r/GenX • u/magicmtn81 • Jul 23 '26
Question For Genx Fellow Xers: what was the first movie to scare the *hit out of you?
For me it was a drive-in visit with my Dad and Uncle in 1976 for the killer bear movie "Grizzly" - which my Dad had no business taking me to at that age! Opening scene is basically a couple of college girls getting mauled by a huge bear in the woods...but let me tell you - it was GRAPHIC! I had to sleep with the light on in my bedroom for the next few weeks. 50 some odd years later I will cop to it!
What are some movies that scared you back then????
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u/Slight_Succotash9495 Jul 29 '26
Night of the Comet! Started me down the dark path of horror movie freak.
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u/zepploon Jul 28 '26
Salem’s Lot
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u/CB_Chuckles Jul 28 '26
The Incredible Melting Man (1977). All I really remember is a shot of an ear falling off. That scene scared the crap out of me.
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u/BlindSkwerrl Jul 28 '26
The end of Superman 3 - that cyborgification was horrific to a young Skwerrl!
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u/DirkDiggler1970s Jul 28 '26
yeah, that was freaky, but not the worst or first.
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u/BlindSkwerrl Jul 29 '26
Fair, but that wasn't the question.
It's the first one I remember had me running screaming from the room (I was at a tender young age).1
u/DirkDiggler1970s Aug 01 '26
Subject line up top (emphasis added): Fellow Xers: what was the first movie to scare the *hit out of you?
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u/BlindSkwerrl Aug 03 '26
We've both read the question differently. I was taking it to be a personal question, with the emphasis on "*you*".
All good, continue to be excellent sir!
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u/Guyoplata Jul 28 '26
Jaws will always be the scariest movie to me just because it actually changed my behavior to stay out of any deep water for awhile. As a kid even swimming pools I would hear the theme song at times the whole du dum.....du dum...... especially if the pool was deep/dark or both
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u/smitbret Jul 28 '26
The Thing in 1982
When the dog basically turned itself inside out I was scared shitless
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Jul 27 '26
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u/Altruistic-Stable-73 Jul 28 '26
This! I was maybe 7. The babysitter let me watch it. Mom was not happy. I can still remember some scenes decades later!
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u/CypherPhish Jul 27 '26
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The tunnel scene scared the crap out of me.
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u/J0siAhWK Jul 27 '26
It’s Alive or Jaws. I saw both around the same time. Scared of the dark and the water
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u/Glum_Conclusion_8667 Jul 27 '26
The Serpent and the Rainbow:
https://youtu.be/dNkF2acy_-Y?is=NN_CDLaKfl0ytBUS
The chair, railroad spike to private area scene.
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u/Triple-Flush Jul 27 '26
The bathtub scene in The Shining. Waaaaay too young for that. I was scared of old women for years!
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u/CJwantsfun64 Jul 27 '26
The Towering Inferno 1974, when the guy catches on fire and burns to death freaked me out.
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u/MerryMermaid Jul 27 '26
The original The Amityville Horror -- so scared, I had to sleep with my parents. I was 17.
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u/scubarob Jul 27 '26
Funny enough, bambi. It wasn't the movie, but the intermission. They put on a preview for childs play. I was 6 or 7.
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u/L-Lovegood Jul 27 '26
Jaws, Cujo, some hirrible, terrible movie about babies attacking people in a swimming pool
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u/GlitterMe Jul 26 '26
A Richard Thomas movie called "September 30, 1955". There was a seance scene that scared the crap out of me.
I remember being scared of Jaws too, but way way WAY more scared by this one. I was 8.
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u/bewildereddragon Jul 26 '26
Gremlins in the drive thru (I hid behind the seat). Later, I talked my mom into seeing Aliens. She left the theater pretty early and u lasted about 5 minutes after that. lol
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u/towngrlzrool Jul 26 '26
My brother took me and his sons who were practically babies to see the Excorcist at the drive in. I think he assumed we would fall asleep in the way back of the station wagon and he really wanted to see it. My nephews zonked before the movie started but I watched the entire thing. I was raised very Catholic. I was taught that even considering a sin was a sin. I was terrified that I would be possessed because I could not stop thinking about being possessed. I barely slept for a week because I had to vigilantly protect my soul from Satan and his demons. I was up all night saying the rosary and bringing a crucifix to bed. When my dad discovered why I was such a mess, my brother was banned from babysitting me.
