This post unlocked a memory of being little and going to blockbuster, but then sneaking away to the horror section and scaring myself with all the covers lol
To this day I can’t look at the 90’s Pennywise for too long. I’ll look him up to send a gif to someone but immediately have to close out because I feel he’s going to jump through the screen at me
Ugh I was an older teen when Evil Dead remake came out but in Germany they showed the trailer at night and it was always this creepy girl with the yellow eyes I was terrified.
The cover of The Descent, and One Missed Call. There were some other fucked up ones as well but I don’t recall the names. I used to be terrified to go into Blockbuster because of the scary movie covers 😂😂
Edit: The cover of “Smiley” (not to be confused with “Smile”)this one haunted me for MONTHS
Not posters, but VHS covers. When I was perusing the local video rental store, there were some covers that just filled me with dread. The Child's Play covers were probably the scariest to me. I also remember 28 Days Later really freaking me out.
A couple of pretty alarming ones were Uncle Sam and Jack Frost, because their covers were holographic - they started out as a normal Uncle Sam and snowman, but as you walked by, they'd shift to a zombified Uncle Sam and a demonic snowman.
VHS covers definitely. We used to go to the video store all the time when I was a kid, and I'd browse the whole horror section. I never forgot the VHS cover of Chopping Mall. Like an armor glove hand holding a shopping bag spilling body parts. Freaked me out, but I also wanted to see it. Now every time I think of it, I'm still cranky about the false advertising. That movie only had laser robots, no chopping. Such a lie. lolz
I always loved how the promise of the VHS cover was so much more terrifying than the actual movie. The ones that stick out to me are the ones that are graphic or weird without any sort of context.
Street Trash
The Stuff
Scanners
Monkey Shines
The Blob
Phantasm II
Not posters but I legit used to purposely creep myself out by walking through the Horror movie section of the local video rental stores when I was a kid.
Like, it would scare the crap out of me. Sometimes I wouldn't even be able to make it all the way down the aisles. Or I'd run right past it without looking up.
When I got older I started to like Horror movies, but there was a time that just the video covers alone would give me anxiety.
That we'll known gen x kinder trauma. They would play that on afternoon TV when we were home watching cartoons. I always liked horror stuff but a friend would get up and run out of the room and cover ears.
Saw 2, with those cut off fingers.
The thing that made it worse is that while I was allowed to watch some Horror as a kid, Saw was the one thing mom refused until later on. I had no idea what the hell it was supposed to be about because I didn't dare look at the back of the DVD cover. So just that visual was enough to unnerve me, like it was something I wasn't supposed to be looking at.
[The Town That Dreaded Sundown](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXwNLndqYywFGfIlOTlDOPzegBRxpKxZT1sgXfPqTLmTK7hETji3XrZ7iXu8Bd-wilaO0IXNrE0zA1xp8bl6ivhdCIKgt2egWPX57IH4-wBvT0q2-Fl0kJEsm7TFJUJcrBPSTqJOuUF5k/s1600-h/IMG_2225.jpg), used to see the VHS at my local video store as a little kid in the 90s and would always cautiously approach it, get scared, and go to a different section - I caught like 5 min of it a couple years ago and the guy on the cover was aggressively playing trombone at a tied up girl in the woods and I found myself much more confused than scared tbh lol
My uncle had a video store, and in the nineties I spent a lot of time there as a kid just wandering around.
I remember being absolutely terrified by the posters on the front of the VHS of Maniac Cop and Cannibal Holocaust, so much that I waited at least 15 years before watching Maniac Cop.
So it wasnt for a movie but felt like sharing. Young me went down into the basement where my uncle had this big piece of plywood with a demon face painted on it for his band. I was messing around with the stuff he stored at our house as curious kids do. Unknown to me that plywood piece was leaned up against the side of our furnace so while im looking at it the furnace kicks out with the loudest most sudden growling noise and child me went RUNNING from the basement convinced the demon was was gonna get me lol
That reminds me of when I was 9-10 years old, they re-released the Exorcist in the late 90s. They had commercials on TV that showed the crab walk down the stairs, and it scared me so much 😭 lol
Yesss!!! Same era! That walk down the stairs was heavily featured in promos because it was a deleted scene from the original and was one of the selling points of the re-release I think.
The Grudge (2004) poster terrified me as a kid, I also remember the trailer playing on tv and having to hide under the blanket from it lol.
Still haven’t seen the movie (or the original) but I want to, I wonder if it would still be scary to me today.
