What's your favorite scary movie?

Some of my favorite movies are scary ones ("Scream", "The Others", "The Ring"), but it wasn't always so. As a child, I couldn't bear to watch the spooky stuff. You see, I had a really active imagination and it would run wild after seeing creepy movies. So I swore off the stuff, but only after 2 movies, in particular, got my goat.

The first was "Salem's Lot", a 1979 telefilm based on a Stephen King book. I didn't watch the whole thing, but the part that disturbed me the most was when this vampire boy floated outside this man's window, entered his room through the window, and then bit the man.



For weeks afterward, whenever I laid in bed, I would look out my bedroom window to be sure he hadn't found me yet, the vampire boy who caused all that commotion in Salem.

The other flick that haunted me for some time was another telefilm, 1981's "Dark Night of the Scarecrow" starring Charles Durning. Here is the plot summary courtesy of the Internet Movie Database:

"A retarded man is unjustly accused of killing a young girl. Disguised as a scarecrow, he hides in a cornfield, only to be hunted down and shot. Later, members of the search posse are killed by a mysterious scarecrow."

That scarecrow was ruthless. He trapped a guy in an empty silo and then poured grain into the silo, burying him alive. Again, I would go to bed on many nights afterward wishing I could forget what I had seen.