Name something in a horror movie that frightens you or makes you squirm but doesn’t seem to scare anyone else you know.

Casey Criswell - Cinema Fromage

Spiders make me scream like a girl. For instance, I watched Arachnophobia from my best friends kitchen peeking around the corner. Just this past weekend, when watching “The Mist”, there was a particular scene in which I had to literally cover my eyes and damn near crawled into the lap of the friend that came with me.

I’ve seen tons of horror flicks. Gore doesn’t phase me, cannibalism doesn’t phase me, monsters don’t phase me. If there’s spiders? You better watch out because my 260 lb ass is most likely vacating the room in a hurry.

Eric - Bloody Good Horror

Well, the scene in “The Lost Boys” where Kiefer Sutherland gives Michael the Lo-Mein, only to have him look down and discover that he’s been eating maggots, that always makes me squirm in my seat. Pretty much anything with maggots really screws with me, and makes me not want to eat anything for the rest of the day. Also, the scene in “The Ring” where we see a flash of the dead girls’ body in the closet, mouth agape and face all drained of life, that scares the shit out of me… it gets me still to this day, but reviewers seldom seem to mention it.

Jeff OBrien

Spiders. The scene in The Giant Spider Invasion where one gets turned into a mixed drink. A real plump one/

Also Slugs - the scene where a slug in a head of lettuce is chopped up and mistaken for salty sliced olives…

Dave - Rue Morgue’s The Abbatoir

I’d have to say that I’ve got a bigger-than-average aversion to centipedes. When I was a kid, there was a period where I was sleeping in our unfinished basement and remember seeing the odd centipede scurry across the floor, which really, well, bugged me out. I really hated them. When I saw the giant centipedes in King Kong, I got a King-sized dose of the heebie-jeebies. A close second might be any J-horror film with hair gurgling up from a drain. If you’ve ever lived with someone whose long hair gets caught in the drain and has to be pulled out in a giant clot, you know why this is yucksville.

Louis - Damaged 2.0

Skin ailments, like cracked, bubbling, scaly or craterous lesions or dryness. I actually still have nightmares about stuff like that.

Rony

There is one thing that always gets me in horror movies and that’s when someone is being dragged away and the victims finger nail gets ripped off from trying to hold on to things. Seeing the nail being peeled off always gives me shivers!

Nathan - MicroHorror

Eye stabbing? Fine with me. Children in danger? Bring it on. There’s not much that I truly can’t stand to see in a horror movie– it’s fiction, after all– but there is one thing that keeps cropping up in movie after movie, and I hate it every time. Don’t laugh, now. It’s violence against cats.

What can I say? I love cats! I live with three, and I adore them all, even the old and grouchy one and the one who pees where he’s not supposed to. I dread the very thought of anything bad happening to them. And yet if I see a cat in a horror movie, I know that it’s almost certainly doomed before the credits roll. It always seems to happen early in the movie, too– before any humans get killed. It’s as though murdering a cat were somehow less horrifying than murdering a
human, and frankly I don’t think it is.

Lines from dead cat scenes haunt me.

Pet Sematary (1989): “Play dead! BE DEAD!”

May (2002): “Oh, Lupe. I’m going to miss petting your soft fur.”

Awful, awful stuff.

I watched the Masters of Horror episode “Jenifer,” and the one thing that most threw me out of the story was the knowledge that no matter how sexy you are, if you were to kill and eat one of my cats, that would be the end of the relationship right there. The male lead in the episode evidently disagreed with me.

Or another MoH episode: “The Black Cat.” I watched the DVD with one of my beasts by my side, and when I saw a cat-murdering scene coming up, I covered his eyes so he couldn’t watch. What else would a responsible parent do?

So, yeah. Next time you make a movie, kill all the humans you want. Men, women, children, it’s all good. But please, leave the kitties alone. Thanks.

Sean T. Collins - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat

Oooh, you know what I HATE? Those little bubbles that form on the backs of the mogwai and gremlins when they get wet and start to multiply. I have a phobia of growths, or anything resembling them, and seeing that gets me all twiggy.

JA - My New Plaid Pants

It just has to have more than four limbs. It doesn’t even have to be in a horror movie; you could show me a bowl of shrimp at a banquet in somebody’s wedding video and I’ll jump out the window.

My greatest fear is that I won’t remember to thank all this week’s Roundtable participants. Do you have a cinematic phobia? Let it all out in the comments below.

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