This movie PERMANENTLY traumatized me

I sincerely hope you don't play Black Ops because if you do, then you are lying. I saw this movie as a kid and it's not creepy in the least.

The Halloween Spirit Continues
http://tinyurl.com/halloween365

My review of E.T. covers most if not all of these points, and then some!

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whu--5NNl8k

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajgU_k0ILEs

https://twitter.com/ShaynaLax

O.T., I see what you are saying. It can be a really scary movie. Good for you, for warning people who might not realize how scary this could be for a small child.

I remember seeing just the COMMERCIALS, on TV, for Last House On The Left (1972), and also an incredibly stupid horror/comedy movie called Arnold (1973), when I was around 5 or 6 years old. They scared the living CR@P out of me, and I had intense, brutal, horrifying nightmares for YEARS. The minds of small children are simply not equipped to deal with the horrors that modern film can dream up.

Do they pose a threat? Only one thing's for certain: we are ALL going to be killed.

The government entering the house in suits and quarantining it was definitely traumatic for me as well! I remember it clearly and I was quite afraid and afterward thought: what if it really happens to me?

That was an eerie scene!

I understand you being scared because you were very young when you saw it but I just dont understand being PERMANENTLY traumatized, you are grown up now, right? I saw Alien when I was 7 and it really scared me then but now its one of my favorite movies.

To this day, only one movie, out of the thousands of films I've seen over the years, ever truly traumatized me. That movie is E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial.

I was an 80s baby, and in the years after the movie's release, naturally my mom bought it on VHS thinking it would be a cute, uplifting film for a young kid to watch. What she didn't realize is that she had made a big, BIG mistake.

All it took was witnessing the cornfield scene for the very first time as an impressionable 5-year-old, and the die had been cast. This was a horror film as far as my childhood self was concerned.

So many scenes and details disturbed me overwhelmingly, in particular these:

• Music/sound effects at beginning (so eerie)
• FBI chase scene at beginning (the screeching figure running through the ferns)
• Cornfield scene
• E.T.'s hand coming out of the bushes to grab Reese's Pieces candies
• Back-and-forth exchange of the baseball from the tool shed
• Closet scene with E.T. among the dolls
• Gertie encountering E.T. for the first time
• Government listening in on the household from a van on the street
• E.T. bloated and face-down in the pond
• Elliott's mom encountering E.T. for the first time in the bathroom
• Scientists entering the house in astronaut suits

It's pretty much one scary/creepy/eerie scene after another.

When I was little, I was too afraid to even open my eyes lying in bed at night in fear that that sausage-skinned monster would be squatting there next to my bed, waiting to gnaw my face off with his jagged E.T. teeth. I was absolutely terrified. E.T. was (and still is) a recurring subject in my nightmares. I still can't sleep with my closet door open.

Whenever I'm surprised by an advertisement with E.T., a photo on a website, or even if anyone ever mentions the movie casually, a jolt shoots down my spine, and my heart rate instantly jumps. This is the effect he still has on me as a grown adult!

Despite the movie's impact on my life, I somehow still feel captivated by the story, and watch it again every few years because I get a thrill from it.

Has this movie affected/disturbed/traumatized anyone else as much as it did me?

Anyone who is scared of E.T. is actually dealing with repressed memories of alien abduction.

[deleted]