No, it wasn't scarier than the Exorcist.
I was older when I finally saw the Exorcist and even then, the stuff didnt strike me so much as horror but as dramatics. It was an acclaimed, well done movie, but I couldn't see the horror, even with its subject matter.
"Don't be Afraid of the Dark" was the boogeyman. It scared kids. Sally was alone against everyone else.
"It's your imagination. Are you sleeping well at night? Youre overtired."
Like Gilligan seeing his lookalike or a rescue ship. No one believed him, no one believed Kim Darby.
My brother and sister thought the little men were funny, but I still wouldn't look out from behind the chair.
Truthfully, the only moment that didn't seem to be an insult to intelligence was when she got the camera. We sure were rooting for her then.
Like others posted here, I was seven, scared by it, hated it. I hated the thought of her being dragged back down that furnace, and I was so glad we didn't have one.
I never knew the title or the actors, until finally one day I read the old movies on a cable station we didn't receive and BAM, there it was "little men in the furnace drag a woman back down with them" and I realized I had found this childhood question of what was that movie.
I never liked Kim Darby so it was fun for me to see her get tormented like that.
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womackphotokcmo
19 years ago
WOW! I can't believe so many people, besides me, have been affected by this little "Made for T.V." movie! I had trouble sleeping for quite a while after seeing it as a 11 year old. I hope they DON'T re-make it! The original is perfect.
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riverheadestelle
19 years ago
It scared me at the ripe old age of 12!
One of the reasons ABC plays such a huge part in my childhood memories is because it was the only network that came in as clear as a bell. My family and I had moved to eastern Long Island in 1971 - a then unknown town called Sag Harbor. Cable was in its infancy back then, and if you didn't have it, you had to make do with ABC or the very snowy receptions of CBS and NBC. And even before we moved from our old neighborhood Springfield Gardens, I was racing home from parochial school just to be in time for ABC's 'Dark Shadows'.
Well, for me, getting used to Sag Harbor took a lot of time, and a major complaint for me was: 'There's nothing to watch!' Well, if it wasn't for ABC, I don't know what I would have done. So whether it's 'Movie of the Week', 'The After School Special', or the many primetime dramas or sitcoms - some of them short-lived - the network aired, I remember a lot of 70's ABC programming.
But getting back to 'Don't Be AFraid of the Dark'...
Our lovely new home in Sag Harbor's Ninevah Beach development off Route 114 had a fireplace - a real one, not the gas job like our old home in the city. I thought it was real neat to experience an old-fashioned log fire for the first two years of living there. After the debut of this particular ABC flick, though, I didn't go near the fireplace for about a week!
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cinemantic
19 years ago
I too belong to the ever growing group of kids that saw this film back on network t.v. in the mid to late 70's. It seemed to show up on WPIX/channel 11 here in N.Y. I still, as of this posting have fond memories of watching this wonderful gem of a creepy thriller on a rainy Sunday afternoon, hiding under a blanket that I had wrapped myself up in because this movie gave me the creeps.... I hope that someday a studio executive will go into the vault and find this great thriller and put it on the fast track towards a legitimate DVD release. Are there any studio exec's listening?? {"Saaalllyyy....weeee want your soul !!}
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xxlibra76
19 years ago
Remember when channel 5 use to have something called the the sunday movies drive-in or somethin like that, and every sunday afternoon they'd show a made for TV movie. I saw don't be afraid of the dark on that, I was around six and The demons scared me to death. My cousins also use to try to scare me by calling out sally the way the demons did and I was afraid of the basement for a long time cause I use to think they were down there waiting to get me. Oh how I miss those days, when you didn't need cable to see a good movie and made for TV movies would scare you to death.
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israelx7
19 years ago
funny to visit this forum and find so many who have vivid recollections and confess to significant impact upon their young psyches. I was not a child when this came out, but remember ruminating over it for many days...I haven't seen it in perhaps 20 years now, but there was I believe, a line in it that I still find so very haunting, and unless I am showing my age and poor memory it was spoken by one the little people while she was in the bathroom...he sort of pleaded "I want to hurt her"..and the others kind of put him off with something like "not yet,... or not now". "I want to hurt her...or please..."let me hurt her"...spooky
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mwmtampa
19 years ago
Undoubtedly, unquestionably, one of the all time classics of its kind. I see a comparison to the Exorcist above, but while they were both designed to scare you they did it with different ways. Exorcist did it straight in your face mixed in with great special effects. This one did it with the buildup throughout the movie of the suspense and the creepiness til it gnawed on you. I want this on DVD, or better yet, a new high budget remake. I doubt they could get it as good as the original though.
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womackphotokcmo
19 years ago
The reason I don't want to see a remake is that the original did "it" with a minimal budget and no CGI. I'm afraid a remake would be TOO CGI-ish.
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