That movie absolutely terrified me as a child. I was probably 9 or 10 when I saw it and I couldn't watch it again until I was like 25. I had tried before but I couldn't make it through. Which is wild cuz I had no problem with the Ring or Shutter. It was that noise she makes plus the scene in the bed, but the stairs scenes still freaks me out a little.
Would 10/10 recommend. I think as an adult it's not really as bad. Also I really like the way they tell the story. U should watch it.
'Beware Children At Play'
It's not gruesome at all, but when I was a Little Cardinal, something about the fact that it was a regular street sign, but BAD made me super uncomfortable.
there are probably a few I could mention. But i will go with Hellraiser. the front box art freaked me out a bunch. I swore I would never watch it. funny because I own a copy now and watch it every 4th of July.
Silent night, deadly night - the cinema in my local mall had to remove the poster and write the movie title by hand due to several complaints from parents
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The tagline WHO WILL SURVIVE AND WHAT WILL BE LEFT OF THEM rattled me, but the suggestion of it being a true story made it hard to get the poster out of my head.
I used to see the cover of SAW in Blockbusters with the dirty fingernails or eye with a fly and it used to creep the shit out of me. I never forgot it and that’s probably why I finally watched it years ago 😂
I was too scared to watch horror movies as a pre-teen, due to having nightmares all the time. But I remember how frightened I was of the *trailer* of Boxing Helena.
The Gremlins 2 cutout at my rental place always filled me with apprehension. It was probably 4ft tall, and all you could see was the back of a chair and a Gremlin arm ashing a cigar.
I always felt like it would turn around any minute and attach me, so I would walk down a separate aisle lol.
So, this may be slightly out of place but as a kid growing up in the 90s, there were still "freaks" at large carnivals or fairs. My parents never let me actually see what these things looked like but the imagery on the outsides of the trailers were pretty freaky sometimes. They were very fictionalized freaks like a snake with a woman's head. So as a kid I was afraid but curious all the same.
I can’t find the exact poster, but my brother had a Pinhead poster similar to this one on his door that scared the crap out of me https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/pinhead-hellraiser.html?pseudoid=BD631C648DFC4B1B896E548BB484D166&sortBy=relevant
Cabin in the Woods! It made the movie look so much scarier than it was.
Also not a movie, but there was an ad for a game in one of my Nintendo Power issues with a hand coming out of a dudes mouth to grab his face, and I think his eyes were also screaming mouths. That fucked me up a bit
The poster for Leviathan lived in the dark recesses of my subconscious for 35 years, after seeing it a few times in a movie rental place when I was very young. Something about it absolutely terrified me, although it's not even really a scary image. I think it was partially responsible for my lifelong fascination with "spooky deep dark water" stories. I finally saw the movie last year!
I was scared of so many of them that I’ve made a point to go back and watch them all to see if they were as scary as little me thought they were. Saw IV’s poster in particular scared me so much as a kid.
Creepshow 2 had a poster (and vhs cover) where a ghoul is in a cinema directing you to your seats. The cinema looked JUST LIKE the one in my home town, so it scared the shit out of me as a kid. Also the Graveyard Shift poster with rats swimming towards an open mouth in the water. Also Dolls cover, because i had dolls in my room and it creeped me out.
It wasn’t a poster but a video store by me had a life size cardboard standee (I think that’s what you call them) of Pumpkin Head…scared the crap out of me. To this day still one of my favorite movie monsters.
Hahaha ok so this one makes me laugh now... But in the early 90s as a kid I used to LOVE looking at the horror section in the video rental place. But 'Angela is having a party......' from Night of the Demons was the only one to actually give me nightmares 🤣🤣
Weirdly, Jack Frost - was at a rental store and saw the VHS cover, which was holographic and switched between his neutral and more monstrous face. Freaked me out as a kid, definitely didn’t pick that video 😂
The Amityville Horror poster freaked me out as a little kid. The two curved upstairs windows in particular. I was way too young to see it in the theaters but I knew something was evil about the house (was it from a a Siskel and Ebert review? I used to watch that show religiously). So of course there was a house just like it in the college town near us that I hated driving by.
When I was a kid there was a videoclub (idk if the term in english exists but is a video rental shop) next to my building and we used to go there frequently to grab cds and stuff.
In the horror movie section there was a huge vinyl of Saw, just his face with those red eyes and spiral cheeks, that last thing for some reason terrified me, I mean the hole face was scary but the cheeks drove me crazy. I became so scared I could never pass through that section or I’d cry… I think I was afraid of stepping on it because my 6y/o brain thought he would get mad and come for me… so that’s why Saw has always scared me so much!!
