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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 |
| House of Wax (1953) - in 3-D
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The scene in which Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) beats against wheelchair-bound Professor Henry Jarrod's (Vincent Price) face, causing his wax visage to break and fall away, revealing the grotesque features beneath |  |
| The Howling (1981)
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The file cabinet scene in an office at a Big Sur country retreat when Terry Fisher (Belinda Belaski) is rifling through the folders - and a giant hairy claw reaches calmly in to help her - she is attacked by the werewolf and slapped backwards; also the real werewolf transformation scenes in the film, in which the skin and jaw structure change (without computer animation effects) |    |
| An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
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The shocking, frightening sight of the state of the Patagonia Glacier in Brazil after 75 years of global warming, and the near-complete melting of Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro's famous ice cap in the last 30 years, as shown by ex-Vice President Al Gore with before-and-after slides, in the cautionary ecological documentary about climatic science that predicts higher temperatures, stronger storms, deadlier floods, and higher sea levels unless our course is reversed in the next decade |  
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| Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
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The frightening, terrifying reaction Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) experiences after kissing his sweetheart Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) - discovering that she has been transformed and become one of the clones |   |
| Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
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The despairing, climactic ending in which health department inspector Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) screams with a piercing, accusatory howl (and the camera descends into the blackness of his open mouth) when he points his finger and confronts the still-human Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright) - the last to not be absorbed; also the first view of a still-forming pod person when a sheet is pulled back - and the creature opens its eyes; and the image of a talking, human-faced dog |  
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Irreversible (2002, Fr.)
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The infamously excruciatingly-long, graphic, violent shrieking, painful-to-watch nine-minute real-time beating and anal-rape sequence (in flashback) of Alex (Monica Bellucci) in a Parisian underpass tunnel lit by a reddish glow, by rapist/pimp Le Tenia/Tapeworm (Jo Prestia), in which she begged: "Let me go, please"; as he raped her, he threatened: "You gonna shut up, little whore?" |  
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I Walked With a Zombie (1943)
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The nighttime scene of Canadian nurse Betsy Connell's (Frances Dee) haunting walk through sugar cane fields to a local voodoo ceremony - and the abrupt appearance in the darkness of huge zombie guard Carrefour (Darby Jones) |  
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| Jacob's Ladder (1990)
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Jacob Singer's (Tim Robbins) temptress Latina girlfriend Jezzie's (Elizabeth Pena) erotic disco dance with the snake-like devil to James Brown's Ma Thang (Sex Machine) on a crowded dance floor - when a horn abruptly rips open her mouth |  |
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The ominous, driving, menacing John Williams' 'da-dum...da-dum' score (of cellos) that brings on shark attacks, especially in the shocking opening scene in which carefree blonde Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) leaves a beach party to go skinny-dipping and is 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; also the first terrifying appearance of the gigantic shark behind Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) as he spoons out chum; and the horrifying scene of the shark devouring Quint (Robert Shaw) |       |
| Jurassic Park (1993)
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The sudden dropping of a goat's leg on the windshield after teenage Lex (Arianna Richards) wonders, "Where's the goat"?, and the tense, hide-and-go-seek scene (with mirrors) in the restaurant kitchen when a pair of velociraptors stalk the young children while Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) quips 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 |   |
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The horrific censored scenes (later restored) of Skull Island natives being killed by the awesome and enraged beast Kong, who has broken through from behind an enormous wall: first, one hapless spear-throwing native was grabbed and chewed, and then two others were stomped to death in the mud |
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| Land of the Dead (2005)
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George Romero's latest zombie film included the scene of the smartly-evolved, more advanced and well-organized horde of hundreds of zombies (led by gas station attendant Big Daddy (Eugene Clark)) invading the walled and fortified city of the wealthy living in high-rise skyscrapers, and crashing into the insular Fiddler's Green enclave of opportunistic supercapitalist and scheming coward Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) while he attempts to escape with his money |
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| The Last House on the Left (1972)
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This taboo-breaking and often revolting 'snuff'-type film featured the long ordeal of two teenaged girls, Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham) who are searching for pot when kidnapped by a sadistic group of escaped convicts led by Krug (David Hess), and then forced to have sex with each other, brutally tortured, raped, dis-emboweled (after repeated stabbings), and eventually murdered in the woods |   |
The Last King of Scotland (2006)
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The awful scene in which Scottish physician Dr. Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) is punished (for an attempted poisoning) by being dangled from the ceiling by ropes and left to die - hanging by two meat hooks pierced through his chest's nipples - one of the brutal actions of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) |  
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| Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
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In this Technicolored noir, neurotically-possessive, insanely-jealous, and darkly alluring femme fatale Ellen Berent/Harland (Gene Tierney) deliberately let her husband's younger paraplegic brother Danny (Darryl Hickman) tire and drown in the lake as she sat in a rowboat nearby, in one of the film's most chilling scenes | 
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Lethal Weapon (1987)
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The electric shower electrocution scene in which hostage Sgt. Riggs (Mel Gibson) was tortured (strung up half-naked, doused in water, and prodded with an electric sponge) by villain Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey) and his Chinese henchman Endo (Al Leong) - demanding to know about "The Shipment" | 
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A creepy David Lynch film about a hip LA couple: jazz musician Fred Madison and his girlfriend/wife Alice Wakefield/Renee (Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette), enhanced with an Angelo Badalamenti-Trent Reznor soundtrack, who discover - to their horror - that they are being videotaped while they sleep; in the scariest scene, Robert Blake (as a no-eyebrowed evil Mystery Man with white makeup and a puffy face) introduces himself to Madison at a party and announces that he's also standing miles away in Fred's house at that very moment |  |
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 -- 
