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Just curious: what's the scariest movie you've ever seen?
For me, it was The Ring. Yeah, yeah, you're welcome to laugh at me, but that movie was just so creepy!
Follow Ups:
I am the only person I know that thinks this movie is scary. It really creeps me out though. Something about a dead person floating up in a well that is very unnerving. Usually it's certain scenes and not overall movies that scare me. The Sixth Sense is probably the best overall for the most scares(more like creepy scares and not a 'make you jump' scare). And that darn vampire kid floating outside and tapping on the window in Salem's lot, I had to turn it off at that scene the other night cuz I couldn't bear it. The dead girl in the closet it The Ring was horrifying too. Maybe we should do a scary scene post.
The topic of scary movies came up awhile back at work and 'The Changeling' was brought up by someone as one of their favorite scary flicks. I had forgotten about it, but have since been meaning to rent it as I do remember it creeping me out when I saw it at the time of it's release, although I was pretty young at the time and this might have something to do with it. The scene with the ball bouncing down the stairs still haunts me a little to this day...Now Salem's Lot...that wasn't bad! Especially for a made-for-TV film. It was replayed on TV awhile back and I watched some of it. It holds up surprisingly well; MUCH darker in mood than your typical TV fare. I started a 'scariest film you've ever seen' thread on another message board quite awhile back that got some great responses. I actually had to go back to the thread to cut and paste a section of a response discussing his personal Salem's Lot experience.
"...i think by far the most violent reaction to a horror scene i've ever witnessed was during a viewing of Salem's Lot. i was over at a friend's house. (he wasn't too fond of horror movies, but, as with everything else during those days, i talked him into it.) i can't remember if the scene was the appearance of Mr. Barlowe or the boy-vampire's entrance in the hospital... but when the beast appeared, matt did two screaming back-flips and ended up cowering in the corner of the room, crying hysterically.
his mother made me go home and prevented me from *ever* coming over to their house again.
matt wouldn't talk to me in school for months afterward...
even now (15 years later) when i run into him during visits home, he still gives me distrustful side-long glances as if i might just pull something else outta my pocket to fuck with his head...
mental note: make sure to schedule some time this christmas to go over to matt's house in the middle of the night and scratch on his window... "
Classic.
Bryan K.,
Music Lover & President-elect of C.C.A.C. (Concerned Citizens Against Cilantro)
The original movie with Steve McQueen when I was a kid. Scared me for years.The remake was pretty good, too.
the 1st one
The original did very little for me. Seemed like nothing more than a cookie cutter 50's B scifi movie to me. That makes it fun IMO but far from scary. OTOH the second version (not really a remake a much as a far more accurate version of the book) was very creepy in that it generated a sense of paranoia in a way that had never been done on film. It had this great sense of "what the f*** is going on?" That simply didn't exist in the first version. The scene when the guys were bound and their blood was being tested was amazing. The pacing, the unfolding of events and the genuine terror that the actors played was breath taking.
One of Carpenter's better flicks, had a great feel to it. I watch it every winter, gets me in the mood for the season. Also shows that Russell is a pretty good emotional and colorful actor(thought he was good in Breakdown too).
The scene where the crew spreads out across the ice to indicate the size of the spaceship frozen below has always seemed to me to one of the creepiest (or "unsettling" or "disturbing" if you prefer) moments in movies.As noted in another thread below I'd have to say that no movie has scared me as much as Invaders From Mars did after seeing it on TV at age 7 or 8. Over forty years later I still vividly recall having nightmares about that movie for days afterward.
Of more recent movies I'd concur with the others who listed Alien . I'd add Aliens , especially the scenes where the humans are waiting in the control room as the aliens approach and the chase through the air ducts. The escape from the alien nest is pretty great too.
the electric-frying scene still fascinates me, IMO, one of the alltime great shock(!) scenes. Another is Psycho bathtub stabbing. Add some of Alien scenes too. Island of Lost Souls scene were Dr. Moreau aka Charles Laughton gets a taste of crude vivisection from his manimals in The House of Pain. ~AH
Another of those 50's films that really hits the bullseye. It had a matter-of-factness in the presentation that made it so convincing. Right up there with The Thing, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A classic.
Speaking of remakes - The remake of "Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers" had it's redeeming qualities. A good cast - Goldblum , Sutherland , Nimoy and a class act by someone for the cameo appearance by McCarthy.It missed the scary core of the original. That the change in people was subtle , very hard to define. In the remake , rabid sports fans became complacent sleepwalkers. Not a good reading !
I liked The Thing (both versions) but they didn't scare me... John W Campbell's original short story "Who Goes There?" really did creep me out though (Carpenter's version was much closer to the original story, but the spook factor of the story didn't quite make it into the film... maybe because they showed some things better left to the imagination).
I first saw this film as a small child in the late fifties, a much more innocent and unworldly-wise era for children, in my opinion. "The Thing" was a whole new dark and frightening world to me, from those stark black and white images of the polar ice caps to those corrugated metal shelters -- far from the safe little home world I lived in. I think the fear of the crew, all adults, was the most troublesome and unfamiliar thing to me, re-seeing the film through those eyes. But the Thing itself was, a nightmare worse than any I had had to that time, peering in from behind the veil of darkness, posing the primal threat. I had trouble sleeping many nights after seeing that film, keeping an eye open for the hand that would reach through the door of my bedroom, the way the Thing's did in that film.The Alien and the Exorcist are also excellent choices for scariest film. DePalma's Scarface, also, but in an entirely different way.
s
The 1960 original. Not that POS 1995 remake.
