Scariest Movie Moments

[DB7]

Top 50 Scariest Movie Moments
Earlier this month, we invited you to share your most frightening film moments with us online. Here, in time for Hallowe’en, is your top 50. Tonight, as the clocks go back and the winter nights roll in on Hallowe’en week, huddle around the TV with us, as we celebrate the dark side of film.

With our list done, we took a deep breath and invited your comments and nominations via Times Online. Several other sites, notably the lively and frequently ribald news site Fark.com, took up the challenge on our behalf. Within days, we were inundated.

At the time of writing, we have received more than 1,000 replies to this piece across the internet, some containing new nominations and memories, some agreeing with our (and other correspondents’) choices, and some hurling gratuitous abuse in our direction. In all, more than 70 separate films were nominated, and from that list we have selected the 50 scary scenes most frequently mentioned by our readers around the world. Unscientific? Definitely. Comprehensive? Probably not. But frightening? You bet.

50 BLUE VELVET

Frank (Dennis Hopper) gets his gasmask in Lynch’s surreal tale. He is, noted a reader, “one scary mofo”.

49 CREEPSHOW

The last part, when a million cockroaches pour out of a dead body. “Still gives me the willies.”

48 DELIVERANCE

“It is shocking and nightmarish. It is disturbing and painful and too real.”

47 THE DESCENT

The oppressive environment caused you more problems than the monsters. “The whole thing was so damned claustrophobic.”

46 LES DIABOLIQUES

The body in the bath. “The build-up is unbearable, the climax is terrifying.”

45 THE EVIL DEAD

“It was a classic. Still is,” said one admirer.

44 IRRÉVERSIBLE

Terrifying brutality. “This film could easily fill all places in this poll.”

43 JACOB’S LADDER

“There are a few disturbing scenes, but one I remember is the demon Tim [Robbins] sees in the mirror for a split second as he is getting dressed.”

42 ROSEMARY’S BABY

A film revolving around a demonic rape and the resulting conception of Satan’s child undoubtedly deserves a place in this list.

41 SCREAM

“Scream freaked me when I first saw it, ‘If you hang up on me one more time I’m gonna gut you like a fish!’ ”

40 SLEEPAWAY CAMP

“The closing scenes haven’t left my mind in weeks.”

39 TRAINSPOTTING

This tale has one intensely terrifying moment. “Dead baby. Carved into my brains for all time.”

38 THE AMITYVILLE HORROR

This 1979 paranormal shocker left one respondent lost for words. “There are a lot of scenes in that movie which are... bah!”

37 AUDITION

The climax. Nasty. “I’ve never had to work so hard to keep watching something.”

36 THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT

“When the film-makers come out of the tent after hearing the faint sound of children’s laughter. That got me.”

35 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

“I still can barely watch it...”

34 THE HITCHER

“The bloody finger, ‘french fry’. Enough said.”

33 MARATHON MAN

Dustin Hoffman under “the dentist drill”.

32 MULHOLLAND DRIVE

“The unnerving atmosphere just freaks me out every time.”

31 NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Seminal zombie film, with “one of the greatest lines in horror history, ‘They’re coming to get you, Barbra!’ ”

30 THE OMEN

“Intelligent film-making from an era of classic horror.”

29 THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

Either Leatherface’s first appearance, or “just about every second of the original”.

28 WAIT UNTIL DARK

Blind girl pursued by killer in pitch-dark flat. But the fridge is open. “Everyone jumped out of their seats.”

27 WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

“The tunnel scene is an acid trip gone horribly wrong.”

26 THE WIZARD OF OZ

“The flying monkeys scared the crap out of me.”

25 THE BIRDS

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 shocker is set in the coastal village of Bodega Bay. So spare a thought for this correspondent. “Try actually being from Bodega Bay! It’s still pretty creepy.”

24 THE CHANGELING

A professor finds that the ghost of a murdered child haunts his new home. “Creepy.”

23 DAWN OF THE DEAD

“It freaks me out because my daughter wakes me up by standing at the foot of my bed, just like in the film!”

22 DON’T LOOK NOW

“The final scene haunts me – a certified classic.”

21 PRINCE OF DARKNESS

“Makes me jump every time. The last scene is traumatising.”

20 PSYCHO

“While the shower scene is scary, it can’t match the creepy factor of the scene before it in which Marion suggests that Norman put his mother in an institution.”

19 SUSPIRIA

“The most terrifying horror film of all time.”

18 CARRIE

The scene when pig’s blood is poured over the titular prom queen (Sissy Spacek).

17 JAWS

“I saw it at a friend’s house and was afraid to walk home... on the grass.”

16 A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

“You can’t escape, you have to sleep some time.”

15 PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE

“To this day I am afraid to watch this because that trucker lady just terrified me to death. I saw her face in my dreams for months.”

