fujishig

I'm gonna hijack the thread, but there's a recent print ad that grosses me out... I think it's one of those Truth ads, but it's usually a double page magazine spread. It has someone sewing their own eyes shut, in closeup. Freaks the heck out of me...

GatorDeb

I can't remember what it's called but it's this Hispanic monster that takes bad kids at night... so it was like you better be good or "____" is going to take you away while you're sleeping... I remember now... EL COCO!!! (The Coconut... trust me... it's a lot scarier in Spanish). I had nightmares that El Coco was going to take me away. Still scares me to this day.

Not a commercial but it's the first thing that came to my mind because there was a scary-sounding song about El Coco.

Jadzia

The commercial that scares me now is that ad with the cartoon toe fungus, how they rip off that guy's toenail and jump inside. That sends me to my remote every time. It gives me the creeps, it is so disgusting.

Chembree

That 'MAGIC' movie commercial scared the crap out of me also -- I have never seen the movie, but i can still remember that puppet saying 'Magic' in that scary voice every time i see one of those puppets ---

Burnt Alive

Oh god, no.


Please



no

Burnt Alive

OK, that's it, someone needs to find this trailer somewhere and post the link ASAP.

Eplicon

I did some searching around and found out the board game in question is "High Stakes."

Even for still pictures, it still brings back not-so-fun memories.

Rogue588

NOT commericals, but...There was this intro back in the day for WPIX's "brand" of horror flicks they'd show [it was something like "Chiller Theatre" or something], they'd preface each movie with a pond/lake that had a GIANT HAND pop out of it [similar to the ending of Carrie].

That would scare the FUCK outta me.

Oh, that and catching Gene Simmons one night on HBO when I was 6-7.

Currently? Hmm...any T-Mobile commercial with Paris trying to shove her "trademark" phrase "That's Hot".

Giantrobo

Back in the Day(Mid to late 70's):

Alien ad...the one with the egg breaking over the apple pie looking landscape.

Universal Studio's ad for the new "JAWS" ride. They would show the sea bottom with all that grey looking grass then they would should the shark(bruce) coming out of the water. It always freaked me out.

Today:

White Noise ad...they've been airing these late at night and I always change the channel when it comes on. I can't deal with those voices.

Doc Moonlight

When I was a kid in the 50's I used to get freaked out by the "Build a Bombshelter" PSAs that the government used to run. It talked about nuclear fallout being present in the air and how it was a silent, deadly killer. I couldn't understand why my dad wasn't building a shelter in our basement.

Another dissturbing PSA was for Radio Free Europe, a government radio network that used to bradcast western news to the communist block countries. It would open on a radio doing a newscast and all of a sudden a hatchet would come down on the radio and a fat communist guy would yell "Nyet!"

tboogie

There was a commercial for a movie that came out in the 70s called "Beyond the Door." My sister and I were scared to death of it. One night she was babysitting--I was the youngest but she was old enough to babysit--and we shut off the TV because it kept coming on. We turned on the radio instead, and a commercial came on the radio for it too! We were so freaked out. There was a scary voice that said, "Who are you?" It still scares me thinking about it. I think this might be the listing on IMDb:

Beyond the Door

Quatermass

I remember that one. It used to creep out my brother and me, too. Another one that was out about the same time was for the Steely Dan album "Katy Lied". It had kind of a silhouette of a little girl sitting on the floor (similar to Poltergeist which came out at least 10 years later). You couldn't see her face and the camera slowly zoomed in on her. The voice over was Sterling Holloway, who had played the snake in Disney's Jungle Book, which I had just seen so I associated it with an evil character. Later he did the voice of Winnie the Pooh, so I never liked watching those either, I always thought Winnie was secretly evil.

fallfan

That's hilarious, I remember seeing that same trailer as a kid and being scared by it. I also remember seeing a trailer for Videodrome, and for years I had no idea what the movie was, just the image of the head stretching out the TV screen freaking me out.

MGBGT

I remember the other Jerry Lewis board game was 7 Card Stud. He got flattened in both commercials.

I still wish I knew what the freakin' monster commercial was about!

Y2K Falcon

Two words..... Snuggle Bear :shudder:

Lampei

me too. I used to hide in a room down the hall and peek around the corner until I could see he had finished changing into the hulk

mndtrp

There was a psa, probably something about 10 years ago, during Christmas. A small child was stacking books on a chair, trying to get to the top of a closet and find hidden presents. He pulls out a handgun instead, and the screen goes black as you hear a gunshot.

I always, and still to this day, think that is one of the most fucked up commercials I have ever seen.

grifter

There were so many horror commercials and shows like Tales From the Darkside when I was growing up, thanks to my being raised by the TV without and supervision. In particular, I remember commercials for those Fly movies, especially the second one with a commercial where someone was singing Rock a Bye Baby with scary intercut footage and noises. Bending children's songs and stuff of that nature for horror purposes messes with kids' heads. All the Fly imagery like the "pod" on the posters really freaked me out too.

I was afraid of so many things that I'd challenge myself to watch when the commercial came on. Wish I could remember more of them now but maybe it's best I didn't.

Giles

oh there were about a dozen movie TV spots (from the mid 70's early 80's) that gave me nightmares:

- It's Alive
- Sasquatch
- Coma
- Ghost Story
- Orca

some feature-length documentary film on the after life whose title I am completely forgetting.

sfsdfd

The Emergency Broadcast System tests. As in, the ones they play occasionally during TV commercials with a black screen and a long, kind of jarring two-tone sound, and then they'd have a voiceover about how it's just a test, had it been an actual emergency..., blah blah blah. And they'd play the audio portion on the radio, too. When I was a kid, these tests shook me up pretty badly.

In retrospect, I had a right to be scared, since it was intended for use in the event of a nuclear war scenario. It was much creepier than the pink/mauve/salmon terror alert system.

But the reason it scared me was that the creepy sound was genuinely painful. I had a bad ear infection when I was a baby, and it made my hearing hyper-sensitive to certain frequencies - I think the tones chosen for these tests happened to hit two of 'em at once. (Similarly, I couldn't stand the Fourth of July - felt like my head was going to explode.)

- David Stein

MGBGT

sfsdfd--OMG! Hope the new ones don't affect you!

BTW, the TV spots for Suspiria and It's Alive frightened me as well. I even had the pleasure of having been hijacked by the Suspiria trailer in a theatre once--Even scarier than on TV.

cleaver

The one with that old chick for some Viagra-type drug who says something like "let's just say it... enhances the experience." Scares the bejeezus out of me. If I see her on the street I'm going to run away screaming. If I was 90 years old and married to her I would tatoo DNR on my chest.

Jadzia

Those current DirecTV ads where the guys die while watching TV and become ghosts is kind of disturbing for a commercial.

tanman

I'm not sure of the commercial but I think it is called the El Chupacabra.

http://www.elchupacabra.com/

cleaver

I love those commercials. The message is hey, death isn't that bad.