This is topic What're your scariest movie moments? (spoilers possible) in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
 
Thought this might be a fun thread.

Two moments in movies that really freaked me out -- to the point that I continued to be disturbed by the images days later -- were:

1. In Suspiria. When the eyes appear outside that window, just hovering there in the dark. I didn't care too much for where that movie eventually went -- but that beginning sequence was terribly frightening to me.

2. In Signs. When the kid backs up against the coal bin and then that black alien hand reaches out and grabs at him. Signs effected me more than I think it effected most people -- and it's because of moments like that one, and probably especially that one. I think my brain associates it with other things, but it upset me greatly when I saw it in the theaters. I was shaken.
 
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
I saw Poltergeist twice. The first time, when there's that lull part way through and you think it's all over, I looked at my watch and realized it wasn't.

That summer, I went to see it with my cousin, and when the lull came, I knew that nothing was going to happen for a few minutes, so I was completely relaxed. And someone in the audience let out this bloodcurdling shriek, and I almost wet myself.

When I saw Carrie... I'd read the book. So the hand coming out (which wasn't in the book) scared the heck out of me.

But the worst was when I was a little kid. I'd watched Creature Features one Saturday afternoon, and there was a movie called Frankenstein 1970. I was probably in 4th or 5th grade, which was a bit too young for a movie like that. I still get nightmare visions of it when I think about it.
 
Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
 
I don't know what movie it was. I only saw the poster for it, but the image was horrific enough that it stuck in my mind for a while. It was a partly decomposed corpse surrounded with cockroaches, which were crawling in and out of the body through the mouth, which was gaping open. I think I was 7 or 8.

I found Signs frightening in that irritating, long-drawn out sort of way. But horror films generally make my skin crawl. I remember the first scene in which you see the aliens (on that TV news clip); but that was scary mainly because of its shock value.

I couldn't even watch Dark Water without cutting off the DVD once in a while for some comic Colbert relief.

[Major spoiler]That scene where Dahlia is reading to the kid on the couch, and realises that her own daughter is actually still in the bathtub; terrifying![/Major spoiler]
 
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
 
I went to see Hitchhiker's Guide in the theatre, and there was a preview for The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl.

The entire audience was petrified.

(In all seriousness, I avoid scary movies. I'm real bad jumpy. [Smile] )
 
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Carrie:
I went to see Hitchhiker's Guide in the theatre, and there was a preview for The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl.

The entire audience was petrified.

I don't think that's what they had in mind with that particular movie, but each to his own I guess.

My family took me to see Jaws in the theater. It must have been a re-release or something, because I can't imagine it seeing it when it first came out (I would have been four years old).

I was on edge the entire movie, and I had to leave the theater without seeing the last twenty minutes of me. Scared the living hell out of me at the time.

Also, like I mentioned elsewhere, the real trailer for The Shining made me stay curled up in a ball, not putting my feet on the floor, for the entire movie.
 
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
Oh, right. A friend coerced me to go to I Know What You Did Last Summer. And Scream 3. She made fun of me for years over the way my hands jerked up in the air when something terrifying happened.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
One of my scariest movie moments is from when I was very young, no more than eight I think, in the film Return to Oz. The scene in the head-room, and especially with Mombi's head.
 
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
 
When my brother and I were little we begged and begged our Dad to show us Alien. He finally did after a year of pestering.

Scared me so bad I ended up sobbing under my parents bed by the time Riply is trying to get to the lifeboat. I still have dreams of the Aliens from time to time.
 
Posted by Earendil18 (Member # 3180) on :
 
Alien. The chestburster scene.

eeee

o.o
 
Posted by Bella Bee (Member # 7027) on :
 
'The Ring', when zombie girl climbs out of the TV and crawls all dripping and stop-motiony towards the boyfriend.

I don't usually freak about horror films, but owing to a misunderstanding, I went to that one expecting it to really be a murder mystery movie. I hadn't prepared for zombie ghost girls.
 
Posted by anti_maven (Member # 9789) on :
 
Thr giant spider scene in the 1940 version of the Thief of Bagdad [sic].