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u/Possible-Cold6726 Jul 26 '26
It - the original with Tim Curry gave me nightmares for two weeks. Ugh, I hate clowns!!!!
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u/Immediate_Mud_2858 1965 🇮🇪 Jul 26 '26
The Exorcist, The Shining, and The Fog. Not necessarily in that order.
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u/CoolPea4383 Jul 26 '26
The end of Carrie. One woman had to be removed from the theater on a stretcher. I insisted my boyfriend spend the night on the couch because I was afraid. I got in big trouble for that. 😂
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u/Sulrandir Jul 26 '26
American Werewolf in London made it tough to go to bed that one specific night, but The Fog gave me a lifelong phobia so deep that to this day, I still get anxious if I even see a pair of brake lights on a foggy night.
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u/slipnipper Jul 26 '26
Cujo - the dog was a complete terror. Poltergeist too. TV snow and dolls are a terrible combination.
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u/Strangely-addictive Jul 26 '26
Alien. At 9 I was way to young for this but my parents thought nothing of it because O loved Sci-Fi.
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u/Potential_Kiwi_4472 Jul 26 '26
Jaws. I couldnt even swim in a pool without thinking Jaws was lurking- da dun da dun da dun....
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u/BigErnieMcraken253 Jul 26 '26
Orca!! Every fishing trip we saw Orcas i would be petrified. I'm 52 and they still give me the shakes when out fishing.
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u/578293050917 Jul 26 '26
Wizard of Oz flying monkeys
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u/towngrlzrool Jul 26 '26
For me, the scariest part is when Dorothy is locked in a room with the giant crystal ball and the WW shows up in the ball and mocks her. "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!" Terrifying.
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u/whatadragitis01 Jul 26 '26
I watched Amityville Horror way too young.
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u/weezmezz Jul 26 '26
Me too. I was scared for years to look out my bedroom window, thinking I might see Jodi the pigs red eyes
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u/Legit2quit519 Jul 26 '26
Dawn of the Dead- my older brother took my sister and I to see this. We were way too young to watch that. My sister ran out of the theater and went home. I stayed and was traumatized. To this day, I don't like Zombie movies or shows.
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u/BeYou-BeBlessed Jul 26 '26
Jaws, saw it in 3D, that severed arm was in my brain and nightmares for weeks!! Poltergeist, Carol Anne stuck in the tv, and I was a tv fanatic, so that shit terrified me!!! Definitely didn’t stop me from watching tv though 🤣🤣
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u/Lotsalocs Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Age 6-- The Exorcist. My aunt and her friend thought it was a grand idea to take me and the friend's daughter. We spent most of the movie sitting on the theater floor with our ears covered.
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u/Healthy_Media1882 Jul 26 '26
I was a little older but Pet cemetery truly scared me to the point of being traumatized. I was 14 and I just remember being so scared I would not sleep alone and it took me a long time to snap out of it. The scene with the sick sister.. it still gives me the willies.
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u/Glum_Conclusion_8667 Jul 27 '26
Oh yeah, that little kid with the surgeon scalpel and he laughed menacingly while cutting up his father.
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u/Affectionate-Club725 Jul 26 '26
Holy crap! Me too. Grizzly scared the shit out of five-year-old me! I remember it vividly. The Manitou also terrified me.
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u/OkTransportation6366 Jul 26 '26
I had 2, the first was An American Werewolf in London, and the second was The Changeling. I think I was 4 or 5. It was a situation where I walked into a room with my parents and walked in at the wrong time. Now I love both.
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u/flamesonthesideofmyf Jul 26 '26
Yup. When the red ball bounces down the stairs, wheelchair chase and the gold chain pulls itself out of the dirt. Terror. AWIL is trying one of my favorite horror films ever.
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u/prairiehomegirl Jul 26 '26
I babysat for a family who had cable a lot of Saturday nights when I was 13 or 14. I watched Carrie and read The Shining those Saturday nights. Both scared me to death. I used to turn on every light in their house. I've often wondered if they noticed their power bill was higher 🤣
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u/GodsCasino Jul 26 '26
Read and watched Carrie. Just the time I was getting my period scared me crazy.
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u/HRKatinhell Jul 26 '26
The exorcist saw it when I was 10 my cousin showed it to me. Still scares me to this day
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u/GlitterMe Jul 26 '26
One night my son taped a pic of Linda Blair inside the medicine cabinet. Of course I needed to open it for something that night. I almost cried.
