Went to see the Exorcist when it came out with a couple who were friends – it was a late night showing, and we’d been to the pub beforehand. It totally freaked us out, so much so that I couldn’t go back to where I was staying (I would have been alone), so went back to theirs. We were sat in pretty much silence….then a picture fell off the wall and we nearly jumped out of our skins. Never seen the film since and if clips get shown I still totally freak out! What a wuss….
Terrific film. I still rate it as the best horror film ever. For me the most powerful scene had nothing to do with special effects or funny voices, but is the scene where Ellen Burstyn meets Father Karass for the first time. Hiding her sleepless, traumatised eyes behind dark glasses she looks so desperate and helpless and utterly out of her depth. “Oh, not a psychiatrist. She needs a priest! She’s already seen every fucking psychiatrist in the world and they sent me to you, now you’re gonna send me back to them? Jesus Christ! Won’t somebody help me?…Can’t you help her, just help her?”
Yes, this sets an unreachable standard for horror movies. And what makes it especially special is that when you learn about its making, the stuff that happened off camera, the poisonous, grinding atmosphere, it only gets more terrifying. Not like other horror movies, when showing you how the tricks were done reduces their impact. Billy Friedkin … the greatest film-maker ever, the twisted fuck …
I’ve just received an email from the home of cinema, the Prince Charles Cinema in London, announcing that they’re going to be screening Sorcerer on three dates in November. Unmissable, I’d say.
I saw it on my own in Brighton on a Tuesday afternoon, which happened to be pensioner day. They were completely unfazed (one of them said, ‘Ooh, didn’t know it was going to be like this.’) and talked all the way through, which helped to dull the terror a bit. Never felt remotely like seeing it again though.
I also love The Exorcist. It really bothers me that its reputation has been diluted to the extent it’s almost seen as a joke these days. It’s truly and insidiously horrific in a slow burning way. The freakiest scenes for me are:
(1) The medical examination scene.
(2) The bit where Karas returns to that room (that chilling, claustrophobic room) and finds the old priest dead and the girl just sitting there. Ugh.
I think that’s an awfully glib comment in light of Donald Sutherland’s notorious early 70s custard addiction, Bob. We very nearly lost him completely to Ambrosia.
I saw The Man with the X Ray Eyes on late night TV when I was far too young. It culminates with Ray Milland, driven mad by his x-ray vision, stumbling into a holy-roller church service. When the congregation start chanting ‘If thine ye offend thee pluck it out! Pluck it out!! Pluck it out!!!’ he claws at his face at the film ends with a close-up of the bloody holes where his eyes had been. That’s stayed with me for more than 40 years, and I thinking about now gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Oh great. And now this evening’s Simpsons plot has Lisa discover a drug which renders the aged tolerable but has the side effect of over-lubricating their eye-sockets so their eyeballs pop out. Thanks for that Groening.
Yep. Me too. Exactly this. I seem to recall being allowed to stay up to watch it on a school night when BBC 1 would occasionally show feature films after the 9 O’Clock News.
I must have been 12 or 13 at the time. I don’t think my Dad had any inkling how sinister it turned out to be. The schlocky title might have caught him out. But, yes, the final scene had me freaked out for a night or two after.
Another creepy Ray Milland film is The Premature Burial (unsurprisingly directed by Roger Corman from a Poe short story), where he plays a guy who has the condition catalepsy and is freaked about the thought of, yep, being buried alive). Chilling shenanigans ensue.
Saving Private Ryan. The knife fight in the last battle scene between the German they’d allowed to live and one of Easy Company, while Opham stands by, terrified and helpless. I’ve seen many film deaths but this one really made me believe it. I think it’s the fact that it’s hand to hand, and the German ignoring the last desperate pleadings of his victim, that does it for me.
I can’t watch the film anymore because I know this scene is in it.
Ah that’s a different thread. Recently had this argument with another filmhead who is a parent, but the onscreen death of a child renders the following that pre-kids were fine unwatchable for me:
The Ice Storm
Don’t Look Now
Decalogue No 1 (the one with the ice, the worst of the lot).
well, as I say, I haven’t seen it. But I’d be safe to assume that little Fido doesn’t get to spend the film lolloping around with a bone in his mouth and a goofy grin, right?
If you made a movie about a gang of plucky dogs being menaced by a supernatural clown in 80s Bumfuck USA I would watch it, and so would literally everybody else.
In fact, I’m going to start a thread about movies that would be better if the human heroes were replaced by talking dogs, because whimsy.
I’d be first in line to download buy a multiplex ticket to see a dog-cast 2001 – that scene where the ape throws a bone up into the sky? In the canine version, it stays a bone! And that monolith? It’s a cosmic dog urinal! Someone send out for cronuts and get an intern in here …
From what I understand the Beeb have just done a Cumberswag miniseries of The Child In Time. I got 20 pages or so into it when my girls were tiny and had to put it down. I’ve never gone back to it.
I just watched that last night. (A one-off, not a mini series.) It was ok, given the short amount of time it lasted, although, natch, I far preferred the book. McEwan translates quite well to the screen. The Cement Garden, The Last Day Of Summer, Enduring Love, The Comfort Of Strangers, Atonement and The Child In Time have all had pretty decent screen adaptations. Bodes well for the forthcoming On Chesil Beach.
Didn’t watch! Have the book on my shelves but unread since the advent of children sixteen years ago. Only another 4 to go before technically they are all adults, but I’m feeling that it’ll always be difficult to watch things like this. There are upsides to having kids though.
This was the scene which immediately sprang to my mind when I read the OP. I too cannot watch this scene, and I leave the room or just put the film off. It horrifies me.
Yes! First time I watched this I was terrified. We watched it again in a German lesson at school (yes, really) and we all laughed at it. But that first watch, blimey…
Seeing The Elephant Man as a kid really messed me up. I remember when it came out, they’d show the same clip on TV of when he’s chased through a railway station by a mob and has his masked ripped off, but they’d always tease by stopping at showing John Merrick’s face. But one time they showed this clip all the way through, and seeing poor Merrick’s deformed terrified face for the first time made my blood run cold. I’d only just started sleeping with my bedroom light off around then, but after that I kept it on for years. If i thought there was going to be any reference to The Elephant Man on tv or in a magazine, I’d immediately get anxious. It took me years to exorcise this fear by finally sitting down a decade later and watching the movie all the way through.
For me, it’s the unforgettable scene in … that film I can’t remember … you know … the British movie that’s got four or five mini-movies in it, black and white … hang on, don’t tell me … anyway, it’s the one with the ventriloquist’s dummy coming to life in the last frame … starring the unforgettable what’s his name … you know, him … ooh! That’s the scene I’ll never forget. That one.
