew there was like the boobs, like you knew that the wolf girl was turning topless or whatever. And so my mom had the book, and so I remember going through and trying to find that section of the book. So wait, so you're let's

Kristin Nilsen 41:41

just get this straight. So you're not allowed to see jaws because they are bare breasts, not because there was a shark that ate people.

Carolyn Cochrane 41:49

I don't think the shark that ate people was a deal breaker. I really

Michelle Newman 41:53

don't. Not just eating people. Oh, I was about to say, but eating a little boy floating on a raft. However, she's already been. She's already had family movie night and see it watching a little girl. I know, but like if they that can't be the reason they didn't let you see Jaws, right? Because they let you watch the movie of a cute little girl who like burned people and killed them with her tap shoes. Yeah, and they

Carolyn Cochrane 42:13

also let me watch. And I guess this would have been once it was on TV because I would have been too little. But they were all about me seeing Poseidon Adventure and you know towering in France. Yes, I mean that people are burning and Shelly Winters in Poseidon Adventure stuck in the portal.

Kristin Nilsen 42:31

Oh, stuck on the portal. Oh my gosh! Oh my God! I can't even talk about it.

Carolyn Cochrane 42:38

Yeah. So okay, next, kind of along the lines of our Snow White earlier from my husband, the Wizard of Oz. This is so totally. My hand is probably same, and I wasn't

Michelle Newman 42:49

thinking of that when I thought my first, but for sure would have been my first. Yeah, yeah. And it's not just the

Kristin Nilsen 42:55

witch. For me, it was the witch, and I could and I could see her like I could see a puff, and I could see her coming out of the puff in my bedroom at night in my bed. And but my roommate Martha, for her it was the flying monkeys.

Michelle Newman 43:11

Yeah, could

Kristin Nilsen 43:12

not could not with the well for me it was because they

Michelle Newman 43:14

talked. Yeah, and they talked. Yeah, voices and they were busy. They were also yeah when she's on the bike like before she's the wicked. Yeah, yes, the Chinese. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 43:22

yeah, and and

Carolyn Cochrane 43:24

then she did Folgers commercials, and I could not wrap my head around the fact that Margaret Hamilton, my mom would say, does she look familiar? Oh my gosh, the Witcher, the Wizard of Oz, and she's like this nice old lady. She was like typecast for me. She was never nice in my head. I don't care what show movie you put her in. She's scared. Well, and this is more when she was on the bike. Like we

Kristin Nilsen 43:44

understood this. Our generation of parents had like parenting classes and parenting books, so we understand. We understood how children's brains worked. Our parents did not understand that we didn't know that that was an actor. Like we thought that was a witch, and now the witch was selling coffee. We couldn't differentiate. I remember because, of course, my parents knew that I watched The Wizard of Oz because we're watching it all together, and it's for children. And why on earth would you be afraid? I do remember getting out of bed because of the witch appearing in my room in the puff and going, and I'm telling my mom that the witch has come to me, and I'm afraid, and she's like, "Yeah, yeah, go to bed. And I was, I was like, "How do I get her to understand my fear? And so I came, I got out of bed again. This is number two, and I said, "The witch told me there was no Jesus.

Carolyn Cochrane 44:34

Oh,

Kristin Nilsen 44:35

I'm like, "I've got to somehow convince her, and she told me, "Go back to bed and think about Disneyland. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 44:44

that you just said that. I think that's what my parents will say. Maybe not Disneyland, but it was like go to bed and think about Christmas or something. It was always go think about something that's because I watch a mod and I

Kristin Nilsen 44:54

can't pause it, and so go back. I probably used

Michelle Newman 44:57

that too. And the winter scares me. Jesus,

Kristin Nilsen 45:01

oh yeah, the wizard was scary. That's scary.

Carolyn Cochrane 45:04

The monkeys were number one for me, and that just that tracks for me. Yeah. Okay, everybody. A lot of people did mention Amityville Horror, so they're right along with you, Kristen. And that just also tracks for Gen X because those Gen Xers my age, this could have been your very first, you know, rated R movie. You might have been able to to kind of fake it because also the reason that I didn't ever see a rated R movie till a really long time was I was afraid I'd get in trouble. I'd get caught. It wasn't that I was scared to see it or anything like that. It was like, well, I'm not the age and I'm not being accompanied by a parent, so I can't go. But Amityville Horror would have been the one either your parents. In my case, that's what happened. My friend's parents took us because they maybe because it was a true story too. They just thought, oh, this they can handle it kind of thing.