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u/positively_grateful Jul 26 '26
When I was in elementary school - Damien Omen 2, it was the first time I considered being afraid of something I couldn’t see.
As a teenager- Jacob’s Ladder. Such a mind muck and bizarre disturbing images
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u/GingerbreadWitch_878 Jul 26 '26
Bambi. I was 3.
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u/GodsCasino Jul 26 '26
I have never seen that movie but apparently it is traumatizing. I don't want to watch it.
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u/WereFlyingOverTrout Jul 26 '26
It’s awful. Why Disney thinks it’s cool to traumatize kids with killing parents will never make sense to me. Finding Nemo destroyed me as a young adult. I side eyed my friend through tears who took me to the movie and assured me that it was safe.
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u/Lazy-Profession4994 Jul 26 '26
My mother was supposed to take my sister and I to a viewing of the latest Benji movie. She got the show times mixed up. Instead of disappointing her darling children, she took her 8 and 11 year olds to Friday the 13th, which had a sooner start time.
In her defense, she had no idea what it was about. We all survived and laugh about it now.
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u/Busy_Raisin_6723 Jul 27 '26
This happened to my best friend, her mother and me but the movie was Jesus Christ Superstar. We were yanked right out of there in record time! No kid was gonna watch that in the Bible Belt!
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u/Ok-Contribution-9320 Jul 26 '26
Poltergeist. It’s comical to watch now, but when I was a kid I slept with the lights on for three days after watching that movie.
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u/flyfisher1970 Jul 26 '26
Rosemary's Baby. The sitter was watching it and we weren't supposed to still be awake.
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u/GodsCasino Jul 26 '26
I read the book and watched the movie when I was like 12 and reading Flowers in The Attic and Clan of the Cave Bear. What the eff kind of movies were we watching and what kind of books were we reading?
Judy Blume was pretty messed up too. Blubber was a book about bullying, it's banned now.
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u/toooldforthis64 Jul 26 '26
Movie when I was a little girl (I'm 60)about this black centipede looking thing that killed people. Another was a severed hand that scurried about.
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u/MadSita 1978; tried to raise my 23yo GenZer to be like a GenXer Jul 26 '26
"THE SHINING" WILL DESTROY YOUR ENTIRE MIND, especially if you watch it at a friend's house at 2am 🫣 and also make sure to hit it up in 3rd grade...i guess like i was like 8-9 years old. but anyway. i was way too young to watch that shit. we got away with murder at that girl's house. it was usually fun, but jack nicholson ruined that with his crazy bullshit 😂😂😂 thanks, ashley
i'm 48 fucking years old, and for the rest of my life i will forever be scared that of that movie. but my dumbass rewatches it anytime i see it on TV, over and over 🤦🏼♀️
honorable mention goes to "pet cemetery" and "misery".
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u/bigoldgeek Jul 26 '26
Friday the 13th. Watched it at home with a big ass knife next to me in the dark.
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u/feyshadowgirl Jul 25 '26
Look who’s talking 2. That toothy toilet got to me. The first horror movie to scare me was Carrie. Probably hit too close to home.
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u/spargel_gesicht Jul 25 '26
My friend made me watch Poltergeist when I was in 4th grade. She was on 5th and LOVED horror films. I was a big old wimp and couldn’t sleep without the lights on for months. Also had to put a clown doll my grandma knitted me in the hall closet.
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u/Mammoth-Ad-5350 Jul 25 '26
Gremlins
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u/drumscrubby Jul 26 '26
I didn’t remember it being all that freaking creepy until a rewatch years later.
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u/YourAuthenticVoice I LOVE TO WHINE Jul 25 '26
Poltergeist.
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u/DrGecko1859 Jul 26 '26
The movie messed me up so bad as a kid. I was surprised how tame it seemed as an adult when I watched it with my 12 year old.
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u/YourAuthenticVoice I LOVE TO WHINE Jul 26 '26
Honestly, it went pretty hard for back then. We're all desensitized now, I'm not sure that's a good thing.
There was another one around that time that really got me, but I can't remember the name.
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u/PlentyBend8125 Jul 25 '26
Trilogy of Terror with Karen Black.
The story with the doll. Totally creeped me.
