Steven Spielberg’s Jaws turned 35 earlier this month. Yup, it was 35 years ago (on June 20, 1975 to be exact) that the modern Hollywood blockbuster was born and with it, a drastic increase in human beings’ irrational fear of sharks. I can clearly remember floating on a raft with my sister on Siesta Key in Florida one hot summer day sometime around 1984 when she said, “You know, in Jaws, the shark always attacks when people are calmly dangling their legs off their rafts.” So we hauled ass back to the shore. I’m not sure I’d even seen the actual movie by then, but the poster (left) was terrifying enough for my impressionable mind. The whole idea of a great, ravenous beast opening its mouth to take a bite out of an unsuspecting swimmer so freaked me out that my fear of what lies beneath soon extended to all bodies of water: lakes, ponds, rivers, and yes friends, even sometimes pools. I am not kidding.
So I can thank Mr. Spielberg for scarring me for life with his brilliant, timeless classic about a killer shark. Who are you sending your shrink bill to? What movie created your greatest irrational fear? Let the message board be your therapist! Share!
Read more:
‘Jaws’: The Fish that Fed Hollywood
20 scariest movies of all time
‘Jaws’ and other scary movies
‘Jaws’: 30th anniversary edition
There were times when I was a kid that poster popped into my head while in a pool, and I had to get out of the water RIGHT! NOW! (Yes, just like you: in a pool.)
I don’t think fear of being eaten alive is “irrational.”
I can beat both of you. Yes, lakes, rivers, oceans, and even pools scared the bejesus out of me when I first saw Jaws as a kid. But I was also convinced that, somehow, that giant shark was in my bath tub. Makes you not feel so bad about the pool, doesn’t it?
I am terrified of toilet snakes. Always check before you sit!
I wasn’t born when Jaws came out and saw it years later but it still freaked me out. Anything with open water, sharks, or even alligators makes me shiver.
Me too!
For me it was “The Blob”. Gave me nightmares for years!
I have an idea! Take a small boat out on the ocean through the night and drop the anchor then go down below and watch the movie JAWS then after it is over let’s say about midnight in pitch black, jump off the boat and swim about 20 feet away from the boat then back. If you can do this you are a brave person.
I saw “IT” when I was around 7 or 8 years old and it scared the bejeebus out of me. To this day, clowns creep me out. Didn’t help that I recently watched a movie about Gacy which only made it worse. I should have known better!
I was around the same age when I saw IT, and I still can’t be around clowns. Over the years I’ve met a lot of people around my age with clown issues that have this same story.
Ditto both of you. Around the same (9 or 10) age when I first saw it when it aired on TV for the first time. I also made the mistake of watching that all by myself in the dark. The creepy ass image of the clown in the gutter with the teeth and saying “We all float down here”–creepy as hell!
Yup, the clowns! Can’t stand to be around clowns. All I can picture are those pointy teeth!!
Same! I still get uncomfortable when i think of clowns. Hell, i get uncomfortable when i think of Tim Curry!!
Clowns for me too, but not because of IT, but rather Poltergeist. I still will not look under my bed at night because of that stupid freaky clown doll in that movie.
I believe Poltergeist created a lot of people’s fear of clowns.
I’m with you re: Poltergeist. I had a clown doll very similiar to the one in the movie and had to get rid of it. It kept starting at me!
definetly Arachnophobia, hate spiders that i order my wife to kill every one that I see as I run away like a little girl.
I also second this one. I hated spiders before, but man did I become more afraid of them. I also like to scare myself, so whenever that movie comes on TV I always watch it. You’d think I’d become desenitized to it after the 30th viewing–NOPE.
Whoops–’desensitized’
Poltergeist kept me away from closets for a long, long time.
I agree on the movie … but ever since I saw Poltergeist, maggots scare the living heck out of me. I’ve never even been able to eat rice after seeing that. And my best friend threw away any clowns in his room after seeing Poltergeist.
