By far the MOST...

I don't know about anybody else, but for my whole life, there has never been a more terrifying movie that has had such an impact on me as The Bat.

I first saw this movie when I was probably 2 or 3 years old...at the time, except for most of the screaming, and the Bat shown in the beginning, I didn't have any problem with it...I loved it and by the time I was 6, it was easily the movie I knew every line to.

Also by the time I was 6, this movie started REALLY scaring the hell out of me that I used to have nightmares about the Bat catching me on the stairwell when I went up for the night...which caused my family a lot of exhaust when they tried sending me up to bed for the night. Another dream of which I only had one night, but have remembered clear as a bell ever since, involved the Bat being in our home, cutting the phone lines, and staking out in the kitchen waiting for somebody to go in. I outgrew it from there, or at least thought I had, then when I was 9, once in the middle of the night I was half asleep and fell into a dream that felt as real as they get, the feeling that somebody was watching me. Before I opened my eyes I had a mental picture of the Bat hovering over me in the room, and it terrified me to wake up. But once that passed, I thought I was through with the nightmares relating to this movie. But the same thing occurred one night when I was 13.

I hoped by that time that it was finished, and it was, until this afternoon. Now at 17 the Bat is STILL scaring the hell out of me in my dreams. This time I dreamt that the Bat, once again, was in the kitchen, and I knew this before entering because his reflection was cast on the window in the door, much like the image seen when Lizzie opened the door to Cornelia's bedroom and they saw him. I locked the door, he slipped out the back and tried coming around front, but I managed to bolt the door there as well, and he disappeared across the street, only to reappear and try and break into my grandmother's house while I was visiting. Needless to say that was a dream I was VERY glad to wake up from this afternoon.

It strikes me as amazing that this is still happening after all this time...The Bat has been by far the most terrifying villain in any horror movie I have ever seen and clearly I'm never going to forget it. Forget Michael Myers, forget Jason Vorhees, forget Freddy Krueger, forget Ghostface, The Bat is a true cinematic symbol of terror. Is there anybody who agrees?