Scariest Movie Moments and Scenes

	Greatest Scariest Movie Moments and Scenes Part 10

Introduction: The following list, in unranked alphabetical order by film title, presents a solid collection of the most classic, 'scariest' scenes in movie history, including film scenes that were once considered 'scary' upon their initial screenings (or scary for young viewers), but have lost some of their shock appeal. Films represent some of the best and worst of the horror film genre including entries from the classic Universal 30's monster films to some of the scariest, most shocking, bloodiest and gore-ridden slasher films of the recent past. [Author's Note: Admittedly, the word 'scariest' may also be interpreted as most horrifying, shocking, or many other such synonyms.] Other areas of this website have scariest scenes also - see Greatest Film Scenes with some descriptions of scary scenes included, or entries in Best Film Death Scenes.

Key to Iconic Symbol:

- Entries in Entertainment Weekly's "20 Scariest Movies of All Time" (October, 2004 issue)

Movie Title	Brief Scene Description	Example
House of Wax (1953) - in 3-D	The scene in which Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) beat against wheelchair-bound Professor Henry Jarrod's (Vincent Price) face, causing his wax visage to break and fall away -- to reveal his grotesque features beneath
House on Haunted Hill (1999)	In this horror remake of the 1959 William Castle movie set in a a hellish sanatorium where guests were challenged to spend the night for $1 million, the five guests saw freaky, subliminal images of the asylum's lethal past as a torture institution for the criminally insane; in one scary sequence, Sarah Wolfe (Ali Larter) reached her arms into a large vat of blood to rescue Eddie Baker (Taye Diggs) who had jumped in, but found him suddenly approaching her and asking: "What the hell are you doing?" as a mysterious force tried to drag her in; in another scene, demented inventor Steven Price (Geoffrey Rush) was placed in a gigantic, revolving kinescope (a sensory overload isolation chamber) where he hallucinated while wearing goggles, with nightmarish psychotic images of a guy in a bowler hat bouncing a red ball while maniacally laughing, accompanied by his experience of drowning in a sealed vault of water with a nude underwater female spewing blood from her mouth
The Howling (1981)	The werewolf transformation scene in which Los Angeles television news anchor Karen White (Dee Wallace-Stone) watched helplessly as resurrected serial murderer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo) realistically turned into a werewolf ("You said on the phone that you wanted to get to know me, but here I am, Karen - Look at me!") - his skin and jaw structures changed, his cheeks, forehead and neck undulated and bubbled, his claws extended from his fingers, his teeth grew, and his snout and jaw elongated (all pneumatic transformations without CGI effects); also the file cabinet scene in an office at a Big Sur country "Colony" retreat in which Terry Fisher (Belinda Balaski) was rifling through the folders - and a giant hairy claw reached calmly in to help her - she was attacked by the werewolf and slapped backwards
The Hurt Locker (2009)	The stressful and tense series of war scenes/set-pieces of an elite group of three bomb-squad specialists or EOD bomb defusers (Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squad) in Bravo Company (cognizant of a 39-day countdown until their home-leave deployment-rotation); the film opened with the death of team leader SSG Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce) in a bulky Kevlar suit after a failed defusement of a dangerous IED (improvised explosive devices) bomb with a robotic device in the rubble and garbage-strewn streets of Bagdad in 2004 Iraq when they were threatened with sniper fire and the bomb was set off by a cellphone from a marketplace butcher shop; and the character of Thompson's replacement ("a redneck piece of trailer trash") - newcomer and risk-taker Army Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) - in one scary and harrowing scene after another, James displayed bravado, recklessness and fearlessness - (1) he activated a flare, obscuring everyone's visibility, and drew his pistol on a suspected Iraqi-haji cab driver during a stand-off while commanding him to back up and get out of the car - and then clipped wires to one bomb detonator but found it attached to seven others buried nearby, and (2) his disregard for orders when he attempted to defuse bombs in an illegally-parked car near an evacuated UN building and removed his protective helmet and gear (so if he's gonna die, he can die "comfortable") - and then threw away his headset while searching to dismantle the device, and (3) the unsuccessful attempt to break the bolts of locks holding strapped explosives with a timer to an Arabic family man's waist
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)	The shocking, frightening sight of the state of the Patagonia Glacier in Brazil after 75 years of global warming, and the near-complete melting of Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro's famous ice cap in the last 30 years, as shown by ex-Vice President Al Gore with before-and-after slides, in the cautionary ecological documentary about climatic science that predicted higher temperatures, stronger storms, deadlier floods, and higher sea levels unless our course was reversed in the next decade
