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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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Saboteur (1942)
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The climactic frightening, harrowing scene high on the Statue of Liberty's torch when Fry's (Norman Lloyd) coat sleeve slowly rips away stitch by stitch and he falls to his death |
 
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Salem's Lot (1979)
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The scene of an undead, vampirish boy (a dead brother) floating outside of a bedroom window, while smiling and scratching at the glass and asking to come in |
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Salo - The 120 Days of Sodom (1975, It./Fr.)
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Italian film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini's work was a shocking, disgusting and disturbing film about the dark and atrocious side of humanity - it told about the brutalization of a group of young adolescents (male and female) by four ruling WWII fascists in an isolated villa over several days, with four chapters: the third titled "Circle of Shit" in which they were forced to play with and eat feces, and the fourth titled "Circle of Blood" with teen torture scenes (i.e., a gouged-out eye, burned breasts and genitals, and a cut-off tongue) |
  
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Saw (2004)
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In both of these films, sadistic mastermind serial killer and terminally-ill cancer patient Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) devised impossible live-or-die situations for victims where they had to make outrageous moral choices to survive in the trap-filled environments, while self-inflicting lethal wounds; in the first film, two men (a photographer named Adam (Leigh Whannell) and a surgeon named Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes)) chained to pipes were given saws to hack off their limbs to escape - Dr. Gordon sawed off his own leg to break free; for another victim, a cage of razor wire must be clawed through to reach safety; and Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) was outfitted with a bizarre booby-trapped jaw device that would blow her head wide open if she didn't find the key to unlock it – inside the guts of another heavily-sedated, semi-conscious victim In the second film, victims in
a lethal, booby-trapped house faced similar dire circumstances - in
the razor-box scene, Addison (Emmanuelle Vaugier) grabbed at a vial
of antidote with her hands inside a glass cage where the openings were
one-way, with sharp metal that cut her arms when she tried to pull them
back out; in another horrific scene, returning victim Amanda was thrown
into a pit filled with used, dirty syringes where a key was hidden -
as she dug for the key, syringes stuck to all parts of her body |
  Saw (2004)   Saw II (2005) |
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Scanners (1981)
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The infamous exploding-head sequence in which scanner villain Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside) demonstrates his brain-bursting telepathic powers at an ESP conference; also the final showdown between Revok and long-lost brother Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), when Revok growls: "All right, we're gonna do this the scanner way: I'm gonna suck your brain dry!" followed by a gory, blood-bursting mutual psychic attack |
 
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Scream (1996)
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The opening 12-minute prologue scene in which all-American, sweatered girl Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore in a cameo) is alone preparing pop-corn to watch a video at home when she receives an initially playful phone call (she is asked a trivia question: what is her favorite scary movie? - and she replies Halloween) - and then the repeated terrifying calls turn obscene, threatening and ugly; when she demands to know what the caller wants and she must answer to save herself and her captured boyfriend, the caller simply replies: "To see what your insides look like" - followed with her startling murder outside by repeated stabbings and hanging from the front yard's tree - with Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) confirming what the caller wanted: "Her mom and dad found her hanging from a tree limb, her insides on the outside" |
 
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In the pre-massacre scene, the shadow of Comanche Chief Scar (Henry Brandon) slowly moves over and menacingly covers the crouched figure of young, frightened 10 year old Debbie (Lana Wood, younger sister of co-star Natalie Wood) by a family grave |
 
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The Secret of NIMH (1982)
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The unusually intense moments in a G-rated animated film: tiny little field mouse Mrs. Brisby's (voice of Elizabeth Hartman) perilous adventure into the world - and her encounter with the imposing farmer's cat named Dragon; also her meeting with The Great Owl (voice of John Carradine), including his first scary appearance (squishing a deadly spider underfoot) and his command to enter into his dark, cobweb-filled home: "Step inside...my house", including the shot of the bones of his previous mouse victims; also Mrs. Brisby's first scary encounter with a rat leader of NIMH (escapees from the National Institute of Mental Health); and the moment when Brisby's cement block home sinks into the mud, seemingly killing her three young children |
 
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The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
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The scene in which Harvard anthropologist/scientist Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman), who is searching for a strange, magical revitalizing powder in Haiti, is experiences the power first-hand; he is paralyzed and placed in a coffin - buried alive and lying still and emotionless with a tarantula placed on his face; he is totally conscious at both his autopsy and burial |
 
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The scenes of the many sick and gruesome crime-murders committed by maniacal serial killer John Doe (Kevin Spacey), with his MOs based upon the famous Seven Deadly Sins (gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy, and wrath) - especially the Sloth killing in which the victim was strapped to a bed to suffer a slow death for a year which was chronicled by photographs -- and the scary moment occurring when the corpse slightly rises up and moans; and the climactic grim moment in which Doe leads arrogant, hotshot replacement Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) and retiring veteran Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) to another sick and gruesome crime and souvenir - "her pretty head" in a bloody box |
 
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Shallow Grave (1994)
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The disturbing scenes of geeky and meek accountant David Stephens (Christopher Eccleston) being scarily transformed into an insane maniac as the film progressed, due to monetary greed; after the death of his Edinburgh apartment-mate Hugo (Keith Allen), he was chosen by his other roommates to dispose of the body in a shallow grave in the woods; while drooling, he bloodily hack-sawed the arms and legs off the corpse of the deceased, and plummeled the body's teeth with a hammer to prevent identification from dental records |
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While Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) serves as the winter caretaker of the snowbound Overlook Hotel with his family, he begins writing, but slowly becomes insane. When his nervous wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) discovers his typewriter and reams of paper, she is horrified to see that every single page has the phrase, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" thousands and thousands of time in different configurations; also the scene of Jack discovering a young woman taking a bath in Room 237, who turns into a rotting corpse when he hugs and kisses her; and the scene of Danny (Danny Lloyd) riding his tricycle around the hallways of the hotel and coming upon the murdered twins wearing blue dresses (and a horrific axe-murder scene) and beckoning him to play with them "forever and ever and ever"; also the iconic scene of maniacal Jack breaking down the door with an axe and exclaiming: "Here's Johnny!"; the scene of the unexpected axe-murder of Mr. Halloran (Scatman Crothers) in the lobby of the hotel; and the disturbing, perplexing, and lurid glimpse of a sexually-perverse scene between two party-goers from the hotel's sordid past - a man in a dog (or bear) outfit (with a open bottom) that masks his face is stretched out over a formally-dressed male lover on a bed
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Signs (2002)
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The scene of TV news footage from a Brazilian children's birthday party, showing home video footage of a brief shot of a green alien walking past an alley, with horrified brother Merrill Hess' (Joaquin Phoenix's) urgent warning shouted at the TV to the birthday party children: "Move children!! Vaminos!!", and the final climax when an alien breaks into the Hess household and puts the weak and ill son Morgan (Rory Culkin) at risk; also the scene of the blocked kitchen pantry in which Rev. Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) discovers a trapped giant alien - he uses a butcher knife to cut off two fingers on the alien's clawed hand reaching out from the underside of the closed door - causing the trapped creature to let out a blood-curdling scream |
 
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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 -- 