Michelle Newman 45:53

This sweet story of the the boy killing his family. All

Carolyn Cochrane 45:57

right, well here's where we get into some of those slasher ones. People said Friday the 13th,

Carolyn Cochrane 46:03

of course,

Michelle Newman 46:03

yeah, Brian. But

Carolyn Cochrane 46:05

you know, and even right now, I'd be hard pressed. They so Friday the 13th, another one. We'll talk about like Halloween, Texas Chainsaw. They all are like in the same bubble for me. So if you said which one had the hockey mask, I don't know that I could tell you, even sitting here right now. I don't know what I could tell you if I could tell you which one was Jamie Lee Curtis in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't know that I would remember that. It's

Kristin Nilsen 46:29

hard to differentiate a lot. There's there's hockey mask. There's Jamie Lee Curtis. There's well, there's the and there's the other the screen

Michelle Newman 46:38

mask, the white mask, the open mask. Yeah. Now we're getting those '90s invented Van Gogh. Yeah.

Carolyn Cochrane 46:43

Yes. Okay. This is one I don't remember. I've I've seen it on TV now, but it scares me because I think it could be real. The Exorcist. So I'm really wondering about our listeners and followers that that was their first movie. Did they see it at the movie theater? Because that would have been really freaky, and I thought it was super freaky, never having seen the movie. Because my mom told me this story, she said that my grandmother was reading it, The Exorcist, and she fell asleep and it went on the floor, like you know, she must have like just dropped on the floor. And then during the night, she had to go get up and go to the bathroom, and so when she got out of bed, she stepped on it, and she had this huge chill that went through her body, like needles and everything, like whatever. She just it was like it shocked her literally, and I'll never forget that. And I thought my mom wouldn't lie to me, my grandmother wouldn't lie. Like that was spooky. Yes. And then you know, and my mom would tell me because of course I'm Catholic, like yeah, priests do exorcisms, so that was one of those. I didn't need to see it to create this scary picture in my head, and I knew the head, you know, went rounding around. And yeah, there's so many

Kristin Nilsen 47:50

iconic things from some of these movies. And Exorcist is probably the first time we got the the iconic thing that happened, the iconic image. So the iconic image of her head spinning around, the iconic image of her turning her head to the side and vomiting. Oh, and then the voice

Carolyn Cochrane 48:06

part. Okay, Frankenstein, the the true story. I don't know what that is. I don't think I ever saw it, but a lot. But a lot of

Kristin Nilsen 48:12

people said that it was interesting because I don't know what it is either. So it makes me want to see

Carolyn Cochrane 48:17

it. Psycho. So that was one that people mentioned, and I'm wondering is that one that your your parents might have said, "Here, let's pop some popcorn and watch this on the late night. Yes, because my

Kristin Nilsen 48:27

parents were really into Rear Window and Vertigo and all of the Alfred Hitchcock movies. I don't recall when I saw, but I definitely saw it at their if not with them at their suggestion. And I am not to this day unafraid to shower, like especially in a hotel room. I'm checking things out in the bathroom. I'm not. Yeah.

Carolyn Cochrane 48:48

Wow. And it's a shower

Kristin Nilsen 48:49

curtain. I'm just. I'm now unpacking all this hotel shower curtain. I might just skip the shower. I might just skip it. I get it. Yeah.

