Favourite scary movies or movie scenes

Just for the season that's in it. Name your scariest movies. Or scariest/most horrific scene from a film you've seen. Link to videos if you can.

First that comes to mind is The Exorcist III.
30 Days Of Night and the oil guy being grabbed is pretty scary.

Aliens, the marines discovering multiple creatures around them too late.

Dead Man, the bounty hunters "testing" the head the next day.

Day Of The Dead, Captain Rhodes' demise.

Heeeeeere's Johnnnny!

Dog Soldiers; when a dead cow falls on the camping soldiers
1408; Cusack sees himself on the window and a man with an axe comes from behind
Resident evil; first time the zombies appear.
Alien; famous dinner table scene
Predator; Billy: I'm scared Poncho.
Poncho: Bullshit. You ain't afraid of no man.
Billy: There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man. We're all gonna die.

Savage Harvest when the lion makes its entrance from the roof of the hut..

The boogey man...

The Descent

Probably my favorite thing to watch around Halloween is The Changeling from 1980 with George C Scott. Possibly the scariest haunted house movie ever made, this is the famous seance scene. Of course, for the full effect, watch the whole thing.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-AzTXJHw2Tk

Also the orignal Night of the Living Dead, as well as the excellent remake, the original The Haunting and The Others are Halloween classics in my book.

this bit in Shaun of the Dead where they 'walk like zombies' to avoid the real zombies so they can get to the Winchester Pub.

The first movie I remember being really truly terrified of was Poltergeist. I was about the same age as the little girl in the film when I first saw it, and I don't think I've ever completely gotten over being totally freaked out by it.

Another film that terrified me in childhood was The Gate. I have only ever seen it once, probably twenty years ago, but I still vividly recall the kid getting stabbed in the eye with a Barbie doll.

And as a teenager, I always enjoyed scaring the hell out of myself and my friends with Candyman. Probably my favourite horror film of all time, next to The Shining.

Candyman meets Helen

Speaking of scary movies, 30 Days Of Night is previewing at Maxx tonight at 11pm, original version, for €7. It appears to be the 113 minute cut that was just released in the US, which means either the German censor hasn't gotten to it yet, or they've given it a strict certificate. I've seen it and it is F**KING SCARY, frequently made me jump. And very graphically gorey. Not for those of a nervous disposition.

Is that in English or German though? I couldn't see anything saying OV.

Thanks for the warning.

My bad, went on my colleagues word, she must've just read "Original" on the site and presumed that meant "original version". Just rang them up and the nice lady said that it's in German. Bugger. Just have to wait 'til it rolls up in Cinema.


It has a botched decapitation scene (among many decapitation scenes) that makes you want to curl up into the foetal position behind the couch and wait for it all to go away. Quite grotesque.

Stop! Stop! TMI!

Sounds quite promising, actually. Just last week, my boyfriend and I (both horror film fans) were complaining about the lack of truly scary movies these days. We saw The Descent on DVD and were quite disappointed with the scare factor after having heard numerous stories about how good it was. BF did quite like the fact that the film involved six hot women, but that's where the fun ended.

I can't remember being truly, truly scared out of my wits by a film since The Blair Witch Project, which I saw in the cinema when I was at uni - the final shot actually made me scream aloud.

Also saw Dark Water on Sunday evening; can't particularly recommend that film either although Jennifer Connelly is very very good as usual.

He Knows You're Alone
Now in advance I must say that this is utter crap.
But when he's hiding in the fucking wallpaper? aaaaaaaaaaieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Apart from that, The Watcher In The Woods (Disney fucks up kids - yeah), The Uninvited (my mum's fave - she cannot sleep without a light on after this and has seen it 50+ times), Ringu (The Ring).
argggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg

In the Mouth of Madness (1995) with Sam Neil and Jürgen Prochnow (won 1 award and 3 nominations)

Plot summary: With the disappearance of hack horror writer Sutter Cane, all Hell is breaking loose...literally! Author Cane, it seems, has a knack for description that really brings his evil creepy-crawlies to life. Insurance investigator John Trent is sent to investigate Cane's mysterious vanishing act and ends up in the sleepy little East Coast town of Hobb's End. The fact that this town exists as a figment of Cane's twisted imagination is only the beginning of Trent's problems...

It's a hide-behind-the-sofa-with-your-hands-over-your-face movie!

Scared of spiders? DON'T CLICK ON THIS LINK. E tu vivrai nel terrore - L'aldilà is quite scary, in that early 80s cheesy exploitation film way.

The Thing has so many classic horror scenes, I'd be hard pressed to choose between the defibrillation scene or the blood test. Further highlights here. Again, scenes of a graphic nature.

The Thing (1982) - The creature is reanimating and is about to attack Bennings in the cold storage room.

EDIT: Opps, just got to reading your posting!

