Written by Ian Fleming.

Except the book is nothing like the movie. I couldn't believe it when I finally read it and I have no idea how they came up with most of it. The child catcher freaked me right out, but I adored that movie and had a toy CCBB car that had folding and unfolding wings.

For some reason, Willy Wonka never bothered me, but I used to hide behind my dad's chair when the Wicked Witch appeared on TV.

I'm pretty sure I read the book, but I obviously didn't find it as memorable as the movie.

I was just thinking about The Apple Dumpling Gang a week ago! I was trying to remember which Disney films I remember seeing in the theaters in the '70s, and that one was near the top of my list. Totally innocuous, but very funny schtick from Don Knotts and Tim Conway, and the little romance between Bill Bixby and the female lead (whose name I can't remember offhand, but she was a great semi-feminist character) was well-handled, and the kids weren't overly cloying.

I'm pretty sure I read the book, but I obviously didn't find it as memorable as the movie.

Because it's terribly boring. Essentially, none of the Neuschwanstein stuff happens. There is no romance plotline. The family picnics on the coast and end up sailing to the French Coast and there are spies or gangsters that kidnap the kids and take them to Paris.

And there's a plot involving chocolate, and I think counterfeiters, and I liked it.

The first movie I saw in the theater was Where the Red Fern Grows at age four, with my parents completely ignorant going in that the doggies die by the finish. This did not end well.

I don't know that I've really been freaked out by a movie in the theater as an adult, although Sunshine gave me such a claustrophobia/agoraphobia cocktail when I was already queasy from a migraine that I walked out halfway through. And I had a weird moment after seeing Ju-On when the stall door in a restaurant bathroom made the exact same noise as Kayako did in the movie when attacking one of her victims in a restroom.

The movies that disturbed me most, like Eraserhead and The Ring, were all home video experiences.

My biggest freakout was with Trainspotting, and that was on video, too.

I did see The Hitcher (the original) in the theater, but as much as the girl's death-by-truck was horrifying, it wasn't leave-the-theater level horrific.

The movie that freaked me out when I was really small (like 6) was Pinocchio. My dad took me by himself. This was in ye olden dayz when Disney rereleased movies every 7 years. My dad couldn't understand why I was flipping out but they turned into donkeys because they were bad and the whale ate them! I couldn't watch that damn movie again for the longest time and it's one that we do not own on DVD.

When I was a bit older, my dad was tending bar and would get home at around 2:00 a.m., during the summer every once in a while I could get up and watch TV with him while he had a snack before he went to bed. Uusally this involved "creature feature" type movies. I remember the first time I saw Attack of the Mushroom People I couldn't sleep and got in trouble. I remember one black/white movie where all I saw was severed hands crawling across the floor holding scissors... ugh!

The first R rated movie I saw was HAIR. The next day I went to 5th grade and told all my classmates how cool drugs are.

Whatever meal it was they had in Alien before the first chestbursting was what we had for lunch after watching it. Spaghetti? We stared balefully at it. And then my friend moved and her knee brushed mine under the table and I about died.

But mostly movies didn't freak me out as a kid. Real life shit weighed me down instead. Werewolves couldn't encroach on the space where cancer and leprosy held sway of terror.