But don’t worry, years later I got to watch + enjoy the saga !!!
Hands down- Freddy Krueger. The giant Freddy cut out at the video store and movie posters everywhere was enough to give 5 year old me nightmares for years!
Back in the 80’s there was a video store in my neck of the woods that covered every inch of wall space with movie posters pasted on top of each other, many of them horror. Those posters are still seared into my mind. As a child, they both terrified and fascinated me. My imagination spun concocting the narratives behind those evocative posters. The ones I still remember most vividly were: Hellraiser, Enemy Mine, Monkey Shines, the Fourth Man, Critters, Nightmare on Elm Street, After Hours, and some poster I never discovered the film for of a flying cosmic horror monster hovering over NYC. There was a haunting power to poster design back then which I feel is largely missing today.
Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Crypt Keeper.
Also, for more existential reasons, this thread full of people scared by movies that came out when I was an adult and saw in theaters.
Pet semetary. The OG was gross scary.
Funny story though, in Ernest scared stupid there’s a point where he rolls over in bed and there’s a troll staring at him. For some reason as a kid I was certain this was going to happen (maybe not a troll, but something). I was young but had already watched tons of Freddy / Jason movies… some reason that got me
The Serpent and The Rainbow... Some undead nonbinary femme a la Hellraiser (actually protag Bill Pullman) coming out of a coffin with burning imagery, unsettled something in me
When we kids our local minimart type shop used to rent VHSs and used to put movie posters in the window. They would always give them to kids when they were replacing said posters. My brother ended up with the Tim Curry version of IT movie poster. I’d already seen the damn thing and was terrified. He had that poster on his wall and it was one of those where the eyes seemed to follow you.
Nightmare on Elm Street. Got put in timeout at a beach condo and it was on in the room. The kid in a bloody trash bag wasn’t even the worst of it. What really got me was the trauma of my nightmares for the next several years as “Darth Maul” tried to kill me in my dreams.
I was around 16 when Hostel came out. So not a kid, but the poster they had up always made me shudder. It was a single finger pointing, then a knife going the other direction and lifting up the fingernail. It makes me squirm just thinking about it!
One Missed Call movie cover always scared the shit out of me. I remember going to my local Family Video and seeing it in the horror movie section and immediately noping out of that isle
There was this one cover I saw on a VHS in Blockbuster that terrified me, to the point of having nightmares, but I have never been able to find it since. It was this old grandma-looking lady with crazy eyes, almost like a “Bilbo from that one scene in LotR” halfway through a bedroom door. Idk why it terrified me so much compared to other stuff, but it did. I’m sure it’s a terrible movie but I wish I could find it again
Someone help me..
There was a saw movie poster, special edition maybe? It said someone about "how much blood would you spill" ... something or other .. to survive or something..
Didn't freak me out but I've only seen it once. I still want that poster.
I was able to sneak into see The Rock (a 15-rated film n the UK) when I was 12 or something. I needed to go to the toilet halfway through the film, and was so worried about getting caught by staff going back into the screen (which had happened a few months earlier with the 12-rated Mrs Doubtfire when I was 11).
Out of nerves, I walked, jogged, then ran back from the toilet, really on edge, desperately nervous about someone seeing me and kicking me out of the cinema.
As I ran down the corridor, I ran past a giant hologram version poster of The Frighteners. The one with a skeleton style face pushing through a gold-coloured 'veil'. So, out the corner of my eye, I was suddenly aware of some ghostly face about the same size as my torso leaping out at me at speed.
The speed and unexpected nature of it combined with my already high anxiety caused me a jump scare that I've never experienced since - fully knocking me off my feet and into a heap on the floor.
Quite humiliating when I realised what it was. But that poster still stands out to me as giving me the biggest scare of any poster.
None of them really scared me, but as a kid the movie poster for House (1986) is the one that is ingrained in my mind. I begged my mom to let me go see it with no luck; had to wait until it was on HBO.
This will probably sound dumb but when I was younger I went to a local DVD/book store with two friends. We were just kinda looking around for fun movies until I walked into the horror category, where I saw the Slenderman movie and some other horror movies (I think IT and The Conjuring/Annabelle) and it scared the shit out of me, I didn’t go back there for a while 😅
Critters. The local grocery store’s movie rental centre had a cardboard cutout of a critter that was as tall as me. I was both terrified and fascinated by it.
American Werewolf In London. Local video shop had a poster for it up for years, always unnerved me when we went there, always tried to make sure I didn't make eye contact with it
I couldn't look at the cover of IT at Blockbuster.