14 THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (warning - bloopers reel containing frequent and sustained thespian swearing)

“When Jodie Foster is trying to find the killer in the dark – I was too scared to watch!”

13 THE HAUNTING

“The scariest scene is when Julie Harris and Claire Bloom are confronted with the ghost of Hill House late at night. You never see it, but you hear it.”

12 SALEM’S LOT

The TV movie of Stephen King’s vampire horror is full of faces at windows. And it stars David Soul.

11 28 DAYS LATER

“The spookiest part is when Selena is asking Mark if he has been injured by the infected. He’s not sure. But she goes survival insane and slaughters him anyway.”

10 WATERSHIP DOWN

This 1978 animated children’s classic tells the story of brave rabbits attempting to survive in the face of constant peril. Like several other films that make surprising appearances on this list, Watership Down seems to have had a significant impact on its young audience. One correspondent said: “To this day Bright Eyes makes me cry like the traumatised child I was after watching that. How my parents regretted that cinema trip.”

9 HALLOWEEN

John Carpenter’s heavily influential 1978 horror film centres on Michael Myers’s murderous rampage after escaping from a psychiatric hospital, and its omission from the original list made one correspondent furious. “How the hell is the closet scene from Halloween not on that list? I’d put it at number 2!”

8 EVENT HORIZON

It did not perform particularly well at the box office in 1997, but this tale of a revolutionary spaceship that is mysteriously abandoned has since become a cult success. A party sent to explore the ship experience macabre visions which give life to inner demons. Here’s a recommendation from one reader: “Cannot watch that movie... scared me as a youngster, can’t do it now.”

7 THE SHINING

Where does one begin? The teaming of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King gave us bath-tub bodies, the ghosts of dead twins and a mad, axe-wielding Jack Nicholson in a haunted hotel that fills with the blood of its past victims. And REDRUM. “The two little girls standing in front of the elevators give me the willies,” wrote one reader. “I still have marks in my arm from my then girlfriend’s talons as we sat in the theatre and just watched the trailer. The blood terrified her,” added another.

6 THE THING

An alien crash-lands at an Arctic base and engages the scientists and military personnel who are stranded there. It needs human blood to survive and will kill them all to ensure it does so. Howard Hawks’s original was praised by one reader: “I’ll never forget the scene where the silhouetted creature kills the camp’s sled dogs.”

5 SIGNS

In at number 5 is this crop circle chiller from M. Night Shyamalan. Mel Gibson plays a former priest and widower whose beliefs are tested by the mysterious appearance of crop circles on his land. Shyamalan keeps the audience in a suspended state of uncertainty, before revealing the truth in a characteristically sly way. “ Signs scared the s*** out of me,” one writer explained. “Somebody gave it to me and said there were no aliens in it, it was just some guy dealing with these crop circles in his yard. I then proceed to watch it, alone in the dark, at around 1am... and an alien just walks across the screen. I pretty much started freaking out.”

4 THE EXORCIST III

Your top 5 contains a couple of surprises, not least this 1990 second sequel. The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty here directed an adaptation of his own novel Legion, and was reportedly reluctant to have the film marketed as an Exorcist sequel. It is the scene in the hospital that seems to have got to you. “The old lady coming up behind Nurse Keating with the medical shears... to chop off her head.”

3 POLTERGEIST

Like your number one choice, The Exorcist, Tobe Hooper’s twisted tale of suburban demonic possession has something to scare everyone. Here’s a short list: “The chairs getting stacked up in the kitchen. The moment the spirit jumps out of the TV and goes into the wall. The infamous face scene. The giant head coming out of the closet.” It also has a clown. “The clown from Poltergeist ruined my childhood,” lamented one reader.

2 THE RING

Many correspondents’ favourite scary scenes depended as much on the circumstances of first viewing as on the content of the scene Itself. In the case of this film, which – like Poltergeist (see number 3) – integrates technology into a tale of possession, we recommend that you do not follow this reader’s example: “I watched the movie in the dark at a friend’s house in the middle of the woods... I saw that movie five years ago and it still gives me the creeps.” Of the nominations received for this film, two-thirds were for the Japanese original, rather than the 2002 American remake.

1 THE EXORCIST

Nearly 35 years since it was made, the director William Friedkin’s demonic shocker still drew the most reaction. In the words of one online correspondent: “I dare anyone to watch it alone at night with the lights off, and not be affected (what’s that noise?) when going to bed afterwards.”

One of the keys to the film’s total dominance appears to be that it contains something to frighten everybody, so if the religious theme leaves you cold, there’s always Linda Blair’s spinning head, projectile vomiting and spider crawling to fall back on. The film was unavailable on video in Britain until 1999, when an uncut version was finally passed by the BBFC.

