Any movies that scare you? Disturbs you? Messes with your head? Leaves scars upon your mind? Let the list begin!
#1 movie that scares the s*** outof me is, Outbreak. *Shudders* It doenst help that I'm germaphobic. I can never watch the whole thing. Its scary cause that diesease is real Organs turning to liquid; puke up your own lungs...*hides*
Other things that creep me out is Sybil, and Cat's Eye
I'll now introduce you to what I call the Baby Elizabeth Awards! They're named after Elizabeth Maxwell, from the TV Miniseries V: The Final Battle. In the climax of the second episode, we witness her birth, the birth of a hybrid of a human and a reptile alien. After so much suspense and build-up, she looks perfectly normal. And then, suddenly, she flicks out a forked tongue! Scared the crap out of me! I must have been about ten or eleven when I saw it, but it to this day gives me the Willies. (Coincidently, Robert England of Nightmare on Elm Street fame played a lovable character named Willy in that show.)
Other shows that hold the Baby Elizabeth Award, by order in which I saw them:
Wonder Woman (TV series), "melting androids": in one episode of the Linda Carter TV series, a plot is schemed to replace people with duplicate androids. When caught, they self-destructed by melting. The way they melted scared the crap out of me as a kid, but primed me for the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark a few years later.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, "ceti eels": Khan's pets, and the only remaining indigenous life of Ceti Alpha 5, have this tendancy to crawl in your ears, wrap around your brain, and make you lose a lot of sleep. And, you don't expect shock value and horror from a Trek movie. But, then again...
Star Trek: The Motion Picture, "transporter malfunction": After seeing that, I really felt like Dr. McCoy about those blasted contraptions. After seeing this scene, what I got back from my wits didn't live very long, and I was unnerved and shaking by something as innocent as a wormhole generated by a warp drive malfuncition. Still thought it was great, though.
The Company of Wolves, "skin-peeling werewolf": When I first saw this back around 1986, it was so unsettling that I had to leave. I tried to come back and see more, but when the other guy with convergent eyebrows met the Devil in the woods and started applying shapeshifting ointment and then started screaming, I fled again. I had no idea that their fates would soon become my lifelong ambition.
Alien: Resurrection, "please kill me": I made it through the first three Alien movies without any loss of mental hit points at all. But, the thought of seeing a deformed copy of one's self, begging to be killed, that was cruel. I loved South Park's take on it with Towlie.
The Matrix, "what good is a phone call if you're unable to speak?": The melting mouth scene is so disturbing and prone to producing the Willies that I'm considering awarding Joel Silver and Keano Reeves the Baby Elizabeth Lifetime Achievement Award. Twilight Zone: the Movie had a missing mouth, and the classic Trek episode "Charlie X" had a whole missing face, but the execution of the Matrix version really freaked me out.
John Carpenter's "The Thing", "code blue bites off hands / crawling head": I saw this thing a long time back as a kid, but at the time it was edited down to almost nothing. I saw it again just late last year, uncut, and seeing it essentially for the first time. By now, shape-shifting has become quite the obsession, but this Lovecraftian Abhoth-tribute still gave me the Willies. The thought of a dismembered head popping spider legs sounds almost silly, but the way they did it was disturbingly scary. Now, if they could just convince Carpenter to hire a real composer instead of playing with his synthesizer, the movie could be taken seriously.
When writing about how people handle seeing a werewolf in the story's equivalent of real life, I picture how I felt during each of these classic moments--about how the disturbing images burn their way into the mind and cause you to obsess for days afterwards.
Taking a Gestalt approach, since it's the "in" thing...
The Eye:
"I can go now."
"Have you seen my report card?"
And the elevator scene? *shivers*
Darkness Falls:
You can always tell when Matilda is going to attack... But she moves so damn fast!!
Pitch Black:
It wasn't Vin Diesel, or the way any particular character died. It was the scene where they're shown dragging all of their lights in a bunch and the aliens can be seen stalking along all around them. Admittedly, Pitch Black was one of my inspirations for the book I'm working on.
Suspect Zero:
Ben Kingsley's best work yet.
Disgusted me:
Anaconda:
When the snake attacked the panther. Not scary, not necessary, and truly revolting.
Resident Evil:
The way the team captain died (the black guy -- I forget his name) was killed by the security system. Can you say "overkill?" (and he was the only one I wanted to live too! *grumbles*)
Requiem for a Dream:
The infection/amputation + "a** to a**" (the guy that said that line creeped me out more than the action).
When I was little, (8years old), the movie that scared the living daylights outta me was Jaws. My father worked in the theater and I get to see it for free. I couldn't sleep for the next several nights. I had nightmares.
But since I'm older and wiser. The only thing that scares me now is the element of surprize. A good example is the scene from Final Destination. I didn't expect that chick to get hit by a bus. WOW!! I jump out of my shoes!!! And to think, I never got scared when the coyote gets hit by a bus in the road runner cartoons.