Carolyn Cochrane 48:58

Okay. Next. Okay. Audrey Rose. Audrey

Kristin Nilsen 49:02

Rose, you guys, I have, I have feelings about Audrey. I've never heard of it. Could be. I'm sure a lot of people have not heard of it. So when I saw it on the list, my ears perked up because I thought I was the only one. I thought it was some. This was something that was unknown, and so I'm really excited that I'm not the only one who is absolutely terrified by Audrey Rose. I thought this was a made-for-TV movie, but it turns out it was in the theaters in 1977, and I just caught it on TV. But I didn't catch it on TV until years after I again drank, read the book, and there's a story there. I can see the cover in my head. The book. The cover is so scary. Yeah, the cover is terrifying. It's all flames, and then like a scary girl. So yeah, so the Audrey Rose is the story of a family in New York City who is seemingly stalked. They're seemed like they're being stalked by Anthony Hopkins in a dapper trench coat and a fedora hat, and he appears to be very interested. In Ivy, the daughter of Marsha Mason, this is super disturbing because at that moment in time, Ivy has been suffering with horrible night terrors. Which this is the image I can't get out of my mind. She's screaming at her window, at her window, and she's trying to touch the window like this. She holds her hands up to the window, and every time she gets close to the window, oh, she pulls her hands back, pulls her hands back like that. It's terrifying. Like, ouch! She can't touch her windows. The stalker, Anthony Hopkins, who is laser focused on Ivy, is the father of Audrey Rose. Audrey Rose is dead. She died in a fiery car crash, and he thinks that Ivy is the reincarnation of his daughter Audrey Rose, and he wants her back. Like whose daughter is she? And so when she when Ivy is having these nightmares, she's in the car, the fiery car, and she's trying to touch the car window and pulling her hands back, like ah, trying to make her way out of the car. It's terrifying. It's terrifying, and I did not even experience that image on film until years after I'd read the book, so I found the book at the library in the adult section, and my friend I think I'm like fourth grade, maybe fifth grade, and my friend Allison was like, "Check it out, check it out, and I felt like we were doing something illegal, like checking something out from the adult section was definitely not allowed. Okay, that's stupid, people. You can check out anything you want from the library. There are no restrictions. I couldn't believe the librarian let us go. We took it and we ran. I thought for sure we were going to get arrested, and I kept waiting. I hid the book and everything, and Allison and I took turns reading this very clandestine book, and we were so shook. It was our secret, right? And reincarnation became the new topic of discussion on the playground, and that image of Ivy screaming and trying to touch her fiery hot windows and pulling her hands back-whether it was the written word or it was the image on TV-that was traumatic, and I will not revisit it.

Carolyn Cochrane 52:04

Gosh, those are the kind of stories that I would

Michelle Newman 52:06

have. I would have been all in for. Those are the types of stories. Absolutely, you can't look like that kind of stuff. Right? Exactly.

Carolyn Cochrane 52:12

Exactly. Some people mentioned deliverance. I wouldn't have thought of that. I've never seen it either. Just seen. Oh, I I have

Kristin Nilsen 52:19

not seen it. I don't want to see it like the way people talked about it. Yeah, yeah. And I know it's just like it's violent and vile. So it's not spooky. It's bad, bad people. Very bad people. Yeah.

Carolyn Cochrane 52:33

Okay. So we said the omen, the shining Halloween. Oh,

Michelle Newman 52:37

Halloween. You guys know that yesterday, just yesterday, october 25, 1978 is the day Halloween was released. I mean, 48 years ago, yesterday when this was released. But yeah, and also, did you guys know there were 13 of them, and it spanned 13 in the franchise, spanning 44 years. Isn't that crazy? That is

Carolyn Cochrane 52:58

crazy. That is insane. That's I would say one of the

Michelle Newman 53:01

most like watched and popular other than Friday the 13th because the whole Michael Myers thing and I tried to watch it as a teenager I tried to be a good sport at a slumber party or something and I was kind of all in but you know just the whole idea that she's the babysitter and you know, all it-it was too. I couldn't do it. I think I probably went in the other room and read a book or something during it. I've never been able to watch the entire thing. I probably watched most of it. You want to know something really funny? The it was. I think I told you this earlier. How they could the return on investment was so big because these movies were so low budget. Halloween was so low budget. Jamie Lee Curtis only was paid $8,000 for Halloween one. Yeah, and she had to go buy her own. She went and she went to J.C. Penney's to get her own wardrobe. There was like no cost, no wardrobe budget in it, which I think is so funny. And then the mask that Michael Myers wears, it was actually just a William Shatner mask. The production crew went and bought $1, a $1 Captain Kirk mask from a toy store, and then they painted it white and like teased up the hair and like fixed it. But the the iconic mask was $1. So oh yeah, but they think how much money that movie made. It made actually I can tell you how much it made. The budget for the movie was 300 $325,000. It went on to gross over $70 million worldwide, which today is the equivalent of over $300 million. Oh my gosh! My