When I saw it first I was 4, and got the screaming heebie jeebies. I saw it again recently at a film festival and my heebies were definately jeebying.

Oh, and Dr. Who. I watched it as a small boy sitting on my Mum's lap, with her hand over my eyes and peering between her fingers, while my elder sister lookedon and cackled. Actually, the theme tune it self was enough to put the fear of God into me, so the self-same sister bought an LP of BBC theme tunes just to terrify me.

We get on better these days... [Wink]
 
Posted by Launchywiggin (Member # 9116) on :
 
Most recently...

The Excorism of Emily Rose (spoilers) had a very intense excorcism scene. When she started naming off all the demons inside of her ending with Lucifer, I remember feeling genuinely terrified.

The ending battle scene in "Children of Men" was so realistic and intense that I was short of breath and sweating.

Funny story about "Signs"...(spoilers) I was lying on my right side with my right arm under my body. When Mel Gibson sticks his hand under the pantry door and the hand came out, I screamed, twisted left, and dislocated my arm from my shoulder. That was the most painful scare for sure.
 
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
It's not a movie, but the book that scared me the most was Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott (Agatha Christie). It was about someone lying to herself in a way I found way too plausible. It didn't scare me in a *fun* way.

For the fun way...it's hard to say. Maybe another Christie: identifying the murderer in Crooked House. Or the last murder scene in Halloween IV.
 
Posted by calaban (Member # 2516) on :
 
I often don't relate to horror movie characters. When I saw Scream for the first time I laughed most of the way through. That's the way most slashers and zombie flicks are for me. Funny stuff because they never provide a sympathetic protagonist.

Shyamalan does a pretty good job of creating characters I care enough about to be scared for.

Nothing from my youth scares me like aliens because I once had a very vivid dream about them. So I was excited for Signs. For me the whole set up was amazing. It was a different matter after you finally saw them.

Sixth Sense when Cole (Osment) is in his safe tent and it starts getting pulled apart.

In the Village after the big reveal and Ivy (Howard) starts walking off through the forest all by her blind self. Especially the first time you see the nonexistent monster, even though you know who it is.

Other films:

From Hell, Holm was chilling in that film. Black pupils.

Thirteenth warrior, I love mist and rain and that film uses it well. The eerie norse music contributes quite a bit as well.
 
Posted by GForce (Member # 9584) on :
 
Open Water, basically the whole second half of the movie. So realistic. American Psycho, the part where Patrick has his secretary over, who is such a sympathetic character. Also, the scene where the guys are comparing business cards. Absolutely chilling for reasons I don't fully understand.
 
Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
 
quote:
When I saw Scream for the first time I laughed most of the way through.
Yeah, that's kind of the point. Did you think it was supposed to be serious? It's a comedy with an occasional "Boo!" more than a horror movie.

Most of the scenes I remember as really scaring me when I was a kid look pretty stupid when I've watched them more recently. Serpent and the Rainbow and Communion both terrified me when I was a kid, but now seem more cheesy than anything else.

I love the "coal grate" scene from Signs mentioned earlier, because it combines comedy timing and scare timing perfectly. Saw it in the theater, when the kid says "What?" everyone started laughing and then the hand comes out and it turned to screams without a breath inbetween. The Poltergeist "clown/bed" scene is my other favorite scare-timing example.

--Enigmatic
 
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
 
That part of the Messengers trailer where she walks up to the little boy in the barn, and he turns around and is all....freaky? That gave me serious nightmares. Pretty much anything with little kids looking freaky scares me to death.

-pH
 
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
 
My mother was scared out of her wits by, "Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein."

Poltergeist scene, with the clown doll is a classic. You think its about to get him. He looks under the bed, and nothing. You breath a sigh of relief and just as he backs up--Gotcha!
 
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
 
In chronological order:

A Clockwork Orange: Me = four years old. Seeing the woman being bludgeoned by a giant penis sculpture in the rape scene. (it was on PBS, which our parents let us watch -- and they hadn't heard of the movie yet). I hid under the couch.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: Me = seventeen years old. The early scene where the sleepwalker turns into a puppet being dangled from his own ripped-out veins. I rubbed my forearms for days.

