My Really Classy Top 10 List

Following Dr. Write and Middle-Brow, I present to you my Top 10. Of course, since I possess nowhere near the class of these two, my top ten is not of poems or short stories. No, I give you the top 10 movies and tv shows (in no particular order) that scared the bejeezus out of me as a child. I used to stay up Friday nights with my big sisters, watching The Count host cheesy horror movies on Nightmare Theatre. Probably not the best thing for a child with an overactive imagination...

1. Tarantula (1955). This tale of a radiation-enlarged arachnid apparently featured a giant fuzzy leg coming through a window at some point, which led me to fear showering for years to come, since our bathroom had a window above the tub.
2. X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963). Scientist experiments with drug that gives him x-ray vision. Scientist begins to see through the very fabric of reality! Small girl watching show begins to experience mildly hallucinagenic moments.
3. Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1961). A tie between two really really scary Vincent Price classics.
4. "Stopover in a Quiet Town" (1964) and "Where Is Everybody" (1959 pilot). Both of these Twilight Zone episodes emphasize a powerless human being watched and stalked by Other beings. This sense was particularly strong for a 13-year-old newspaper carrier when delivering papers at dawn...
5. The 1972 series The Sixth Sense, an anthology series with lots of creepy ESP kinda of stuff. I particularly remember an episode where a guy opens doors only to find a brick wall suddenly appearing on the other side. Trapped.
6. The Blood of Dracula (1957). Girls' boarding school. Predatory vampire headmistress. On-screen transformation into vampires. Tapped into my deepest desires and my deepest fears all at once! Plus, one of my sisters started tormenting me by pretending to turn into a vampire in front of me.
7. Rosemary's Baby (1968). Even its edited-for-TV version, still incredibly scary. Really, really, really scary. Ruth Gordon--sweet and terrifying, all at once.

(Okay, I only made it to seven, but some of these have two, so there!)