Straight up confession: It doesn’t take a lot to scare me. As an adult who knows better, I may have once (or 2,000 times) imagined there was someone under the bed or in the other room or in the closet, or replaced Nuv beside me in bed, and have laid there with my heartbeat clanging like church bells in my ears, sweating and frozen solid. Basically I don’t have flight or fight in me; I have only possum. So, I’m pretty much the perfect victim. And the worst person to watch scary movies. But I do, always have, and now in the latest installation of High Five, I have compiled a list of my Top 5 Scariest Movie Moments. (Asterisk – Some are from my youth and I’m sure the scare doesn’t hold up, but at the time – crazy scary. And I didn’t include movies like ‘Drag Me To Hell’ or ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ where I was extremely terrified and/or uncomfortable for the entirety of the movie. Otherwise this list would have been too long to write, never mind read.) Spoilers are imminent, so be forewarned.
5. Tales From The Crypt – The New Arrival
The reveal of Felicity
So, yes, this is from a TV show, not a movie. But it’s good, it’s scary, it has Robert Patrick in it, and it embedded into my brain the fear of children wearing masks. Years after seeing this, I can say the word “Felicity” to my 27-year-old brother, and we both still get the heeby-jeeby shudder up our spines. I was stoked to find the whole episode, chunked into Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 on the public scrapbook of my media youth, Mr. YouTube. Watch it and lament the fact that both Zelda Rubinstein and Tales From The Crypt aren’t with us anymore.
4. The Ring
The quick shot of the girl’s face in the closet
Why I continued watching this movie after this shot, in the first few minutes of the film, is a testament to my a) fortitude or b) complete idiocy. The herky-jerky-hair-in-the-face-crawl-out-the-well-towards-the-camera scene was a close second as far as a hands-clamped-firmly-over-my-eyes moment. This film guarantees my children will always have shaved heads.
3. Quarantine
The shot near the end poking up into the attic where you see the “Mad Scientist”
I know, I’ve mentioned this scene and movie before. But a scene that made me, in the safety and warmth of my own living room, SCREAM OUT LOUD, in front of boys, no less, who would hold this incident hostage and tease me about it for infinity years to come – that is worthy of this list. The scream was a combination of a film that built to be increasingly more and more scary, a night vision shot and a pure “what the FUCK is that?” all coming together perfectly to make me lose my shit.
2. Arachnophobia
When the spider pops out of it’s nest as Jeff Daniels pours alcohol on it
This marks the first time I screamed in a movie theatre. I was only 13 so I blame my youthful nerves of jell-o, and a gut full of pop. Why? Because I never have been scared of spiders. They should be afraid of me, with my skillful accidental destruction of their homes over the years. I swear if there is a web somewhere, I have unsuspectingly mowed through it. They probably tell campfire stories about me, El Destructor, the ungainly human responsible for making more spiders homeless than any other. And I will, without fear, kill one if it’s in my home – screw getting equipment to move it back outside carefully. You pull a B & E – your fate is mine, fucker.
1. The Orphanage
The shot where the woman hit by the car suddenly comes back to life (Unable to find clip or still – really I was too scared to look too hard)
After this scene, my friend and I looked over at each other with that embarrassed nervous giggle, and exchanged that telepathic thought of “We’re adults and we have paid full price to see this, but do you want to LEAVE RIGHT NOW?” Essentially this is a first cousin of the scene in ‘Se7en‘ where the starved dude suddenly gasps. And just like the curb stomp in ‘American History X,’ there’s no chance I could watch this scene again. In an otherwise more cerebral, gut – wrenching psychological suspense movie, beautifully executed and subtitled, this shot nearly induced the popcorn I’d just swallowed to come shooting out and decorate my seat at Tinseltown. Honestly, other than ‘Pan’s Labyrinth,’ this was the best example of makeup effects I’ve ever seen in a movie. If you haven’t seen this movie, please do. Even with the intense creepy factor of children in homemade sack masks, it’s the best movie of the five I’ve listed here; one both my Mama and Nuv would love.
And now it’s your turn. Let me know in the Comments what scenes made you gently dampen your underwear or never want to go camping ever again.