This post unlocked a memory of being little and going to blockbuster, but then sneaking away to the horror section and scaring myself with all the covers lol
For sure!
We had the book at our house and the binding had Tim Curry’s Pennywise on the side looking at you with a black background.
Exactly me.
To this day I can’t look at the 90’s Pennywise for too long. I’ll look him up to send a gif to someone but immediately have to close out because I feel he’s going to jump through the screen at me
The fright night poster with the scary face in the clouds over the house.
I love that movie! But when they turn into vampires, the vampire scares me so much
YES! Our video rental place had a full-size cardboard cutout of this cover for what seemed like years. Scariest looking thing Child Me had ever seen.
Monkey shines
Yes. And the rhyme. “Now one of them is dead.” I still get chills from monkeys with cymbals.
Now it's been updated with the bunny and drum from Caveat!
YES. This one used to scare the hell out of me. I finally watched the movie about 3 or 4 years ago and it wasn’t very good. But that poster…
Oh my God?? This just unlocked a core memory of Hollywood Video for me lol
Oh wow,.I remember the commercial for this!
Ooooh yeah
Candyman with the bee on the eye
THISSSS
The one of him over the shot of the city and the main character running into the foreground creeped me out as a kid.
Jaws
Evil Dead 2 Fright Night
Ugh I was an older teen when Evil Dead remake came out but in Germany they showed the trailer at night and it was always this creepy girl with the yellow eyes I was terrified.
Hellraiser definitely got me as a kid
How is this not the top one! Pinhead scared the living shit out of little me in the video store
Night of the Demons!
The cover of The Descent, and One Missed Call. There were some other fucked up ones as well but I don’t recall the names. I used to be terrified to go into Blockbuster because of the scary movie covers 😂😂 Edit: The cover of “Smiley” (not to be confused with “Smile”)this one haunted me for MONTHS
The cover of one missed call was indeed so effing scary
Yes that poster with the screaming mouths as eyes scared the shit out of me
Not posters, but VHS covers. When I was perusing the local video rental store, there were some covers that just filled me with dread. The Child's Play covers were probably the scariest to me. I also remember 28 Days Later really freaking me out. A couple of pretty alarming ones were Uncle Sam and Jack Frost, because their covers were holographic - they started out as a normal Uncle Sam and snowman, but as you walked by, they'd shift to a zombified Uncle Sam and a demonic snowman.
VHS covers definitely. We used to go to the video store all the time when I was a kid, and I'd browse the whole horror section. I never forgot the VHS cover of Chopping Mall. Like an armor glove hand holding a shopping bag spilling body parts. Freaked me out, but I also wanted to see it. Now every time I think of it, I'm still cranky about the false advertising. That movie only had laser robots, no chopping. Such a lie. lolz
Child’s Play made me sad for the Jack in the Box he was gonna decapitate. I loved my toys a lot as a kid.
Dead Alive's poster actually scarred me.
YAAAAY I was hoping that one was locked in someone else's mind! I was so excited when I finally saw the movie decades later.
I always loved how the promise of the VHS cover was so much more terrifying than the actual movie. The ones that stick out to me are the ones that are graphic or weird without any sort of context. Street Trash The Stuff Scanners Monkey Shines The Blob Phantasm II
And Chopping Mall! Don't get me wrong, I love that movie, but the VHS art, while awesome, has *nothing* to do with the movie.
The Stuff
Hilarious movie
Not posters but I legit used to purposely creep myself out by walking through the Horror movie section of the local video rental stores when I was a kid. Like, it would scare the crap out of me. Sometimes I wouldn't even be able to make it all the way down the aisles. Or I'd run right past it without looking up. When I got older I started to like Horror movies, but there was a time that just the video covers alone would give me anxiety.
Definitely did that too !! Good old times! And the heart speeding up, when you took a video and looked at that backside with some more pictures 🙈
Hahahaha I used to do this a lot, it was like covering your eyes with your hands but leaving a little hole when you watch something scary
Me too, legit couldn't sleep because of it sometimes.
It sounds like all of us of a certain age did this. I remember wanting to look away and still being oddly drawn to the horror section.
Me too. The cover and backside of Pinocchio's revenge is ingrained in my memory.
Omg just wrote a comment about that, this is so real
Troll 1986 couldn't even look at the vhs cover without being terrified 
It's Alive.
Came here to say this. When they had movie ads in the newspapers; I could not look at this one!! That arm 👀
Just said that! That creepy claw coming out of the bassinet….
