Top 10 Scariest film moments

[Hand of Evil]

As I look at these list I wonder if age has a lot to do with what is scary? I am 42 and note most of my movies were late 70's to mid-80's, does it really have impact?

 

[Berandor]

"Don't Look Now" ...the entire movie...

Oh, I'm happy someone already mentioned it. Seriously, when

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the red-hooded "girl" turns around, and it's that freakish visage of that woman...

- it gets me everytime!

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And those ladies laughing!

In "Arachnophobia", when

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the spider runs out of the man's nose

.

In "Stir of Echoes", when

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the girl's fingernail breaks off

The first 15 Minutes of "House on Haunted Hill".

But I don't watch that many Scary movies...

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

As I look at these list I wonder if age has a lot to do with what is scary? I am 42 and note most of my movies were late 70's to mid-80's, does it really have impact?

Well, you know youngsters today--thinking their crap is somehow better than the more original films we dinosaurs remember! j/k

I have to agree with your first post--where was Psycho in that first list?!! I saw that on a little 12" t.v. in the 70s and the shower scene scared me to death. I wanted to show it to my daughter (who is almost 13) and she will not watch that movie--from having seen the shower scene once on t.v.

Jaws also has that great scene

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with the head falling out of the hole of the boat

.

 

[Celtavian]

re

One movie that has always stood out in my mind as very scare was The Changeling with George C. Scott. I had nightmares it was so frickin scary. Anyone else watch this film?

I have to admit that the scene with the little girl crawling out of the T.V. rates pretty high on my "scary moments" list. If that happened to me, I would be mesmerized then horrified. Just like the movie.

 

[MarauderX]

I agree with most of the other ones, and call me weird, but...

* EvilDead 2: The scene where he is alone in the cabin with everything becoming possessed freaked me out for some reason. I know, it was still funny, but after seeing it at 3 am I couldn't get to sleep...

* Clockwork Orange: The beginning scenes were kinda freaky enough to weird me out, but when everyone was getting even... how could you take that?

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

Psycho for me, but not the shower scene, which frankly was telegraphed a mile away. Now the scene when Martin Balsam gets killed, that was so quick and scary. You knew he was gonna bite it, you just didn't know when.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Looksing at that list I can't think of anything scary about any of those scenes. What is more irriating is that most of those movies actually have genuiniely scary moments in them but Jack busting down the door in The Shining is not scary in the least - it was campy and funny - yes but not scary.

Tom Cashal - the scenes you describe in both the Ring and the Blair Witch Project are the ones that scared the crap out of me too. And to think they did it without blasting 300 decibels of noise at us when the scen occured too!

 

[javapadawan]

One movie that has always stood out in my mind as very scare was The Changeling with George C. Scott. I had nightmares it was so frickin scary. Anyone else watch this film?

Oh yeah! What a classic. It's a shame that it's so often overlooked in "Best Horror Movie" type lists. The part that got me really creeped out was

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when George comes home from tossing the rubber ball off a bridge... and here it comes, rolling down the stairs again...

*shivers*

I'd add the aforementioned scenes from The Ring and Blair Witch to my list as well.

Then there's this one scene from an otherwise unremarkable horror movie that I never caught the name of. I came across it already in progress while flipping channels late one night, had to be 13-14 years ago. There are these two college guys, out on some kind of frat house dare/initiation, and they have to go into this mental institution/hospital and take pictures of some patient who is, of course, kept in the basement behind a door secured only with a cross (or something similar).

Opening the door, the view shifts to that of the kid with the camera, and all you can see is blackness. Then the kid starts snapping pictures, and the flash briefly illuminates this shadowy figure. Next flash, the figure is closer. The flashes speed up and this pale white face with shark black eyes is closer with each one, and then suddenly he's right on top of you...

Anyway, the rest of the movie was unimpressive, though I watched the whole thing hoping for another shiver like the one I got from that camera scene. If anyone recognizes the movie from that bit, I'd love to know the title so I can rent it and see if it's really as creepy as my memory seems to think it was.

Most of the rest of my favorite scary scenes come from videogames like Silent Hill and the first Resident Evil.

 

[reapersaurus]

I agree about Blair Witch and The Ring.
But in The Ring, the creepiest part (image burned into my mind) is when they show the

Spoiler

opening of the closet door, and the wasted corpse who's jaw is dangling horrified lifeless and open.

 

[barsoomcore]

The moment in Dawn of the Dead when their careful hideaway starts to unravel. Romero is SO good at that stuff.

One of the creepiest bits in Poltergeist is a little moment where the mom walks through the kitchen and then the camera pans back and all the chairs are up on the table. That always freaks me out.

Has anyone else seen the new Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters? There's a moment in there with a bag. Just a bag, leaving a smear on the floor. It's bad. Very very bad.

And another vote here for The Thing. The bit where he's got everyone tied down so he can figure which of them is the monster... ay yi yi...