Jacob's Ladder: Me = 20 years old. First date with the man later to become my first husband. I freaked out at the sudden shot of the bobbling head in the mirror. Unfortunately, I was the only one screaming. (There is a joke to be made here, but I won't go there.)

The Sixth Sense: Me = 29 years old. Generally, I find the normal juxtaposed with the unexpectedly distorted to be most scary (same as with JL above). In this movie, it was the kid with the shotgun when his (blown-off) face is finally revealed. Auughhhh! As with JL, I was avoiding mirrors or looking in my peripheral vision as much as possible for days.
 
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Earendil18:
Alien. The chestburster scene.

My Dad took me to see Alien when it was in the theater. My Mom hates science fiction, and Dad and I like it. I had no clue how scary it was going to be. The chest thing was nasty, but when the captain was crawling through the tunnel, it was the first time in my life that I ever actually covered my eyes in a movie. I peeked just in time to see him get et.

I was holding one of those little Movie Facts things they hand out when I went into the movie. I had paper pulp on my hands when I walked out.
 
Posted by SC Carver (Member # 8173) on :
 
Silence of the Lambs, A couple of scenes, but at the end when Jody Foster is walking around in the dark in the basement I found rather freaky.

After watching "the Ring" for the first time at home the phone rang exactly as the movie stopped. It really freaked out my roommate who didn't want to answer it.
 
Posted by SC Carver (Member # 8173) on :
 
Oh yeah, In college I went to see “Seven” with a friend who had already seen it. Right when the sloth guy who everyone thought was dead sat up in bed, my friend hit me in the chest and I jumped about 5 ft in the air.
 
Posted by Liz B (Member # 8238) on :
 
The Dark Crystal when I was eight or so. Nightmares for years. The whole movie was scary, but especially the part when the crystal sucks the souls out of the pod people and they become mindless slaves.

More recently, I just couldn't watch The Ring. The whole telephone ringing thing. I watched like the first 20 minutes, then went upstairs and read something comforting. Probably Anne of Green Gables.

I don't like scary movies.
 
Posted by Tara (Member # 10030) on :
 
Also in The Ring, when you see their faces after they've been "scared to death". Ugggg. I hate that movie.

The Sixth Sense scared me, not because of any particular scene, but just the whole concept of it. Never knowing when the next ghost is going to show up, not being safe anywhere...The little cloth tent he had set up in his room broke my heart, with all the little statues of Jesus in it.
 
Posted by Kelly (Member # 9576) on :
 
Most of these are from when I was younger

Poltergeist

The "clown" scene, and also when the parapsychologist goes into the kitchen, sees the maggots crawling out of the steak, goes into the bathroom, and sees himself ripping his skin off (I'm a little surprised that no one's mentioned that one yet).

Poltergeist II

The scene where the wires start coming out of the little boy's braces and attacking him.

The Exorcist

The scene where the little girl is under hypnosis and the psychiatrist is questioning the "demon" in her. I saw the movie on TV just after it was re-released. I left the room after that scene.

Carrie

Not a scene, but did anyone else think that the crucifix in the "prayer closet" was extremely creepy? [Angst]

The Labyrinth

I was scared to death of those goblins and refused to watch the scene in the baby's room.

quote:
The Dark Crystal when I was eight or so. Nightmares for years. The whole movie was scary, but especially the part when the crystal sucks the souls out of the pod people and they become mindless slaves.
seconded

Oh yeah, just recently, a family friend brought over the movie hostel. Please don't ask me why. Let's just say I lasted about 15 minutes (at most).

[ February 19, 2007, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: Kelly ]
 
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
 
I hardly ever watch scary movies. I hate them. My parents liked scary movies when I was a little kid and had zero common sense about what movies kids should not see, so I saw a lot of pretty intense stuff at a young age. I have pretty much blocked out all of The Exorcist II, The Omen, and Halloween, but I still have pretty vivid memories of Poltergeist. The scariest scene for me was when the tree burst through the bedroom window and basically tried to eat Robbie. I had a large tree right outside my bedroom window, and it was quite some time before I could sleep again.