(Definitely not Archie Andrews, should any half-wit think of adding that in a comment)
I saw this film at least thirty years ago on late night TV, and no-one else seems to have heard of it.
A scientist has isolated a thing in your back which causes your body to freeze when you’re frightened. It’s microscopic, but when it senses fear it expands to about a couple of feet in length and tenses up. The scientist has removed one of these from a body for research and it turns out to have a life of its own and escapes. People get scared when they see it, which means it immediately blows up and clutches the nearest thing, usually someone’s throat, and starts to strangle them. That’s the scary bit. I think the hero was the only one who can control his own fear and so recaptures it.
Have I made this up? If I have, do you think I could sell the idea?
Sounds like The Tingler starring Vincent Price. The only way to release the parasite from killing you is by screaming. When they showed the movie in cinemas, they’d rigged up some of the cinema seats to give electric shocks to the poor unsuspecting souls sat in them to make them scream and cause hysteria in the audience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tingler
Thanks. That’s the one. although my memory has mangled the plot a bit. At last I know that it wasn’t something I imagined due to acombination of tiredness and Watneys.
The Tingler is a unique film as it’s cheap low-budget 50’s exploitation trash that’s also manages to be genuinely terrifying too. The scene that really sticks in my head is when a woman who thinks she’s being haunted in her house runs herself a bath to calm down. The film is in black and white, but when she turns the taps on, bright red technicolour blood shoots out. Simple, but brilliantly shocking. The film also includes cinema’s first onscreen acid trip when Vincent Price injects himself with LSD!
Yes! I remember that scene. I’ve lost the habit now, but I used to go to film societies and watch works by Bergman, Truffaut and so on when they were a thing. I liked them, but none of them had scenes which have stuck in my mind like that one or many other B movie scenes.
I re-read a collection of stories by H P Lovecraft (no relation) last year, and while he might not be Tolstoy, I recognised image after image as I went through it. There is a strange intensity about a lot of popular culture, perhaps because its creators often have a more genuine and original vision than many supposedly serious artists have.
There’s that scene in Under The Skin where Scarlett Johansson leaves that young boy on the beach in the middle of nowhere, presumably to die of exposure. Freaked me out, that did, as a new dad at the time. Even more horrific for just being played straight and deadpan.
The bit with the kid on the beach, but also the sequence where you see what’s happening to her victims. And just the overall feels of the movie. Brilliantly horrible, stayed with me for ages.
Oi! You got yourself your first grown-up thread here! The least you could do is curate it. I say “curate” because that’s what one does to apparently everything these days, from compilation albums to blogs to (I don’t know) Happy Meal Toy collections and sandwiches. What it means here, bri, is adding waspish rejoinders, encouragements, and fun new comments to engender a feeling of togetherness and enthusiasm. GAG, FFS.
Dad was made redundant in the early 80s and went straight out and bought a VCR. He had a mate who had a huge library of videos that he was happy to lend to us.
Being bloodthirsty little tikes, me and my brother got ahold of films that we were far too young for..
Scanners was a bad one – the head explosion scene is revolting and shocked us. But we became pretty un-shockable pretty quickly.
Until, that is, I went to the pictures to watch the re-released Exorcist. That is an amazing film; frightening, unnerving and filled with dread. It’s stands head and shoulders above every other horror movie I’ve seen. But It gave me nightmares and I haven’t seen it again. The whole thing gave me the heebie jeebies. But… from memory, when Regan says ‘You’re gonna die up there’ is freaky. As is the bit when you hear the roar from the attic and you just know that something awful is going to happen.
Oh – attics remains me. At the start of The Grudge, a young woman puts her head up into an attic to investigate the noises she has heard. The camera moves back and we, the audience, see that behind her vulnerable head there is something very bad and once she turns around she is going to see it too. Shudder.
I taught Film Genres at a couple of UK universities in the early 2000s in the course of which I proposed a session on the Pseudo-documentary. Prior to The Office, this was a less than familiar genre, but it did produce the likes of Spinal Tap, The Blair Witch Project, Bob Roberts and a handful of others. When I presented my class on this genre all was going reasonably well until I showed the key moments from award-winning Belgian shocker Man Bites Dog.
My less-than-eager students (whose ambitions were mainly to write for Coronation Street) balked at the excruciating scene when the amiable serial killer Remi shocks a sweet old lady into dying – before our eyes – from a heart attack as he explains why he used this approach instead of shooting her with his huge revolver. But this wasn’t the scene that freaked me out. As the movie progresses and the body count mounts up, so does the horror. One viewing in real time and a follow up (for teaching purposes) in fast forward have been all I can manage. When I reached the end of the old lady scene, I turned to my students and just asked: “enough?” before stopping the film.
I remember once getting very cross about that movie on the old site. Wanted it banned etc. Then I remembered that’s exactly the kind of fuss the silly twats who made it wanted. It’s hardly ever talked about now, which is exactly right.
The wikipedia summary was more than enough for me – seems like an utterly irredeemable pile of nastiness. Director’s assertion that it was a metaphor about the traumas visited upon the nation felt like a half hearted excuse.
First X-rated film I ever saw (14?) was when me and Billy Mathers sneaked into to see Witchfinder General. The scariest thing I had seen in my life before this was the face of that old bag in Number 14 when you asked for your ball back.
I sat absolutely terrified through the whole thing, the atmosphere only heightened when the usher walked up and down the cinema aisle with his torch seeking underage scallies like me.
The film ended. I turned to my pal and said “Fucking Hell!”. It turned out Billy had scarpered after five minutes. To this day I have no idea if Witchfinder General is actually scary.
That’s a fave of mine, too, Pence. Seen Dead Of Night? Can’t believe I’m the only one here with the impeccable taste and breadth of cinematic experience necessary to have brought it into this thread.
Almost posted a clip from The Innocents as well KFD but thought the sight of Peter Wingarde would be too unsettling for Afterworders of a nervy disposition.
Truman Capote wrote the screenplay doncha know.
My uncle used to manage a small town cinema and when I was young, 10 or 1, I was free in ramble in whenever I stayed at my granny’s (did’t make as much use of it as you might think). One evening I checked the local newspaper to see what was on and thought I’d go to see “Herbie Rides Again”. I must have got the dates wrong, because it turned out to be “Papillion”. That scene where the escapee is running through the jungle and triggers a trap the sends sharpened spikes though his body bothered me for a bit…
Killer Bob in the original Twin Peaks caused me many sleepless nights. It was his habit of popping out from behind furniture that compounded the terror when waking from Bob related nightmares – Aaaahhh! A Wardrobe! The End of My Bed!