I still can’t sleep with closet door open.
Yes!! My closet door is always shut now.
I have an unrational fear of open closet doors, but I never linked it to Poltergeist. Now I know. Thanks again Speilberg!
Mine too! And I’m sure I’m older than both of you.
This is also one that makes you afraid of checking under the bed… when that clown grabbed the kid, everyone jumped out of their skin.
Damn clowns. Is there a non-creepy clown in a movie?
Oltergeist did it for me, but for the clowns…Those things are creepy!!
And clown dolls.
2 come to mind…
Visiting Hours… makes you never want to stay in a Hospital
The Birds… enough said…
I second “The Birds”. Except that there’s nothing irrational about it. Flying vermin.
I third The Birds! I saw it when I was about 7 years old, and I’m still scared to death of birds to this day…the smaller they are the worse it is! Damn those lovebirds!
The Birds. I was about 5 or 6 when I watched it with my older sibs.
I still get scared when they flock.
Seriously, whenever I see a big flock of birds just hanging out on up on the wires, I start getting a little freaked out.
So glad to see I’m not the only one creeped out by a flock of birds on a wire because of this film.
Me too! The day after I first saw it, some migrating birds happened to stop for a rest in my neighborhood. They were everywhere!
I was 10 when Jaws came out and my memory was not anything concerning water. I remember being in the theater when Richard Dreyfus found the shark tooth the size of a shot glass and lost it when that head came out of the side of the boat. An elder couple got up and walked out of the theater. I was like, “Whoa, they really didn’t want to see anymore.” That’s when I KNEW this was going to be a memorable movie.
The Ring made me afraid of my television for a good long while, and that is an unforgivable crime.
Scared the crap out of me too! Whenever I see static on the TV, it reminds me of this movie.
for the longest time, i couldn’t walk past my television while it was off because i was terrified that it would suddenly turn on and that girl would crawl out
The movie Aligator scared me so bad that when I was kid I would check the swimming pools and I would also check the lids to the sewers bc I thought an aligator would come out from there.
The Blair Witch Project kept me out of the woods for a while!
For a while? I still cant go back.
good point…when I really think about it I haven’t been camping in over 10 years…
I agree…. and for a long time, I had to keep something in the corner of the room. If not, all I could see is the character looking down, standing in the corner in the last scene. Irrational for sure.
I was seven when I first saw Evil Dead 2, and when Bruce Campbell’s girlfriend came back from the dead and danced… well I’m still scared of dancing to this day.
The Wizard of Oz!! Those flying monkeys scared the bejesus out of me when I was a little kid.
Ok, that made me laugh. But then I remember that ET terrified me. He is not cute! He’s totally freaky looking and he will devour your soul!
As a child, ET scared the heck out of me! I still haven’t seen the movie. Maybe I’ll try and conquer that fear someday, lol!
thank you! ET was the monster in my closet. I was convinced that he was going to eat me. I also believed he had some secret passage way to get from my room (upstairs) to the laundry room (downstairs) to further terrify me when I had to get something from the basement at night. I still sometimes have nightmares of ET chasing me.
I was so afraid of the flying monkeys that I would race to fastforward through them every time they came on screen (which was a lot, because I loved that movie as a child). At some point, the VHS couldn’t play the flying monkey parts anymore from so much fastforwarding. Also, ditto on ET being terrifying (especially at the end of the movie when the quarantine everyone!).
This is embarrassing: it wasn’t the monkeys that freaked me out, it was the Scarecrow. Nightmares!
I’m ashamed to admit it, but after watching The Ring I couldn’t walk by a TV without an irrational twinge of fear for, like, months.
1408 made me a little wary about hotel rooms, although not to a big extent. I can usually banish the thought by saying to myself, “It was only a movie.”
Is it bad that I am terrified of dinosaurs because of Jurassic Park?
Not at all! I have two irrational fears: dinosaurs and zombies.