 |
Greatest Scariest Movie Moments
and Scenes
|
|
|
Greatest Scariest Movie Moments
and Scenes
|
|
Greatest Scariest Movie Moments and
Scenes |
||
|
Movie Title |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
|
Suspiria (1977)
|
The series of creatively-brutal and bloody murder scenes in the double-murder sequence: (1) a helpless blonde dancer is repeatedly stabbed in the chest (into her still-beating heart); then her face (and entire body) are shoved through a colorful stained-glass skylight window, only to be stopped in mid-fall by a rope strung around her neck, that suspends her only a foot or two from the floor as blood drips down from her body; and (2) a second victimized dancer is bisected by the falling shard of glass and other objects from the ceiling's skylight; honorable mention: in another scene, a negligee-wearing terrorized woman escapes attack by crawling through a window high in the wall, only to tumble onto coils of razor wire; and ballet dancer Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) finds maggots writhing in her hair one night; also, the scene of the vicious attack by a seeing-eye dog on its owner -- the dance school's blind pianist |
  
|
Syriana (2005)
|
The intense, nauseating and brutal, difficult-to-watch torture scene of veteran, middle-aged, bearded, and betrayed CIA analyst Bob Barnes (George Clooney), stationed in the Middle East, barechested and having his fingernails yanked out by a pair of pliers | 
|
|
The Tenant (1976)
|
A European immigrant Trelkovsky (Roman Polanski) rents an apartment in Paris, whose previous tenant Simone Choule, now lying in a hospital in a body cast in traction (and screaming through her bandages), attempted to commit suicide by jumping out of the window - as the film progresses, he slowly becomes demented and transforms (mentally and physically) into the previous tenant (i.e., cross-dressing), after finding a bloody tooth in a hidden hole in the wall behind the wardrobe and discovering that the tooth is a perfect fit for a missing molar in his own mouth - he attempts to commit a more successful suicide (as himself and Simone) by hurling himself from the window |
 
|
|
|
The face-off scene between Sarah
Connor (Linda Hamilton) and the relentless cyborg called The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) - reduced to a metallic, skeletal frame - crawling and grasping
towards her; and Kyle Reese's (Michael Biehn) frightening memories of
a post-apocalyptic future, including the infiltration of a human hideout
by another future Terminator (Franco Columbo) |
|
|
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
|
The disturbingly realistic depiction of a nuclear weapon exploding in Los Angeles in Sarah Conner's (Linda Hamilton) nightmarish dream, and the fiery effect on a children's playground and herself |
|
|
|
The entire low-budget, documentary feel of this seminal horror film, opening with a sober narration about a crime spree; with the image of a sliding door that opens and takes battered, innocent teenagers into the lair of chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), wearing a butcher's apron and a mask stitched out of human skin; also the scenes of hanging a screaming Pam (Teri McMinn) on a meat hook through her upper back, and Sally (Marilyn Burns) being held captive at the dinner table (and having her finger cut as an appetizer for Grandfather (John Dugan)), and the lengthy scene of Sally being chased as she makes a frantic bid to escape; also Leatherface jumping out of the shadows and scaring Franklin (Paul A. Partain) - and slaughtering him by a chainsaw applied to his stomach |
   
|
|
Theater of Blood (1973)
|
The scene of Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart (Vincent Price), after faking his own death, exacting revenge on a nasty London theater critic who has ended his career, by feeding him his own poodles |
|
|
Them! (1954)
|
The scene of police finding a traumatized girl wandering trance-like, near a smashed-up automobile, and blood (but no bodies) - and when she is revived out of her shocked state, she screams: "THEM! THEM!!!! THEMM!!!!"; also the scenes of the giant radioactive ants with mandibles on the loose, due to atomic testing in the New Mexico desert |
 
|
|
The Thing (From Another World) (1951)
|
The tense sequence in the Antarctic station in which Bob's (Dewey Martin) geiger counter reveals the indestructible, defrosted monster (James Arness) is coming closer and closer - and is revealed behind a closed doorway |
 
|
|
|
The autopsy scene, in which infected Norris (Charles Hallahan), a member of an Antarctica research team experiencing sub-zero temperatures during a snowstorm and extreme paranoia, has a heart attack; as Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) attempts to revive his heart with resuscitation paddles and CPR, Norris' mutated rib cage/chest and stomach become a fanged, gaping maw with a bear-trap spring that bites off the doctor's forearms; in addition, Norris' head separates from his body, sprouts spider legs and eye stalks, and scurries away like a crab; also the scene of the blood test used by R. J. MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Windows (Thomas Waites) upon the participants who are forced to sit tied together - in order to 'smoke out' the alien creature (Palmer played by David Clennon, who shockingly emerges as an eyeless tentacled monster); and the additional scary scene of discovering that Blair (Wilford Brimley), slowly going insane, has escaped the storage shed by tunneling under the ice |
    
|
|
|
The nighttime scene of Jem (Philip Alford) and Scout (Mary Badham) Finch's walk home through the woods with rustling trees and leaves - Scout wears a ham costume, which prevents her from seeing an attacker (the feared Boo Radley?) assaulting her brother |
|
|
Torn Curtain (1966)
|
The lengthy murder sequence in a farmhouse kitchen involving the difficult killing by Professor Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman) of a Soviet agent using a soup kettle, a butcher knife, and finally a gas oven |
|
|
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
|
The tense scene, a remade segment called "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" in which phobic, panic-stricken airplane passenger John Valentine (John Lithgow) deliriously sees a gremlin (Larry Cedar) sabotaging the plane's engines during a turbulent storm, and when he lifts the window shade to see the gremlin pressing its face against the window |
 
|
|
The Vanishing (1988, Neth/Fr.)
|
Kidnapper Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) abducts Saskia (Johanna Ter Steege) at a gas station (and chloroforms her into unconsciousness, shown in flashback) - and also plans a similar hideous fate for her lover boyfriend Rex (Gene Bervoets) by drugging him and burying him alive in a coffin under the earth |
  
|
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 -- 