“How’s Annie Blackberry?”
May I never see that scene again.
Strangely enough, I had no problem with his appearances in Fire Walk With Me finding it quite pantomimish.
The first killing in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is another that I find hard to watch. I think much of the horror I’d watched before that was either slightly humorous, or ridiculous, but that is such a cold, hard realistic death and there’s so little build up to it, that it just hits you right in the gut.
The rest of the film is almost as grim (it’s a film I admire rather than like, I think) but that single scene of the door sliding open and Leatherface with his hammer…
Call me a sentimental old fool, but I liked that movie. Not at all the gore-fest snuff-o-rama I feared, but a well-made and effectively terrifying movie. For some reason, I pair this with Reservoir Dogs (hey! a candidate for Bingo’s much-awaited Dog-cast Movies thread!).
I’ve no idea what this film was called, but it featured an African village overrun with killer ants. The solution was for the village folk to relocate to the other side of the river, and then blow up the bridge thus preventing the killer ants from following them. The last shot of the movie – and I can still recall this scene vividly – showed the ants climbing onto leaves on the river bank and floating across the river in search of their quarry. Gave me nightmares. Well, I was only 8 or 9.
The closing shot of the original ‘The Fly’ with the human/fly hybrid trapped in a spider’s web shouting “Help me! Help me!” in a squeaky voice.
“Threads.” The Ruskies nuke Sheffield (cue “… and did 400 quid’s worth of damage.”). I had to go for a drive after that. I couldn’t sleep.
Although not exactly as you described, I wonder is that ant film The Naked Jungle starring Charlton Heston. I also remember seeing it at a young age and needing reassurance that such things would never happen in Ireland.
I was trying to remember the name of that film where at the end the person’s in the thing, and I remember now that it’s The Vanishing. Anyway, that one.
Are you sure it’s not that Ryan Reynolds movie where he wakes up in the – aw shucks, you know – with the thing that’s about to run out of battery but still has good reception?
The scene that I most clearly remember giving me nightmares for months was from the TV mini series of Salem’s Lot. It’s the scene where Kurt Barlow visits the jail. I was very young at the time and it affected me pretty badly for a while.
Watched that as a nipper & was genuinely creeped out by it but still loved the animation. Decided to watch it with my kids (aged around 8-10 at the time) & they’ve still never forgiven me!
Admittedly, not a movie – but there are scenes from the BBC Ghost Story “A warning to the Curious” that are still very creepy – particularly this:
The whole thing is here:
Also, looks a little ridiculous now – but Night of the Demon truly scared me back in the 60s/70s – and when I watched it last year, it was still a little unsettling…it’s coming, it’s in the trees!
In the Amityville Horror, early on the main bloke is outside the house, feels he is being watched and looks up to an upstairs window. Two lights appear very briefly. Brrr…
Spoiler alert! There’s a scene in Eraserhead (don’t attach it) where Jack Nance is anxiously at the dock in an empty courtroom with a chequered floor. He is alone. His hands grab and twist the metal bar in front of him.
Jack’s head pops off like a champagne cork (making a comical sproiing! noise). He is now headless, still standing upright, wearing a suit and tie – his hands continue grabbing at the metal bar, anxiously.
We then hear the demonic cry of his emaciated, barely-human baby. Presently, the baby’s head appears from Jack’s body and rises up above his collar and screams and screams and screams. Jack’s head is in a pool of blood on the chequered floor. Slowly we see his head submerged under the blood and the head falls through the floor.
We are now outside, the head falls, seemingly from sky. A passing young boy picks it up and runs away. He seems to sell the head to a man who owns a factory that manufactures erasers – the ones you see on the top of pencils.
I watched this with my brother and we looked at each other – bloody hellll.
After reading about it for years in scrappy gore movie fanzines and various Headpress type publications I watched the Japanese “war film” Men behind the Sun. A horrible nihilistic experience that will stain my mind for ever. Stupidly, not learning my lesson I then went on to watch the mondo documentaries Goodbye Uncle Tom and Africa Addio. Why? Obviously because I’m an idiot. No more needs to be said really.
– Long, lingering close-ups of faces – preferably expressionless – and Significant Objects (wine bottle, child’s doll … anything, really)
– Long sequences of people walking the streets, with ambient noise amped right up
– Long shots out through car windscreens in the rain, wipers going back and forth, with streaky view of urban or natural bleakness, preferably at night
– Long scenes of people shopping for food, preparing it, eating it
– Long conversations about society and relationships, preferably between scruffy, smoking protagonists talking extremely quickly
– Long shots of people on trains, texting, staring bleakly out of window, looking alienated
It’s now one of my favourite films, but the first time I saw Theatre of Blood I was genuinely disturbed by the Robert Morley character being force-fed a pie made from his own poodles.
a strange Spanish short film called ‘La Cabina’ … phone booths … locked in … no possible means of escape … saw it late night on possibly Channel 4 and has stayed with me ever since
I saw “Rosemary’s Baby” at the cinema on release. I must have been about 17, so I may well have been under the influence of some illicit substance or other. For quite a little while afterwards I was a bit freaked-out.
There are no actual scenes of horror and gore in the movie, just a building sense of inevitable doom and helpless dread.
I’m not a lover of gorefest-type horror. Most of what I’ve seen in the “horror” genre has been a bit silly really, or else just plain distastefully violent. I have avoided the ones I know are proper slasher material though. I’m an old hippy so I don’t dig that kinda scene, man.
Giving yourself a scare, or being given one, is part of any well-nurtured child’s growing-up process. It helps with the necessary transition from implicit trust in the good intentions of the adults you know, into the world outside your cosiness, where human frailty and rather random outright badness also feature.
I’m not sure where an adult need for a scare fits in.
Maybe it helps us realise that even if our particular situation definitely has it’s downsides, it could be a hell of a lot worse.
I don’t think we compare our personal situations with someone up on the screen, even subconsciously, thanking our lucky stars it’s not us getting hacked to bits. It’s just the thrill, isn’t it? Don’t have to go much deeper than the rush of adrenalin. Which, as I grow older, I find myself less susceptible to. Being scared shitless by movies is maybe less of an adult need than you think.
Martin. The film about a vampire who might not actually be a vampire. The first time he kills a woman on a train. It just gave me such heebie jeebies…
Also the bit in The Road where Viggo Mortenson goes into the basement. I had read the book. I had seen previous horror films when someone goes into the basement.
I am to this day traumatised by that eyeball scene in Le Chien Andalou.
