I posted this at the FWIS forum a few months ago and I thought I would repost it here too kinda in the spirit of Halloween. I was watching this program on the Bravo channel called "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments" which counts down what was thought to be the 100 scariest movies or movie moments. I thought it was a pretty good program, but they had things like the tunnel scene from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" listed as scarier than say "28 Days Later" or "Zombie". I couldn't understand why, but then I started thinking as a child, that tunnel scene is pretty freaky and definitly took the movie in another direction if for a brief moment.

I can watch any horror movie right now because I am a horror movie fan, but it is sometimes the tamer movies that freak people out more. For me, to this day I still cannot watch "The Elephant Man". I know I have only seen it once and cannot remember too much about it except a few scenes here and there, but everytime I think about it for some reason I get nauseous. I really don't understand why I do, and it isn't because of the display of his deformaty, I think it has more to do with one particular scene where some guys teasing him force two women to kiss him. Sounds weird, I know, but for some reason it has put an emotional scar on me since I was a kid.

Another movie that freaked me out, but was actually a horror movie, was "Day of the Dead". Yeah, I know, I actually look back and laugh about it now, but the scene where the Zombies break in and tear the soldiers to pieces, one in particular they have a continuous shot of the soldier being held down and the Zombies tearing away his head while he's still screaming. I just bought Dawn of the Dead (the original) and Day of the Dead on DVD and I watched the bonus features for Day of the Dead and saw how they did the dismemberment scenes and I was pretty impressed with how simple they were. They used animatronics, but I remember when I was younger I couldn't tell they were fake and it freaked me out back then.

Anyway, I was just wondering what movies or movie moments freaked you out the most. Which ones put a permanent scar on your psyche, or a permanent skid in your shorts.

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Homer no function beer well without – Homer Simpson

I remember many years ago when I was a youngster, the scene in "Sleeping Beauty" when the witch turned into a dragon scared the crap out of me.

Other than that, "Jaws" might be the most frightening movie in my opinion. It's pretty intense.

It's hard to say, for me. I honestly don't think that I have ever been really scared by a "scary movie" or a "horror movie" in a long time. There are a few factors for it:

1) I grew up on horror movies. Literally. I was 8, I think, when I saw Friday the 13th movies. Every one of them. Multiple times.

2) A lot of horror movies are mainly about gore and such. When you get desensitized, you get over it. For instance, some people said that you don't want to watch the movie Ravenous while eating, because it might make you sick. I was eating meatloaf in a nice blood-looking sauce while watching Ravenous and not caring. I'm just too desensitized to go "EWWW! I CAN SEE THE BONE STICKING OUT OF HIS LEG!"

Of course, if I saw this in real life, I probably would throw up. But that's a completely different story.

3) There are "obviously fakey" moments in a lot of movies. 28 Days Later was WAY too unrealistic for me to really be freaked out by it. Overdone actions/reactions by the Infected, no stated reason for them to gang up, and no stated reason for them to be vomiting blood like that, or that quickly, except as a "gore effect" and an excuse to have more Infected. On the other hand, I was emotionally effected when that one guy (I dunno names) turned Infected towards the end. It was sad... but not necessarily scary.

The Ring was pretty freaky overall, but I don't recall if I was really affected by it.

The scariest movie, I think, wasn't a movie, it was a dream. But that's not a movie, so it doesn't count (I'll relate it to you all if anyone's interested).

Other than that, though, the scariest thing for me for a long while was actually games. In the game Deus Ex, for instance, I was scared half to death when I had to crawl through the dark and either fight or avoid the Greasels (don't ask me why, I'm over it now!). Alternatively, the game Silent Hill scared me. It was mainly the suspense that got me, more than anything else. I'm not really a "LEAP OUT AND SCARE YOU!" type of scaredy wulf.

Carrie´s last scene.

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart

The final scene in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (the remake, with Donald Sutherland) is second behind the final scene in the deeply disturbing Threads, for me.

*edited in case non-Brits aren't aware of it - Threads at IMDB. Check the reviews.

