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Greatest Scariest Movie Moments
and Scenes
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Greatest Scariest Movie Moments
and Scenes
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Greatest Scariest Movie Moments and
Scenes |
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Movie Title |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
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Prince of Darkness (1987)
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The recurring, chilling dreams in a grainy video broadcast transmitted from the future featuring a shadowy, menacing figure in a church, and Wyndham's (Robert Grasmere) warning while being consumed from inside by beetles (and literally having his head disintegrate): "I have a message for you, and you're not going to like it: pray for death"; also the scene of a possessed vagrant (Alice Cooper) using a bicycle frame to brutally kill an escaping scientist |
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The Prophecy (1995)
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Lucifer's (Viggo Mortensen) revealing himself to Katherine Henley (Virginia Madsen): "God is love. I don't love you," and disillusioned priest-turned-police detective Thomas Daggett (Elias Koteas): "Little Tommy Daggett. How I loved listening to your sweet prayers. Then you would hop into bed, afraid that I was hiding under it. And I was!" |
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The shocking, carefully-edited shower murder scene of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in the first third of the film, by an opaque-outlined figure who whips aside (or tears open) the curtain barrier, wields a menacing butcher knife high in the air that repeatedly rises and falls in a machine-like fashion, as Marion vainly resists and shields her breasts while being savagely murdered - to the sounds of Bernard Herrmann's shrieking violins; also the scene in which neurotic mama's boy Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) realizes that the victim's sister is snooping around in his house; also the scenes of Detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) killed at the top of the stairs; and the horrifying discovery of Norman's mummified mother in the fruit cellar by Lila (Vera Miles); the eerie epilogue scene in a police waiting room of Norman with a grinning smile slowly creeping over his face - subliminally superimposed by and dissolving into the grinning skull of his mother's mummified corpse, as he speaks chilling words: "I'm not even gonna swat that fly. I hope they are watching..." |
   
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The final horrifying scene in which once-brutal, cocky gangster Tom Powers (James Cagney) has his bandaged corpse delivered to his home - propped up like a mummy at the doorstep of his mother's (Beryl Mercer) house, with his face-first fall forward (while a scratchy phonograph record plays an upbeat tune on the soundtrack) |
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Pulp Fiction (1994)
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The violent scene of LA mob boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) being raped over a pommel horse in the basement by motorcycle-riding security guard Zed (Peter Greene) and bearded pawn shop owner Maynard (Duane Whitaker) - and Butch's (Bruce Willis) intervention by killing Maynard with a sword-like katana and by Marsellus shooting Zed in the groin with a shotgun; and the scene of overdosed Marsellus' wife Mia (Uma Thurman) being injected with a long hypodermic needle (with adrenaline) directly into her breastplate and heart to help her regain consciousness |   
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Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
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The spectacular finale when the Ark of the Covenant is opened by the Nazis and the horrors of hell are released upon them, while nearby Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is tied to a pole with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) |
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Re-Animator (1985)
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The outrageously humorous/perverted/horrifying scene - the film's most famous over-the-top sequence - of Dr. Herbert West's (Jeffery Combs) experiment with recently-dead and decapitated competitor Dr. Hill (David Gale), whose disembodied 'head' provides oral sex to student Dean Cain's (Bruce Abbott) girlfriend Megan Halsey (Barbara Crampton); also the scene of West killing his opponent by cutting off his head with a shovel |
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The frightening moments when spying neighbor L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) looks on helplessly as his fiancee Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) is caught in the murderer Lars Thorwald's (Raymond Burr) apartment and gestures with the wedding ring, and when Thorwald knows who and WHERE his voyeuristic, telephoto-lens watching neighbor is located, by spotting him across the courtyard, and by phoning him, the sound of Thorwald heavily climbing the steps outside his apartment, and then entering his apartment and forcing him out the window after a stand-off confrontation with popping flashbulbs |
    
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The demonic Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) plotting to eliminate the second Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) by urging her to jump to her death from an open window because she can never be the true replacement and mistress of the estate |
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Red Eye (2005)
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The creepy set-up of this film - a chance encounter on a red-eye flight from Dallas to Miami with two passengers sitting together: hotel manager Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) and terrorist Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy); he stuns her with details about her family and her personal life ("As fate would have it, my business is all about you"), and demands to do as he says (set up Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia) to be assassinated by a rocket launcher in the hotel where she works) while threatening to kill her father (and family) in Miami; especially scary is the scene in which he angrily pushes her into the airplane's bathroom after she has written a warning with soap on the mirror; later to retaliate after the plane has landed, she lunges at Jackson and drives a pen right into his throat, grabs his cell phone and runs to the plane exit - the film climactically ends with their struggle in her Miami house before Jackson is killed and the murder plot is thwarted |
   
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Repulsion (1965)
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The progression of the increasing insanity of sexually-repressed, virginal, and fragile young Belgian beautician Carol Ledoux (Catherine Deneuve) who was left alone in an apartment and began to have psychosexual hallucinations, with the sound of a ticking clock and dripping faucet, and two disturbing scenes of rape (one hallucinatory and one real) - with her retaliatory slashing out with a razor and murdering her landlord (Patrick Wymark) in the second instance; also her brutal murder of a male visitor by beating him with a candlestick and immersing his body in a bathtub full of water, and the equally startling hallucinatory images of cracks appearing in the wall and grasping phantom hands reaching out at her, as well as shots of plates with rotting food and flies |
  
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Requiem for a Dream (2000)
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The sickening, horrifying scene of heroin-addicted druggie Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) injecting another dose of heroin into a hole forming in his infected left arm - and the subsequent hospital scene of Harry having his gangrene-infected arm amputated and waking up to the reality of his situation | 
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Reservoir Dogs (1992)
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The infamous, violent, shocking and menacing ear-slicing torture scene following the robbery in which suspicious, psychotic gang member Mr. Blonde or Vic Vega (Michael Madsen) - while dancing to the music of Stuck in the Middle With You by Steeler's Wheel - excises (off-screen) the ear of chair-bound, duct-taped cop-hostage Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz), and then threatens to douse him with gasoline |
 
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The Ring (2002)
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The disturbing scene of the undead young girl named Samara (drowned years before in a well) crawling out of the well and walking toward the screen, and the equally shocking scene of her crawling out of the TV screen; the videotape itself that investigative reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) watches and tries to understand; and the cutaway flashback scene when Katie's (Amber Tamblyn) mother (Lindsay Frost) tells Rachel how she discovered her daughter cringing in a closet |
    
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Mother-to-be Rosemary's (Mia Farrow) memory of being raped by Satan in her dream-like sleep, recalling that self-centered husband Guy (John Cassavetes) had begun making love to her, but then his appearance changed into a grotesque beast-like figure resembling the Devil, with yellowish eyes and clawed, scaly hands. He stroked the length of her body with his hairy claw. While being 'raped' during this horrific copulation scene, she realized: "This is no dream, this is really happening"; Honorable Mention: Rosemary's discovery that her friendly Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Bellamy) is actually a Satanist, and the final scene when she sees her child in a bassinet and demands: "What have you done to it? What have you done to its eyes?" |
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Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.
Many sites
and horror books have attempted to compile listings of the scariest
scenes in film history. In late October 2004, the Bravo cable
network first presented a countdown of 100 movies that contained the
100 Scariest Movie Moments in Film History, later supplemented with
30 Even Scarier Movie Moments in October, 2006. Other sites and film
critics have presented their own compilations of cinema's scariest scenes,
such as the UK's Channel Four and RetroCrush. The selections
of Entertainment Weekly for the "20 Scariest Movies of All
Time" in October 2004 are marked with this symbol -- 
