Kids these days aren't phased by anything. I remember the days when I was too scared to ever watch Aliens... yet somehow, I managed to fall in love with Terminator and T2 when I was about 3 or 4. Damn, I had good taste back then...

The first two horror films I remember obsessing about were Scream and Halloween. I'd seen others, but only in pieces. Sometimes, my sisters would have random Friday the 13th movies on, and I'd only ever watch a few scenes while hiding behind my fingers. I also remember being horrified by certain movies I'd only catch a glimpse of, like Return of the Living Dead Part 3 and Child's Play.

I started seeing made for TV horror movies around 1977. Some of the first ones I saw were Curse of the Black Widow, Killdozer, Snowbeast, Frankenstein: The True Story and Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night.

The multiple personalities in Black Widow and the child abuse in Mary Jane Harper were more disturbing to me than any of the actual horror aspects. Of course there's no real gore in TV movies so I can't really say one way or the other about that. I was probably too busy being scared and disturbed by the real people in my life to be bothered by anything in a movie that I would've known was make believe. But I should also point out that I was a different kind of kid than most. I knew that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and God were not real by the time I was 7 or 8, and it didn't take me much longer to learn that people who truly believe in any kind of higher power are evil and dangerous.

I can't imagine Gremlins or Poltergeist being scary or disturbing even to a six year old. The special effects are so badly done and fake looking that they can't possibly be scary. They are just bad, bad films on many levels.

Not a huge fan of Poltergeist and the effects have certainly dated. I disagree on Gremlins though. It still stands up today, is a lot of fun and my kids loved it.

I just saw Gremlins for the first time only about a month ago. I'm probably too old for it. I think it was intended to be more of a fun movie for younger people than a full-blown horror movie. The main reason I watched it was because Phoebe Cates is in it.

One of the biggest problems with me and movies is I never got to see things when they first came out, due mainly to having parents who didn't like horror movies. I had to wait until I was in my 20s and 30s to see most of them, and a lot of them I was too old to appreciate by that time. That's probably also one reason why I was never really scared by many movies. I was too old to be scared by movies by the time I saw them.

Yeah I get what you are saying and can understand why you might think Gremlins was terrible if it's only the first time you've seen it. It definitely helps to have watched and enjoyed that movie as a kid to fully appreciate it as an adult. Of course it's also possible to dislike a movie in later life that you loved as a kid, such as The Goonies which I thought was pretty awful during a recent rewatch with the kids (my eldest thought it was pretty bad too lol, so that's saying something).

My parents didn't like horror either. Most of the movies I saw as a child were either with friends or I secretly stayed up late by myself without them finding out (well, except on one occasion when I was watching the original The Fly and was told to go to bed).

I think I must have been 9 or 10 when I first saw Alien. It didn't give me nightmares. However around the same time I was scared to go to bed after seeing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The heart removing scene I found quite shocking. I think scared, disturbed and fascinated all went together there for me. And yes it's the only Indiana Jones movie I care about to revisit.

Nice, due to this post you remind me of my own Pops who was a big horror fan that made me watch Frankenstein, Dracula and other classic Universals for my 5th Halloween which put me on my way to being the Horror fan I am today. Keep it up Markus!

I need to start showing them the Universal classics. After they get used to watching something that is not in colour.. not sure how kids would react to that these days.

I think things have changed too much for kids to watch B&W. No, I take it back. Some certainly would if the environment for it was there, the kid was open enough, and the parent introduced it. When I was little, Nickelodeon used to show re-runs of the old Lassie TV show from the '50s. It was B&W and I watched it like it was nothing. It didn't bother me. I just don't see that happening for today's children so naturally, but then again, with streaming platforms and all, I don't think there are any kids shows in B&W. Maybe Disney+ has old B&W programming, I don't know. Said child would have to be fairly precocious to choose it over color, though.

I grew up watching horror from an incredibly early age. My mom took me to see The Blob (1988) and Return of the Living Dead II (1988) when I was 5 years old. She got me into Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy, first with the television show Freddy's Nightmares, then the films. That's a pic of me in the avatar dressed as Freddy. It's been downhill and a lifelong obsession since. Always been fascinated, though there were plenty of instances i was afraid of certain movies and/or scenes. But the rush I got from them was more important than ever shying away from them.

Oh just remembered we regularly watched Tales from the Darkside too. When the theme song played, I'd run around the house screaming for it to stop, while being equally enthralled by being scared and wanting more.

My daughter is 5 now and she seems like shes going to be into horror. So far, she's displaying huge signs of becoming a tomboy. She was Spider-Man for Halloween. Not Spider-Girl. Man. She liked Ghostbusters 1 and 2. The other day I was watching something very inappropriate and she walked in. I had to quickly pause it. When she asked what it was and I told her something scary, she wanted to stay and watch.

Your 5 year old daughter sounds a lot like my other 5 year son. His favourite movies are Gremlins, A Nightmare Before Christmas and yeah Ghostbusters 1 and 2. Every Friday night is "movie night" and whatever I choose for them to watch he will always ask "is it scary?". When it's not scary, he seems a tad disappointed (although like most kids that age, they're still happy with some Pixar or Studio Ghibli animation).