Anything with eyes tends to give me the creeps and so Coraline was definitely unnerving. But brilliant. My son has still not forgiven me for taking him to see it.
Yeah, I watched this last night (the same fuzzy YouTube version). No one who ever stumbled across this on late night television, possibly in a state of mental disarray, ever forgot it. Apparently it’s a parable about Franco’s Spain, and the lead was the Spanish equivalent of Eric Morecambe.
Surprised that no-one’s mentioned the horse-head scene from The Godfather yet. Absolutely freaked me out as a tender 17 year old. Superbly accompanied by Nino Rota’s theme in waltz time played on a demented carnival organ…
I read somewhere that actor John Marley (as Jack Woltz, the movie producer) had no idea a real horse’s head was going to be used, and what you see on screen his his initial reaction. I think I also read that Coppolla wanted a second take and Marley refused.
The scene in Pulp Fiction where Mia has OD’d and they have to give her a shot of adrenaline. I remember everyone in the cinema squealing and cringing at that.
A masterpiece of editing, that. Real tension and release.
For me, it’s the tent scene in my favourite film: A Field in England by the masterful Ben Wheatley. There’s a build up to the actual ‘event’ which makes the possession scene all the more horrifying.
A couple of scenes that have been overlooked: the climactic scene of the Japanese Ringu has now become something of an overexposed cliche, but the first view of it remains one of the iconic horror moments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dch7CCutkXc
And keeping to the Japanese theme, Audition. All of it.
NigelT says
Went to see the Exorcist when it came out with a couple who were friends – it was a late night showing, and we’d been to the pub beforehand. It totally freaked us out, so much so that I couldn’t go back to where I was staying (I would have been alone), so went back to theirs. We were sat in pretty much silence….then a picture fell off the wall and we nearly jumped out of our skins. Never seen the film since and if clips get shown I still totally freak out! What a wuss….
Gary says
Terrific film. I still rate it as the best horror film ever. For me the most powerful scene had nothing to do with special effects or funny voices, but is the scene where Ellen Burstyn meets Father Karass for the first time. Hiding her sleepless, traumatised eyes behind dark glasses she looks so desperate and helpless and utterly out of her depth. “Oh, not a psychiatrist. She needs a priest! She’s already seen every fucking psychiatrist in the world and they sent me to you, now you’re gonna send me back to them? Jesus Christ! Won’t somebody help me?…Can’t you help her, just help her?”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5prpIUxWoCM
H.P. Saucecraft says
Yes, this sets an unreachable standard for horror movies. And what makes it especially special is that when you learn about its making, the stuff that happened off camera, the poisonous, grinding atmosphere, it only gets more terrifying. Not like other horror movies, when showing you how the tricks were done reduces their impact. Billy Friedkin … the greatest film-maker ever, the twisted fuck …
Bingo Little says
I’ve just received an email from the home of cinema, the Prince Charles Cinema in London, announcing that they’re going to be screening Sorcerer on three dates in November. Unmissable, I’d say.
mikethep says
I saw it on my own in Brighton on a Tuesday afternoon, which happened to be pensioner day. They were completely unfazed (one of them said, ‘Ooh, didn’t know it was going to be like this.’) and talked all the way through, which helped to dull the terror a bit. Never felt remotely like seeing it again though.
Arthur Cowslip says
I also love The Exorcist. It really bothers me that its reputation has been diluted to the extent it’s almost seen as a joke these days. It’s truly and insidiously horrific in a slow burning way. The freakiest scenes for me are:
(1) The medical examination scene.
(2) The bit where Karas returns to that room (that chilling, claustrophobic room) and finds the old priest dead and the girl just sitting there. Ugh.
JustB says
The Thing. Head on legs. ARGH.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Some personal resonance for you there Bob?
Moose the Mooche says
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Milkybarnick says
This made me go cold. Absolutely freezing cold. Sorry for the spoilery video title.
Bingo Little says
I came to this thread to post this. It should be nowhere near as horrible as it is – masterful film making.
JustB says
Something I’ve never understood. Why was fake blood in 70s horror movies always so vivid and opaque? It looks like sort of bright red custard always.
H.P. Saucecraft says
You clearly have little actual domestic experience with copious blood flow.
JustB says
That’s true. Another personal failing of mine.
Bingo Little says
I think that’s an awfully glib comment in light of Donald Sutherland’s notorious early 70s custard addiction, Bob. We very nearly lost him completely to Ambrosia.
JustB says
Thank god he never moved onto Hartleys jelly. Once you go lime, you’re lost.
badartdog says
me too – logged in to post that scene. I haven’t seen it in a while, but as a teen … brrr.
Gatz says
I saw The Man with the X Ray Eyes on late night TV when I was far too young. It culminates with Ray Milland, driven mad by his x-ray vision, stumbling into a holy-roller church service. When the congregation start chanting ‘If thine ye offend thee pluck it out! Pluck it out!! Pluck it out!!!’ he claws at his face at the film ends with a close-up of the bloody holes where his eyes had been. That’s stayed with me for more than 40 years, and I thinking about now gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Kid Dynamite says
That’s actually a watered-down ending – the original plan was for him to shout, post-gouging, “I can still see!”. Brrr.
Gatz says
Oh great. And now this evening’s Simpsons plot has Lisa discover a drug which renders the aged tolerable but has the side effect of over-lubricating their eye-sockets so their eyeballs pop out. Thanks for that Groening.
Beezer says
Yep. Me too. Exactly this. I seem to recall being allowed to stay up to watch it on a school night when BBC 1 would occasionally show feature films after the 9 O’Clock News.
I must have been 12 or 13 at the time. I don’t think my Dad had any inkling how sinister it turned out to be. The schlocky title might have caught him out. But, yes, the final scene had me freaked out for a night or two after.
Cool!
Black Type says
Another creepy Ray Milland film is The Premature Burial (unsurprisingly directed by Roger Corman from a Poe short story), where he plays a guy who has the condition catalepsy and is freaked about the thought of, yep, being buried alive). Chilling shenanigans ensue.
Mousey says
Billie Holiday aka Diana Ross shooting up in Lady Sings The Blues. Nearly passed out myself
H.P. Saucecraft says
Gah! Yer gert girl’s blouse!
MC Escher says
Saving Private Ryan. The knife fight in the last battle scene between the German they’d allowed to live and one of Easy Company, while Opham stands by, terrified and helpless. I’ve seen many film deaths but this one really made me believe it. I think it’s the fact that it’s hand to hand, and the German ignoring the last desperate pleadings of his victim, that does it for me.
