One Movie Freaked Stephen King Out Too Much To Finish In A Single Viewing

As a master wordsmith who's often labeled the King of Horror, one could only imagine what it would take to scare the pants off author Stephen King. Horror fans craving a solid answer will be delighted to know that King identified a movie even he was too chilled by to watch in just one sitting. The dreaded film was "The Blair Witch Project" — a horror staple that, though not considered one of the 5 best horror movies of all time, according to Rotten Tomatoes, consistently rattles horror fans with its raw depiction of fear derived from the unseen. This movie reigns as one of the most successful independent films of all time. For King, who also directed an '80s sci-fi horror classic Maximum Overdrive, it was a hard watch to get through on the first try.

The first time King watched "The Blair Witch Project," he was in the hospital recovering after a car accident. On an episode of "Eli Roth's History of Horror," he said: "I was in the hospital and I was doped up. My son brought a VHS tape of it and he said, 'You gotta watch this.' Halfway through it I said, 'Turn it off it's too freaky.'" This coming from the King of Horror, who has defined the horror genre with stories such as "Carrie," "It," "The Shining," and "Misery."

"The Blair Witch Project" may not be among the sci-fi horror movies that are so disturbing you will only watch them once, but it has to be pretty close as King couldn't make it through the whole movie during his first attempt. After recovering, King rewatched the film, and he described his appreciation for the movie's devotion to realism, effectively simple concept, and execution in the 2010 rerelease of his novel, "Danse Macabre." About the found-footage horror classic, he said: "The damn thing feels real. And because it does, it's like the worst nightmare you ever had, the one you woke from gasping and crying with relief because you thought you were buried alive and it turned out the cat jumped up on your bed and went to sleep on your chest."

King later compared "The Blair Witch Project" to another horror film, which successfully prayed on his nightmares in a Pennywise-like fashion: Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Beyond its similarly raw and low-budget presentation, King said: "I was in the theater almost by myself. That's when a movie really has a tendency to work on you, to get its cold little fingers under your skin." While the same could be said for any theatergoer, whether they're a casual viewer or a horror fanatic, some may still find it surprising that the Stephen King, of all people, is capable of showing fear.