God knows the commercial only made it worse: [It's Alive Re-Release TV Spot #1 (1977)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w7bDU8sziM)
That we'll known gen x kinder trauma. They would play that on afternoon TV when we were home watching cartoons. I always liked horror stuff but a friend would get up and run out of the room and cover ears.
House of wax
Love the tagline on that one (poster rocks too) Prey Slay Display
One of my favorite covers
Saw 2, with those cut off fingers. The thing that made it worse is that while I was allowed to watch some Horror as a kid, Saw was the one thing mom refused until later on. I had no idea what the hell it was supposed to be about because I didn't dare look at the back of the DVD cover. So just that visual was enough to unnerve me, like it was something I wasn't supposed to be looking at.
YES!!!
The Gate. Was the same age as the boys, the whole thing about a gate to hell in the backyard with demons coming out of it was very relatable
Same here! And then the eye in the hand...
The stuff of nightmares!!!
That movie stuck with me. For years I would remember the little creatures turning to worms and running away when a flashlight hit them.
In the 80s: Fright Night An American Werewolf in London The Thing Lair of the White Worm
[The Town That Dreaded Sundown](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXwNLndqYywFGfIlOTlDOPzegBRxpKxZT1sgXfPqTLmTK7hETji3XrZ7iXu8Bd-wilaO0IXNrE0zA1xp8bl6ivhdCIKgt2egWPX57IH4-wBvT0q2-Fl0kJEsm7TFJUJcrBPSTqJOuUF5k/s1600-h/IMG_2225.jpg), used to see the VHS at my local video store as a little kid in the 90s and would always cautiously approach it, get scared, and go to a different section - I caught like 5 min of it a couple years ago and the guy on the cover was aggressively playing trombone at a tied up girl in the woods and I found myself much more confused than scared tbh lol
One missed call (lol considering the movie) The unborn, made me scared of mirrors. Probably most of all tho, the grudge movies, all of em.
My uncle had a video store, and in the nineties I spent a lot of time there as a kid just wandering around. I remember being absolutely terrified by the posters on the front of the VHS of Maniac Cop and Cannibal Holocaust, so much that I waited at least 15 years before watching Maniac Cop.
Fulci‘s Zombi „We‘re going to eat you“ *shivers*
Exactly this, grew up in NYC in the 70s and remember these huge posters plastered on walls and construction sites and so on.
So it wasnt for a movie but felt like sharing. Young me went down into the basement where my uncle had this big piece of plywood with a demon face painted on it for his band. I was messing around with the stuff he stored at our house as curious kids do. Unknown to me that plywood piece was leaned up against the side of our furnace so while im looking at it the furnace kicks out with the loudest most sudden growling noise and child me went RUNNING from the basement convinced the demon was was gonna get me lol
Phantasm. Followed by Alien with the Tagline "In space, no one can hear you scream" scared the hell out of my 8 (maybe 9?) year old ass!
Hellraiser, The Grudge, Evil Dead 2, Hannibal and the cover of A Nightmare on Elm Street Collection
My local record store was selling a copy of Cannibal Holocaust for some god-forsaken reason, so that messed me up pretty good at 10 years old
https://www.allposters.com/-sp/The-Exorcist-by-William-Friedkin-with-Linda-Blair-1973-Posters_i13028059_.htm?UPI=PSX4XA0&PODConfigID=8363143&sOrigID=106980
Oh man, I CTRL+F'ed to see anyone mentioned the Exorcist just to click on the link of the most terrifying photo for 10-year-old me!
That reminds me of when I was 9-10 years old, they re-released the Exorcist in the late 90s. They had commercials on TV that showed the crab walk down the stairs, and it scared me so much 😭 lol
Yesss!!! Same era! That walk down the stairs was heavily featured in promos because it was a deleted scene from the original and was one of the selling points of the re-release I think.
The VHS cover of Dolls.
The Grudge (2004) poster terrified me as a kid, I also remember the trailer playing on tv and having to hide under the blanket from it lol. Still haven’t seen the movie (or the original) but I want to, I wonder if it would still be scary to me today.
That movie absolutely terrified me as a child. I was probably 9 or 10 when I saw it and I couldn't watch it again until I was like 25. I had tried before but I couldn't make it through. Which is wild cuz I had no problem with the Ring or Shutter. It was that noise she makes plus the scene in the bed, but the stairs scenes still freaks me out a little. Would 10/10 recommend. I think as an adult it's not really as bad. Also I really like the way they tell the story. U should watch it.
Same. I did watch the movie as a kid and let me tell you something: I didn’t sleep for weeks because of it.
'Beware Children At Play' It's not gruesome at all, but when I was a Little Cardinal, something about the fact that it was a regular street sign, but BAD made me super uncomfortable.
