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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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Carnival of Souls (1962)
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The many disturbing, creepy visions of ghostly figures of the recent dead (including director Herk Harvey) that haunt sole car crash survivor (?) Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss), such as weird visions of a ghoulish man who stares at her through the windshield, and the surreal dance of the ghouls in an abandoned circus tent |
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The recurring nightmare - shock second ending in which dead Carrie White's (Sissy Spacek) bloody arm bursts out of the ground above her grave toward mourning classmate Sue Snell (Amy Irving); or the opening locker room scene in which Carrie is taunted by schoolmates for having her first period, and the scene of a humiliated Carrie's psycho-kinetic, murderous revenge against prom-goers (shown in split-screen) after being doused and crowned with a bucket of pig's blood, and the scene of Carrie's murder of her ultra-religious, psychotic mother Margaret (Piper Laurie) - crucified by flying cutlery and kitchenware |
    
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Casino Royale (2006)
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In the infamous sexual torture and interrogation scene, villain Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) strapped Bond (Daniel Craig) naked to an open-bottomed cane chair and swung a heavy, knotted rope to strike Bond's testicles, in order to extract a password; Bond defiantly taunted Le Chiffre while in excruciating pain: "I've got a little itch, down there. Would you mind?... No! No! No, no, no, to the right. To the right, to the right! Aargh! Yeah! Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes...! Now the whole world's gonna know you died scratching my balls!" |
 
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Two frightening, feline stalkings:
kitten-faced Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) jealously stalking rival female
Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) on a Central Park path at night (accentuated
by the hissing, squealing air-brakes as a bus pulls abruptly into the
screen - to create a jolting sensation and cause audiences to 'jump'),
and a second similar scene in a YWCA indoor swimming pool accompanied
by growls and shadows of a black panther |
 
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The Cell (2000)
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The surrealistically beautiful image of a segmented horse - after being suddenly sliced into still pulsating pieces by panes of glass; and the inventive, disturbing visuals to represent the mind of the sadomasochistic serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) |
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The Changeling (1980)
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The deeply-disturbing imagery, supernatural phenomena, and sounds that composer/musician John Russell (George C. Scott) experiences in a haunted house, exacerbated by his own personal tragedy (losing his wife and daughter in an auto accident): a ball bouncing down the stairs, the apparition of a child in a bathtub, and a glass ball suddenly flying off a table and smashing during a seance; also the effective seance scene in which the tormented spirit conveys a message |
 
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Un Chien Andalou (1929, Fr.)
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The shocking and disturbing opening sequence when a man sharpens a straight razor, then moves the sharp-edged blade close to a woman's (Simone Mareuil) wide-opened eye, (an image of a cloud passing over the moon is interspersed), and then slices it in half -- (it was actually a cow's eye that was being cut) |
 
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Children of the Corn (1984)
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In this Stephen King tale, children with glowing eyes in the isolated and deserted farmland town of Gatlin, Nebraska have slaughtered all of the adult townspeople in the name of a God dubbed "He Who Walks Behind the Rows" -- the film opens with the famous coffee shop massacre after Sunday church of the Gatlin adults, and the scene of a boy stumbling out onto the highway clutching his sliced throat when he is hit by a car in the middle of the road; sadistic Malachai (Courtney Gains), the enforcer for the cult of murderous children, abducts victim Vicky (Linda Hamilton) and while holding her captive in the middle of the street, calls out tauntingly to her boyfriend Burt (Peter Horton): "Outlander! Outlander! We have your woman!", and then she is tied to a giant corn-dressed cross or crucifix |
 
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Child's Play (1988)
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The subtle moments in which
the blue-eyed, cherub-faced toy doll Chucky, imbued by the evil soul of
serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), appears to be talking --
without batteries, and commits his first murder |
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The tense nose-cutting scene in which nosy LA private detective J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is threatened to stay off the case by a maniacal, intimidating, knife-wielding hoodlum (director Roman Polanski in a cameo role): "You're a very nosy fellow, kitty-cat, huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows? Huh, no? Want to guess? Huh, no? OK. They lose their noses. (Jake's nose gushes blood after a sharp flick of the knife.) Next time you lose the whole thing. (I) cut if off and feed it to my goldfish. Understand? Understand!?"; also the tragic ending in Chinatown itself when Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) is shot through the head from behind in her fleeing convertible; Jake, the first to get to the car, opens the driver's door and she flops to the side - her face is horribly blown apart through her flawed eye - she has literally been destroyed by her domineering water-tycoon father Noah Cross (John Huston), who laments: "Lord, Oh Lord," and clumsily shields and covers the eyes of an hysterical daughter/grand-daughter Katherine - telling her: "Don't look, don't look" - to prevent her from comprehending the enormous tragedy |
  
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Christine (1983)
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The scene in which the evil-possessed red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury becomes obsessively-jealous of nerd owner Arnie Cunningham's (Keith Gordon) new girlfriend Leigh Cabot (Alexandra Paul) - and at a drive-in theatre on a rainy night, the malevolent car makes Leigh choke on her popcorn, the dome light becomes a brilliant white light, the radio blasts an old but menacing 50s tune, and the car's doors lock her inside -- she nearly dies and then delivers an ultimatum to her car-fixated boyfriend; in other scary scenes, the evil, flaming Christine chased one of Arnie's enemies (Buddy Reperton, played by William Ostrander) down a highway and left him a flaming corpse on the road, and then similarly stalked Moochie Welch (Malcolm Danare) down in a narrow alleyway and pinned him against a wall |
  
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Cliffhanger (1993)
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The opening scene of a climber falling to her death without being rescued by Gabe Walker (Sylvester Stallone) |
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The abhorrent scene of young punker Alex de Large (Malcolm McDowell) raping the red pajama-wearing writer's wife Mrs. Alexander (Adrienne Corri) - while performing a song/dance to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain"; the elderly husband Frank Alexander (Patrick Magee) is forced to helplessly watch the ugly disrobing and choreographed rape of his own wife when Alex first attacks her breasts - he snips off two circles of jumpsuit cloth around them to expose them and then in the mode of 'Jack the Ripper', he slits her entire suit off from her pant leg upward; after unzipping and pulling his own pants down prior to her rape, he mocks the husband: "Viddy well, little brother. Viddy well"; also, the scenes of Alex being given a new, experimental, brain-washing reprogramming treatment called "aversion therapy," the Ludovico Treatment Technique -- he is strait-jacketed and transported to a screening room where he is tied down in a seat and made a captive audience, and forced to watch films (of sex and violence) with his eyelids clamped open with pitiless clamps, while an assistant lubricates his bulging pupils at various intervals; his tortured face and head are wrapped in straps, and connected with electrodes and wires |
  
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The Collector, aka The Butterfly Collector (1965)
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The mentally-disturbed, obsessed character of young London bank clerk and kidnapper Freddie Clegg (Terence Stamp), and the chilling finale when Clegg goes back on his word to liberate from the basement his latest captive addition to his collection - art student Miranda Grey (Samantha Eggar) (she dies offscreen in a bathtub) |
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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 -- 