Carolyn Cochrane 54:35

gosh! Yikes! Well, I can tell you that Halloween Two was my first and only slasher movie that I ever saw, because I'm just not a fan of that stuff. And in this case, I was on a date, and I didn't really go on very many dates. And this was one of those-I'm not gonna say names, but it was kind of a pity date. Like the guy that liked me, yeah, and he was just a really good friend. But I was. Go because you know he just kept asking, and I just was like, okay, we'll go as friends in my mind. And I remember he put his arm around me, and I know, and I'm what am I going to do? And here's the thing: he probably wore a little bit too much of this on our date night. He wore the cologne gray flannel. I don't know if you're familiar with gray flannel. I can never smell it again. It makes me-I mean-and person, I doubt you are listening, but you're a super nice guy. But it was just so awkward, and I just remember that awkward feeling is associated with that scent. Okay, House of Wax with Vincent Price was mentioned a lot. I thought, which jogged a memory of mine, and I'm just going to tell you this super fast. Well, no, I'm not going to tell you the whole thing. You probably won't care. So I'm going to skip that. Wait, wait. I want to hear what it is. Okay. Well, so when I was like in eight or nine, we had this movie theater. Well, it wasn't really a movie theater. It was a storefront in a strip center that had these carpeted, almost like bleacher seats, and on Saturdays they did these little matinees, and Friday nights you could go out Friday night too, and I could walk to it. So my friends and I would go, and for $1 you'd get some candy, and you'd watch a movie, and it would usually be a Vincent Price movie. So it was like House of Wax or The Raven or House on Haunted Hill, and so that was kind of ish my first exposure to those kind of movies. But also Vincent Price as this scary actor because he was also Egghead in Batman, and if you remember, he had this really weird. He was one of the villains in Batman. He was Egghead, and he was also, as we know, in the Brady Bunch. He was a scary kid. He was just yes. And don't you, when you hear his name, don't you think horror movies or old school like scary movies?

Kristin Nilsen 56:50

Thriller videos. Exactly. We've

Carolyn Cochrane 56:52

got the thriller video. Also, he was in Edward Scissorhands. I mean, we think of him as, especially our generation, I think, as scary actors. He's in scary movies. Less than a third of the movies he ever did were scary movies.

Kristin Nilsen 57:06

Oh,

Carolyn Cochrane 57:07

which is crazy. He was in so many movies, but whatever we automatically equate Vincent Price with scary horror movies. Whether he was on a variety show, and even his voice, like I can hear that voice in my head, and it is scary.

Kristin Nilsen 57:21

So anyway, neighborhood.

Carolyn Cochrane 57:24

Yeah, and he also would be on Hollywood Squares a lot. These are my other fun little things. Yeah, and he was also on the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Now I don't know if he came back as the professor, you know, from the archeologist, yeah, or the archeologist

Kristin Nilsen 57:40

when he's the kidnapper,

Carolyn Cochrane 57:42

yeah, and he went to Yale and is a gourmet chef.

Kristin Nilsen 57:48

The more you know,

Carolyn Cochrane 57:49

the more you know. There you go. Okay, Carrie. Carrie is next. Did you guys see that? That one is

Kristin Nilsen 57:55

also another one where I read the book, The Little Brick, and it also has a terrifying image. Does everybody have the same image?

Carolyn Cochrane 58:02

We do.

Kristin Nilsen 58:03

So I'm just gonna say it out loud, and everybody's gonna nod their head out there who's listening. It's right after the bucket of pig's blood has dropped onto Carrie at the prom, and she's standing, and her face is like ah, and everybody is scared now. She has turned into a demonic being, and I'm sorry, I can't. I can't. Not going to see that movie again. And also, the other thing that was scary about Carrie was that Abby from Ada's Enough was in it. Yes, and I was like, Oh, Abby, what? I

Carolyn Cochrane 58:33

know. Oh, well. Interestingly enough, this month, an eight-episode television series, Carrie, is going to be on Prime Video, and it is set current day, so it's the same time. I think,

Michelle Newman 58:46

yeah, they need to, they need to, they need to make that more current. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 58:51

yeah, and it'll be interesting with the whole social media and phones and all of that kind of stuff because you know the whole bullying thing. Oh, think

Kristin Nilsen 58:58

about how they can elevate the bullying. And remember, John Travolta was her date at the prom. This was it his first film. He was in Welcome Back, Cotter, but he was her. He was and he was in on the joke. I think. I know. Oh no! Wait, was he nice again? No, remember I can't research any of it. You

Carolyn Cochrane 59:15

know where there's. It's like I have the feeling, and I never saw the movie all the way through, but I feel like it was borderline. Like he wanted to tell, like he, yeah, you know those that kind of time where you're in on it, but then you feel bad. He wanted to be cool to tell him,

Kristin Nilsen 59:27

and so he's gonna go with the gang of cool kids and right.

Carolyn Cochrane 59:30

But he feels kind of bad. He feels kind of that kind of thing. Okay, the Beast with Five Fingers. I don't know. Was that a movie? I don't know. Oh, was that a

Kristin Nilsen 59:39

was that a made for TV movie.

