Don't really like horrors, but I thought the Sixth Sense was pretty scary. For ghosts....the Others. Has anyone seen the Skeleton Key?

Since this is moments and not movies...

Prince of Darkness. The axe through the mirror, with our heroine reaching in vain, being pulled into inky blackness...

Mention of missing eyes in "The Birds" reminds me of the utterly creepy moment in Twilight Zone, The Movie where we see the super-powered boy's sister watching tv... and the camera next shows us her face, which has no mouth...

Mention of "The Haunting" reminds me of the Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House -- which has the scariest scene I've ever read -- so scary that I had to put the book down and leave the room. (the two vulnerable girls holding hands in the dark)

Nomads. What a kick-ass underrated horror flick. Images of the nuns was pretty damn scary, as were waking realizations of our nurse-heroine.

The Entity. The sexual assaults from the thing-possibly-abusive-dead-husband always happen when our heroine is alone at home. At least the monster is predictable... until it suddenly attacks her halfway through the movie, in front of her children... (disturbing, disturbing)

As for the list there -- some nice and unexpected entries! I'm especially pleased to see Akira there. That is a creepy, fascinating scene. And the Twilight Zone "something really scary" bit. Glad they used the real door in The Shining -- it shows. The Marathon Man torture scene, and Exorcist "unspeakable actions with the cross", Freddy Krueger long arms, and Sutherland's last scream in the Body Snatchers remake. Classic. That Willy Wonka boat ride (best story on the whole site! -- loved it). Misery foot-hobbling. Floating vampire kid from Salem's Lot. And frigging half of the highly underrated original Poltergeist. But I don't understand what "The Ring" was doing there in place of those same moments from the far more authentic Ringu.

It really IS a good list.

Add little-known scary flicks: The Power, and The Blue Man. Erm... and the hopping, plaster-mosquito-masked kid in the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. And the face in the rear car window in Jacob's Ladder.

Oh, and months before Blair Witch, the same technique was used on late night tv and featured freakin aliens instead. THAT was scary. Oh, and I vote for a half dozen scenes in the video game Silent Hill if I can.

Sorry for the long post, but I love this stuff.

Bloody hell, I've been up for something like 34 hours now, and will be up the rest of the night (company here tomorrow -- must clean entire apartment) but I have all this shite in my head now. Totally on edge, keep thinking I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Biggest fear is that my girlfriend will unknowingly skulk in from the other room and my heart will friggin explode. Uh...

Honey! Have some chamomile tea and take a little nap before you start cleaning. 34 hours is way too long.

yes! retrocrush put Un chien andalou on the list, god bless 'em! That eye-slice thang has always freaked the hell out of me.

This is a pretty good list. I normally look at these kinds of lists and instantly start complaining, but I think there's more to agree with here than disagree with. Although many of these scenes are more creepy than outright scary. I tend to prefer the long creepy scenes to the quick scares. And if you can combine the two - that's perfection!

#4 was one of the few jump-out-of-my-seat moments I've ever had watching a film. The whole movie for #24 was really just one long and confusing creepy scene. And I laugh my ass off every time I see #49, but it's somehow still scary at the same time.

i watched the shining for the first time in forever the other week. it's really fucking terrifying in places. i concur - the drowned woman and the twin girls definitely belong in the top ten.

one that's not there that should be - jacob's ladder. the scene where tim robbins has broken his back and is leatherstrapped immobile in an institutional stretcher and is being wheeled down the halls of a "hospital" by "doctors". passing scenery as he's roughly pushed further and further into the bowels of the place which isn't really a hospital includes filthy deformed children crawling on the wire roof above whilst leering unpleasantly and unidentifiable fluids and body parts littering the hallway and straightjacketed freaks smeared with weird things and flickering dirty lights and rooms with spasmodic amputee demons with no faces twitching inside. really nasty.

also doom generation - in the threesome scene at the end where the nazi skins come to the warehouse and rape her with the statue of mary and cut off his dick and make the other guy eat it. that was pretty bad right there.

That is a good list. There's a few films there I haven't seen that I'd like to get hold of now (Tombs of the Blind Dead particularly).

The biggest ommission for me is The Omen - the scene where David Warner comes a cropper has to be one of the best executed (heh) shock scenes of all time. I'd also say Theatre of Blood has some great scenes too but that's not so well known. Audition was mentioned in the list they linked to and I have to say that has to be very near to the top of my list - I've never seen so many people walk out of a cinema.

The scene from Carrie is an interesting one as De Palma used a couple of tricks to make the scene unnerving. For a start it's filmed in reverse so the girl is actually walking backwards (you can see a car going backwards in the background) and the scene at the "grave" was actually filmed at night but lit to look like daytime.

I had a slumber party for my 16th birthday. Of course, one of the things you do at slumber parties is watch scary movies. We watched "Carrie." For most of the movie, we were sitting there saying "This isn't scary," until that last scene. When Carrie's hand came out of the grave all of us screamed in unison, which in turn set the dog off barking. Still one of my favorite movie surprises.

where's When a Stranger Calls? One of the scariest movies ever (that list had more gross/violent/bloody ones than truly scary ones)

I wish I could have been around to see Psycho when it was initially released. The shower scene to me isn't scary at all but I've seen it so many times in so many different ways since I was young that I think it lost the power to be frightening a long time ago. Family tells me though that seeing it in the theater when it first came out was terrifying. Thanks for the list taz!

And thanks to Mefi, I can't look at this without giggling.

where's When a Stranger Calls? One of the scariest movies ever (that list had more gross/violent/bloody ones than truly scary ones)
posted by amberglow 20 August | 11:31

Right here?

Freaks
The Shining
the first episode of the otherwise appalling Nightmare series
The Fog

Great list. I was really glad to see so many non-horror scary bits on there, like Donofrio in Full Metal Jacket and Large Marge.

I looooove scary movies, so I was surprised by how many on that list I hadn't seen. Nice to have recommendations.

Uh. Freaky dreams on 4 hours sleep, more cleaning. Now it's time for ginger tea.

Yeah, soi-disant, the more you describe from Jacob's Ladder, the more I remember that belongs on that list (or a longer one, if not the very scariest -- still damn freaky).

Alas, my sig other has no tolerance for horror. Getting her to watch Ringu was a definite coup, but we can't make a regular thing out of it. I'd love to have "Horror Sundays" and work my way through this list.