I can’t watch the film anymore because I know this scene is in it.
moseleymoles says
Ah that’s a different thread. Recently had this argument with another filmhead who is a parent, but the onscreen death of a child renders the following that pre-kids were fine unwatchable for me:
The Ice Storm
Don’t Look Now
Decalogue No 1 (the one with the ice, the worst of the lot).
Bingo Little says
Gone Baby Gone is high up my post-kids Nope List.
H.P. Saucecraft says
It’s dogs getting it I can’t stomach. I always check here if in doubt:
https://www.doesthedogdie.com/topics/25
Kid Dynamite says
This is why I haven’t watched John Wick. I know it’s supposed to be great and all that, but I don’t want to see his dog get shot.
JustB says
You could watch the sequel. It’s the same film, but no dog.
Bingo Little says
If it’s any help, his dog doesn’t get shot. Which puts it in the absolute minority.
JustB says
Ha! Yeah, I was wondering if I’d misremembered. Definitely not shot.
Kid Dynamite says
well, as I say, I haven’t seen it. But I’d be safe to assume that little Fido doesn’t get to spend the film lolloping around with a bone in his mouth and a goofy grin, right?
moseleymoles says
gap in the market there for doesthekidgetit.com surely
Bingo Little says
Dogs are basically people, only better.
If you made a movie about a gang of plucky dogs being menaced by a supernatural clown in 80s Bumfuck USA I would watch it, and so would literally everybody else.
In fact, I’m going to start a thread about movies that would be better if the human heroes were replaced by talking dogs, because whimsy.
H.P. Saucecraft says
I’d be first in line to
downloadbuy a multiplex ticket to see a dog-cast 2001 – that scene where the ape throws a bone up into the sky? In the canine version, it stays a bone! And that monolith? It’s a cosmic dog urinal! Someone send out for cronuts and get an intern in here …James EB says
I’d still recommend that you watch The Rover, an incredibly touching doggie death denouement.
JustB says
From what I understand the Beeb have just done a Cumberswag miniseries of The Child In Time. I got 20 pages or so into it when my girls were tiny and had to put it down. I’ve never gone back to it.
Gary says
I just watched that last night. (A one-off, not a mini series.) It was ok, given the short amount of time it lasted, although, natch, I far preferred the book. McEwan translates quite well to the screen. The Cement Garden, The Last Day Of Summer, Enduring Love, The Comfort Of Strangers, Atonement and The Child In Time have all had pretty decent screen adaptations. Bodes well for the forthcoming On Chesil Beach.
MC Escher says
On Chesil Beach: Coming Soon!
Gary says
Ha! Made me chuckle!
bungliemutt says
Last Day Of Summer – fabulous adaptation, never released on DVD.
Gary says
On the youtube though.
bungliemutt says
Had no idea it was on You Tube. Thanks – will give it a watch later.
moseleymoles says
Didn’t watch! Have the book on my shelves but unread since the advent of children sixteen years ago. Only another 4 to go before technically they are all adults, but I’m feeling that it’ll always be difficult to watch things like this. There are upsides to having kids though.
JustB says
Yeah especially when they’re old enough to empty and stack the dishwasher
MC Escher says
Nope I’m pretty sure it’s still this thread moles ;). It freaked me out I tells ya
geacher says
This was the scene which immediately sprang to my mind when I read the OP. I too cannot watch this scene, and I leave the room or just put the film off. It horrifies me.
JustB says
Nightmare on Elm Street. When the girl gets hurled up into the top corner of a room and having been slashed open on her bed by nothing at all.
Wigged me the fuck OUT as a kid.
(Violent. Don’t play if easily nastied by gore.)
Milkybarnick says
Yes! First time I watched this I was terrified. We watched it again in a German lesson at school (yes, really) and we all laughed at it. But that first watch, blimey…
Droogie says
Seeing The Elephant Man as a kid really messed me up. I remember when it came out, they’d show the same clip on TV of when he’s chased through a railway station by a mob and has his masked ripped off, but they’d always tease by stopping at showing John Merrick’s face. But one time they showed this clip all the way through, and seeing poor Merrick’s deformed terrified face for the first time made my blood run cold. I’d only just started sleeping with my bedroom light off around then, but after that I kept it on for years. If i thought there was going to be any reference to The Elephant Man on tv or in a magazine, I’d immediately get anxious. It took me years to exorcise this fear by finally sitting down a decade later and watching the movie all the way through.
H.P. Saucecraft says
For me, it’s the unforgettable scene in … that film I can’t remember … you know … the British movie that’s got four or five mini-movies in it, black and white … hang on, don’t tell me … anyway, it’s the one with the ventriloquist’s dummy coming to life in the last frame … starring the unforgettable what’s his name … you know, him … ooh! That’s the scene I’ll never forget. That one.
(Definitely not Archie Andrews, should any half-wit think of adding that in a comment)
Moose the Mooche says
Archie Andrews?
H.P. Saucecraft says
I … don’t … think … so. Rod Hull and Emu? It’s all such a blur now.
Martin Hairnet says
Was it The Ghost Train with Arthur Askey? Or Theatre of Blood with Vincent Price? I often confuse the two.
Moose the Mooche says
Well Orville certainly always gave me the creeps.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Ooh! I knew it would come to me! Dead Of Night.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037635/
Review here:
Bingo Little says
Close the thread.
David Kendal says
I saw this film at least thirty years ago on late night TV, and no-one else seems to have heard of it.
A scientist has isolated a thing in your back which causes your body to freeze when you’re frightened. It’s microscopic, but when it senses fear it expands to about a couple of feet in length and tenses up. The scientist has removed one of these from a body for research and it turns out to have a life of its own and escapes. People get scared when they see it, which means it immediately blows up and clutches the nearest thing, usually someone’s throat, and starts to strangle them. That’s the scary bit. I think the hero was the only one who can control his own fear and so recaptures it.
Have I made this up? If I have, do you think I could sell the idea?
Droogie says
Sounds like The Tingler starring Vincent Price. The only way to release the parasite from killing you is by screaming. When they showed the movie in cinemas, they’d rigged up some of the cinema seats to give electric shocks to the poor unsuspecting souls sat in them to make them scream and cause hysteria in the audience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tingler
David Kendal says
Thanks. That’s the one. although my memory has mangled the plot a bit. At last I know that it wasn’t something I imagined due to acombination of tiredness and Watneys.
Droogie says
The Tingler is a unique film as it’s cheap low-budget 50’s exploitation trash that’s also manages to be genuinely terrifying too. The scene that really sticks in my head is when a woman who thinks she’s being haunted in her house runs herself a bath to calm down. The film is in black and white, but when she turns the taps on, bright red technicolour blood shoots out. Simple, but brilliantly shocking. The film also includes cinema’s first onscreen acid trip when Vincent Price injects himself with LSD!
