I would have gone for Quint’s recitation of the story of the Indianapolis. That was one of the scariest moments in the film.
When I first saw this scene in the theater in 1975, you could hear a pin drop while Quint was telling his story.
If anyone wants to revisit this scene, here you go:
The end scene of The Attic (the movie with Carrie Snodgrass and Ray Milland, circa 1979, not one of the other movies of the same name).
Speaking of the Exorcist “spider walk” scene, wasn’t that edited out of the actual film but only inserted back in for the thirty year anniversary special? Considering how chilling it was, I can’t see why it was not included originally. It wasn’t just the surreal way that this little girl was climbing down the stairs, but then she crawled up to her mother like a dog, and started licking her hand in a sub-human manner.
The moment I’ll add though comes from the Exorcist III (an under-rated and under-appreciated movie in my opinion). No, not when the old lady is doing her own special crawl on the ceiling, but when, during a mundane scene in the hospital late at night when everything is quiet, after the annoyed patient curses the nurse for waking him up and promising to report her. That jolt is a minor tease to the actual pay-off when the sheeted figure comes out of nowhere right behind the nurse, with his special scissors pointed right at the poor nurse’s neck.
Is that scene after you seen the figure walk across the corridor behind someone? Because that figure, just crossing the corridor, well to the back of the frame, with the autopsy shears, gave me nightmares.
Exorcist III nurse scene via YouTube. Seriously freaking scary.
The commentary on the extended Exorcist DVD said that the creepy spider walk scene was cut because it didn’t fit into the movie. Where it was in the story was too much too soon and it spoiled the suspenciful build up for Regan being possesed.
Even after seeing the movie a few times, when I first saw that new scene I jumped even though I knew it was coming.
There’s only been one movie recently (that I can remember) that’s made me actually jump out of my chair and consider checking my jeans to see if I needed to change them and that is a scene in the movie The Forgotten. No, not the part where
The one girl is taken up into the air by the aliens suddenly,
I’m talking about
when the two parents are driving and they’re hit by another car.
I still consider that to be the biggest jump in a movie ever. I have yet to have one make me flinch half as much as that did.
I was watching The Mist with my wife last weekend, and when
the car runs out of gas, and the driver kills everyone in the car (especially his son) I was floored. Not scared, just felt like I had been gutted. Especially since a military convoy showed up just a few minutes later.
I saw “Alien” when it first came out, in one of those huge theaters they had back in the 70’s that showed blockbuster movies in 70mm, with a screen so wide it curved. My friend and I got there late and the only two seats we could find together were in the first or second row of the theater, so we were pretty much looking straight up and having to turn our heads back and forth in order to take in the whole screen.
When that Alien popped out of the egg onto John Hurt’s face, that’s when I lost it.
whimpers hold me!
Full Metal Jacket
However, it wasn’t the movie itself. When I saw this in the theatre, down the row from sat an older gentleman. He was old enough to be a Viet Nam Vet and from his reactions, I was pretty sure he was.
Then, during the battle a Marine is going through a damaged building. He sees a large teddy bear. He starts to reach for it and the guy down the row from me says “NO!” The guy in the movie, not hearing him, picks it up and sets off a booby trap.
Then there is Pulp Fiction and the adrenalin shot to the heart scene. That was trippy.
Darby O’Gill and the Little People.
The banshee.
'Nuff said.
I remember it very well. I saw the film at Radio City and the entire audience went airborne at the same time. Alan Arkin was really creepy in that.
What happens?
It’s corny as hell, but the screaming banshee ghost was very frightening when I saw this as a kid. It’s supposed to be a family-type Disney movie and then this screeching banshee comes out of nowhere and scares the shit out of the kids in the audience.
I’m ashamed that I couldn’t make it past the dogs in the dog run scene in John Carpenter’s The Thing. I wanted very much to watch this movie, but I was too badly frightened by the transmogrifying of the dog. Subsequent discussions here of various other scenes in the movie have confirmed that it’s too poop-inducing for me to handle. I’m still fascinated by it, though.
Boo
Oh my god I remember that! Scared the living shit out of me as a child, I actually spent a whole night awake with the light on because I was too afraid to go to sleep after watching that film. :eek:
Same!