Childhood Fears

I was just listening to a podcast that mentioned a guy who saw The Shining when he was 6 and it scarred him for life. Well, when I was little, I saw a movie that scared the crap out of me. You can watch the trailer above.
When I was growing up, our local CBS station had a daily movie at 3 pm called The Big Show. When I got older I loved watching the old horror movies they showed, especially the ones about radiated creatures growing in size and demolishing cities. But when I was wee tot, I was at my Aunt Betty Lou's house with all my cousins and 20,000,000 Miles To Earth was on the tube. I'm sure my cousin David was the one watching since he was the only one old enough to really appreciate that sort of thing at the time. I didn't see the whole thing but I saw enough to freak me out. From that point on I was convinced there were giant monsters roaming the earth seeking out cars to step on or houses to smash. I thought at any time a giant foot could come crashing in on us from the outside. I'm not sure when this fear abated but it scared me for quite a while. It made me not want to play outside. I also remember there was a truck commercial on at about the same time that had a giant stop-motion monster in it. That just added to my being convinced that they were real.
Eventually I grew a bit older and actually embraced the monsters that had scared me so badly as a child. Ray Harryhausen, the man behind the Ymir in the above mentioned movie, became a hero of mine. Now that I am older I no longer believe in giant monsters. There are scarier things to fear nowadays.