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Agree with you there, never seen anything else have such an effect on the audience.

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

My scariest movie moment was the nighttime cornfield scene in ET when I was seven. Had nightmares for months.

After that, I've never actually been scared by a movie (startled, sure, but never genuinely scared by a horror flick). Two admissions, though:

1) I caught myself paying far too much attention to the evening breeze and sky walking home from Twister.

2) I suspect my only genuine fear response was to Anthony Hopkin's Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. I don't know why he creeps me out so much (to this day when I rewatch the movie) during the scenes while he's safely in his cell and I'm on my couch watching through the magic of DVD.

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

I also have to agree. I still remember when that hand popped up, everyone, and I mean everyone, in the theater screamed and jumped. The house light immediately came on. All of us manly men gave each other sideway glances and kind of laughed, but we all had to go home to change our underwear.

When I was about 7 or so I watched some 1950s black & white science fiction / horror movie about an alien creature that was hiding in a cave just outside of some town and killing people. For most of the movie, all you saw of the creature was two glowing eyes in the dark. That one had me afraid of the dark for months.

The torture scene in Marathon Man, where the Nazi dentist is torturing Dustin Hoffman ("Is it safe?") is so scary because it is so much like our fears when we actually go to the dentist (it certainly had a big effect on my date when I first went to see the movie - which was not a completely bad thing ).

The first time I saw Alien in the theatre, when it had just come out... the scene where the creature pops out of the guy's chest had everyone in the theatre jumping.

I was never a big fan of horror movies and like them even less now. Real life is more than scary enough for me.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

for me its always been a weird one....
in the late 1970s a "documentary" called "UFOs are Real" always terrified me. Not so much the content as the music. I could watch it in the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day and by the end of the show I was nervously looking over my shoulder every couple of seconds.

I was totally the music. Lots of synthesizer and jarring chords. A very dysfunctional piece. Strange!

john

edited to add:

here's a link to it.
http://theufostore.com/Merchant2/mer...Code=Stanton-2
Sorry that it's a store site. It was hard finding hte right video. Lots of places link it to "flying sauces are real" which is a totally different flick. Apparantly, the UFO one has been out of print for years and is really hard to come by. I got mine off the TV

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"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

--Ambrose Bierce

http://threelittleboxes.com

I saw The Blob at a very young age, and it traumatized me for months. I saw Carrie a long time after it came out and knew exactly what happened at the end. It still scared the [expletive voluntarily deleted] out of me when it did.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

My scariest moment was from Jaws 2 when the diving class was in the water, there was gentle music playing, then someone jumped on the lowest 2 octaves of the piano with both feet as the shark swam right next to the diver who probably "soiled" his wetsuit (I almost did the same thing to my "dry suit"). But the most frightning thing recently was when the 5 of us went to see a movie. Tickets, popcorn, and drinks...$86.00 you have got to be kidding

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Those who repeat History are doomed to learn it.

I grew up on Horror movies too. I grew up watching the "Nightmare on Elm St" series and of course the "Friday the 13th" series. I loved (and still love) the George Romero "Dead" series.

A lot of the really bad horror movies are just all about gore, and yup, after a while you can watch any of them without a problem. I personally prefer the horror movies that have less gore, and more subtle horror. For instance (and I know people may think this is cliché or boring), when I first saw "The Blair Witch Project", it was done so well and in such a way that you kinda felt like it really happened. In the last part when they were in the empty house, the camera was panning the stairways and you saw the small bloody handprints on the wall, that whole scene sent shivers up my spine. That's the subtlety I'm referring too.

By all means.

I love Silent Hill. I use to stay up late at night in the dark and play Silent Hill 2. It definitely game me chills. Part 4 isn't bad either.

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Homer no function beer well without – Homer Simpson

I have this thing about cannibalism. It's about the only thing in a movie that can really scare me, and then, only if it's based on real events. (Hannibal Lecter doesn't bother me terribly, for example.)

So a few years ago, my then-boyfriend decided to rent Alive.

