1. Arachnophobia (1990) – This creepy-crawler film scarred me for life. When I was in grade school, I used to play with fake spiders, however, after seeing this film, it’s hard for me to even get close enough to kill the eight-legged creatures. (Is something crawling on me?)

2. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – A Wes Craven masterpiece, this horror flick took a very scary person, Freddy Krueger, who could kill you at anytime with his glove made of knives, but hunted you down in your sleep – when you’re most vulnerable. The sound of his finger knives scraping along metal and Freddy coming through Joey’s waterbed are two of the most memorable things from the movie. While several sequels were made, none of them came close to the original “Nightmare.”

3. Jaws (1975) – The scariest part of this movie has to be the music. Everybody together now – da …. Da, da … Da, da da da da da da da da da da da da dada DA. The opening scene was perfect: A lone girl swimming in the ocean and suddenly she’s yanked under. At first, she thinks it’s nothing, almost humorous, but then yank – and CHOMP! Not seeing the actual beast until late in the movie also built up the suspense, so when you finally saw it, you were in awe at the giant fish, rather than laughing at how unrealistic it was.

4. Poltergeist (1982) – For a 10 year old, this film was horrifying. After the tree monster attacked the little boy, I couldn’t climb a tree for some time. To this day, I can’t sleep if there’s a puppet in my bedroom and the corpses coming up out of the swimming pool was classic. “This house is clean.”

5. Gigli (2003) – Ben Affleck plus Jennifer Lopez. So awful, it’s scary!