At least one of you might have preferred it to stay censored: “ The Exorcist has everything. It is the only horror film to give me the jibblies.” One can only speculate what the film might have been like had Stanley Kubrick (who later made The Shining) directed, as originally planned.

Compiled by Michael Haddon, Nigel Kendall and Michael Moran.

[Torquemada]

The head out of the botttom of the boat in Jaws - made me jump just as high the second time around too.

[batman]

A good list, I especially agree with the inclusion Halloween, Les Diaboliques, Audition, The Ring, The Haunting and Jaws.

Others I find scary are The Fog (original version) and Dead of Night.

An honourable mention must also go to a film that I watched for the first time recently Halloween 5. An uneven film overall with one or two good scares, but there is one sequence that is the equal of the 'closet' scene in the original. Little Jamie (Danielle Harris) is trying to hide and then escape via a laundry shute, but Michael Myers finds her .... it's very well directed scene with a great performance from young Harris (soon to be seen in the 'remake') and it is also exciting and very scary!

bats.

[Carmel]

Im sorry but the Blair witch i thought was so stupid, when it came out they said it was one of the scariest films made and i went to the cinema to see it and came out soo disappointed as there was nothing remotely scary in the whole film and i still consider it quite stupid.

[smudge]

Originally Posted by Carmel Im sorry but the Blair witch i thought was so stupid, when it came out they said it was one of the scariest films made and i went to the cinema to see it and came out soo disappointed as there was nothing remotely scary in the whole film and i still consider it quite stupid.

I wholeheartedly agree !! Utter tosh.

Smudge

[batman]

Originally Posted by smudge I wholeheartedly agree !! Utter tosh. Smudge

Thirded! Complete rubbish!

Bats.

[Aaryk Noctivagus]

I'm amazed anybody would mention the bore-fest 'Event Horizon'.

That is one of the very few movies I walked out of a cinema because.

I was up in London for a nine-week stint... and thought I'd take a break from my hard and difficult work to catch a movie. Being a fan of science fiction I went to see 'Event Horizon'...

After some boredom... I decided to leave the movie and return to work... yes, that is 10% true... a rather difficult and tiresome job was preferable to that movie.

And before anybody throws any accusations my way... I was not skiving... I was free to choose my own hours because I was working through the entire night on some occasions, writing up my notes and the such like. I was working very hard... but I found 'Event Horizon' to be less preferable.

[Freddy]

We've had the most scariest films so I thought how about chilling.

Scarey scenes you can still watch out of the corner of your eye or between your fingers and once shown they don't bother you,then there are those scenes which do not scare you, which appear so 'everyday' but leave you feeling as if you have just experienced something evil or bad.

I get that sense in the scene from Cabaret, in the beer garden where the young blond youth begins to sing Tomorrow Belongs To Me. A normal scene but what follows is a wonderful piece of cinema. It does leaves you with a great sense of the evil to come.


YouTube - Cabaret - Tomorrow Belongs to Me

Freddy

[Marky B]

Good thread,Freddy. I am sure there have been plenty of scenes in films,which have left people disturbed.
Ta Ta
Marky B

[Carmel]

Dont take sweets from strangers leaves you feeling disturbed when that awful man grabs the rope off the boat and pulls the children towards him and you know what is going to happen awful.

[penfold]

There's a German silent film for kids, I think called Die Dreite Kampf, from about '28 and similar in genre to Emil and the Detectives; the third form of a German equivalent to Gordonstoun find out that the local town's council has been corrupted by a furrier to cull all the local cats on the pretext of cat flu; he then pays the council 10 pfennig a pelt. The kids initially daub the walls of the village with pro-animal rights slogans, then kidnaps the furrier, played by Max Schreck of Nosferatu (This isn't on IMDB by the way)and spoil the plan by rounding up the cats themselves, putting them in a makeshift cattery at the school and thereby get the council to resign. The photography is excellent, it's a nice story, the acting from the kids excellent......
......it's just that the school uniform is identical to that of the SA, the daubing of the walls, the camp for cats, the militaristic parade at the end.....it's like a kids premonition of the Holocaust....it's hard to watch.

[batman]

When the killer is revealed in Jigsaw. A great piece of acting from that person.

Bats.

[Carmel]

Originally Posted by batman When the killer is revealed in Jigsaw. A great piece of acting from that person. Bats.

I forgot that one.

[Nita St. James]

I always find the final scene in The Wicker Man a bit hard to take.

[ProfMarcus]

The scene in the original Haunting where Julie Harris lies in bed, we hear her thoughts and unidentifiable threatening noises which could be inchoate voices, we see the shift of light on heavy wallpaper whose pattern could be about to turn into faces, she believes she's holding hands with Claire Bloom in the next bed . . . at the end it turns out that Claire Bloom's bed is on the other side of the room, and we're left with Julie Harris gasping, "God! God! Whose hand was I holding?" That one always brings the chill to my bowels.