MovieChat Forums > Homicidal (1961) Discussion > Television ads for this movie scared me ...

Television ads for this movie scared me waterless as a child


I remember vividly seeing tv ads for Homicidal, that appeared several times a day for a couple of weeks when the picture was first released. I was only seven or eight at the time, but I still remember how terrifying it was to see the old lady slowly coming down the stairs in her wheelchair lift, with Patricia Breslin looking scared. It was like nothing I had ever seen, because my parents wouldn't allow me to watch any scary tv shows or movies. All I knew was that something really bad was happening, or about to, in that clip that was shown, which was of course accompanied by a dramatic voice booming on about how frightening this picture was.

Even now, when watching that movie, I still get some of that eerie feeling as that scene unreels. I think it has to do with both the darkness hiding the old lady, and the utter silence with which the chair slowly descends. The audience knows that Helga can't talk, but there's still something unnerving about that silent descent from the darkness.

Does anyone else remember being scared by the tv ads when they were kids? Or the movie itself?

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I never saw this movie until recently but as a child I did see most of the other similar ones (black and white movies about vengeful, deranged individuals and their families with dark, twisted secrets to hide) of the era when they were released in the movie theatre like 'Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte', 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane' and I vaguely recall seeing 'The Nanny', those scared and haunted me.

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my parents wouldn't allow me to watch any scary tv shows or movies
My mother actually took me to see this movie when I was six. I was so scared that I spent the last scene of the movie in the lobby of the theater waiting for her to come out.


"Please! You're not at home!"

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The scariest movie I ever saw as a child (in the 1960s, on TV no less!) was Isle of the Dead (Boris Karloff, 1945).
The scene where the woman is buried alive and is scratching to get out of her coffin scared me so much I couldn't get up to turn off the TV. AND it was 2 in the afternoon!
Recently I copied it on DVR and am hesitant to watch it again.
What if it's worse than I remember? or what if it isnt'?
Maybe I should just leave the scary memory alone!

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I never saw the ads but I did see the movie at the drive-in with my parents when I was about the same age. It scared the sh@t out of me. Stabbing the JOP and when the old woman's head rolls down the stairs. One of the most frightening movies of my childhood. I know own it on DVD.
Along with The Neandertal Man, Monster on the Campus and a few others I can't remember right now.

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