I'm sure we can all see where this is going--it was a fascinating movie, but at the end of it, there was Gillian, curled up and twitching in a corner. "Put in something else," I said.

"But it's one in the morning," he said.

"I don't care. If you ever want me to sleep again, you'll put in something else!" (Italics very much necessary to convey my attitude on this.)

So we watched Noises Off!, and I could sleep. (I got out of watching an American Experience about the Donner Party using this particular quirk, since I'd already seen it and convinced the teacher that, if she made me watch it a second time, I would lose it and start screaming in the middle of class. Being a wise woman, she let me go into another teacher's class, provided I could answer all the worksheet questions.)

A teacher of mine from community college saw Psycho in an outdoor theatre in Hawaii. They were sitting under plastic sheeting in the rain. In the dark. She was 8. She still can't watch it a second time.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Day of the Dead, as one of the survivors has his head ripped off, he lets off a scream that becomes more shrill as the skin at the neck starts to tear.

That was about it for me and George Romero's movies. I was never much for graphic violence.

/shrug

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

That is the exact part of the movie I was referring to in my OP. That part sickened me...that and the soldier who has his eyelid torn off.

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Homer no function beer well without – Homer Simpson

Well, since it HAS been requested, I once had a dream involving me being chased by a creature of some sort. It was a rather "Subtle" horror, because the creature (which I had a vague notion was a man, actually, though a very "spiritual" man), was chasing after me. No matter what I did, I couldn't get to a point where I could stop running. It was an endless chase, and no weapon I could find would possibly stop this "man".

However, this is the scariest part: I couldn't look over my shoulder, or slow down, or stumble for a single instant, for if this "man" reached me, I wouldn't be able to fight back, in any way, shape, or form. There was nothing I could do to stop him from killing me (which I knew was what he was wanting to do), and I couldn't even look over my shoulder to see him (without being killed, at least).

I know it sounds silly now that I say it, but it was *really* scary for me. I hate the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.

I've been trying for so long to get people to discuss Silent Hill on the BABB!

Prior to Silent Hill, I thought of games as just games - if you're good enough, you'll win through, defeat the baddies, and see the end scene when it congratulates you. If you're not good enough, you keep practising until you get there.

But with Silent Hill, the playing aspect was much more to do with character identification. I rarely if ever get scared by horror movies, but in Silent Hill (especially the second game, which I played first) I was so involved that at times I was really, really scared. (My wife was pretty involved too, although she didn't usually drive when we played.) As well as scared, I was moved to tears - James' inability to cope with his wife's death, Angela's inability to cope with her father's abuse, the sheer hopelessness of fat and ugly Eddie - that was powerful storytelling, and to get such storytelling in a GAME of all things was astonishing.

I'm looking forward to the movie adaptation of the series. I understand this will borrow aspects of the plot of the first game, together with elements of the second (e.g. Pyramid Head), and although I don't expect it to be as good as the games themselves, it should still be worth seeing.

<.< >.> I'm going to have to play the games through. I never finished up One...

Please do! Invest some time into it, and you will be well rewarded. And don't forget to dim the lights (or play by candlelight).

I love the Silent Hill games. There's something about the grittyness of it. You can almost smell the damp, musty air in the run down buildings. You really feel like your walking through a haunted building when walking around in the game.

I'm looking forward to the movie too. Release will be in April 2006. I just hope you get the same feeling from the movie you get from the game.

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Homer no function beer well without – Homer Simpson

The pivotal scene in "The Crying Game"

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There's room for all God's little creatures -
right next to the mashed potatoes

Most of the allegedly scary movies bore or disgust me. But, as a kid, back in '68, I was pretty weirded out by the image of Frank Poole's body drifting away into space in 2001: A Space Odyssey (saw it on the first run). It stayed with me for days.

Also, in second or third grade, one of those eddycayshunal movies (Our Friend Mr. Sun?) kept me awake that night with the thought that the Sun would eventually expand and toast the Earth, until Dad reminded me that this would be millions of years in the future.