There are plenty of movies that have creeped me out, but the one that left the longest impression was certainly Damien: Omen 2.
The scene I speak of is the one where the guy is in the elevator. It breaks down and goes speeding down (and perhaps up?). But that's not what kills him. He believe he's in the clear when it crashes down, but all of a sudden the cable that supported the elevator snaps and cuts him clear in half.
For years afterwards, and even now, I hesitate getting on elevators for fear of this happening to me. Oh yeah, and I always mention this scene whenever i'm on an elevator and someone else is in earshot (such a bastard I am!)
Figarou wrote:When I was little, (8years old), the movie that scared the living daylights outta me was Jaws. My father worked in the theater and I get to see it for free. I couldn't sleep for the next several nights. I had nightmares.
Figarou wrote:When I was little, (8years old), the movie that scared the living daylights outta me was Jaws. My father worked in the theater and I get to see it for free. I couldn't sleep for the next several nights. I had nightmares.
Figarou wrote:When I was little, (8years old), the movie that scared the living daylights outta me was Jaws. My father worked in the theater and I get to see it for free. I couldn't sleep for the next several nights. I had nightmares.
Figarou wrote:When I was little, (8years old), the movie that scared the living daylights outta me was Jaws. My father worked in the theater and I get to see it for free. I couldn't sleep for the next several nights. I had nightmares.
I completely forgot about that movie. And I think the appeal in that movie is that there's three completely different ways it can creep you out.
1) Killer jellyfish / giant squid
2) Ominous foreboding elements ("this sphere is reflecting everything except us.")
3) The whole inner-demon thing.
I probably just forgot to list that movie because, for some reason, the first thing I always think of whenever someone mentions Sphere is the scene where they first breathe helium.
Another movie I seriously want to list but can't think of any particular moments that either scared me senseless or creeped me out, is 28 Days Later. The scene that sticks out the most for me with that movie isn't one that scared me or creeped me, but the scene where they woke Selena up to ask her how she slept so well (BTW: Naomie Harris certainly has come a long way since The Tomorrow People, hasn't she?)
EDIT: And one more that just came to mind: Event Horizon
The annoying thing about Event Horizon is that I went in expecting mainly sci-fi, and ended up getting mainly horror. I liked the movie, but I think it needed to be marketed for what it was, because a lot of sci-fi fans hate splatter movies and wouldn't appreciate being subjected to people ripping out their eyeballs and showing them off while mumbling Latin.
And, did anyone else think of the Plot Device reactor in Event Horizon when seeing the beryllium sphere in Galaxy Quest?
But, I loved the eerie beginning, with the space station, with the field of view rotating, to show that sense of direction-less space.
Taking a Gestalt approach, since it's the "in" thing...
Scott Gardener wrote:The annoying thing about Event Horizon is that I went in expecting mainly sci-fi, and ended up getting mainly horror. I liked the movie, but I think it needed to be marketed for what it was, because a lot of sci-fi fans hate splatter movies and wouldn't appreciate being subjected to people ripping out their eyeballs and showing them off while mumbling Latin.
And, did anyone else think of the Plot Device reactor in Event Horizon when seeing the beryllium sphere in Galaxy Quest?
But, I loved the eerie beginning, with the space station, with the field of view rotating, to show that sense of direction-less space.
I thought it was marketed specifically as a horror. I seem to remember seeing a commercial that went along the lines of something like "the next great horror does not dwell in our past, but waits for us in our future." I went expecting some sort of haunted spaceship movie, which wasn't too far from the truth I suppose, but was still one hell of an understatement.
I didn't see Galaxy Quest though, so I wouldn't know.
There were a lot of moments that made it a creepfest, but the first thing I always remember is the opening timeline. It's completely nonemotional and straight to the point, so you know you're in for something tense when it states that it was the most tragic event in the history of space travel.
The only problem is that it inspired countless other future-set horrors like Ghosts from Mars and other total crapfests, only one of which was even moderately tolerable (that, of course, being Pitch Black).
The different ways all the bad kids went out in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Mr Wonka was just so vague about them. "Oh, you son is probably going to be boiled/whatever once he reaches that top of that tube...now, where were we?"
That film still creeps me out today, but watching it as a kid freaked me out (I'm not a wimp, I swear!).
I don't know if anyone's seen Prince of Darkness but that genuinely gave me the creeps, even if it was kinda slow to build up. The gross transformation of that blonde woman and the way the converted people attacked people especially
All really creepy movies but this this one is in my opinion the creepiest movie in moviedom, Silence of the lambs. I can't watch any Anthony Hopkin movies now because i always expect him to run upi and bite someones nose off. And that one line that he says "I ate his liver with some fava beans and keante fffffff" That line haunts my nightmares. Oh and Johny Deep (i think that's how you spell it) as Willie Wonka is very creepy I mean He just freaks me out.
Organs turning to liquid; puke up your own lungs...*hides*