As an adult, I remember finding the scene in Sixth Sense where Cole walks out of his room in his skivvies and is going to the bathroom, while we notice the drop in temperature that we have, by now, come to associate with the appearance of angry ghosts. It's just hard to think of a more vulnerable position to be in: urinating, so you can't easily turn around or move or run away, and half naked, which already makes you feel vulnerable. And on top of everything else it's cold!

[Angst]
 
Posted by lynn johnson (Member # 9620) on :
 
As a young boy I went to a drive in and saw a double feature about flying saucers and wolfmen. I have no idea of the titles. It was in the 1950s.

Anyway, after that we all walked to my friend Craig's house (we walked to the drive in!) and slept out on the lawn. I didn't sleep. Craig lived out of town and there were huge bushes all around his house. I laid there all night trying to see if the wolf man would come out of the bushes.
 
Posted by Silent E (Member # 8840) on :
 
I was quite young when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theater. The first sequence, trying to escape from the tunnel with all the boobytraps, and the climax, with the melting Nazi faces, both freaked me right out. I had nightmares for weeks, and even before I fell asleep I would swear the face of the quarterback on the poster on my wall was melting.
 
Posted by Perplexity'sDaughter (Member # 9668) on :
 
When I was younger, I was terribly freaked out by the movie "Mars Attacks", which was actually not supposed to be a scary movie, but a comedy. Anyway, the part where the the aliens step out of the ship and and start zapping everyone with their laser beams,which melted their bodies until they were nothing left but either green or red skeletons, was what really got me.

Present day, The first Saw movie had me staying up late and watching Winnie the Pooh for weeks.
 
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
 
When I was very young, the Wicked Witch popping up in the crystal ball from "Wizard of Oz" was a heck of a gotcha.

More recently, I'll second the tv scene in "The Ring" and the hand from the grave in "Carrie"- though the former irritates me somewhat because I found so many of the characters in the movie imbecillic to the point of unsympathetic. (Leave the horse alone, lady!) Which is part of why I was darkly tickled by the kid's line, "You weren't supposed to help her!"

The Carrie thing partly works because it's on two levels, the basic "gotcha" and the creepy "Well, she's healing from that trauma- ah, no, I guess not."
 
Posted by stihl1 (Member # 1562) on :
 
The Exorcist 3 has a couple of good scary scenes. There is one scene in particular where we are watching a nurse move around a hospital hall, but it's a long shot and we watch her from down the hall. She goes back and forth for a couple of minutes, just totally building up suspense. The camera never moves, just static as she moves in and out of the shot. Then suddenly this robed figure jumps out and comes up from beind her with these huge scissors to chop her head off. We don't see the beheading, just a quickie shot and some scary music. Scared the crap outta me.

The ring when the ghost chick comes outta the tv is scary too, I was disappointed they spent so little time showing her because that was the scariest part of the show.
 
Posted by GForce (Member # 9584) on :
 
I must admit, I was laughing out loud when Samara crawled out of the TV in The Ring. I did not think that movie all that scary. The actual video, however, was pretty trippy and creepy. Especially the box full of twitching fingers. It's too bad they took the movie mainstream and dampened the effect of the only truly scary bit.
 
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese:
A Clockwork Orange: Me = four years old. Seeing the woman being bludgeoned by a giant penis sculpture in the rape scene. (it was on PBS, which our parents let us watch -- and they hadn't heard of the movie yet). I hid under the couch.

Whoa... what? They put that movie on PBS?!?

How times change, I guess...
 
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nighthawk:
How times change, I guess...

It's still referenced on the pbs.org site as a "Culture Shock: Flashpoint" *grin

PBS and the evening news were all we were allowed to watch on television during my childhood. This meant lots of Monty Python but also me staying up past my bedtime (and falling asleep hidden behind the couch) to see "Masterpiss" Theatre (I had buck teeth and a lisp). I missed out on The Dukes of Hazzard, though I was well-compensated with the flying machines of Flanders (sp?).
 


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