David Kendal says
Yes! I remember that scene. I’ve lost the habit now, but I used to go to film societies and watch works by Bergman, Truffaut and so on when they were a thing. I liked them, but none of them had scenes which have stuck in my mind like that one or many other B movie scenes.
I re-read a collection of stories by H P Lovecraft (no relation) last year, and while he might not be Tolstoy, I recognised image after image as I went through it. There is a strange intensity about a lot of popular culture, perhaps because its creators often have a more genuine and original vision than many supposedly serious artists have.
Leicester Bangs says
The bit with the hammer, the chisel and the teeth in Last House On The Left.
Oh, but that’s just reminded me: the bit in American History X with the kerb.
Arthur Cowslip says
Teeth are ALWAYS good for creating horror and unpleasantness. Marathon Man!
Leicester Bangs says
I haven’t seen that. I refuse.
Moose the Mooche says
The most unpleasant thing in it is Larry’s preposterous aksent. Gott in Himmel!
Leicester Bangs says
Everything I know about Marathon Man in two bulletpoints
1.) The teeth bit.
2.) “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”
JustB says
OUCH FUCK THE KERB-BITE.
I wigged out at that at the time and the thought of it still makes me physically wince/shudder and do an involuntary GAH noise.
Leicester Bangs says
Same. Just the thought. Eww.
Arthur Cowslip says
There’s that scene in Under The Skin where Scarlett Johansson leaves that young boy on the beach in the middle of nowhere, presumably to die of exposure. Freaked me out, that did, as a new dad at the time. Even more horrific for just being played straight and deadpan.
JustB says
Oh that’s horrible horrible, that bit. What a wonderful film that is: the whole thing gave me such a case of the slow creeping dread.
Bingo Little says
Oh god. Under The Skin.
The bit with the kid on the beach, but also the sequence where you see what’s happening to her victims. And just the overall feels of the movie. Brilliantly horrible, stayed with me for ages.
JustB says
She’s AMAZING in it too. So completely blank and inhuman but with that strange sympathetic curiosity that creeps in as the film progresses.
andielou says
How I love that film. It made an indelible impression on me.
H.P. Saucecraft says
@bricameron
Oi! You got yourself your first grown-up thread here! The least you could do is curate it. I say “curate” because that’s what one does to apparently everything these days, from compilation albums to blogs to (I don’t know) Happy Meal Toy collections and sandwiches. What it means here, bri, is adding waspish rejoinders, encouragements, and fun new comments to engender a feeling of togetherness and enthusiasm. GAG, FFS.
Moose the Mooche says
He’s in his cot, dreaming sweet dreams no doubt. Not necessarily asleep either.
bricameron says
Stupid Planet 🌎 and it’s Earth hours!
bricameron says
The scene in the Changeling where the wet ball bounces down the stairs. Gulp!
Marwood says
Dad was made redundant in the early 80s and went straight out and bought a VCR. He had a mate who had a huge library of videos that he was happy to lend to us.
Being bloodthirsty little tikes, me and my brother got ahold of films that we were far too young for..
Scanners was a bad one – the head explosion scene is revolting and shocked us. But we became pretty un-shockable pretty quickly.
Until, that is, I went to the pictures to watch the re-released Exorcist. That is an amazing film; frightening, unnerving and filled with dread. It’s stands head and shoulders above every other horror movie I’ve seen. But It gave me nightmares and I haven’t seen it again. The whole thing gave me the heebie jeebies. But… from memory, when Regan says ‘You’re gonna die up there’ is freaky. As is the bit when you hear the roar from the attic and you just know that something awful is going to happen.
Oh – attics remains me. At the start of The Grudge, a young woman puts her head up into an attic to investigate the noises she has heard. The camera moves back and we, the audience, see that behind her vulnerable head there is something very bad and once she turns around she is going to see it too. Shudder.
Rufus T Firefly says
I taught Film Genres at a couple of UK universities in the early 2000s in the course of which I proposed a session on the Pseudo-documentary. Prior to The Office, this was a less than familiar genre, but it did produce the likes of Spinal Tap, The Blair Witch Project, Bob Roberts and a handful of others. When I presented my class on this genre all was going reasonably well until I showed the key moments from award-winning Belgian shocker Man Bites Dog.
My less-than-eager students (whose ambitions were mainly to write for Coronation Street) balked at the excruciating scene when the amiable serial killer Remi shocks a sweet old lady into dying – before our eyes – from a heart attack as he explains why he used this approach instead of shooting her with his huge revolver. But this wasn’t the scene that freaked me out. As the movie progresses and the body count mounts up, so does the horror. One viewing in real time and a follow up (for teaching purposes) in fast forward have been all I can manage. When I reached the end of the old lady scene, I turned to my students and just asked: “enough?” before stopping the film.
Marwood says
I remember seeing Man bites dog at the pictures. Very uncomfortable watch. Lots of walk outs.
The move from (very) black comedy to outright horror is jarring.
Bingo Little says
I’ve read the wikipedia summary of A Serbian Film and it made me feel light headed and nauseous.
What is WRONG with people?!
JustB says
I remember once getting very cross about that movie on the old site. Wanted it banned etc. Then I remembered that’s exactly the kind of fuss the silly twats who made it wanted. It’s hardly ever talked about now, which is exactly right.
But yeah: what *is* wrong with people?
Marwood says
The wikipedia summary was more than enough for me – seems like an utterly irredeemable pile of nastiness. Director’s assertion that it was a metaphor about the traumas visited upon the nation felt like a half hearted excuse.
JustB says
Totally. It’s Ben Dover trying to retcon Anal Spunkfest #203 into a coruscating satire about the Iraq War.
Which he has done.
He hasn’t.
Or has he?
No.
Moose the Mooche says
You’re thinking of HamBugger Hill.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
First X-rated film I ever saw (14?) was when me and Billy Mathers sneaked into to see Witchfinder General. The scariest thing I had seen in my life before this was the face of that old bag in Number 14 when you asked for your ball back.
I sat absolutely terrified through the whole thing, the atmosphere only heightened when the usher walked up and down the cinema aisle with his torch seeking underage scallies like me.
The film ended. I turned to my pal and said “Fucking Hell!”. It turned out Billy had scarpered after five minutes. To this day I have no idea if Witchfinder General is actually scary.
pencilsqueezer says
This. Terrified me when I first watched it as a young teenager, it still creeps me out now.
