I always thought the Changeling with George C. Scott was a scary movie…particularly the creepy sceance scene…“are you the boy, the boy killed by the coal cart?”
Okay, that doesn’t sound scary, but it WAS!
Also, the first Nightmare on Elm Street which I saw when I was 15 really scared me…when the body bag was being dragged by itself down the hall, yowza!
I bought Frailty on DVD after seeing McConaughy and Paxton interviewed about it, and I still haven’t gotten the nerve up to watch it.
In The Exorcist, that crab-walk on the ceiling freaked me out. I get really upset by wierd, surreal stuff.
And that tree eating the boy in Poltergeist was nasty. And what about the inimitable Julian Beck in the sequel? That guy scared the crap out of me just by standing there!
I love horror movies.
Ok, I saw The Shining just a few weeks ago for the first time. Unfortunately, I saw it on TV and I have no idea what you guys are all talking about with the bear / dog fellatio thing. I must admit I am, to say the least, intrigued and yet horrified, but someone has to describe this scene for me, as I think it was edited out.
Another vote for The Ring here. That movie seriously affected me – I got home that night after watching it in the theater and when I turned on the tv the lower tier of cable was out because of a storm, and when I saw the snow on the screen I about jumped out the window. The scariest scenes were when you first got a glimpse of Katie’s body in the closet, when the horse went nuts on the ferry, Noah’s body being discovered, and the blurred faces.
So many scenes in the Exorcist are just the scariest things I’ve ever seen. I’ll second whomever mentioned the quick glimpses of the “scary” face in Father Karras’s dreams. When Chris hears noises from Reagan’s bedroom and finds her masturbating with the crucifix… completely wigs me out every time. All the scenes showing some locality of Georgetown and DC – I live near DC so the location of the movie and of the real story always freaks me out.
The Ring was seriously creepy, as was The Excorcist, although I prefered the book.
Scariest for me:
Sixth Sense: Little girl openning Cole’s tent one clothespin at a time, and the woman in the bathrobe that passes behind him as he goes to the bathroom.
Signs: The footage of the birthday party, first real look at the aliens. For some reason I was expecting a flash of foot or hand, but the full alien coming out of nowhere scared the hell out of me. (Perhaps the fact that the footage looked like a real home movie added to the effect.)
The Others: There a moment where we see a scary face in the mirror behind Nicole Kidman, and then realize it’s an out of focus painting. Cheap shot, but scary as hell.
Alien the chestburster, and the facehugger.
Blair Witch: The ending, but only because I had a nightmare after seeing the trailer that was eerily similar to the final shot.
Twin Peaks, yeah, there’s somethign about that staircase that gives me the willies.
Lost Highway: Somehow Robert Blake was scarier before he (alledgedly) killed his wife. “We’ve met before. It was at your house. In fact, I’m there right now.”
That whole movie got to me, but there’s a scene where the main character is arguing with his girlfriend that really got me.
I saw just the one hallway scene in Exorcist III when flipping channels and decided I didn’t want to watch the rest of the movie.
I’ll 2nd the Trilogy of Terror doll.
Also there was a movie I saw as a kid that had funky little people living in a house who couldn’t stand light. Creeped me out for a long time (the memory still does)
I always lock the door to the bathroom because of Psycho.
This sounds really stupid, but the end of Child’s Play, where Chucky’s burned body is slowly walking towards Andy. He looks so nasty and creepy!
My mother told me about how incredibly scary this was to her. We stayed up to watch it on the late late show one night (early 80’s, no cable) and I was LMAO when the doll came to life. Pissed mom off to no end 
Who the hell NEEDS scary movies with threads like this? I’ve relived nearly every scary scene in every scary movie I’ve ever had the guts to watch, and I’ve got all kinds of creepy images from scary movies I know now not to EVER watch. Fuck, I’ll have nightmares for a month!
FTR, any scene in The Shining or Pet Semetary. I’m a gigantic chicken. I still can’t watch either movie. I won’t ever watch The Exorcist. Or The Ring. Or The Others. Or Darkness Falls. Just watching the commercials for that shit makes me want to puke.
Does anyone remember a trailer for a movie back in the 70s that showed a bassinet or a cradle or something, and the camera kept slowly moving closer and closer and then this big clawed hand reached over the side of the bassinet? I don’t even remember what movie that was and that scared the shit outta me!
Okay, think happy thoughts…think happy thoughts…I’m gonna need a night light tonight…
That was Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember the end where they’re dragging off the woman, and she’s taking flash pictures to try and blind them. Brrrrrrr. That was creepy!