The first Psycho was good – especially when the detective gets killed by the knife attack when walking up the stairs. Alfred Hitchcock made his first film in Munich.

The mirror scene in Donnie Darko, along with the sound track.

I like Carpenter's recurring nightmare theme. you wake up, realize that something is wrong. enter bad guy, wake up again. He used this in couple other movies like Prince of darkness.

I also like Sam Neil in horror movies such as Event horizon, or Jurassic Park

That's what I liked about "In the Mouth of Madness". It messes with your expectations and plays on your fears and imagination. Like Halloween in that respect, but better IMHO. By comparison, many of the new so-called horror movies seem very tame. You can see things coming a mile away and they leave little to the imagination. The special effects are a poor substitute for your own fears.

Found the trailer for "In the Mouth of Madness": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFcOeM_Usk

The Blair Witch Project

on a lazy afternoon, strolled down to local one dollar theater and somehow endend up watching this movie.

scary!

I'm with you on that one, many western "horror" films of the last few years aren't really horror films per se, rather action films with genre elements. The Resident Evil franchise comes to mind. They're mostly formulaic, horror-by-numbers, predictable, most of the scares signposted along the way. There aren't any Carpenters, Romeros, Fulcis at work in the genre, guys dedicated to disturbing you. Rob Zombie perhaps, he's got visual flair and an individual style.

Jackiesaw

We watched The Ring last night. I sat with the pillow in front of my face the whole time and couldn't sleep afterwards, but my husband looked about as scared as if he was watching an infomercial on salad spinners. It is a pretty movie (except for the inexplicably and totally unannounced - damn them- grey mossy stone faced victims).

Z Charron: I love all of the movies you mentioned. 'The Legend of Hell House' would be right up your alley. It's a more modern version of the Haunting, going after the ghosts from the scientific as well as spiritual perspective. It was made in 1973 and stars Roddy Mcdowell, among others.

I actually haven't seen The Legend of Hell House. Must add it to the rental list...

The Shining scene when Wendy walks into Jack's study to look at his manuscript, only to find hundreds and hundreds of pages with the words

"all work and no play makes jack a dull boy"

This slow look of horror comes over her face and it is the most psychologically scary scene ever!

Yes, The Shining, but the scene when Jack Nicholson tries to smash down the door with an ax. That was freaky.

Just as Punchbear mentioned in his opening post, one of the best vampire movies produced in a while has to be 30 Days Of Night. Bloody as hell. I'm not a big horror or vampire movie fan (or a Josh Hartnett fan for that matter), but there are a few I don't mind watching and this one counts among them. Check out this gory decapitation scene, certainly one of the best in movies to date:

30 Days Of Night (2007) - Decapitation Scene



_{Let's hope YouTube doesn't remove this clip anytime soon.}

Back in 1979 I went to see a corny B-grade horror movie called Phantasm that was released the same year. The acting was weak and the special effects were almost laughable, especially looking back at some of the clips now. But one character, known only as The Tall Man, would give me the creeps; he and his flying metal spheres with their deadly spring-loaded blades.

Phantasm (1979)

The final scene of Saw is one my favourite twists in a horror film to date.


I vacillate on this one. I've watched it several times now and each time I change my mind. There are moments of brilliance and you can feel the directors desire to bring something fresh to the genre, but there are some gaping plotholes (for me) and the sneaking suspicion that at some points style triumphed over substance. The premise for the film had way more potential than was exploited. But the overhead panning shot of the vampire massacre is rather good and there are, on initial viewing, satisfying "I just jumped over the pygmy" moments.

Saw IV wasn't bad, but its opening sequence, the autopsy, is rather graphic and should come with some sort of warning
Apparently there'll be seven of them. But I still don't really consider the Saw series to be horror, more thriller with overtly grotesque setpieces interwound with clevererer-than-thou soap opera elements, that are reminiscent of Lost, in the same way that the Hostels aren't horror but neo-exploitation film. Should one call Marathon Man a horror film, or I Spit On Your Grave or Seven for that matter?

A horror film definition from Wikipedia:

"originating from the horror genre that are designed to elicit fright, fear, terror, or horror from viewers. In horror film plots, evil forces, events, or characters, sometimes of supernatural origin, intrude into the everyday world and usually include a central villain."

The boundary between horror and thriller can be slim, as the above mentioned case of Seven, Marathon Man, Alien, etc. Certainly there are things in these films that are horrific though. Even with a film like The Wicker Man (a favorite of mine. The original, not the horrid, horrid remake!), which takes place almost entirely during the day and has no gore whatsoever, I would consider horror simply because of the final unsettling scene.

I think horror generally involves the fantastic, preternatural or science fiction or all three in the case of Event Horizon. Although something like Silence Of The Lambs is often classified as a horror film, I'd still classify it as a thriller with horror elements. The original Wicker Man is great, definitely a horror film in the truest sense of the word, in its capture of an bleak atmosphere of isolation and paranoia.