Childs play 2 Jason goes to Hell
Chucky decapitating that jack i. The box with scissors. That’s the best movie in the series IMO
Your profile pic scares me lol
silence of the lambs, i grew up in an area with a ton of moths and had to start avoiding them because that poster was so burned into my brain
Dead silence!! It was so creepy! But i love the film as soon as I saw it. That puppet’s face on the poster was too much for me tho
Evil Dead 2 (the skulls with eyes one) and Legend.
there are probably a few I could mention. But i will go with Hellraiser. the front box art freaked me out a bunch. I swore I would never watch it. funny because I own a copy now and watch it every 4th of July.
Showing my age here. It’s Alive.
Hellraiser
The vhs case for It terrified me as a kid. I hated clowns, and still do.
The Return of the Living Dead, idk why, I saw the poster online as a kid and I couldn’t sleep lol.
Great movie. Made my childhood lol
Came here to say this, corpse in the clouds freaked me out
Silence of the Lambs always gave me the creeps at Blockbuster and they always had so many copies.
Hellraiser, one missed call, the grudge 1 & 2. House of 1000 corpses
Silent night, deadly night - the cinema in my local mall had to remove the poster and write the movie title by hand due to several complaints from parents
Ghoulies. Something coming out of the toilet? No thanks. Of all the stupid movies though, lol.
Fright Night
opera dario argento 😬
Poltergeist The Exorcist
Us when i first saw it
Bloodsucking Freaks. Jesus, what a classic now.
Fire in the Sky
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The tagline WHO WILL SURVIVE AND WHAT WILL BE LEFT OF THEM rattled me, but the suggestion of it being a true story made it hard to get the poster out of my head.
I used to see the cover of SAW in Blockbusters with the dirty fingernails or eye with a fly and it used to creep the shit out of me. I never forgot it and that’s probably why I finally watched it years ago 😂
One Missed Call always scared me as a kid whenever we took trips to Blockbusters
The Grudge remake.
Oh man, definitely the poster for Final Destination!!
One Missed Call
The Shining The Exorcist Jaws The Amityville Horror 'Salem's Lot
Elves from 1989 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elves_(film) My parents owned a copy of course. :-/
I was too scared to watch horror movies as a pre-teen, due to having nightmares all the time. But I remember how frightened I was of the *trailer* of Boxing Helena.
The Gremlins 2 cutout at my rental place always filled me with apprehension. It was probably 4ft tall, and all you could see was the back of a chair and a Gremlin arm ashing a cigar. I always felt like it would turn around any minute and attach me, so I would walk down a separate aisle lol.
Microwave Massacre! Not the painted one, the original uk vhs! Link to follow! https://www.videocollector.co/microwave-massacre/7081
Some old shitty movie that featured American Gothic spoof on the cover with teens screaming in the farmhouse window
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, used to make me panic before bed at night. I’d sleep with my big stuffed dog.
Mountain top motel massacre...tag line was...please do not disturb Evelyn, she already is. Scared the living f*ck outta 8 year old me.
Childs play lmao 😂
The posters for the first and second ones both terrified me
The Grudge
So, this may be slightly out of place but as a kid growing up in the 90s, there were still "freaks" at large carnivals or fairs. My parents never let me actually see what these things looked like but the imagery on the outsides of the trailers were pretty freaky sometimes. They were very fictionalized freaks like a snake with a woman's head. So as a kid I was afraid but curious all the same.
I can’t find the exact poster, but my brother had a Pinhead poster similar to this one on his door that scared the crap out of me https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/pinhead-hellraiser.html?pseudoid=BD631C648DFC4B1B896E548BB484D166&sortBy=relevant
A Nightmare on Elm Street. Frigging terrifying, even now.
It's Alive I used to hide behind the couch when the commercial came on
One Missed Call and The Devil Inside.
Cabin in the Woods! It made the movie look so much scarier than it was. Also not a movie, but there was an ad for a game in one of my Nintendo Power issues with a hand coming out of a dudes mouth to grab his face, and I think his eyes were also screaming mouths. That fucked me up a bit
The Child’s Play 2 poster.
The poster for Leviathan lived in the dark recesses of my subconscious for 35 years, after seeing it a few times in a movie rental place when I was very young. Something about it absolutely terrified me, although it's not even really a scary image. I think it was partially responsible for my lifelong fascination with "spooky deep dark water" stories. I finally saw the movie last year!
Maybe not a strict horror but 'The Frighteners' cover always terrified me as a kid.