I don't tend to start watching inappripriate things until I know they are tucked away in bed but my 5 year old did get up and come down to the living room one night whilst I was watching a particularly violent shoot 'em up scene from John Wick 3. I had to pause it in the end and send him back to sleep..

I took her to see Frozen 2 the other weekend and she didn't like it. Half way through, she asked if we could leave. Lol. Boy was I tempted to say "OK!!!"

One other thing. Whenever I think about what some of the earliest horror films I saw were, I notice movies from 1986 were in abundance. Saw all of these very young:

Invaders from Mars, Neon Maniacs, Terror Vision, Chopping Mall, Night of the Creeps, Class of Nuke 'Em High, House, Spookies, From Beyond, Deadly Friend, Critters.

For a few of them, I remember exactly where I was and approximately how old I was. From Beyond we rented on more than one occasion. Chopping Mall came on TV one afternoon at my grandma's. Night of the Creeps regularly played on TV on the weekends on channel 39-WDZL. Spookies played a Saturday night on USA's Saturday Nightmares. Class of Nuke 'Em High played on USA's Up All Night and I was terrified of the punk gang, thinking that that's how kids in high school were gonna be when I went.

I don't really remember what the first horror movie I saw was. I guess my first introduction into horror elements would be from seeing Snow White as a child.

I do vividly remember the first horror movie I saw that actually scared me as a child though lol. That award goes to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). My cousin and I saw that her older brother had rented it, and when he left we snuck and got the vhs to watch it. BIG mistake lol. I lost several weeks sleep due to that movie, but it's one I still love to this day.

Yeah I don't think I will be introducing my little ones to Freddy any time too soon .

Maybe not . The first horror movie I ever showed my kids was Evil Dead.

I was about 8 when I started watching our local Creature Double Feature. Some of the first horror movies I watched were incredibly stupid American International Pictures movies. They were often (not always) very low quality, but they were certainly scary enough to scare the crap out of an 8 year old. I remember having nightmares about The Astounding She-Monster, who (the monster described in the movie title) could kill you by touching you, and usually walked slowly toward you. She was actually quite a bit like the It in It follows, actually, although she was supposed to be an alien. Her eyebrows were very cheaply drawn on her forehead as going diagonally downward from the sides in an almost-V, not quite meeting above her nose. It just scared the HELL out of me, she looked so mad. I had a lot of nightmares about her.

The Brain that Wouldn't Die was scary too, largely because it had an extra monster hiding in the closet in the lab.

Hey, if your kid disliked the demise of Jaws, don't show him The Fly II. I can't even say the bad thing that happens, it's so miserable... if you haven't watched it, do yourself a favor and keep things that way, and don't show it to your kid either. Also, Son of Kong would be bad to show him. The son of Kong meets a tragic end at the end of the movie.

I saw Alien for the first time at age 7 and thought it was just about the best thing ever, although the plot and suspense was a little lost on me. The chest-bursting and general monster action though, that had me set for years. In fact to this day I can dig just about any Alien film or even rip off if it has cool gore and monster action.

Otherwise I wasn't really allowed to watch any horror stuff at that time unless it was essentially family friendly like Gremlins or just classic Universal, like I remember watching The Mummy with Boris Karloff one afternoon, it was just that my older brothers were allowed to see Alien and I had been really bugging my mum. Somewhere around age 9 or 10 was when I was first really allowed to get in to more, largely in the form of Hammer horror, but also other older British stuff and the odd creature feature like The Thing. If it seemed schlocky rather than outright nasty then I was ok. I lapped it all up but I did get disturbed by bad stuff happening to kids or priests (as I was quite religious at the time). The bit in the supermarket in Psychomania when one of the bikers takes out a pram made me uncomfortable, that was I guess age 12, the baby menacing in Candyman or priest tormenting in Hellraiser III disturbed me outright. I just kept watching things though.

It's funny (or slightly ironic). I didn't tell my Mrs that I let him stay up late watching Alien and Aliens over two consesutive days. She can be funny about what I show him (and his younger brother). I did worry initially that he might have a nightmare or say something to her but it was all perfectly fine.. However, at the weekend I let him and his younger brother watch Independece Day. They had both previously enjoyed E.T. and most of Close Encounters (friendly aliens) and the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds (unfriendly aliens). So hey, you'd think ID would be perfectly fine. That night, my eldest woke up crying and screaming for his mummy. He told her he'd had a nightmare about aliens. She was mad at me for showing him "that kind of movie!". So yeah, a PG certificate alien movie gives him nightmares and gets me into trouble with the Mrs but an 18 certificate one was perfectly ok.

I did ask him if the movie had scared or disturbed him and he said it was because the aliens in Independence Day were "creepy looking", and specifically mentioned the eyes. I guess that's the thing with more "humanoid" creatures or aliens. They can appear more creepy or freaky to kids. Adults too probably. I will certainly have to bare that in mind when choosing things for him to watch. Predator will be fine..