There was a film made in the '70s called “Patrick” (I think) about a seemingly comatose man being kept alive by life support. Most of the film had him lying in a hospital bed with his eyes wide open, staring at nothing and not responding to anything. Turned out that he had psychic abilities that he eventually revealed to a nurse by making a typewriter in his room type out his thoughts. In one scene during a thunderstorm (I believe it was a dream sequence) he slowly turns his head to his left, complete with creaking tendons, to stare straight into the camera (the camera being the POV of the nurse). That scene made you feel like you were totally trapped in the room with him. At the end of the movie (SPOILER) he is killed (forgot how)…only to suddenly jump out of his hospital bed and straight into the camera. When that happened I didn’t jump, but went into a cold kind of shock where I could not move at all for a good 10-15 seconds.
For pure shock value, it’s hard to beat the lake scene from the first Friday the 13th.
I think I kicked the row of theater seats in front of me loose from their moorings.
Damn, here I thought I’d be able to add one that hadn’t been mentioned but you beat me to it. This whole movie is pretty damn scary. Kinderman’s discussions with the Gemini/Father Karras are just down right creepy.
Malaka, you stole mine! 
Seriously, though, I’m glad to see someone else who’s freaked out by those terrible little girls in The Shining… I still occasionally hesitate before turning corners that lead to long hallways. The thing about those girls that really scares the fecal matter outta’ me, though, is that short (maybe two or three seconds) CU shot of their faces, smiling in a subtly-hideous way. They just look… wrong. I can watch the infamous biker disembowlment scene at the end of Dawn of the Dead without batting an eye, but I still can’t look at the screen during that one shot.
I also second Max Torque’s nomination of The Blair Witch Project, especially the final scene in the house, where the two remaining characters are completely, and very convincingly, out of their minds with fear. Maybe it’s just me, but I think a lot of filmmakers underestimate how scary it is to actually show someone who looks and sounds scared.
To add a few of my own, I find the hospital scene in Jacob’s Ladder really terrifying–Tim Robbins, strapped to that gurney, looking up and seeing that he is surrounded by a group of deformed doctors (one doesn’t even have a face), and then they take that huge hypo and… well, let’s just say that this isn’t the best movie for folks with “needle anxiety.”
Another scene that had me completely on the edge was the scene in Lost Highway where Bill Pullman is going through his darkened house, room by room, looking for an intruder. It has the feel of one of those nightmares where you know something is coming after you, and you keep looking and looking for it, but you can’t see it… even as you sense it getting ever closer. Creee-PY. The movie as a whole is more surreal than it is scary, but that scene freaked me out badly… and I don’t freak easily, ladies and gentlemen.
Wow, you just yanked out a chunk of memory from deep inside my brain. I remember that movie too, but I don’t think I’ve even thought about it at all in 20 years. If I hadn’t seen this thread I probably never would have either.
But now that I recall it, yeah it was pretty creepy.
I just looked up the link at IMDB - Here Tis.
Oh, I just remembered another one. Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man with that DRILL. AAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!
The ones that stand out in my mind:
Serpent and the Rainbow - the “I wanna hear you scream” scene. Bill Pullman gets a spike through the scrotum, enough said.
Jaws - when the Captain is slowly sliding into the sharks mouth as the shark chomps away. Probably the first really gory scene I ever saw.
One of the Omen movies - the scene where they are playing hockey and some guy falls through the ice and everybody else is trying to free him and the current keeps dragging him away under the ice but within their sight. It bugged me because I could see that happening IRL.
Nobody’s yet mentioned “Phantasm” – a low budget spectacular from the late 70s. It’s the one with that little flying sphere where an adolescent kid (can’t remember the actor or character name) who discovers that the shady undertaker/manager of the local funeral home is stealing the bodies he’s supposed to be burying and takes them to another dimension inhabited by pint-sized Jawa like guys, and…and…
well, ok the movie doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but there’s this great scene where the kid looks at an antique photograph of a horse-drawn hearse. He realizes it’s being driven by the same evil undertaker who’s stealing bodies in the here & now (make that then & now seeing as the movie is at least 20 years old). Anyway, the kid keeps staring at the photo, then the undertaker IN THE PHOTO comes to life and stares back at him, growling like an animal as he does so.
Interestingly enough, Stephen King wrote a book “It” several years AFTER this movie came out where two more adolescent boys look at an old photo which comes to life, and Pennywise the evil clown appears and addresses them through it.
Coincidence??? HMMMMMMMMMM…
That Pee Wee Herman film…where he’s in the semi…and that lady truck driver makes a scary face “bwaahaaaaaaa”
damn…scared me to death
Tygr,
Where did you see that double feature? Back in college in Arcata, CA, I saw those two movies together.
Man, were my knees shaking when we got out of the theater! Complete strangers were leaning on each other, laughing shakily.
Too many “jump scenes” . . . those aren’t scary, just momentarily exciting.
Not a horror movie, but one of the most disturbing I’ve seen recently is the scene in Return to Paradise when you realize that, despite the efforts of the protagonists, Lewis is not getting his reprieve. (Between that one, Gladiator and 8mm, Joaquin Phoenix gets some raw deals in his movies.)
Also, the scene in Rear Window where Grace Kelly is in Raymond Burr’s apartment, Burr is on his way in, and Jimmy Stewart has no way to warn her.
I’m not a big fan of gore flicks (nor chick flicks - frankly the entire movie The Piano was painful), concur on the shower scene and overhead murder scene in Psyco but for sheer pins and needles on the edge of your seat is a film no one has mentioned so far:
Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing
I saw it once on TV probably in the 70’s and it still haunts me today. Rarely available (if your rental store has it, do it, it’s not generally available). Carol Lynly and Kyle (something or other). Carol Lynly as a mom who has just moved to England, goes to the school to pick up her daughter Bunny, but she’s not there. Did she even exist??? (won’t tell more). Very creepy.
Every choice listed here (that I’ve seen) I agree with, but am surprised at one nobody has mentioned.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer - A scene where you are watching through a video cam laying on the floor of an average house. The father is tied up lying on the floor and the mother is also tied up, on the steps. Henry’s ‘friend’ is wanting to rape the mother, but Henry won’t allow it. In the meantime, the father protests and is kicked repeatedly until unconscious.
You hear a door open and the words “Mom, I’m home” as a young teenage boy walks into the scene. He sees what is going on and tries to run back out the door, but with no luck. One of them grabs him and kills him on the spot, with mother watching the whole time.
It has been a long time since I’ve seen this, and will likely never watch it again (so the details may be a bit off), but it really REALLY freaked me out because it could (and likely has) happen.