Again, if you have NOT SEEN 'SIGNS', do not view this clip! After the scene from 'The Innocents', this brief scene from the film 'Signs' (when we the audience first view the alien creature) is a close 2nd as far as 'frightening'. When I saw it upon it's opening in a packed New York theater, the audience literally JUMPED in their seats! Even today, when I know what's going to occur, I still freak! M. Night's last good film.
The "Amelia" episode in Trilogy of Terror is one of Dan Curtis' greatest hits, so far as I'm concerned. Karen Black really sells it.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)--When Miles kisses Becky in the cave and realizes she has changed and she yells out, "He's here."
As classic as the original is, the 1978 Snatchers remake has the most shuddery ending I have EVER seen in a horror movies...still makes me jump to this day. Everything about that movie is masterfully unsettling.
Yeah, even the garbage truck pickups at the beginning are unsettling before we realize what it is they're picking up. A sterling creep show, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). The blu-ray is an absolute must.
Don't Look Now (1973) is also another unsettling masterpiece with many scenes that get under you skin before the final horror is revealed. A masterpiece of understatement and the power of suggestion -- in the decay and fragmentation of Venice.
I remember watching a TV play or drama when I was quite young (probably sometime during the 70's and probably one of those of which Graham and Richard allude to above). A family move into a new house and the woman (( think) keeps hearing the sound of a woman crying. They search everywhere, turning the house upside down, but can't locate the source. I think they find some bones and assume that's the reason, so they lay them to rest, hoping that will fix the prob, but I think it makes things worse! I've never seen it since and can't remember the outcome, but it did spook and creep me out.
There was also that great Spanish short TV film where the guy gets stuck in a phone-box. It's a comedy for about 95% of it, then it has a killer ending, never to be forgotten. More oooohhhh that frightening though. Classic!
Kev, I'm not sure about that TV thing, but it rings a bell - and OUT OF THE UNKNOWN springs to mind. I wonder if it was an episode of that. It used to scare the schidt out of me!
Yes, LA CABINA, a classic which always seemed to be shown around Christmas time on British telly. Funny, but also creepy as hell at the end when he's taken away on the back of the lorry into the warehouse with all these rotting corpses and skeletons in phone boxes!
A few people have mentioned the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. I think even Richard-W and myself had a chat about it on the board a few years ago. Agreed about the moment Miles realises that Becky has been taken over, but it's not her later shout of "He's over here!" (or something) that gets me. It's the enormous close up of Kevin McCarthy's face after kissing Becky and getting no response. I'm getting chills just thinking about that! Oh yeah, the '78 remake is brilliant too, one of the few remakes which equals the original. In fact I think it might be even better on the whole.
Whoa! Since a few posters here mentioned 'The Innocents', including myself, I just found out that (at Amazon), you can pre-order this for release at the end of September. What makes this interesting, at least to me, is that it's a re-mastered version from CRITERION with 'who knows what' special features; it's still too early to tell. This is a title I'd really like to view! 'We now return to our regular program, already in progress...
There's this scene, I don't remember the name of the film (I saw it on a video of horrible film deaths on Youtube), where this guy is in a closet, trying to surprise his friend or was hiding from his friend, either way his friend didn't know he was in there and opened the closet and yelled and jumped back and drew out his gun and blew a hole in the guy's head, splattering blood everywhere -- shocking.
That sounds a lot like BURN AFTER READING.
For me...well, I'm one of those whatchacallits; a wimp. I rarely seek out full-throttle horror movies. However, two moments in (non-)horror movies stand out:
- LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - The judge answering her cell phone. The incongruity of how such a thing could be rigged was completely trumped by the 'Holy fuck!' reaction it got out of me.
- THE FORGOTTEN - "I need you to forget!" A description can't do justice. The scene really creeped me out and stands, among a number of that film's examples, as a very effective use of CGI.
The scene at the nurse's station in Exorcist 3. Beautifully executed.
Everything about EXORCIST III is scary. The long scene down the corridor while the nurse goes in and out of rooms is the scariest scene in a motion picture, to me.
I agree. EXORCIST III is intense and scary. I found a fanedit recently which restores, insofar as is possible, the director's original intent. That means cutting out the priest played by Nicol Williamson and the exorcism which filmed and inserted after the completed film had been screened. It's infinitely more effective without them. The understatement of the whole thing really works.
To Richard-W and everyone else who liked this film: I haven't seen the film since it came out and Netflix has it at 1990. I honestly do NOT recall a thing about the film except for the scene I posted. I don't remember the beginning, middle or end and that's good because I put it at the top of my Netflix queue now after so many VERY strong recommendations from here as well as Netflix members. Thanks, I'm sure it will all be new to me again!
It's laughable, but for some reason that scene from Superman 3 when the lady turns into a robot bugged me a lot when I was a kid.
Hey, you're not the only one.
There's something weird about that scene, the abscence of score, the gruins of pain and the fact that she was a (bad) comic villain sidekick turned into a monster. Too bad she's so easily dispatched in the following scene.
Sorry richard, meant the very creepy italian 80s one.
Lamberto bava, 1985, one of claudio simonettis most unsettling scores. Cant remember which bits but certainly the downbeat and disturbing ending - spoiler - that the demons are relentless - like the music - and cannot be stopped.
The final minute of the first episode The Cemetery.
Portifoy looks at the painting hanging on the wall.
"Back Jeremy! Back Jeremy! Back Jeremy!"
It gave me the shakes for days as a kid.
Ahhh, Night Gallery. Now there's a culprit, well twice for me at least. All the "monster on the prowl" stuff from Pickman's Model and There Aren't Any More MacBanes gave me some seriously sleepless nights as a young kid. Saw them both again quite recently. Hmmm... maybe not so scary these days, although still remarkably effective for the time. But, boy, could I see why they gave me problems back then!
Ironically, it was always Serling himself who consistently creeped me out in Night Gallery. These days I have nothing but respect and admiration for him as a great writer. Back then, he was just this extremely creepy, fatalistic guy lurking in the shadows and reigning over the horrors of the show like Dracula in a smart suit! I wonder if he fully realised that he was having this effect on young minds.
What a mind Rod Serling had. A genuine, bona fide authentic original. He could think outside the box. He constantly surprised his audience with twists and turns and loops and perspectives that were like a snake eating its tail. He was a dramatist first, writing award-winning plays. The episodes of The Twilight Zone that he didn't write, he edited or developed in some way. He was a renaissance man. His impact on writers and on storytelling was profound. By the 1960s his influence was being felt everywhere, in all of television, in episodic series and movies-of-the-week that he had no involvement in. In movies, too. Perhaps his impact isn't felt as keenly now as it used to be. He is largely responsible for the masterpiece Planet of the Apes (1968). There is almost no relationship between the original French novel and the film; Serling took it to a different place, to new heights. Without Serling's development and re-conceptualizing, it would never have turned into a hit or a franchise that still endures today.
As the host of The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery I've always thought he modeled his on-camera persona on Edward R. Murrow. The same low-key matter-of-fact deadpan delivery in a suit and a cigarette, only Serling was turning the ordinary and the mundane on its head, and making us see things we take for granted differently.
What's really ironic is that Serling had no idea how brilliant he was. I've listened to some of his classroom lectures in The Twilight Zone box-set, always denigrating his own talent and his own scripts, using them as examples of bad writing or of things to avoid in writing, when in fact they were brilliant scripts.
Everything about that movie is masterfully unsettling. 