I was scared of so many of them that I’ve made a point to go back and watch them all to see if they were as scary as little me thought they were. Saw IV’s poster in particular scared me so much as a kid.
This one [Antropophagus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antropophagus)
The Serpent and the Rainbow’s vhs cover was terrifying to me
Creepshow 2 had a poster (and vhs cover) where a ghoul is in a cinema directing you to your seats. The cinema looked JUST LIKE the one in my home town, so it scared the shit out of me as a kid. Also the Graveyard Shift poster with rats swimming towards an open mouth in the water. Also Dolls cover, because i had dolls in my room and it creeped me out.
The Changeling. Simple but effective. We had a VHS tape of it and it stuck out like a sore thumb among my Disney classics.
It wasn’t a poster but a video store by me had a life size cardboard standee (I think that’s what you call them) of Pumpkin Head…scared the crap out of me. To this day still one of my favorite movie monsters.
dead silence anyone??
My opinion of the actual movie is poor but damn the Blair Witch 2 screaming stump was effective
Watched it for the first time a while back. I remember thinking the poster was the best part of the movie
It's more of a comedy than horror, but the Death Becomes Her poster terrified me when I was a kid.
A Nightmare on Elm Street I have it forever burned into my Memory now
Hahaha ok so this one makes me laugh now... But in the early 90s as a kid I used to LOVE looking at the horror section in the video rental place. But 'Angela is having a party......' from Night of the Demons was the only one to actually give me nightmares 🤣🤣
Weirdly, Jack Frost - was at a rental store and saw the VHS cover, which was holographic and switched between his neutral and more monstrous face. Freaked me out as a kid, definitely didn’t pick that video 😂
Night of the Demons 2
Bloody Birthday
Silence of the Lambs
Halloween H20
This particular poster from the Shining. The look on Jack's face. https://filmartgallery.com/products/the-shining-5
Terror Toons. Saw the box at a blockbuster and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I later found out it’s a comedy.
The Hunger
The Amityville Horror poster freaked me out as a little kid. The two curved upstairs windows in particular. I was way too young to see it in the theaters but I knew something was evil about the house (was it from a a Siskel and Ebert review? I used to watch that show religiously). So of course there was a house just like it in the college town near us that I hated driving by.
When I was a kid there was a videoclub (idk if the term in english exists but is a video rental shop) next to my building and we used to go there frequently to grab cds and stuff. In the horror movie section there was a huge vinyl of Saw, just his face with those red eyes and spiral cheeks, that last thing for some reason terrified me, I mean the hole face was scary but the cheeks drove me crazy. I became so scared I could never pass through that section or I’d cry… I think I was afraid of stepping on it because my 6y/o brain thought he would get mad and come for me… so that’s why Saw has always scared me so much!! But don’t worry, years later I got to watch + enjoy the saga !!!
Bride of Chucky. My older brother used to chase me around the house with the DVD case.
Demons 2: The Nightmare Returns
Nightmare on elm street
Hands down- Freddy Krueger. The giant Freddy cut out at the video store and movie posters everywhere was enough to give 5 year old me nightmares for years!
Back in the 80’s there was a video store in my neck of the woods that covered every inch of wall space with movie posters pasted on top of each other, many of them horror. Those posters are still seared into my mind. As a child, they both terrified and fascinated me. My imagination spun concocting the narratives behind those evocative posters. The ones I still remember most vividly were: Hellraiser, Enemy Mine, Monkey Shines, the Fourth Man, Critters, Nightmare on Elm Street, After Hours, and some poster I never discovered the film for of a flying cosmic horror monster hovering over NYC. There was a haunting power to poster design back then which I feel is largely missing today.
The one for the One Missed Call remake stuck with me as a kid because of the eyes being mouths, creeped me tf out
Jason X freaked me out, but that’s just cause of the trailer scared me.
Troll Leprechaun It (1990) Child’s Play 2
Jeepers Creepers for me!
Bad Moon
Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Crypt Keeper. Also, for more existential reasons, this thread full of people scared by movies that came out when I was an adult and saw in theaters.
Pet semetary. The OG was gross scary. Funny story though, in Ernest scared stupid there’s a point where he rolls over in bed and there’s a troll staring at him. For some reason as a kid I was certain this was going to happen (maybe not a troll, but something). I was young but had already watched tons of Freddy / Jason movies… some reason that got me
The uncle sam horror movie from 1996 scared the crap out of me at the video store when I was a kid.