But what scares me about movies in general is people who think, "Wow, [insert wretched concept here] would make a great movie!" See http://www.jabootu.com for examples.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

Greetings.

A few scenes come to mind:

The scene in John Carpenter's "The Thing" in which the guy's chest-turned- mouth bites off the doctor's hands..........

The scene in "Ghost Story" where the corpse falls from the recovered car.......

I know there are more......

Regards, tbm

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Paddle faster!! I hear banjo music!!

I can't recall a movie that scared me off the top of my head. I generally try to avoid scary movies. The Alien series doesn't count because I already knew pretty much everything about it when I saw it, so it didn't scare me because there were no suprises. The only "horror" movies I have seen are slasher movies like Freddy and Jason, which aren't really scary.

Oh, wait, one movie I do remember that was kind of scary was about a sort of Houdini-type paranormal debunker who gets called to a house. It turns out pretty much everyone at the house is a ghost. But the ghost of his twin sister, who is generally the scary one, is trying to protect him from the other ghosts but he doesn't realize that until it is almost too late. What makes it scary is you have no idea what is going on until the very end, so all these seemingly random ghosts that appear don't seem to have any connection and don't appear to have any purpose that could tell you when they will appear again, and in what form. Although the times when paranormal events occur are somewhat predictable, what happens seems to make no sense.

I also tend to avoid scary video games, but one of my friends convinced me to watch him play Eternal Darkness. That had some scary moments. Like when you character walks into a bathroom and sees her own dead body lying in bathtub full of blood. The fact that you only see it for a split second before it disappears makes it all the worse. Or the multiples times that the centuries-old corpses of characters you had previously played as suddenly spring to life. Or the time demons start slaughtering the people at a hospital, then climb inside their bodies and use them to attack you.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

There's a scene very similar to this in Silent Hill 3. Your character walks into a hospital room where one wall is a mirror. You see your reflection in the mirror and it moves as you move. Then suddenly your reflection freezes and it starts bleeding throughout the entire body. You have to be in the room for a bit before it starts happening, but it is definitly freaky when it does happen.

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Homer no function beer well without – Homer Simpson

Jeez, you guys are scaring the feces out of me just talking about it. >.>

I can just imagine it, and I'm shivering.

I dislike slasher movies and don't consider them scary, really. I like the slow creeping horror.

I saw Westworld as a kid. Scared for days on end. Saw it as an adult and was much relieved that it was now a whole lot less scarier. Two scenes as a kid that scared me:

The countdown on the remaining oxygen in the control room as people desperately try to open the automatic doors. Slow suffocation gives me the willies.

The last gasp of the gunslinger robot. From his sudden appearence on the stairs to his faceless form on the floor, that whole sequence kept me up the next few nights.

From the American version of The Ring, I'd say when the spirit emerged from the well and started walking toward the TV screen.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

I never had a scary moment as I only found movies scary afterwards late at night... I had quite a few nightmares from movies. I got the most from Independence Day by far, probably in part because my dad only let us watch as far as the first cities getting blown up before my mom walked in and got quite upset about this (I was in third grade or so). I then prolly woke up about four times during the night due to nightmares, and I never saw the rest of the movie for years afterwards because my dad learned his lesson after being woken up four times...

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Yes, I have a life. It's quite different from yours.

Wierdly enough, The Core gave me nightmares. I was in a ship going to the core, but we kept ended up in caves full of ghosts, and one ghost in particular was chasing us. I know it sounds silly, and even in the dream I knew it was silly, but it still scared the heck out of me. That normally wouldn't be that bad, because as always happens with nightmares I would wake up from the dream with start, then think the dream was over and go back to sleep. Except for this dream it wasn't over, every time I would go back to sleep it would start up again where it left off. After this happened 7 or 8 times I finally gave up, got up, and walked around for a while before going back to sleep again to make suire the dream was gone. That was not a fun night. That is the only movie I can connect to a nightmare, although there are several other movies I have had fun dreams about.

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page