Carolyn Cochrane 59:42

I I don't know. That almost sounds like a dumb name for a TV movie. I mean, at least the scary TV movies that we had were. I mean, you know, like don't be afraid of the dark because that's the one that was mentioned a lot. This is a TV movie. You remember me talking about this when we did our TV movies and the scary little people. That would come out. There were those little bitches, and they had the knife when the girl was in the shower, and they turned off the lights, and they climbed up on each other, and they have a razor, and they're gonna go in there. Oh, they came out at night out the fireplace, and again, it's just weird when they're like human but not, and they're. It's like the West and

Kristin Nilsen 1:00:16

the ant farm when they're giant. It's in reverse, right? Yeah, and a lot of the a lot of the movies that are on this list were we did talk about in our made for TV movies episode, which is number four in our in yeah in our lineup.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:00:28

Yeah, yes, the trilogy of terror. Trilogy

Kristin Nilsen 1:00:30

of terror

Carolyn Cochrane 1:00:31

that was mentioned. That was a little double jump,

Kristin Nilsen 1:00:34

right?

Michelle Newman 1:00:35

Yeah, that was mentioned the most of the TV movies in our comments for sure.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:00:42

Yeah, so I'll just read these last ones really, really fast. Some I'm like, what are you talking about? Others, I totally get. Okay, Ghostbusters because someone thought it would be, it was just going to be more fun, but they were legit scared. American Werewolf in London. I remember that. I don't know that I was scared. Nightmare on Elm Street. Yep, all of them. The Blob, Tales from the Crypt, Hellraiser, When a Stranger Calls, Dark Knight of the Scarecrow, Knight of the Living Dead, Suspira,

Kristin Nilsen 1:01:12

Suspiria. I've never Suspiria. I don't know. I think that is either new or it came out and it was redone. So maybe we can start that

Carolyn Cochrane 1:01:21

one. Okay, Alien, the changeling. What's the matter with Helen? I don't remember. I get a weird feeling when I say that title. Say

Michelle Newman 1:01:30

after-school special. It doesn't. It could be like my dad lives in a downtown hotel. Yeah. Yeah. What's the matter with Helen?

Kristin Nilsen 1:01:37

Wait till Helen comes. Remember that book? Wait till Helen comes, I don't. I bet that's what

Carolyn Cochrane 1:01:43

it is. The eyes of Laura Mars, which I know the title, but I can't remember the movie. Race with the Devil, Disney's Child of Glass. I do not remember that. Do you guys remember that? The brain that wouldn't die, which I think is in that era of like those black and white Frankensteiny kind of things, okay. Planet of the Apes. I gotta just take a little aside here, you guys, because yes, okay. I mean, we're talking. Well, we're talking talking apes. Oh my gosh, so creepy. And I again, I cannot believe they made a line of toys for children based on that movie. And honestly, what really scared me the most-if I close my eyes and think of that movie-it was the very last scene where it's the Statue of Liberty thing on the beach, and it's like

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:31

just the head sticking out like yes, just sticking out with the torch. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:02:35

yes. Oh my God! It's like Creepshow. They buried her tornado. Yes. Yes. Well, and it's just like you realize, like this is actually Earth. Like you don't really know that it's Earth through a lot of you think you're on a

Kristin Nilsen 1:02:47

different planet. You're in New York, and it's gone. It's destroyed. Right,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:02:50

and I could just never look at Roddy McDowell the same way again. Anytime he would be on anything, I would just see him in the monkey face, like he was the one nice monkey. But I gotta say that that reminded me of the another movie that was at the theater, but I saw it on TV. It was called The Omega Man. Oh, does anyone remember this? Mike was talking

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:08

about Omega Man because of that time. Yeah,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:03:12

was so he straddled. He was in Planet of the Apes and the Omega Man, and I was trying to get my plot straight, and I thought it was Planet of the Apes, but it was the Omega Man, and he was the only like living human. He was like this doctor person. He could only go out in the daytime, and he would go and watch the same movie over and over at a movie theater because there had been this bacterial plague that had wiped out most of humanity, and it had turned the infected survivors into light-sensitive, murderous Mutant albinos, and so they would come out at night and try to get him, and they'd be walking through the streets of like the downtown, and he is in this apartment looking out the window at them, and they were the creepiest, creepiest things, and I think it was my first really dystopian movie of like what could happen at the end of the world. Anyway, that was the

