We’ve done scariest moments in movies gazillions of times, but I don’t think we’ve done ones on telly for a while. Or maybe we have, and I just don’t care. So, anyway.
For me: in The X-files episode in which the ghosts of young girls keep appearing, and there’s one ghost stuck behind the end of a bowling run thingy (where the pins go) improbably, and her lips are moving. Brrr.
Also: a recent episode of Angel where there’s a weird insectoid kind of demon that has imprisoned a vampire and is doing something horrible with his entrails. Urk.
I saw it years ago when I was quite young, but parts of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (old, old, old minseries) really creeped me out.
I’m a big fan of “X-Files,” but for some reason can’t think of anything creepy just this minute. I know there are plenty of scenes that are creepy from that show, though.
Doctor Who was full of them … the ones that stick with me are the Cybermen coming out of the sewers in “The Invasion”, the shop window dummies coming to life in “Spearhead from Space”, the mask coming off in “The Talons of Weng-Chi’ang” …
The BBC’s done some excellent ghost stories in its time; there’s the Michael Hordern adaptation of M.R. James’ “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to you, my Lad”, or Nigel Kneale’s seminal TV play The Stone Tape, both of which have moments which will scare your socks off. Possibly the creepiest thing they ever did was The Nightmare Man, a four-part adaptation of what’s actually a fairly bog-standard horror novel … the sequence where the (mostly off-screen) “thing” attacks a solitary camper in a tent is … brrrrr …
I’m going to have to go with what is both my all time favorite X-Files AND the creepiest one I’ve ever seen: Home.
It’s the one with the inbred brothers who keep their limbless mother on a rolling dolly under a bed … and she’s all for it. I don’t think I know anyone who’s seen the episode who isn’t at least a little creeped out about it.
The pilot for Twin Peaks has one of the scariest visuals I’ve ever seen on television. It’s basically just a shot of an empty staircase and a slowly moving ceiling fan, but it creeped the hell out of me when I first saw it.
Gilda Radner played a little girl who kept infuriating her parents by waking them up when she got scared; by a man coming into her room (the repairman retrieving his tools) or the bed kept shaking (a family of Gypsies living under her bed). “You’d better not get us up again, young lady!”
So she walks to her closet, opens it, and . . . There stands a huge, drooling monster with an ax.
I’ve never heard that kind of sound coming from a studio audience: a low moan of utter horror, like they were all simultaneously soiling themselves.
This is more a ‘personal’ one with odd real-world timing.
My father’s first name is ‘Norman’. He and my mom had gone out for the evening, and left my brothers and I home. We’d just gotten cable, and are looking through the available movies.
‘Psycho’ is on.
Gets to one of the parts where Norman Bates’ mom is ‘talking’ to him on the phone, telling him what to do, and Bates hangs up.
Our phone immediately rings.
I pick it up, and hear an old woman’s voice on the other end of the line, “Norman?”
I almost screamed!
(Turned out it was my grandmother, looking for my dad. Our voices at the time sounded very alike)
Man, that show had TONS of the creepiest moments. Especially for me, I was only like 11 years old when it was on. Besides what you mentioned, I was also particularly disturbed by the dancing dwarf dream, the zombie-looking girl wandering on the railroad tracks; her dress all ragged, any of the murder scenes, and especially anything concerning the character Bob.
Other than Twin Peaks, the single most frightening thing I ever saw on tv was something unknown to most people. I was about 7 or 8 years old, so it was about 1988 or '89. Maybe earlier. I was watching PBS. They had a time filler between shows. It was like an artsy student film short or something. It was called “Zulu Warrior”. It was shots of, well, a Zulu Warrior, dancing in neon colors, alternating with shots of a spinning PORK CHOP (as improbable as that seems), all while a chanting voice in the background sang, “Zulu Warrior. Zulu warrior.” With an eerie calmness. Whoa. It scared me forever because I just didn’t understand it. I never saw it again, luckily.
I remember seeing an interview with the actor (he was actually a prop master) stating that he was really nothing like his character in the show. I thought, so he’s really not a psychotic apparition that appears in people’s nightmares? Good for him!
another vote for TWIN PEAKS- when Laura’s corpse is on the examining table & Cooper is probing with tweezer’s under her fingernail for an agonizingly slow several seconds while the fluorescent lights are flickering- chilling!
all out scary moment- the damn Zuni Festish Doll going after Karen Black in TRILOGY OF TERROR
The Cursed Doll sent to the British Colonel’s Niece episode of NIGHT GALLERY.- I would watch that between fingers over my eyes when I was a kid (ya see, my Grandmom collected dolls…!L)
I’m going to go with Woeg, Hush definitely very scarey
There was a TV series on the BBC years ago with these big stones that had eyes and could move and was THE scarest thing anyone had ever or since seen, but no one can remember what it was called and it’s not available on video/DVD or been repeated …
I second “Salem’s Lot” as a surprisingly creepy t.v. production.
But nothing ever kept me up late at night like the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” story “Where the Woodbine Twines”: a young girl with an overactive imagination goes to live with her aunt after her parents’ die. To make a long story short, the little girl gets a doll of a little black girl (the story suggests the prim & proper aunt is racist), and the aunt has this weird suspicion that the doll occasionally comes to life as a real girl…well it’s actually too complicated to give a short synopsis (it was an hour long episode), but the ending was really, really creepy!
There are many genuinely scary moments in Lars Von Trier’s miniseries The Kingdom, but I’ll never forget the final scene, in which……after an impossibly-accelerated pregnancy, a woman gives birth to a supernaturally-conceived ‘child’, which emerges as a fully-grown man. This looks much more ‘realistic’ than you would think possible, and is presented very graphically, with an almost documentary feel. Aaaaaaagh!
There was the one about sundials and golems…
There was “The Box of Delights”, “The wolves are running…” yeah merry chrismas to you too!..
“Children of the Stones” was HTV, but still, oh my god…
This is not to mention Chocky, Day of the Triffids and any other Wyndham seried they made. Holy hell… I still have nightmares
