Aaryk Noctivagus

Michael Sundin was the Blue Peter presenter who inhabited Tik Tok. Sean Barrett provided the voice. Tim Rose did the pupeteering work on Tik Tok.

christoph404

sorry to back pedal, but there is a name for fear of clowns, its a recognised phobia called ' Coulrophobia' and apparently many people suffer from this phobia including Johnny Depp! I must say I do find clowns a bit spooky and I was terrified of them as a child!......and that Ronald Macdonald is certainly very creepy!....wonder if I should see my doctor!.....

Aaryk Noctivagus

Ronald MacDonald is the ONLY clown I've ever found creepy.

Aaryk Noctivagus

Ronald MacDonald is obviously very hungry for another burger.

batman

Sad to see that Michael Sundin died very young in 1989.

Bats.

Don't miss out on a chance to win a rare film in Bat-Quiz 13 closing date - 31/8/8.

smiffy

Just tracked the kingdom down ,so it's just a matter of finishing KH first so I can make the comparison .From what I've read and with your reccomendation it sounds worth it

I May be getting older ,but I refuse to grow up

Aaryk Noctivagus

Argh... Steve Crook beat me by the 3 minutes it took me to write my post. Argh.

Steve Crook

I noticed, but I don't crow about such things
It can happen either way, it might be you just beating me next time

Steve

Aaryk Noctivagus

So long as its good humoured friendly crowing, I wouldn't mind. When I do that to friends, I offer a 'Beat Ya' or some such thing - lol. I only noticed when I saw Bats' post quoting your's - lol

Yeps... these sorts of things are always happening on Fora. Another common thing is saying something in reply to a post before reading all the thread... and then realising three or four folk have already said the same thing - lol.

That happened in a thread recently about movies set in a museum. I mentioned 'The Relic' and then read that several others have suggested that title quite some time in the past before me - lol.

tali122

im playing with your mind......haahhahahhhahhahahahaa ...i have you in my clutches!
Flying monkeys and witch in oz -were surely scary , and that genie in TOBaghdad was terrifying
Yul brynner scary looking bald bloke with fierce stare.
Jaws , psycho -good movies but not supernaturally scary

Aaryk Noctivagus

lol... 'The King and I' is surely not 'supernaturally' scarey either!!!

Have you ever seen 'Westworld'... Yul Brynner as a murderous gun-slinger robot run amok and hunting down our heros... great Sci-Fi stuff... perhaps you'd like it

tali122

He had a hat on in westworld - so he wasn;t scary.Sure King and I isn;t supernatural scary , its just that yul looks firece and intimidating
I have noticed you have a similar hairstyle to Mr Brynner, hence perhaps your bemusement

Aaryk Noctivagus

ROTFLOL

Now I know which is the more scary... 'Nosferatu' and not 'Dracula' - lol

As for hats not being scary... just tell that to the Vikings!!!

Hugo Fitch

Reading this thread reminded me of when I first saw The Exorcist on a late-night showing at the ABC Lime Street Liverpool. At the height of the tension as the priest arrives to perform the exorcism, a Scouse wag shouted out "Don't worry, love, the exorcise will do you good !" The whole place dissolved into laughter (I suspect out of relief as much as anything else) but the remainder of the film was played out to hilarious laughter as if a comedy. I've never been able to take it ( or the many films that aped it) seriously ever since. Much the same thing happened with those Peckinpah- led slow motion blood fests after the Python team's "Salad Days" sketch.

DB7

31 SCARIEST MOMENTS IN FILM

As Hallowe'en looms – it's on Wednesday – our critics pick their most terrifying scenes in movie history

Spoiler Alert: Major plot details are revealed below

1 The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988)

Almost 20 years ago, at a time when the horror genre in all its forms seemed pretty much moribund, this extraordinary Dutch film descended on cinemagoers like an angel of death from a clear blue sky. After his girlfriend Saskia vanishes from a service-station while they're on holiday together, Rex becomes increasingly obsessed with what happened to her – and then, three years later, her abductor gets in touch.

With a powerful but twisted logic, the film builds to a climax that's as simple as it is devastating, tapping into one of the most fundamental nightmares of all. We'll say no more here, except to avoid Sluizer's own, hopeless 1993 US remake at all costs. 9The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

There's a smorgasbord of scares in Kubrick's horror epic, but there's little to beat those dead twins, axed down by daddy and walking the hallways hand in hand.
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2 Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

Harry Dean Stanton's mechanic bends down to pick up the ship's errant tomcat, which suddenly, inexplicably, hisses fiercely at him and backs away. After a moment's dreadful confusion, both we and he realise it's not him that the cat's terrified of – it's what's behind him.

3 Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955)

The agonising last 15 minutes of this superb French chiller (on DVD from Mon) disturb anyone of a sensitive disposition – but especially the murderess heroine when her victim sits up in the tub.

4 Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)

Carrie has been laid to rest… or has she? At the end of a decidedly eerie, almost narcotic sequence, a bloody hand lunges out of her grave in one of the most brilliantly timed final jolts in cinema.

5 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Ken Hughes, 1968)

"Lollipops! Ice-cream! Chocolate! All three today," cries the Child Catcher (the late Royal Ballet star Bobby Helpmann, above), prancing like a demented but obscenely graceful goat. And so, squeaky blond poppets Jeremy and Jemima are lured into his evil clutches.