Kristin Nilsen 1:03:59

after. You know, he saw them by accident with the giant ants in the ant farm, but then Omega Man is the one that he said really stuck with him. Like today, that would be the one that scarred him.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:04:10

Yeah, it's scary. It's really, really scary. And those albino mutant people. Okay, Watcher in the Woods, another Disney movie. Betty

Kristin Nilsen 1:04:18

Davis. Betty Davis was the Watcher in the woods,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:04:21

I do not remember. I mean, I think I remember an ads for it, but I don't remember the movie. Children of the Corn. I do remember that. That is creepy. Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Michelle Newman 1:04:30

Okay, let's get to some of the stories that you all shared because some of your memories are so specific. You know, Tawanda, 1965, said started her comment with, "I slept over at a friend's house. Isn't that how all these comments should start? And yeah, that's like we talked about, you know, a while ago about like, yes, you had to be at a sleepover. Ginny Phelps Costello says, "I wasn't allowed to watch." Movies. Nevertheless, my first was the original Friday the 13th. I was eight years old in third grade. That seems way too young to be watching Friday the 13th. Look where she

Carolyn Cochrane 1:05:10

was having a sleepover.

Michelle Newman 1:05:11

Oh no, at Rhonda's house. Did Rhonda wear cheese?

Kristin Nilsen 1:05:16

Oh my God.

Michelle Newman 1:05:18

After the movie was over, my friend's big brother kept scratching the windows outside and doing anything to scare a bunch of little girls. I was instantly traumatized, scared to go to the bathroom, and couldn't go to sleep. I called my parents after midnight to come pick me up. Sleepovers at Rhonda's house were permanently canceled by my parents, but I was still scared for years. I'm 53 years old and still hate scary movies. Oh man, that'll do it. Yeah, I was Rhonda's last name Stein by any chance. Yeah, no kidding.

Kristin Nilsen 1:05:49

Okay, maybe the longest lasting fear for Gen Xers. We mentioned this at the top. This is Beth. Beth says it was Jaws. I was even afraid in swimming pools. Yeah, I hear you, Beth. Especially when I took swimming lessons. So if this poor girl is in swimming lessons and she's looking underneath the water, under the diving board in the deep end, oh my god, it gets worse. There was a huge grate that my little brain insisted on thinking they kept a shark in there.

Speaker 1 1:06:16

Well, that makes sense. There's a shark behind that

Michelle Newman 1:06:19

gate. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 1:06:20

yeah, so sad. We're just and Jennifer says I was three years old when my parents took me took me and my six year old brother to the drive in. I remember we had to take a bath before we went, and we got to wear one of my dad's T-shirts. We had a blue Ford Econoline van when it was when it finally got dark enough for the movie to start. We settled in with our stuffed animals and blankies to watch Jaws six. Like they went, they were having so much fun. Yeah, he has so much fun. We have kids three and six. Yeah, I was traumatized because we went to the beach every summer, and the scene where the kid gets eaten by the shark made me think it was going to happen to me. I also thought there was a shark under my bed. I know classic Gen X parenting. Another possibility is that my dad told me to stay in bed at night, or the shark would eat me. Dad, come on! I was traumatized for years. I don't think I saw the movie again until I was an adult. That is classic Gen X parenting. Yeah,

Michelle Newman 1:07:19

her dad said, "It's not like go, you know, stay in bed and think about Christmas. Yeah, she went and said, "I'm scared of a shark, and he's like, "Well, if you get out of bed another time, there is a shark under your bed, and it's going to eat you. You just stay in bed. The shark under your bed won't bother you. Yeah, just stay and vote.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:07:35

Yeah, he probably thought that was so ingenious. Yeah, well, Jennifer Allen, her parents took her to the theater to see Jaws three in 3d. You guys remember that with the classes? You guys, she was five years old.

Michelle Newman 1:07:50

Like let's make it three times more terrifying, right? Yes,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:07:55

that that shark is coming at you, and so not surprisingly, Jennifer still can't go into oceans or lakes without thinking of sharks, and she won't go into the ocean past her knees. And Jennifer, you are not the only one that has shared that with us. There are people that will not go higher, like than their waist. As a kid, I even thought there might be sharks in swimming pools, and even though the movie traumatized me, I was also fascinated by it and loved borrowing shark books from the library and watching Jaws one and two that my brother recorded from television. Did you do that?

