An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

In this cautionary ecological documentary about climatic science, ex-Vice President Al Gore presented before-and-after slides of the disastrous effects of global warming. He refuted critics with data

He clearly illustrated a number of major developments, including:

• the shocking, frightening sight of the state of the Patagonia Glacier in Brazil after 75 years of global warming
• the near-complete melting of Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro's famous ice cap in the last 30 years
• Antarctic ice coring data that illustrated how CO2 levels were higher now than in the past 650,000 years
• the danger of massive ice sheets breaking off in Greenland or West Antarctica

Gore predicted higher temperatures, stronger storms, deadlier floods, and higher sea levels unless humanity's course was reversed in the next decade.

In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

John Carpenter's horror thriller was told in an extended flashback. Its tagline provided a clue to the film's plot: "LIVED ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY?" This was the third film in what Carpenter called his "Apocalypse Trilogy". (1) The Thing (1982), (2) Prince Of Darkness (1987), and (3) In The Mouth Of Madness (1995)

The protagonist was strait-jacketed private insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) in an asylum's padded room, who told his story to Dr. Wrenn (David Warner). The insane and psychotic Trent had been arrested and then institutionalized after axing to death the reader of a newly-released horror book, after he had asked: "Like the book?"

Trent described how he had been hired to investigate the claim of New York-based Arcane Publishing and its director Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston). He was to look into the disappearance of popular, best-selling horror novelist Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow) who was just about to release his newest and final book in a popular series titled "Horror in Hobbs End." Trent was to recover the manuscript for Cane's latest novel, In the Mouth of Madness, although he believed it was all a hoax and a stunt designed to promote Cane's book. [The Sutter Cane character was based on John Carpenter's novelist friend Stephen King.]

He had traveled to the northern New England, New Hampshire town of Hobbs End with Cane's book editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen). [Hobbs End was fictional - it existed entirely as a product of the writer's mind.] There, they found that civilization had entirely 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."

Trent was then pursued down an immense corridor (or portal) by monstrous creatures brought to life out of the pit - all creatures from Cane's writings. Cane was revealed to be the puppet (through the portal) for monstrous evil creatures from another dimension who wanted to take over Earth. It seemed that reading the stories themselves caused disorientation, lost time, memory loss, hallucinations, and paranoia - particularly infecting "less stable readers."

There were many other shocking images when Trent found himself part of the imagined town. These included strange apparitions, townspeople mutated or turned into psychotic zombies, surreal and hallucinatory nightmare sequences, an ancient race of otherworldly creatures, and people with facial deformities and tendrils whipping out of bodies.

Additional scary scenes included:

• Linda kissing the missing writer Cane - who was composed of sinew and bloody muscle tissue from the back view
• the final segment - 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)

#88

This influential science-fiction film was based upon Jack Finney's novel The Body Snatchers.

In the film's most memorable and frightening sequence, the town's doctor Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) and fiancee Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) fled from the town's space pods to try to elude the enemy and get help, while struggling to stay awake and remain human. As the last two humans (non pod-people) left, they escaped into a hilly wooded area and found refuge in an old abandoned mine, as scores of townspeople followed after them.

Weary and desperately exhausted, they were again compelled to hide in a constricted place - under floorboards in a pit, located in the dark, deserted cave or tunnel that was perilously close to their pursuers. When the aliens departed, Miles left the faint Becky, who was falling asleep, to discover the source of beautiful singing or music that they heard.

Becky couldn't keep her eyes open any longer. She fell asleep briefly. When he returned to the mine, he found her lying slumped over and prostrate with fatigue. He tried to force her to go on, started to carry her, but fell in a puddle at the mine entrance.

He took her in his arms to kiss her, and then drew away from her unresponsive lips. In a tight closeup shot of her face, he looked into the blank, dark, expressionless and staring eyes of his fiancée, realizing with a look of utter fright that she was now one of "them" - her body had been invaded and snatched. He knew instantly that this was not Becky but a treacherous imposter and victim. She confirmed: "I went to sleep Miles, and it happened...They were right." He was unbelieving: "Oh, Becky...I should never have left you."

His sweetheart of a moment ago now asserted: "Stop acting like a fool, Miles, and accept us." She screamed to the pod-people searchers as he fled:

"He's in here! He's in here! Get him! Get him!"

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

In the despairing, climactic ending of this horror remake by director Philip Kaufman, San Francisco health department field investigator Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) had seemingly escaped being replaced by a pod likeness. After leaving work near City Hall, he was summoned by the still-human Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright) - the last to not be absorbed. After she called out his name ("Matthew, Matthew"), he turned to confront her.

He screamed with a piercing, accusatory howl (and the camera descended into the blackness of his open mouth) while pointing his finger at her. She also screamed, realizing that he had become a cloned pod person.

Recognition by Cloned Matthew of Still-Human Nancy!