H.P. Saucecraft says
That’s a fave of mine, too, Pence. Seen Dead Of Night? Can’t believe I’m the only one here with the impeccable taste and breadth of cinematic experience necessary to have brought it into this thread.
pencilsqueezer says
Oo yes. Not for some time though. May just dig out the DVD for tonight’s viewing.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Good man.
Kaisfatdad says
Brilliant choice, Pencil. No gore and few special effects yet that film is absolutely terrifying.
The Innocents is in a similar vein and very frightening too.
pencilsqueezer says
Almost posted a clip from The Innocents as well KFD but thought the sight of Peter Wingarde would be too unsettling for Afterworders of a nervy disposition.
Truman Capote wrote the screenplay doncha know.
Kid Dynamite says
The bit with the bathtub in Les Diaboliques!
H.P. Saucecraft says
Good call! A real !YOW! moment!
Max the Dog says
My uncle used to manage a small town cinema and when I was young, 10 or 1, I was free in ramble in whenever I stayed at my granny’s (did’t make as much use of it as you might think). One evening I checked the local newspaper to see what was on and thought I’d go to see “Herbie Rides Again”. I must have got the dates wrong, because it turned out to be “Papillion”. That scene where the escapee is running through the jungle and triggers a trap the sends sharpened spikes though his body bothered me for a bit…
Bamber says
Killer Bob in the original Twin Peaks caused me many sleepless nights. It was his habit of popping out from behind furniture that compounded the terror when waking from Bob related nightmares – Aaaahhh! A Wardrobe! The End of My Bed!
“How’s Annie Blackberry?”
May I never see that scene again.
Strangely enough, I had no problem with his appearances in Fire Walk With Me finding it quite pantomimish.
bungliemutt says
Allow me.
Bamber says
Bastard!
Milkybarnick says
The first killing in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is another that I find hard to watch. I think much of the horror I’d watched before that was either slightly humorous, or ridiculous, but that is such a cold, hard realistic death and there’s so little build up to it, that it just hits you right in the gut.
The rest of the film is almost as grim (it’s a film I admire rather than like, I think) but that single scene of the door sliding open and Leatherface with his hammer…
JustB says
Oh god. The original TCM is a really hard watch. So brutish and the kids’ suffering is done with horrible realism. Ick.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Call me a sentimental old fool, but I liked that movie. Not at all the gore-fest snuff-o-rama I feared, but a well-made and effectively terrifying movie. For some reason, I pair this with Reservoir Dogs (hey! a candidate for Bingo’s much-awaited Dog-cast Movies thread!).
JustB says
Oh I really like TCM too. It’s just bloody horrible. Fortunately, that’s sort of what I want from a horror film!
bricameron says
The hills have eyes!
Billybob Dylan says
I’ve no idea what this film was called, but it featured an African village overrun with killer ants. The solution was for the village folk to relocate to the other side of the river, and then blow up the bridge thus preventing the killer ants from following them. The last shot of the movie – and I can still recall this scene vividly – showed the ants climbing onto leaves on the river bank and floating across the river in search of their quarry. Gave me nightmares. Well, I was only 8 or 9.
The closing shot of the original ‘The Fly’ with the human/fly hybrid trapped in a spider’s web shouting “Help me! Help me!” in a squeaky voice.
“Threads.” The Ruskies nuke Sheffield (cue “… and did 400 quid’s worth of damage.”). I had to go for a drive after that. I couldn’t sleep.
Bamber says
Although not exactly as you described, I wonder is that ant film The Naked Jungle starring Charlton Heston. I also remember seeing it at a young age and needing reassurance that such things would never happen in Ireland.
RubyBlue says
The last few minutes of ‘Open Water.’ I didn’t sleep well that night.
But, the worst of all, never to be forgotten, the last scenes of ‘The Vanishing’. (The original.)
I’m sure most on here have seen these two films, but I won’t describe them, just in case you want to ‘enjoy’ them yourselves.
I avoid horror/scare/gore usually.
MC Escher says
Yep, never want to see The Vanishing again.
chiz says
I was trying to remember the name of that film where at the end the person’s in the thing, and I remember now that it’s The Vanishing. Anyway, that one.
RubyBlue says
@chiz yeah, I had to Google for the film name -‘film where woman is [redacted], guy ends up [redacted]. ‘
MC Escher says
Are you sure it’s not that Ryan Reynolds movie where he wakes up in the – aw shucks, you know – with the thing that’s about to run out of battery but still has good reception?
dkhbrit says
The scene that I most clearly remember giving me nightmares for months was from the TV mini series of Salem’s Lot. It’s the scene where Kurt Barlow visits the jail. I was very young at the time and it affected me pretty badly for a while.
chiz says
The brother coming through the clouds to the window. Tap tap… tap tap
davebigpicture says
Wasn’t that Greta bleedin’ Garbo?
Moose the Mooche says
“Pieter….Pieter…”
Arthur Cowslip says
Watership Down!
andielou says
Watched that as a nipper & was genuinely creeped out by it but still loved the animation. Decided to watch it with my kids (aged around 8-10 at the time) & they’ve still never forgiven me!
Morrison says
Admittedly, not a movie – but there are scenes from the BBC Ghost Story “A warning to the Curious” that are still very creepy – particularly this:
The whole thing is here:
Also, looks a little ridiculous now – but Night of the Demon truly scared me back in the 60s/70s – and when I watched it last year, it was still a little unsettling…it’s coming, it’s in the trees!
Moose the Mooche says
It’s in the trees – it’s coming!
*thrashes away at air-drums*
Black Type says
Yeah, Kate’s ruined that film forever!
Black Celebration says
In the Amityville Horror, early on the main bloke is outside the house, feels he is being watched and looks up to an upstairs window. Two lights appear very briefly. Brrr…
Moose the Mooche says
Hammer House of Horror: The House That Bled. Scared the living snot outta me.
chiz says
Was that the Nicholas Ball one? Didn’t sleep for a week after that
Moose the Mooche says
Yeah, probably. Bright red blood coming out of chrome taps into a bright white bath. Ugggghhh.
Bloody hell. Literally.
countottoblack says
Eraserhead gave me nightmares when I was early teen, particularly the scene where he goes for dinner at his girlfirend’s house.
Moose the Mooche says
“Whaddaya know, Henry?”
That film still makes the current series of Twin Peaks look like Home and Away.
Black Celebration says
Spoiler alert! There’s a scene in Eraserhead (don’t attach it) where Jack Nance is anxiously at the dock in an empty courtroom with a chequered floor. He is alone. His hands grab and twist the metal bar in front of him.
Jack’s head pops off like a champagne cork (making a comical sproiing! noise). He is now headless, still standing upright, wearing a suit and tie – his hands continue grabbing at the metal bar, anxiously.