Kristin Nilsen 1:08:29

Facing your fears, facing your fears. Yes, I

Carolyn Cochrane 1:08:32

did that with two. I think Amityville Horror. I might have done that a little bit with, and then Lizzie Borden. Well, people mentioned Lizzie Borden, and I was fascinated by

Michelle Newman 1:08:44

that. Yes, and I was fascinated by it, and also like the Titanic, which is a horror. You know, that is a traumatic story. And as much as I, I, so I totally get then wanting to know about sharks. It's like yes, you almost you need to you need to put like science behind it or something. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 1:09:03

was the Lizzie Borden made for TV movie? Is that starring Elizabeth Montgomery from

Carolyn Cochrane 1:09:07

Bewitched? Bewitched. Yes, yeah. And so I've gone down a little Lizzie Borden rabbit hole. One is currently right now Ryan Murphy has a series on Netflix, the Lizzie Borden story, and people got all up in arms that it wasn't the correct story. It's like an adaptation. I mean, the real story is nowhere near the, you know, Lizzie Borden took an X and gave her mother 40x. And yeah, I mean, remember that little rhyme we would do? And so I got so interested that I'm like, you know what? I think I want to read some more books about Lizzie Borden, so I went on Libby, and all the Lizzie Borden books are are like way out, like eight to nine weeks. Like I'd have to put it on hold. Yes, I think people that are watching the Netflix thing right now are really wanting to see how you know close these are together. There are like two that are supposedly the definitive Lizzie Borden story. Things to watch or read. So when I read them, I will keep you all posted, and I will let you know what I have found out about Lizzie Borden.

Michelle Newman 1:10:07

Well, it was such a. I also feel like that's such a Gen X fascination, sort of like you know, quicksand or ESP. We were both fascinated by Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden, right?

Carolyn Cochrane 1:10:18

Yeah, we could tell those stories, and I think I even did the mirror thing. Like I know we said Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, but I don't think I looked in that mirror and said Lizzie Borden, Lizzie Borden, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Michelle Newman 1:10:29

then, like I mentioned before, I mean, scary movies definitely a collective experience. Chuck said I saw the original Halloween in 1978 at the movie theater with my two best friends at that time, it was the scariest movie I'd ever seen. At that time, we had a great time at the movie theater screaming with everybody else. I couldn't sleep that night because I knew Michael Myers was coming out of the closet to get me. But that's one thing that stuck with Chuck. But also, that was a great reason to see these at the theater. Everybody's screaming. Everybody's, you know. Everybody's talking. Everybody's it. It elevates that experience so much. So sleepovers did as well. It's bonding. It's bonding. Only way to watch them. Yeah.

Kristin Nilsen 1:11:13

So this next, we mentioned this above. This next movie got mentioned tons. 87 Ragged Tiger says I was eight years old, maybe third grade made for TV movie trilogy of terror full stop. That devil doll still haunts my dreams and my ankles. To this day, I can't look at the butcher block on the kitchen counter without making sure every damn knife is in its place. And the MP 123, she responded to him. She says, "Yep, that's the one. Not sure if it was my first horror movie, but it's definitely one that I still think about to this day, and I still don't hang my foot over the bed thanks to that little doll. I recently rewatched it, and surprisingly, it held up pretty well.

Michelle Newman 1:11:54

Okay, so Amy told us that her first memory was Psycho. She says it was probably a movie of the week, or maybe a Sunday afternoon movie, because I remember my parents having an argument about whether or not I was old enough to watch it with them. I was probably five or six. I don't know, Carolyn. Did Amy live in your house? Yeah, one parent who shall remain nameless insisted that it'll go over her head, which I'm sorry, all caps. It most certainly did not cue the music, and I developed a phobia of all motels and especially all motel showers. This did not work out in my parents' favor as we took a family car trip a few years later, and I needed my mom to stand outside the bathroom door every single time I took a shower in a motel to make sure to assure me that no one was coming in with a knife.

Kristin Nilsen 1:12:45

I see you, Amy. She was that knife. Yeah, that's okay. I would totally do the same. That is not crazy.

Michelle Newman 1:12:51

Also, though, I'm kind of wondering at age five or six, and it's like she thinks you know it's a Sunday afternoon movie or something that they weren't like. Hey, Amy, why don't you sit and play with your, you know, your Fisher Price over in the corner or something. They're like, yeah, nope. Let's all watch this together. Collective experience, I guess. Like I said, yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 1:13:08

because it's such a quote unquote good movie.

