I loved the first two seasons of Millenium. My favorite and most creepy moment came at the end of season two, with a suddenly white-haired and catatonic Frank Black sitting with his daughter listening to static on the radio with what SHOULD have been the whole world dying of plague. Then they ruined it all in about three minutes at the start of season three… bastards.
It wasn’t a dream. She killed some random lady. I haven’t watched all of the season yet (just got the DVD), but they haven’t mentioned it so far.
You are correct sir.
Those smiling, floating men in “Hush” (Buffy) were uber-creepy. The knifing of Lucy in E.R. shocked me, too, though I hated her character.
But the creepiest moment for me was the “Twilight Zone” (original series) episode “Living Doll.” Living Doll It stars Telly Savalas who cannot get rid of this creepy doll. It’s one of those talking dolls but instead of sticking to her pre-recorded script, she says really creepy things. The messages get steadfastly more menacing. “I’m going to kill you.” said in that cheerful doll voice… Brr! He tries to get rid of the doll, of course, by throwing it in the trash, etc. but when he least expects it, there she is. And she isn’t very happy.
Okay it doesn’t sound very creepy, but it freaked my 7 year old self out so much that I still remember it.
You’re missing the *really * creepy portions of that three-parter.
In the first part, Sam leaps into the body of a small-town sheriff whose 5-year-old daughter is the prime suspect in a murder; he proves her innocence but dies at the end ofthe episode in the fire you mentioned. In the second episode, he jumps ahead 13 years or so and finds himself in the body of a young man whose in bed with that same girl, now all grown up and pretty as hell; and because he is unusually swiss-cheesed by this leap, he’s in love with her as well and obsessed with clearing her of yet another murder. In the third leap he must save the daughter of the first girl, who was conceived while he was leaped in the second episode,and thus may well be his own kid.
That was the one I thought of when I read the thread title. Really freaky.
That is one of the best episodes of X-Files ever. Man, I can’t wait to have them all on DVD.
(Checks Visa balance.)
One of the most disturbing scenes I can recall was the ending scene of a Miami Vice episode. I didn’t see the whole episode, so I have no idea what was actually going on, but what I can recall is that some woman got brave enough to inform on her criminal boyfriend, and of course one of the cops has sort of fallen for her. The final scene of the show has the two cops waiting to meet her on some rocky stretch of beach…across the water is a lighthouse, and as they are waiting for her they see some activity at the distant lighthouse, and watch helplessly as the boyfriend throws the woman to her death.
I just remember the feeling of helplessness and despair as they realized what was going to happen, and couldn’t stop it. I thought it was an uncharacteristically brutal ending for a prime time show in those days.
The creepiest thing I saw on tv as a kid was the bumper for a miniseries called The Atlanta Child Murders. Every time it went to commercial it would show an image of a single child’s shoe lying on a deserted playground with some really spooky music playing. It conveyed a terrible sense of dread without actually showing anything happening.
I don’t remember much about the series itself, but that shoe sticks with me.
The X-Files, any episode, is guaranteed to win for me, but one of the earlier Buffy episodes comes really close–it’s about an obsessive cheerleader, and at the end Buffy and a friend are looking at a golden trophy statue in a glass case at the school. They’re creeped out by it and leave. The eyes of the statue suddenly come alive, with the panicked eyes of the girl who’d previously in the episode lost her mouth, and you can hear her muffled screams again. Euuurgh.
Also, Little House on the Prairie–the clown episode. Hands-down all time creepiest ever.
No CSI yet? Maybe this isn’t so much “creepy” as “gross.”
The episode with the homeless sister and the self-abusing magazine model. Camera pans around the self-abusing model is picking out her skin with tweezers.
Actually, if we’re going to go CSI, my creepiest moment was an early season episode where the perp lady was attacking random people with her dog, so she could extract the organs…for her own meals.
After Grissom had his contractually obligated hunch, the CSI team collected all sorts of appliances and utensils and vessels from her kitchen, sprayed them down with that thing that makes human blood fluoresce, and turned on the dark lights. The blender, the pitcher, the glasses…all start to glow. shudder
Well, it doesn’t involve the undead, Class-A felonies, or the quiet unraveling of a human soul…and, thus, really doesn’t belong with the cavalcade of horrors in this thread, I guess…I’m going to nominate an episode of The Wild Thornberrys, “The Legend of Ha Long Bay.”* Not for subject matter, or plot, but for a couple of lines of dialogue.
At one point the show’s heroine, 12(±) year old Eliza, on an underwater photography dive with her father, was on the verge of panic after thinking she’d seen a “sea-monster.” Her father, a normally jovial, fairly goofy fellow voiced by Tim Curry, gives her a quick, “you’ll cut this nonsense out, now, kid.”-type speech. Nothing out of line, really, and certainly nothing out of line for a parent to say.
But the contrast between the character’s normal attitude, and Curry’s cold, hint-of-menace delivery of the line…it was eerie. Like hearing Andy Taylor implying that someone’s going to wake up one morning with their throat slit if they got in his way, or something.
Like I said, it wasn’t brain-popping gore, or anything. But still…creepy.
*Hey, cut me some slack. I couldn’t get MST3K with my cable company, and I was jonesing for riffing material.
Next to the Twin Peaks Bob appearance mentioned (wuoah!) I would also vote for Buffy. Other than Hush, I think the other episode that really creeped me out was Killed by Death, where they are in a hospital where something called the “Child Death” is killing sick children. There is one scene where Buffy is lying in her hospital bed, feverish, facing the open door, and the Child Death is just walking past it, looking at her and smiling. I didn’t ever see that episode again.
Strictly speaking, no: it’s a family show that specifically includes children in its target audience, and that’s been the case since it began in 1963.
The programme’s early evening broadcast slot and popularity with the playground set has lead to it being labelled a children’s show by some, but it’s never been meant exclusively for kids.
I remember that, I thought it was brilliant! In a show that’s usually more plot-driven than character-driven, Jamie establishes herself as someone with very different boundaries than her predecessor Claire. (In another episode, she freaked out a detective by pointing to something in a lingerie catalogue: “See that? I’m wearing it.”)
In the sitcoms,** Grace Under Fire** had some creepy moments. We’d get glimpses of just how deep-dish freaky Quentin was, from all three actors who played him. I think they fired the kid in the pilot because he was too intense. Jon Paul Steuer’s creepiest moment was when he got a buzz cut and walked into the room looking for all the world like a Skinhead, while his mom had been trying to convince someone that he wasn’t a racist hooligan. Sam Horrigan, the teenaged Quentin, actually shot Wade Swoboda, the neighbor, in the series’ creepiest moment of all.
She had another, older son, played by Tom Everett Scott, who she’d given up for adoption when she was a teenager. She meets his girlfriend, much older than he was, and makes a really catty remark about how they might have first hooked up: “Let me guess: He hit a baseball into your yard and you made him ‘earn’ it back!”
AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH! I had erased that from my mind.
Now I’ll spend the day thinking about a clown rapist.
::teleporting **Annie ** the amnesia ray::
Joey: It’s a choice between ducks and clowns. Let’s flip a coin.
Chandler: Okay.
Joey: Heads is ducks cause ducks have heads
Chandler: What kind of scary-assed clowns came to your birthday parties?
Are you referring to the two-parter “Sylvia”? In which Albert’s girlfriend get raped by a guy in a clown mask? Very disturbing. Especially for a “family” show.
Or are you talking about any of the other 3 or 4 times LHOtP featured a clown. Because we all know clowns are creepy.