Exorcist doesn't scare me either. Some parts are scary, but I find it to be too broken apart by seemingly random moments: maybe I'm just immature. But, a little girl talking about sex and accidentally peeing in front of people just isn't that scary to me. Those scenes ruined it, she didn't seem possessed- rather like a little girl obsessed with sex and talking about sex. A brat rather than demonically posssessed.
Don't get me wrong, I can respect the movie due to the time period during which it came out. I think alot of that was shocking back then, but for me personally it just doesn't hold up. The theater experience may have made it scarier or watching it alone? I don't know- just didn't scare me when I saw it.
Besides those couple of scenes that I listed, it was a great film- just not really scary due to those scenes. I just can't take a horny sex obsessed demonic entity that seriously... leave that stuff out and make it more serious and scary! The scenes came as really random 'shocks' to the audience back then than focusing on the horror itself. Had the demon not been horny, but sadistic this film would have been a masterpiece, imo.... Might have to be alone to watch it though.
I think the only movie that scared me was the first horror movie I saw in theaters, 'Red Dragon' because I found the way he picked his familial victims (through home video tapes) to be very disturbing. Since then, I have kind of become desensitized to ALOT of horror films... and 'RD' doesn't really hold up in scare department like it did in the theater that much.
For me, it's scenes rather than the films themselves.
This guy scares me, though:
WTF? Who is that?
It's also brilliant how that was cut into the film.
The other scenes that have made my spine run cold... two based more around the idea than the scene itself:
Maybe it was due to having not seen many horror movies up to this point, but the dead mother scene in 'Sixth Sense' scared me. I expected it to be the mother, safety- everything is okay, and then when she turns around to reveal a psychopath that terrified me!
I used to check the toilet when I sat down to take a crap, and sometimes I still do. Why? Something might come up and bite me in the ass! Lmaol, but it's true... but, probably more due to the idea that Steven King developed than the scene in the film itself... in 'Dreamcatcher.' I've heard Steven King note how he wanted that scene to effect some like the shower now has the infamous stabbing scene from Psycho ingrained into some people's minds.
'House of Wax' wasn't a great film, HOWEVER for me personally the worst and most disturbing torture I could think of is being made into a living wax statue- why? It's the complete Claustrophobia. As I said- the movie wasn't great, but that scene and method of torture is disturbing, at least in my opinions. Some torture sequences- such as in Saw movies, etc. any torture scene- alot of the times you soon die. However, this torture scene- you live passed the torture in the ultimate confined space.