Carolyn Cochrane 1:13:11

And Jennifer Joyce McDowell's parents probably were friends of mine because she was about six, and her parents took her to the drive-in to see Amityville Horror, and then back to sleep in our cabin in the woods. The next summer it was Jaws, and then back to said cabin that was on a lake. I swear they really were great parrots. Jennifer, I'm sorry that would seem like it might ruin your summer vacation or something in your cabin.

Michelle Newman 1:13:39

And this one just floored me. Ross J Don said, "12 years old and saw the original Friday the 13th by myself.

Kristin Nilsen 1:13:50

By yourself? No, no,

Michelle Newman 1:13:53

no! Not at 12 years old. Terrifying. Yeah, not at

Kristin Nilsen 1:13:58

all. Yes, definitely. So Lau. So Lau said, "I saw Amity Villora at 10 years old with my 13-year-old sister and my mom. Oh, with mom? Mom, shame on you. I could not sleep that night and had to assure myself that our house was okay because it was new construction, and so no one had been murdered in it. I definitely had that thought. Like this is our house. We built it. No one was killed here, but then of course you know several years later we have poltergeist, and that house was built on an Indian burial ground. And I'm like, shit! What if this is an Indian burial ground? Oh god, poltergeist,

Michelle Newman 1:14:31

man, that's almost one that next Halloween we need to just do. I

Kristin Nilsen 1:14:34

think so too. An entire episode on poltergeist,

Michelle Newman 1:14:37

classic. And we also, I mean, that's one that because even Brian was like, "But you've seen Poltergeist, right? I was like, "Oh yes, I've seen. I could like still describe the little lady and her voice and everything. Yeah, and her little handbag. Yeah,

Kristin Nilsen 1:14:50

you guys, I think it feels very bonding to talk about these movies with you. It's like a healing circle, isn't it? Like because we're in this. It's not just pop culture. It's like our pop culture. Trauma, our shared pop culture trauma. These first horror movies were another form of our Gen X experience, our collective Gen X trauma. Oftentimes, it was something we had to suffer through alone because you sneaked into the theater, you weren't allowed to see it, or was a Disney movie starring Betty Davis, and you really shouldn't be that scared, so you suffered alone. And then later, maybe high school horror movies became group activities, and you were bonded together in fright. You clung to each other, and you screamed together, and you ran together through the parking lot because you thought vampires were going to jump out from behind a K car. We didn't talk about no one sent the Lost Boys, right? So yeah, I didn't see movies. Nobody can't believe it, and I know we've heard stories about the Lost Boys before. I was actually using that from somebody's story where they like ran out to their VW Bug, and then the VW Bug wouldn't start, and they're just waiting for all the vampires to come out. These horror movies were a milestone in our Gen X growing up experience, which could be why I have very little interest in seeing them now, because I'm all grown up, I did it. I got to the other side, but I hope all of you feel seen today in our healing circle. Most of the time, we end this podcast by encouraging you to dip back into that pop culture moment that we all shared. But this time, I'm like, maybe don't. You don't have to. Like, let's just let this not lie. It's okay to leave this one in 1979. Thank you for listening today, and we will see you next time.

Michelle Newman 1:16:25

And to our current patrons, you are truly the heartbeat of this podcast. Because of your generosity, we're able to keep researching, recording, and preserving the pop culture history that we all love so much. Your support pays for our hosting, improves our sound quality and, quite honestly, keeps our little nostalgic hearts beating. If you love what we do here and want to help us keep the vault open, we would love for you to join our Patreon family. It's super easy. You just head over to Patreon.com/popculturepreservationsociety, or you can click the direct link in the show notes of this episode, and you can explore the different tiers, the exclusive perch each tier receives, and see what works best for you. And one thing that all our patrons get is a shout out at the end of every episode, and we just pick a few each week to say thank you personally to. And today we're saying thank you to Jackie, Kelly, Derek, Tori, Karen, Nancy, Clint, Carrie, Cherie, C H E R I E, Sherry or Sheree, Christina, Teresa, Don, another Teresa, and Janice. Thanks so much for your support.

Kristin Nilsen 1:17:39

Thank you. Ready. In the meantime, let's raise our glasses for a toast, courtesy of the cast of Three's Company. Two good times,

Carolyn Cochrane 1:17:47

two happy days, two Little House on the Prairie. Cheers! Cheers!

Kristin Nilsen 1:17:55

Happy Halloween! We did it! Yay!

Unknown Speaker 1:17:59

Season 20.