In the Mouth of Madness (1995)	In John Carpenter's horror thriller told in flashback by strait-jacketed private insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) in an asylum's padded room, the insane man (institutionalized after axing to death a horror book reader) related how he had looked into the disappearance of popular, best-selling horror novelist Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) after the release of his newest book "Horror in Hobbs End"; he traveled to the New England town of Hobbs End (that existed entirely as a product of the writer's mind) with Cane's book editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), where he found civilization had broken down; in one of the film's scary sequences, he dreamed that he was standing next to a ripped hole in a page, a fissure or gateway from the real world to the black abyss beyond while Linda read from Cane's book: "Trent stood at the edge of the rip, stared into the unlimitable gulf of the unknown, the Stygian world yawning blackly beyond. Trent's eyes refused to close, he did not shriek, but the hideous unholy abominations shrieked for him, as in the same second he saw them spill and tumble upward out of an enormous carrion black pit, choked with the gleaming white bones of countless unhallowed centuries. He began to back away from the rip as the army of unspeakable figures, toiled by the glow from the bottomless pit, came pouring at him toward our world" -- he was then pursued down an immense corridor by monstrous creatures brought to life out of the pit - all creatures from Cane's writings; also the film's many shocking images included strange apparitions, readers turned into psychotic zombies, surreal and hallucinatory nightmare sequences, otherworldly creatures, people with facial deformities and tendrils whipping out of bodies; additional scenes included one of Linda kissing the missing writer - who was composed of sinew and bloody muscle tissue from the back view, and the sight of madman Trent sitting in an empty movie theatre with a giant tub of popcorn watching his own film - and laughing hysterically
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)	The frightening, terrifying reaction Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) experienced after kissing his sweetheart Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) - discovering that she had been transformed into one of the pod-clones
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)	The despairing, climactic ending in which health department inspector Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) screamed with a piercing, accusatory howl (and the camera descended into the blackness of his open mouth) when he pointed his finger and confronted the still-human Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright) - the last to not be absorbed; also the first view of a still-forming pod person when a sheet was pulled back - and the creature opened its eyes; and the image of a talking, human-faced dog
Irreversible (2002, Fr.)	The infamously excruciatingly-long, graphic, violent shrieking, painful-to-watch nine-minute real-time beating and anal-rape sequence (in flashback) of Alex (Monica Bellucci) in a Parisian underpass tunnel lit by a reddish glow, by rapist/pimp Le Tenia/Tapeworm (Jo Prestia), in which she begged: "Let me go, please"; as he raped her, he threatened: "You gonna shut up, little whore?"
I Walked With a Zombie (1943)	The nighttime scene of Canadian nurse Betsy Connell's (Frances Dee) haunting walk through sugar cane fields to a local voodoo ceremony - and the abrupt appearance in the darkness of huge zombie guard Carrefour (Darby Jones)
Jacob's Ladder (1990)	The hallucinations of troubled and lethally-wounded Vietnam vet Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) who was at an erotic disco dance (to the tune of James Brown's Ma Thang (Sex Machine)) on a crowded dance floor with his temptress Latina girlfriend Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena) - when he saw a snake-like devil with a scaly reptilian tail curled around her and then a horn abruptly ripped open her mouth; also the horrific scene of Jacob being wheeled on a table down to hell/purgatory, where he was bluntly told by an Evil Doctor (Davidson Thomson) that he was dead ("You've been killed. Don't you remember?") and then injected in the center of his forehead by a featureless-face
Jaws (1975)	The ominous, driving, menacing John Williams' 'da-dum...da-dum' score (of cellos) that signaled a shark attack, especially in the shocking opening scene in which carefree blonde Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) left a beach party to go skinny-dipping and was devoured by being jerked underwater - prefaced by the shark's-eye view of the legs of the nude swimmer; honorable mention: the sudden appearance of the severed head of shark victim Ben Gardner in the gaping hole of the hull of the underwater wreckage of a sunken boat; another shark attack on young Alex M. Kintner swimming off the Amity Island beach; also the first terrifying appearance of the gigantic shark behind Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) as he spooned out chum; and the horrifying scene of the shark devouring Quint (Robert Shaw)
Jurassic Park (1993)	The scary build-up to the appearance of the T-Rex, with the glasses of water vibrating on the car's dashboard from the dinosaur's ominous footsteps signaling the coming disaster, followed by the sudden dropping of a bloody goat's leg onto the windshield after teenaged Lex (Ariana Richards) wondered: "Where's the goat"? - and the first sight of the giant monster chomping on the animal; also the suspenseful stalking of T-Rex around the vehicle with the kids trapped inside, including the monster's giant eyeballing of Lex and then crashing through the vehicle's viewing roof with its giant jaws; also the tense, hide-and-go-seek scene (with mirrors) in the restaurant kitchen when a pair of velociraptors stalked the young children while Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) quipped that they're probably safe ("Unless they figured out how to open doors...) - with a cut to a close-up of the kitchen door handle turning and the velociraptor pushing the door open