I second the Ring with Samara climbing out of the well, and skittering forward and through the TV and OH HOLY CRAP! I couldn’t go to the bathroom at night for a week without someone else turning on the hallway light for me.
Also I get the heebie jeebies in Jacob’s Ladder, when he’s in the subway station and sees the creepy things in a car going by real fast. And the twins in front of the elevator in The Shining.
As far as TV shows go, I couldn’t watch the last couple of episodes of Six Feet Under, because of the scene where David wakes up groggy to see the kids at the door of his room, and one says “My face fell off last night.” “What?” “I said MY FACE FELL OFF LAST NIGHT!” Augh! Augh! Augh!
Yep. I saw that movie weeks ago and still think about that scene.
Another vote for the end of Carrie, too. And recently a Spanish film called The Orphanage, where a woman is trying to get child ghosts (always the most scary kind of ghosts!) to show themselves to her, and suddenly there is an outlined shadow behind her…
I mentioned on the Stephen King thread about Danny Glick at Mark Petrie’s window in the TV adaptation of Salem’s Lot. Even scarier than that is the moment he sits up in his coffin for the first time, just after Mike has opened it. Brr.
When I was in 5th grade I went with a friend to see Pet Semetary, and the scene when Zelda pops up onto the screen had me literally running out of the theatre at a dead sprint. I didn’t even know I was doing it, it was literally a fight or flight response.
Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. TV show not film, but ye gods and little fishes. I still have trauma from watching the one where the kid sends people to the CORNFIELD. That scene with the bobbling clown head… shudder
Hmm. The jump scene in ID4:
where the scientists are squinting into the fog filling the specimen room or whatever it was, and you just know what’s coming next.
First time watching that when it came out, and I involuntarily yelp and grab my sister’s arm.
That like the Winkie’s Dream sequence in Mulholland Drive. The guy narrates the entire sequence and tells you exactly what’s going to happen, but it’s still freaky.
For me, it was near the beginning of Jacob’s Ladder, when Tim Robbins is stuck in the subway station and a train passes and he sees a demon. At the time, it was so furtive and early enough in the movie that I wasn’t sure of what I’d seen, and that really bothered me.
The outcome of that scene finally showed up in SAW III - Shawnee (or Amanda, for the OCDers ) had a pig mask on when she knocked out / drugged / kidnapped the shutterbug before chaining him by the ankle in SAW I…
<Rocky> Let’s do the TIME WARP again! </Rocky>
case closed.
Although I don’t have a cite (*Again, I am an ignorant lazy bastard), I seem to recall that in the ‘70’s movies there used to be some sort of trade respect akin to “honor amongst thieves” from horror movie directors - so called “stealing” of other folks’ “signature moves” (aka the “gotcha” move that always showed up in the last 45 seconds of the flick ) in movies became a sort of “one-upmanship” and was a way to say, “damn, I wish I had thought of that” sort of thing.
The pig head I always attributed to Rory Calhoun in “Motel Hell” (1980) … YMMV. Although parts of my subconscious say there is something more horrible than that in there; I just don’t want to see it again because I know I’ve seen it before.
In The Ring, the mother (I think) of the first victim, mourning the death, sadly mentions the girl’s name and FLASH CUT to…
The rotting corpse of the girl, sitting in the closet, looking gross as all get-out and she slightly MOVED!
The rest of the movie was pretty tame compared to that.
Also, the gently-lift-her-out-of-the-tub moment in What Lies Beneath. I watched that at 2 am, alone, and I watched it the next day with commentary and they mentioned how scary it would be to watch that movie, alone, at 2 am. They were rigiht.
Oh fuck yes. I’ve watched the Ring about 4 times now and the last three I closed my eyes when I knew that particular shot was coming - can’t handle it at all.
The Ring is really not a film I’d personally recommend to the weak hearted, but at the same time I’ve heard from others they didn’t find it scary much. Weird.
Shaun of the Dead,Shaun and his loser mate have decided to leave the house and rescue his mum and GF.
Their other housemate has gone to work so they decide to use his car.
.Just before they leave Shaun goes upstairs for a leak and then realises that the shower is running and pulls back the shower curtain…
He then finds thatt the other housemate hasn’t in fact gone to work…
I nearly had an accident in the trouser department I kid you not.
Whenever I recommend The Ring to a friend, I always describe it as: the first 10 or so minutes = scary as hell; the next 70 or so minutes = more of a mystery show than a horror movie; the last 10 or so minuts = scary as hell.