The “Felicity” episode of “Tales from the Crypt” made me hold my bladder all night for two straight weeks.
The “We’re going to need a bigger boat” scene in Jaws where the shark first heaves itself out of the waves never fails to straighten my spine.
The very last image in The Blair Witch Project still haunts me to this day. Not SCARY but very, very FREAKY. The entire preview audience filed out in complete silence. That is the power of cinema.
The hand out of the grave shot in Carrie, now a horrible, horrible cliche, scared the popcorn poop out of audiences at the time. The double-nightmare sequence in An American Werewolf in London also filled a few Pampers.
I remember “Arachnophobia” – so awesome!
For me, I love the scene in “Rosemary’s Baby” when Mia Farrow is in the phone booth and turns around to see the back of a man who may or may not be after her. By the time I saw the movie, it was no longer scary to me, but this scene made my heart jump into my throat!
Also, in “Rear Window,” when Jimmy Stewart is sitting in his apartment, lights off, stuck in a wheelchair, as the man who he suspects/knows has killed his wife, stands outside the door with just his feet highlighted! Uck! Or when Grace Kelly is over in the killer’s apartment investigating, and he comes back before they expect him to – Yikes!
Finally, as a young girl, my best friend and I watched an absolute classic – “Witchboard” – that had us screaming the whole way through, particularly when anyone closed a medicine cabinet with a mirror on it, whether there was anything at all to scare us!
As a child, the librarian scene from Ghostbusters and for what ever reason, Watchers in the Woods.
As an adult, Paranormal Activity made me cover my face, and the insane asylum sequence from The House on Haunted Hill (remake).
Not really ‘jumpy’ scary, but then I’m not a jumpy guy. I can’t really think of anything other than the Sloth killing in ‘Seven.’ Instead, here’s 5 movie scenes that ‘creepy’ scared or severely disturbed me on some level. SPOILERS AHEAD
DISTURBING MY PEACE:
5) ‘Irreversible.’ There are two scenes in this that disturbed me, really, but the one that makes the cut into my top 5 is not the one you’re thinking of if you’ve heard of this movie. Rather, it’s the fire extinguisher scene. Gah! I don’t even want to talk about it. Let’s move on…
4) Shakey-head Dude and the posse in ‘Jacob’s Ladder.’ Seen while peaking on acid. NOT RECOMMENDED!
3) Pink shaves his nipples off in ‘Pink Floyd: The Wall.’ See #4. Drugs are bad kids, and even worse when nipple violence is involved. Leaving this movie convinced there was no point to life was good times!
2) The wife’s older sister in ‘Pet Cemetary’. I still get a bit of a screwface and the shivering willies just thinking about this gross cancer of a character being fed cream of mushroom soup or porridge or little kid bones stew or whatever sludge was in that bowl. Child-Nuv saw this with his a-hole older brothers in the basement. At the end of this traumatic experience, Child-Nuv had to make his way out of the room, into the dark and up the creaky, evil stairs. The lights were flipped off by one brother as I was halfway up the stairs and my leg was grabbed by the other as he made proclamations of dragging me to hell in a convincing devil voice. The achilles heel cutting scene flashed before my eyes. I straight up girl-shrieked, shook myself loose (I would’ve gnawed my leg off to get away in those few seconds) and ran top-fucking-speed to Mom’s room until the danger passed and the brother-laughter died down. I still got hair though, so who’s laughin’ now mofos?!
1) ‘Anti-Christ.’ The whole fucking movie, which opens with Charlotte Gainesbourg’s bush, Willem Defoe’s balls and full on penetration intercut with a baby moving towards an open window and falling to it’s (thankfully off-camera) death. You wouldn’t think it could get any worse, but it does. If I have to pick a scene…well, most people talk about the scissor/lip scene (not those lips…) so I’ll instead choose the scene where Charlotte smashes Willem in the crotch with a woodblock, jerks him off until he ‘cums’ blood, drills a hole through his calf, bolts him (through the wound) to a milling stone, and throws away the only tool that would allow him to free himself. Yep. That’s probably the most disturbing scene I’ve ever seen. Good times, Lars Von Trier.