I saw The Ring last night. As I was putting on a clean pair of shorts, I started wondering which scene in a movie scared the bejeezus out of me the most. I finally decided that it was the scene in Carrie where the arm came out and grabbed Amy Irving. I was pretty young at the time, which didn’t help matters.
Some others:
• Those freaky English twins from The Shining. “Come play with us!”
• When Bilbo lurched towards the Ring in FOTR.
• Any scene from The Exorcist.
Feel free to post your own. Obscure horror movie recommendations also welcome.
I think the scene where she comes out of the television set was pretty horrific! I also shudder, still, at the whole concluding scene in Silence of the Lambs, in the basement with the night-vision goggles.
Impressionable youth scene: The hand from the old Dark Shadows soap opera. I had such nightmares from that thing, crawling across the floor!
The first time I saw “Alien” I was about three rows from the front in one of those big ol’ movie theaters that used to show 70mm prints and had a screen so big it was curved. (Ah, those were the days.) When that thing jumped out of the egg into John Hurt’s face… oh man.:eek:
When I was young I saw Salem’s Lot for the first time and I was terrified at the scene in which the brother comes to the window and starts scratching it and asking to be let in.
Many years later, every time I look out a window at night I think of that scene and it creeps me out (I usually close the curtains).
Slight hijak in regards to format. Spoilers for 'Salem’s Lot.
I saw the movie and read the book, and neither time did this scare me. What scared me (in both formats, but moreso in the book) was Marjorie Glick rising from the morgue table and coming after Ben. I slept with the lights on for two nights and could not go to bed without my cruicifix pendant wrapped around my hand.
I have to agree with Bilbo’s going after the Ring, as well as (in TTT) the faces in the Dead Marshes.
Well, The Ring was a good movie, and creepy, but it’s not more than mildly scary, at least if you’re me. It’s one of those movies like Event Horizon and Session 9 that people have told me scared the piss out of them, and I’m left shrugging my shoulders as to what they thought was so darn scary. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy them, though.
That said, the scariest movie that I can think of is Phantoms with Ben Affleck, Peter O’Toole and Rose McGowan. I found it on-the-edge-of-my-seat scary both times I saw it, which makes it unique in my experience. OTOH, people who reviewed it and didn’t like it mostly remarked that they didn’t find it scary. Which just re-enforces the idea that everyone has different ideas of what is scary
An oldie but a goodie.
Wait Until Dark- you think he is dead and the apartment is dark except for the light from the fridge- when he jumps out and grabs her leg! And that sound, Wow.
Any one else see that one way back when?
And who can forget Psycho? I was scared to take a shower for weeks.
Although it was a stupid movie over all, the single scariest "shock "scene I can think of would be from the Excorcist III, when the nurse working late at night has the heeby-jeebies, and starts checking around the ward just to make sure all is right, and just as she thinks she’s safe…well, I won’t go into it, but it was a mindfuck.
The movie that kept up late at night as a kid was “Phantasm.” That creepy morgue attendant, those weird little goblins, and that sphere… brrrrrrr. Then I rented it a few years ago, and realized how ultra-low budget it was, what a letdown.
An American Werewolf In London, the dream sequence where the monsters in German uniforms burst in and murder David and his family. Was this supposed to be kristalnacht or what?
I’m pretty prone to be scared of everything and spend most scary movies trying to cover both my eyes and my ears at the same time (pretty tricky I can tell ya). Most “shock effects” really scare me. That’s only for a short time, though.
But The Ring scared me on a whole different level. I found out that surreal things really scare me, like the whole video tape. The scene that gave me the creeps most was the barn scene. It was just the setup…this huge barn with the room at the top, solely lit, with all the toys in it.
Honorary mention goes to In the Mouth of Madness, especially to the scene with the cop on the couch. Uah…even thinking about it makes me cringe.
-Samara coming out of the TV
-The first brief shot we get of Katie’s corpse
-The brief shots in the end we get of Katie and Noah’s corpses
-The entire video. The video Rachel watches at the begining is different than the one Aidan watches because at the end of the one Aiden watches, you can see Samara start to come out of the well.
Also, the scenes in The Shining where Shelly Duvall is running around the Overlook and we get the glimpse of the guy dressed as a dog. That rapid close-up is creepy.
The “dog suit fellatio” quick closeup freaked me out more than anything else in the entirety of The Shining… and that’s saying a lot. It’s just one of those totally bizarre, unexpected moments that makes a giant question mark loom over my head momentarily. The Kubrick Zoom didn’t help matters!
The Ring… I KNEW it was mediocre as I was watching it, but by the end I was utterly spooked nonetheless. Walking out of the theater was fine, but once I got home I have to admit that I lost sleep for days. It’s the type of terror that really grows on you the more you casually think about the movie. It pissed me off that I could let a “scary movie” get to me so much when I’m not normally affected in the least by them. Most people I’ve talked to who saw the movie in the first few weeks of its release had similar reactions - they didn’t LIKE the movie per se, but found it weirdly and intensely haunting.
Not a horror movie moment per se, but I nearly swallowed my tongue when Keanu Reeves jumped out the plane without a parachute in Point Break. I think I may have been visualizing the consequences of that one a little too well.