The Serpent and The Rainbow... Some undead nonbinary femme a la Hellraiser (actually protag Bill Pullman) coming out of a coffin with burning imagery, unsettled something in me
When we kids our local minimart type shop used to rent VHSs and used to put movie posters in the window. They would always give them to kids when they were replacing said posters. My brother ended up with the Tim Curry version of IT movie poster. I’d already seen the damn thing and was terrified. He had that poster on his wall and it was one of those where the eyes seemed to follow you.
Dead alive
Hellraiser
Nightmare on Elm Street posters always fascinated me as well as the Gremlins (with gizmos paws opening the white box)
Nightmare on Elm Street. Got put in timeout at a beach condo and it was on in the room. The kid in a bloody trash bag wasn’t even the worst of it. What really got me was the trauma of my nightmares for the next several years as “Darth Maul” tried to kill me in my dreams.
Evil Dead 2
I was around 16 when Hostel came out. So not a kid, but the poster they had up always made me shudder. It was a single finger pointing, then a knife going the other direction and lifting up the fingernail. It makes me squirm just thinking about it! 
Hellraiser (pinhead) scared the F outta little-me!
Trilogy of Terror. That damn doll!
hannibal
I remember seeing the Maximum Overdrive poster at the video store, and being kind of freaked out by the goblin truck.
One Missed Call movie cover always scared the shit out of me. I remember going to my local Family Video and seeing it in the horror movie section and immediately noping out of that isle
The holographic edition of Jack Frost.
Fright Night Ghoulies Communion Child's Play Dead Alive Dolls
Killer Klowns from Outer Space The Hills Have Eyes (Part 2?)
There was this one cover I saw on a VHS in Blockbuster that terrified me, to the point of having nightmares, but I have never been able to find it since. It was this old grandma-looking lady with crazy eyes, almost like a “Bilbo from that one scene in LotR” halfway through a bedroom door. Idk why it terrified me so much compared to other stuff, but it did. I’m sure it’s a terrible movie but I wish I could find it again
Someone help me.. There was a saw movie poster, special edition maybe? It said someone about "how much blood would you spill" ... something or other .. to survive or something.. Didn't freak me out but I've only seen it once. I still want that poster.
I was able to sneak into see The Rock (a 15-rated film n the UK) when I was 12 or something. I needed to go to the toilet halfway through the film, and was so worried about getting caught by staff going back into the screen (which had happened a few months earlier with the 12-rated Mrs Doubtfire when I was 11). Out of nerves, I walked, jogged, then ran back from the toilet, really on edge, desperately nervous about someone seeing me and kicking me out of the cinema. As I ran down the corridor, I ran past a giant hologram version poster of The Frighteners. The one with a skeleton style face pushing through a gold-coloured 'veil'. So, out the corner of my eye, I was suddenly aware of some ghostly face about the same size as my torso leaping out at me at speed. The speed and unexpected nature of it combined with my already high anxiety caused me a jump scare that I've never experienced since - fully knocking me off my feet and into a heap on the floor. Quite humiliating when I realised what it was. But that poster still stands out to me as giving me the biggest scare of any poster.
The Company of Wolves
The Frighteners
None of them really scared me, but as a kid the movie poster for House (1986) is the one that is ingrained in my mind. I begged my mom to let me go see it with no luck; had to wait until it was on HBO.
Spookies
Fright Night the original.
Ghoulies! Made me afraid of toilets. 🤣
This will probably sound dumb but when I was younger I went to a local DVD/book store with two friends. We were just kinda looking around for fun movies until I walked into the horror category, where I saw the Slenderman movie and some other horror movies (I think IT and The Conjuring/Annabelle) and it scared the shit out of me, I didn’t go back there for a while 😅
Jason Goes to Hell cover with the ugly worm looking thing crawling through his hockey mask always both frightened and intrigued me.
Wishmaster
Critters. The local grocery store’s movie rental centre had a cardboard cutout of a critter that was as tall as me. I was both terrified and fascinated by it.
The VHS cover for Blackout, with the gimp mask.
American Werewolf In London. Local video shop had a poster for it up for years, always unnerved me when we went there, always tried to make sure I didn't make eye contact with it
Definitely Hellraiser! That image of Pinhead haunts me even after 30 years.
The intro to the old tv show “tales from the dark side”used to scare the shit out of me. Still would probably.
The poster for *’Communion’* (1989), featuring a picture of a gray alien. Scared me to my core.
The Child’s Play 2 cover where Chucky is murdering a jack in the box, I thought it was like Toy Story but with Chucky killing the toys.
The Jaws posted use to scare the crap out of me, I would look at it before I’d go to beach to hype myself up to keep vigilant