Please tell me this refers to the French original with Simone Signoret and not the cheesey American remake with Sharon Stone.
I was watching this last night, and I came back into the room at one point to them being in the middle of one of the scary scenes and I don’t know what movie it was. They were in the 40s somewhere so I guess it’s one of those. The scene was a woman had just given birth in a very white hospital room and all the doctors and nurses were dead and bloodied on the floor. The mother was saying something like “what’s wrong with my baby?!” A man walked into the room looking around for the baby I guess? The commentators said something about how a thing can be scary even if it’s small. WTF movie was that?
The movie was “It’s Alive!”
Yup, the original French movie.
Although I feel it deserves the number one spot, I am always disapointed by the top spots of these lists because the number one is ALWAYS “Psycho”. There’s no surprise there.
Nope… it was SUPPOSED to be an invalid old woman. Oliver Reed and family were supposed to take care of the house and the old woman up in the attic. Oliver’s wife took on the caretaker duties, and at first would just bring trays of food for the woman, never seeing anything more than a locked door. Then she starts spending the majority of her time up there, going through the old woman’s pictures and such. Meanwhile strange shit is going on in the house… Oliver goes nuts and almost kills the son… (IIRC) his mom comes to visit, goes nuts and dies. At the end of the movie, we see the wife upstairs, eating the food that was supposed to be for the old woman, implying that there never was a woman at all. I can’t quite recall what prompts Oliver and the son to try to get away from the house, but they go to get the wife, who they find upstairs with the old woman’s clothes on, sitting in her chair, all possessed. I know Oliver dies at the end from the turret of the house falling on him. I think the kid dies too. The whole thing was a ploy by Burgess Meredith to re-energize the house (there’s this whole scene where the house goes from dilapidated to beautifully restored), and the wife is stuck there in the attic with the “soul” of the house possessing her.
Incidentally, I saw part of that movie when I was a kid, and it scared the hell out of me… so much so that I had nightmares about the scene, and hadn’t been able to re-watch the movie until a couple of years ago.
The scene where Oliver almost kills his son… he finds a pair of eyeglasses at the side of the pool and puts them on. All of a sudden he becomes evil and while horseplaying with the son, almost drowns him. The look on his face still unnerves me.
nightmares for years: the first death in Jaws.
WAY too fucking real.
Yeah, Psycho will be in the top three. So will The Blair Witch Project. It’s cool that The Tenant (Le Locataire) got such high billing. Very underrated creepy movie.
Sometimes I think I was born just to watch horror films. I still remember my first one. My parents took me to the drive-in when I was about 5 or 6 to see Star Wars. The picture after that was Prom Night. 
Anyway, they thought I was sleeping, and as horror buffs themselves, stayed to watch it. They learned I was still awake and watching when the kids at the beginning were “initiating” the girl who hadn’t a clue. Scared shitless…and hooked for life.
The scenes/themes that get me are anything that have to do with things that are dead and shouldn’t be a factor. Ghosts, zombies, dreams, paranormal. This is why I started a thread to find The Woman in Black. I can’t wait for it to get here!
Some of my favorites.
Just about anything from The Ring. The scene with the girl crawling out of the tv forced me to move the set in the Den to the closet as my back faced it while at the computer. Definately top 5 for horror in my book. And that damn kid that starts acting wierd near the end, like he was a demon seed. Got goose-bumps just typing it. Oh, and of course the girl in the closet near the beginning.
That scene in Dragonfly where Kostner catches the reflection in his kitchen window.
Too many from Night of the Living Dead to list here.
That fucking Poltergeist clown. The tree scene wasn’t much better.
Anyone remember the movie Dolls? After seeing this I literally took every doll my sister’s had and boxed them up. Hey, their room was adjacent and I was just shown they can move from room to room. It was 3 weeks before I broke down and let the poor girls have the dolls back. But I never trusted the bastards.
The Shining had a lot of great moments. My favorite was when Jack starts making out with the “bathtub woman” only to notice something in the mirror. (I don’t know how to do the spoiler boxes, so I’m trying to be vague)
American Gothic had a great part where the female lead gets sucked into the insanity of the fat daughter and finally sees the baby in the bassinette. AND DOESN"T SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH IT!!! :eek:
Jaws. When Dreyfuss swims under the boat. What happens right after he finds the tooth.
Jacob’s Ladder. Anytime he sees that wierd shaking head thing.
More later. I’m starting to creep myself out and want to enjoy it for a bit. 
The thing that is really frightening to me is suspense. How far are you into the movie before you actually see the shark in Jaws? The unknown coupled with that music is hell on the nerves.
When I first saw the movie Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn, that movie terrified me. Alan Arkin made a certain unexpected move that was not a cliche back then. I thought I was not going to be able to get my breath back. Mancini’s music (used as an accent) at that particular point was also effective.
Nope. “The Blair Witch Project” was in the twenties, I think.
My guess for the top three: “Psycho”, “The Exorcist”, “The Silence of the Lambs”.
Jaws was #1
Alien was #2
The Exorcist was #3
Psycho was only #4!!!
I am outraged. :eek:
I was quite surprised at the results too. In fact, I was totally surprised. I was so sure “Psycho” would be number one and “The Exorcist” number two. I wasn’t quite sure after that, which is why I put “Silence…”. But after they announced “The Exorcist” as number three, I guessed the other two. Basically, “What from the opening credits haven’t we seen yet?”
I think since they had “Willy Wonka” in their countdown, they should have had the Large Marge scene in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”.