We then hear the demonic cry of his emaciated, barely-human baby. Presently, the baby’s head appears from Jack’s body and rises up above his collar and screams and screams and screams. Jack’s head is in a pool of blood on the chequered floor. Slowly we see his head submerged under the blood and the head falls through the floor.
We are now outside, the head falls, seemingly from sky. A passing young boy picks it up and runs away. He seems to sell the head to a man who owns a factory that manufactures erasers – the ones you see on the top of pencils.
I watched this with my brother and we looked at each other – bloody hellll.
mikethep says
Yes! Never been able to watch it to the end. Too creepy.
Franco says
After reading about it for years in scrappy gore movie fanzines and various Headpress type publications I watched the Japanese “war film” Men behind the Sun. A horrible nihilistic experience that will stain my mind for ever. Stupidly, not learning my lesson I then went on to watch the mondo documentaries Goodbye Uncle Tom and Africa Addio. Why? Obviously because I’m an idiot. No more needs to be said really.
pencilsqueezer says
Not for the squeamish. If you’ve watched it you’ll know exactly what I mean. Disturbing. Very, very disturbing.
https://youtu.be/FMIC5pc_GzM
Sewer Robot says
Falls into the category of films where I’ve read a description and gone “pass”.
ganglesprocket says
Me also.
duco01 says
Yeah, I’ve deliberately avoided that one, too.
ruff-diamond says
“A French art psychological horror drama film” says Wikipedia.
“Nope”, says R-D…
H.P. Saucecraft says
French movies are art because they have:
– Long, lingering close-ups of faces – preferably expressionless – and Significant Objects (wine bottle, child’s doll … anything, really)
– Long sequences of people walking the streets, with ambient noise amped right up
– Long shots out through car windscreens in the rain, wipers going back and forth, with streaky view of urban or natural bleakness, preferably at night
– Long scenes of people shopping for food, preparing it, eating it
– Long conversations about society and relationships, preferably between scruffy, smoking protagonists talking extremely quickly
– Long shots of people on trains, texting, staring bleakly out of window, looking alienated
Moose the Mooche says
It’s now one of my favourite films, but the first time I saw Theatre of Blood I was genuinely disturbed by the Robert Morley character being force-fed a pie made from his own poodles.
H.P. Saucecraft says
The original version had his poodles eating a pie made from Robert Morley.
exilepj says
a strange Spanish short film called ‘La Cabina’ … phone booths … locked in … no possible means of escape … saw it late night on possibly Channel 4 and has stayed with me ever since
Bingo Little says
It’s on YouTube, and it’s brilliant.
Mike_H says
I saw “Rosemary’s Baby” at the cinema on release. I must have been about 17, so I may well have been under the influence of some illicit substance or other. For quite a little while afterwards I was a bit freaked-out.
There are no actual scenes of horror and gore in the movie, just a building sense of inevitable doom and helpless dread.
I’m not a lover of gorefest-type horror. Most of what I’ve seen in the “horror” genre has been a bit silly really, or else just plain distastefully violent. I have avoided the ones I know are proper slasher material though. I’m an old hippy so I don’t dig that kinda scene, man.
Giving yourself a scare, or being given one, is part of any well-nurtured child’s growing-up process. It helps with the necessary transition from implicit trust in the good intentions of the adults you know, into the world outside your cosiness, where human frailty and rather random outright badness also feature.
Mike_H says
I’m not sure where an adult need for a scare fits in.
Maybe it helps us realise that even if our particular situation definitely has it’s downsides, it could be a hell of a lot worse.
H.P. Saucecraft says
I don’t think we compare our personal situations with someone up on the screen, even subconsciously, thanking our lucky stars it’s not us getting hacked to bits. It’s just the thrill, isn’t it? Don’t have to go much deeper than the rush of adrenalin. Which, as I grow older, I find myself less susceptible to. Being scared shitless by movies is maybe less of an adult need than you think.
ganglesprocket says
Martin. The film about a vampire who might not actually be a vampire. The first time he kills a woman on a train. It just gave me such heebie jeebies…
Also the bit in The Road where Viggo Mortenson goes into the basement. I had read the book. I had seen previous horror films when someone goes into the basement.
That was still just fucking horrible.
AND HERE IT IS!
Mike_H says
Having read the book, there was no fucking way I was going to watch a movie of it.
anton says
Kid Dynamite says
Exorcist III really is one of the great sequels
NigelT says
Anyone ever seen Un Chien Andalou..? Eyeball…razor blade…those surrealists were a laugh a minute.
Kaisfatdad says
I am to this day traumatised by that eyeball scene in Le Chien Andalou.
Anything with eyes tends to give me the creeps and so Coraline was definitely unnerving. But brilliant. My son has still not forgiven me for taking him to see it.
Mike_H says
This short Spanish film boggled my mind when I watched it, stoned, on late-night TV many years back.
“La Cabina”
Gatz says
Yeah, I watched this last night (the same fuzzy YouTube version). No one who ever stumbled across this on late night television, possibly in a state of mental disarray, ever forgot it. Apparently it’s a parable about Franco’s Spain, and the lead was the Spanish equivalent of Eric Morecambe.
Mousey says
Surprised that no-one’s mentioned the horse-head scene from The Godfather yet. Absolutely freaked me out as a tender 17 year old. Superbly accompanied by Nino Rota’s theme in waltz time played on a demented carnival organ…
Billybob Dylan says
I read somewhere that actor John Marley (as Jack Woltz, the movie producer) had no idea a real horse’s head was going to be used, and what you see on screen his his initial reaction. I think I also read that Coppolla wanted a second take and Marley refused.
Arthur Cowslip says
The scene in Pulp Fiction where Mia has OD’d and they have to give her a shot of adrenaline. I remember everyone in the cinema squealing and cringing at that.
A masterpiece of editing, that. Real tension and release.
andielou says
For me, it’s the tent scene in my favourite film: A Field in England by the masterful Ben Wheatley. There’s a build up to the actual ‘event’ which makes the possession scene all the more horrifying.
mikethep says
WHY DON’T YOU SWITCH THE FUCKING LIGHT ON!
I have shouted that often. No point in Wait Until Dark, obvs, because our Aud is (spoiler alert) blind.
That freaked me out at the time, Not sure i want to see it again. Nice cuddly Alan Arkin, FFS!
Black Type says
A couple of scenes that have been overlooked: the climactic scene of the Japanese Ringu has now become something of an overexposed cliche, but the first view of it remains one of the iconic horror moments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dch7CCutkXc
And keeping to the Japanese theme, Audition. All of it.