Other earlier scary scenes included the first examining views of a still-forming pod person, a near-perfect duplicate resembling Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum), when a sheet was pulled back. Matthew noted that the creature had adult characteristics but was still like a fetus without fingerprints - and then slightly later, the creature opened its eyes when Nancy was looking at it by herself. She jumped back and rushed to her husband Jack, trying to rouse him from his sleep. When he was jolted from his sleep and opened his eyes, the eyes of his pod double closed.

Also near the end of the film, Matthew and Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) were exposed as human when Elizabeth screamed after seeing a talking, human-faced mutant dog. Matthew and Elizabeth ran from the pursuing pod people, and jumped into the back of an open truck. They were driven to a giant warehouse at the docks where they saw pods being grown before being loaded into cargo ships.

Irreversible (2002, Fr.)

Frenchman Gaspar Noe's hard-hitting, graphic and violent film about rape revenge was told in reverse-order. It was noted for its excruciatingly-long, painful-to-watch, nine-minute anal-rape and real-time beating sequence.

In a Parisian pedestrian underpass lit by a reddish glow, beautiful and erotically sexual Alexandra (or "Alex") (Monica Bellucci) accidentally came upon rapist/pimp Le Tenia/Tapeworm (Jo Prestia) beating up prostitute Concha in the tunnel. She found herself to be his new victim.

When she was assaulted by him, she begged to no avail: "Let me go." He ordered: "Shut your mouth, slut" as he threatened with a knife: "Is this what you want, slut? You gonna shut your mouth now?" He called her a "f--king high-class bitch," causing her terror when he stroked her face with the blade: "Stinking c--t. This turn you on, tell me?...You know, you're hot for a c--t."

He then lifted her skirt, forced her onto her knees to lay down, and then coerced her: "I'm gonna take care of you." He laid on top of her, covered her mouth, pulled on her hair and began to prepare to anally rape her: "Damn! You must have one tight ass." He untied her dress straps, stroked her bare breast, called her a "little whore," and threatened to strangle her if she didn't keep quiet. He commanded her to spread her legs, told her "I'm gonna f--k your ass...I'm gonna blast your s--thole," and then raped her while using one hand to cover up her muffled screams and moans.

As he endlessly thrust into her, he continued to call her foul names ("F--king high-class swine"), and asked: "You bleeding or you wet?" Afterwards, she attempted to crawl away, and he kicked her in the face ("I'm gonna fix your face, I'm gonna fix it good"), beat her with his fist, and smashed her face into the pavement until she went into a coma. He pronounced her "dead meat" when he was finished with her.

I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

Director Jacques Tourneur's zombie supernatural horror film, a variant of the Jane Eyre novel, was produced by famed RKO producer Val Lewton. The low-budget film was very effective for its moody and atmospheric tone and visually-stylistic terror regarding dark family secrets.

The brooding, mystical melodrama told of the work of a trained Canadian nurse named Betsy Connell (Frances Dee). The retrospective film was her description of how she had "walked with a zombie."

She was hired to care for Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), the invalid and comatose wife of melancholy Paul Holland (Tom Conway), a sugar plantation owner on the West Indies-Caribbean island of St. Sebastian. Jessica's doctor claimed that her condition (with no will of her own, no speaking, and seemingly lobotomized) was caused by an incurable tropical fever. As Betsy cared for Jessica, she slowly began to fall in love with Paul. She also learned that Paul and his younger half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison) quarreled over the love of the afflicted woman.

Betsy was convinced that she could cure the "living dead" Jessica with a shot of insulin, but the treatment failed. She then learned from Jessica's native maid Alma (Theresa Harris) that a local voodoo priest cured a woman with her condition. Alma drew her a map to the "Home Fort" where a local voodoo ceremony would take place.

In an unsettling nighttime scene, Betsy took her patient, without permission, on a haunting, dream-like walk through billowing cane fields to the ceremony. She had to pass animal sacrifices along the way. As she went through a crossroads, there was the abrupt appearance in the darkness of a huge, eerie, bug-eyed and towering zombie-like guard Carre Four (Darby Jones). It was a shocking moment!

A major plot twist occurred next - Betsy entered a shack to consult with the voodoo witch doctor, and discovered it was Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett), the mother of Wesley. When Mrs. Rand had discovered that Jessica was planning to run away with Wesley, she had put a zombie curse on her. One of the film's lobby cards described Jessica's fateful condition: "Doomed to be one of the 'walking dead' by weird and wily witchcraft...her radiant blonde loveliness ravaged through the curse of vengeful voodoo!"

Jacob's Ladder (1990)

#21

• 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
• 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)

#1

• 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
• The first terrifying appearance of the gigantic shark behind Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) as he spooned out chum
• The horrifying scene of the shark devouring Quint (Robert Shaw)

Jurassic Park (1993)

#95

• 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.
• 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.
• The monster's stalking and chewing of cowardly lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) cowering in a thatched-roof toilet.
• 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, allowing them to enter and further stalk the kids.