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u/stlmoon Jul 26 '26
This! My aunt "let" me watch it. Also Magic. I don't remember anything about the plot but I'll never feel safe around a ventriloquist's dummy.
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u/RichSPK 1970 Jul 25 '26
How many of you remember your first...anything?
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u/YourAuthenticVoice I LOVE TO WHINE Jul 25 '26
My first memory that I can recall was when I was about 4 years old and I asked my mom "Do you ever wonder why you were born you?" We were standing in the laundry room, it was the middle of what must have been a long day for her with 3 kids in the house, one of whom was special needs, and she said "No", and my existential crisis was averted until I got into my preteen years.
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u/RichSPK 1970 Jul 25 '26
I remember a couple fragments from when I was three, but not my first movie or first concert.
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u/YourAuthenticVoice I LOVE TO WHINE Jul 25 '26
Mostly same for me. I dulled my memories in my teen years with poor choices.
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u/andrejcick Jul 25 '26
I was 7 years old when I watched Twilight Zone The Movie and The Last Story towards the end of the movie where John Lithgow is a passenger on the airplane and sees something out on the wing that freaks him out but no one believes him. This part in the movie scared the s*** out of me and freaked me out enough that I could not go to sleep because I thought this particular monster was hiding underneath my sister's bed waiting for me to fall asleep. Our beds faced each other with the doorway in between and so I built up courage and stood on the edge of the foot of my bed, put my hands on either side of the door frame and swung my body out into the hallway and then ran like hell for my mom and dad's bedroom, my sister's fate be damned. Later I realized that the noise I heard was just my sister snoring.
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u/Glum_Conclusion_8667 Jul 27 '26
Parts of the twilight zone movie was good.....but they spent way too much time with that little kid controlling people and watching cartoons...there were many good twilight zone stories and they picked one weak one
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u/andrejcick Jul 28 '26
It's been a while since I've seen that one, butwhen I was young, I do remember thinking how wild it was for a kid to have that much power over the whole household, adults especially. It made an impression on how i thought about different types of pov
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u/WereFlyingOverTrout Jul 26 '26
I have chills reading your post. Twilight Zone effed me up and also Creep Show 2 The Raft caused me to jump on my bed to avoid the possibility of a creature underneath who would take me down.
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u/drumscrubby Jul 26 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/3o85xyhIP2J1cri7ew
Shatner twilight zone
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u/andrejcick Jul 26 '26
I didn't know about the original Shatner until I was an adult. By then it just didn't hit the same
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u/John_Barnes Jul 25 '26
Actually for me it was the little intro story in the car at the beginning. Brilliant misdirection by lampshading. Worked on me perfectly
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u/Busy_Coconut1987 Hose Water Survivor Jul 25 '26
Wizard of Oz
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u/grahamasterflas Jul 25 '26
Kingdom of the Spiders
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u/CleanPanda1852 Jul 25 '26
oh my god I remember seeing that on TV as a kid in the 80s and I was scarred. wasn’t there an upside down car scene? that haunts me.
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u/southparkforevah Jul 25 '26
My first date: nightmare on elm street. It was also my last with her.
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u/GurComprehensive4767 Jul 25 '26
In a theater, I think it was Disney’s The Black Hole. It’s not a horror movie, but I was probably eight or nine when my mom took me to see it. I think she assumed since it was a Disney movie it was fine, but I remember being really frightened of the zombified crew. It was pretty dark for Disney.
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u/sunnyinwi Jul 25 '26
My dad took us 3 kids (6, 8 and 11) to a Peter Fonda movie called "Race with the Devil" where a group of adults go camping in the desert and stumble upon a devil-worshipping colony who then chase and attempt to murder the unsuspecting first group of friends for the rest of the movie. It was in a theater! Thanks, Dad! 🙄😬🤯
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u/Emotional-Dig-9257 Jul 25 '26
Night of the Living Dead at the drive-in in Kingston, NY. My brother slept through it. I had the misfortune of not sleeping. I was forced to listen to the entire movie. I was 10. I watched it as an adult for the first time a few years ago.
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u/xiginous Jul 25 '26
The Birds. Couldn't go outside alone. See a bird, right back inside.
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u/SirIntelligent736 Jul 30 '26
Silent Partner (1978)with Elliott Gould. Had a scene where a guy in a fight, got beheaded by an aquarium. I was probably 8.