**Aha! I knew it! ** There’s a continuity error in Jaws that has always bugged me…when Chief Brody and Hooper are arguing with the mayor (in front of the vandalized billboard), they’re counting “incidents”, and don’t include Ben Gardner’s head. They just say that they found Ben Gardner’s boat, and it was “all chewed up”. So was Ben, guys…so obviously, Spielberg inserted Ben’s head after the fact.
Anyway, back to the topic: Jaws made me drop my popcorn, so to speak. Ditto on Wait Until Dark–when first released, theaters dimmed the lights during the climactic sequence. Alien–probably the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.
When I was 5 years old, it was Darby O’Gill and the Little People (the banshee, in particular) but I haven’t seen it since.
I couldn’t see anything in Blair Witch that was remotely frightening.
It’s Alive. I remember seeing that trailer in sixth grade, and it would scare me so badly! I saw the actual movie a few years ago, and it really was quite laughable.
But Hooper did mention the shark tooth he had gotten from the boat - he dropped it when Ben Gardener’s head popped out at him. When the mayor asked where the tooth was, he said he had lost it. He didn’t mention the head popping out, all he said was “I had an accident.” I never understood why he didn’t mention the head - wouldn’t that have been a better way to convince the mayor of the shark problem?
Not necessarily. When Hooper is questioned about the shark tooth he pried from the hull if the boat, he mumbles something about “I lost it.” I always thought he said that because he didn’t want to admit that he screamed like a little girl when that head popped out!
Brody said the line about the boat being all chewed up, so I think Hooper didn’t tell him at all.
Can’t believe I forgot Psycho. And good call on Trilogy of Terror.
And here’s another: the original The Haunting. Wonderfully creepy. (Forget the godawful remake).
Ah, DarkWriter beat me to it, should have hit preview…
Talk about SCARY! :eek:
And jsc1953 hit the nail on the head with the original The Haunting. That one gave me chills. The remake was like most remakes…shouldn’t have been done.
OK, I hate to be anal about this, but here’ s the Jaws scene:
*
Martin: This is a Great White Larry, a big one! And any shark expert in the world will tell you it’s a killer! It’s a man-eater!
Hooper: Look the situation, is that apparently a Great White shark has staked a claim in the waters off Amity Island. And he’s going to continue to feed here as long as there is food in the water.**
Martin: And there’s no limit to what he’s gonna do! I mean we’ve already had three incidents, two people killed inside of a week. **And it’s gonna happen again, it happened before! The Jersey beach!
…
Hooper: Look Mr. Vaughn. Mr. Vaughn. I pulled a tooth the size of a shot glass out of the wreck tow of a boat out there and it was the tooth of a Great White.
Martin: It was Ben Gardner’s boat, it was all chewed up. I helped tow it in, you sh-- you should have seen him!
Vaughn: Where, where is that tooth. Did you see it Brody?
Martin: No I didn’t see it, he, he dropped it. We had a little accident on the way in.
Hooper: I had an accident.
*
OK, two deaths: Chrissie & Alex Kintner. The third incident would be the two guys on the pier with the roast. You would think that when counting people killed by sharks, they would’ve thought of Ben Gardner – if the scene had been shot that way.
So I draw the conclusion that the original scene had the boat, the hole in the hull, the shark tooth–and then Hooper drops the tooth for some mundane reason.
The realistic murder scene in Fargo where Steve Buscemi shoots the guy on top of the parking garage had my heart pounding for an hour afterwards.
Hey, I started to watch The Silence of the Lambs for the first time last night, then remembered that it might be pretty horrifying, so I turned it off. Just how scary is it? I know it’s a four-star flick, and I love Anthony Hopkins. How is it on the wet underpants meter?
Ooh, I also forgot about The Vanishing. Now there’s a horrifying film, yet there are no gruesome murder scenes or even scary acting (a la Anthony Hopkins as Lechter). All the fear is generated by excellently placed tension and your own imagination.
Ok, if I saw it now, I’d probably be laughing, too. Still, when I was a kid, my parents had a bunch of creepy-looking little statues all around the house, and I always had nightmares (even before seeing ToT) about them coming to life.
Another common feature in my childhood nightmares was being in a huge room or long hallway all by myself, with some loud noise preventing me from hearing where the monsters were coming from. Because of this, it was Danny’s riding through the hotel that freaked me more than anything else in The Shining.
BTW, If you liked the Japanese version of The Ring, I recommend Kairo. Some very nicely creepy scenes in that one.
A major part of the story is a website that seems to be a link to the afterworld (and it ain’t a pretty place). In one scene, a character connects to the site, and just sees a black screen with a thin vertical band of light, as if from inside a dark closet with the door open just a crack. Looking more closely at the light, she realizes she’s looking at herself from behind. The closet door behind her opens, but there’s nothing inside. Then, the view on her screen slowly starts getting closer… and closer… and closer. The scene is done so slowly and silently, it was perfect.