6 Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

"It's okay," murmurs Donald Sutherland kindly, to the small, whimpering, red?hooded figure: but even before one of cinema's most shattering endings, his face falls, infectiously, in horror.

7 Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

Jamie Lee Curtis's stab with a straightened-out wire coat?hanger seems to have worked – until a white-masked, evil lunatic Michael Myers coolly sits up again behind her, we gape in horror, and the nightmare continues.

8 Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

Hitchcock's sudden high angle and Bernard Herrmann's shrieking violins paralyse us as Mrs Bates raises her butcher's knife again and again to tumble detective Arbogast downstairs.
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9 The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

There's a smorgasbord of scares in Kubrick's horror epic, but there's little to beat those dead twins, axed down by Daddy and walking the hallways hand in hand.

10 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)

Donald Sutherland rings the authorities for help. "Wait right there, Mr Bennell," says the voice down the phone. Justified paranoia explodes: "How did you know my name? I didn't tell you my name!"

11 Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982)

While too much TV makes some children fat, Carol Anne sees strange creatures in its flickering blue screen. "They're here!" she smiles chillingly at her terrified parents.

12 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

Something clumps out of the kitchen in an apron, clobbers an unwary visitor with a mallet, drags him away and whips shut a metal door behind him. This is Leatherface, and he is not your friend – but he sure knows how to make an entrance.

13 28 Days Later... (Danny Boyle, 2002)

The scene in which our fleeing heroes change a tyre in the Rotherhithe tunnel is a masterclass in mounting panic, climaxing as the killers' looming shadows on a bend in the wall are replaced by the fast-approaching killers themselves.

14 Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)

The ark is opened, the released spirits soar, angelic – and then suddenly hateful. The Nazi treasure-hunters start to scream, and so do we.

15 The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)

She projects green vomit, her head rotates, she has the devil's own voice. But perhaps the scariest trick in Regan (Linda Blair)'s repertoire of possession is the simplest: she levitates.

16 Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)
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Stalked by somebody – or is it something? – through the silent Central Park night, our heroine jumps as a big-cat growl merges into the roar of a bus suddenly braking.

17 Dark Water (Hideo Nakata, 2002)

Looking out through the lift doors and down the corridor, Yoshimi is astonished to see her young daughter coming out of their flat – so who, then, is the small figure with her in the lift? The brilliantly shot moment of revelation is enough to make you fall off your chair.

18 Dawn of the Dead (George A Romero, 1978)

"Shopping" in the mall and outrunning the bumbling undead is fun – until one zombie lunges out from amid the mannequins, flooring one of our reckless heroes.

19 Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

Lynch, a master of the lurking unknown, tracks round a drab street corner, revealing a soot?black, rotting, tramp-like figure you would run 10 blocks to avoid.

20 Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)

Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is getting on with his duties when the monster rears up from the ocean, just inches from him. Audiences leap every time, and he prophesies: "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

21 Magic (Richard Attenborough, 1978)

Deranged ventriloquist Corky plonks his dummy Fats (right) on the sofa. As he walks away, Fats's gaze follows him out of the room. Even spookier: this wasn't in the script.

22 The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) sits smoking on a bench, oblivious to the squadrons of sinister crows silently landing on the skeletal climbing frame silhouetted against the sky behind her.

23 Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)

What, if anything, defines "normality"? When circus freaks turn a treacherous beauty into "one of us", the moment combines visceral terror with a dark moral force.

24 Marathon Man (John Schlesinger, 1976)

Dustin Hoffman locks himself in his bathroom, but the intruders' crowbars start working their way, terrifyingly, through the doorframe. What awaits him is dentistry to rival even an off?day NHS.

25 The Sixth Sense (M Night Shyamalan, 1999)

Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) sees his wedding ring fall from the hand of his sleeping wife, and the truth hits him like a sledgehammer: he's dead.

26 Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter, 1987)

White-faced Alice Cooper, a possessed hobo, finds an unexpectedly horrible use for an old bike-frame – impaling graduate students – in Carpenter's relatively little?known but penetratingly intense satanic epic.

27 The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)

This blast of bonkers paganism sees Edward Woodward's policeman lured into an elaborate trap with a very nasty pay-off indeed. The moment when he realises he's the sacrificial lamb has lost none of its punch.

28 The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, 1999)

An hour of sustained creepiness starts when a neat pile of stones is discovered outside someone's tent. As gifts go, it's about as unsettling as can be.

29 Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

As if getting raped by the Devil wasn't enough, Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) has to endure one of the freakiest dream sequences ever committed to film, involving a yacht, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, an old man hollering "Typhoon!", and a bunch of wizened, naked satanists.

30 Seven (David Fincher, 1995)

Forget the box delivered at the end; the movie's shortest, sharpest shock comes when the cops enter the fetid apartment of the killer's "slothful" victim who turns out, with a jolt, to still be alive.

31 Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)

One of the scariest chase sequences in recent cinema, as the bookish young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) desperately flees the underground lair of a slithery, child-eating monster that resembles an overgrown embryo with eyeballs in the palms of its hands.

Contributors: David Cheal, Philip Horne, Sheila Johnston, Marc Lee, Mark Monahan, Tim Robey, Alastair Sooke