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This one still gets under my skin... flaws and all. Gets right at the psychological iceberg of "Dad wants to kill me". Seen from the perspective of a child, can there be anything more frightening than a parent going insanely homicidal? Nicholson was the Boogeyman!Cheers
NT
Go eat a sausage.
Yes , it's funny I was so disappointed by "The Shining" when it first came out. Now I find it very scary and disturbing. That's Kubrick . Sometimes his films grow on me. I didn't like "Full Metal Jacket" either , now I watch it every year or so. Still don't like "Eyes Wide Shut" !
Kubrick is reported to have said to friends that EWS was "my best film." I thought is was brilliant, though slow-moving. There's another Kubrick film I thought was slow-moving, which I later came to savor every second of: 2001. EWS is a highly complex psychological drama, not as "accessible" (if you can even use that world with Kubrick after 1968) as some of his other films. I always felt the key to the film was why the Cruise character goes out of orbit over his wife's recital of a fleeting attraction (was it?) told to simple make him jealous. To me, it's a meditation on the forces which hold a couple together, as opposed to forces, both physiological and psychological (the same thing?) that can drive them apart. Interestingly, it's a film where dream, masquerade, and reality all exist on the same plain. I also thought Kidman stole the show. One more tid-bit: the character played by Sidney Pollack was originally intended to be played by Harvey Keitel, who seems to me to have been a MUCH better choice for the role. I think Pollack's performance, while solid, was lackluster and may even have detracted from the film.Anyone know why Kietel walked out? Or did he?
I liked EWS. I didn't find it titillating, just a sombre observation on the mystery and power of sex. Why does everybody do it or have it but nobody can figure it out? Why is it related to power, relationships, emotions, obsession and how come it is always unpredictable and even dangerous?
An overview of the strange and fundamental question without an answer, just a series of crafted observations, which make the mystery even deeper .
Remember - Most of 2001 was filmed in the weightless , dark and solitary regions of outerspace. This justified the slow tempo of movement and dialogue . The end result was captivating.
Although I enjoyed reading your post - EWS isn't even half the movie 2001 is.
PS -If you thought the slow tempo of EWS was a success , maybe you should call yourself "Whole Note"
I would have to agree that 2001 is the more important of the 2 films, and even the better. But EWS is a movie that can be viewed and understood from so many different perspectives -- husband versus wife, masculine versus feminine, emotional versus pyshiologicial, culture versus nature, dream versus reality. It is about the nebulousness of ideals like love and marriage, what conjures them up in the mind, and to what degree we allow them to control us. Ultimately, it's a film about free will. It's a film in which reality takes on a dream like dimension, and in which the most rational of men, a doctor, becomes overwhelmed by fantasy. It's a harder film to like than some of Kubrick's others. But it's a film that continues to haunt long after its viewing. It is like the Shining in that respect -- a movie that was booed an laughed at in the theater I saw during its first run, as a young man. But 20 years of marriage and three children of my own have totally transformed it into a completely different, and much more harrowing experience. EWS has that way of growing on you, I think.Almost all of Kubrick's masterpieces were greeted with very mixed reviews -- 2001, Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, even Barry Lyndon. They have all grown in stature, steadily, over the years.
I only saw EWS once in the theaters but I liked it allot- much more than the Shining or Full Metal Jacket. The latter seemed kinda lost, but not in a good way, and the former always seems to me to be just a collection of strong and not so strong set pieces trapped inside a weak movie.As far as EWS goes, I cant say Pollak really bothered me in it, I thought Kidman was great, and I liked the soundtrack.
To me one of the things that did hurt EWS was the masked orgey stuff.
Its the type of thing that I imagine looked good on paper, but it really struck an off note in its execution. Its a shame because I have a nagging feeling it could have been brilliant- as it stands it comes off as a little phoney.I put it down to being a consequence of Kubrik's having lived in England for so long. Some of that weird "Avengers" and "Prisoner" vibe still lingering in the water there from the '60s leaked into his brain.
on you, ever. I don't think I could get past the rather silly story or Pollack's poor performance.
Really ? I didn't think Pollacks performance was a *stand out* BAD performance. I mean not in the context of all the **BAD** in that film. As usual Cruise is confusing , mediocre and a teenager. The overused and overrated Kidman squeaks by unforgettably. Everyone else , well ... just falls through the cracks ! I just thought the whole movie is painfully slow. I've never been able to determine if the "orgy" is suppose to be truly erotic and sexy , or an example of silly pointless sex (the later gets my vote). It also get's my vote for the all-time most grating soundtrack. I think someone is playing an octave on a piano with a hammer. Jeez !
70-something old guy. Extremely un-erotic and almost embarrassingly crass.
I thought exactly the same thing Tinear -kind of a unchallenging MOR suburban sex fantasy. I respect Kubrick so much I second-guessed and wondered if the scene was intentionally staged as unappealing, maybe to illustrate the futile attempts of an over - sexed lifestyle. I don't know! Cruise's acting abilities never answer any questions and unless I’m wrong, we the audience were suppose to be clear on the meaning of this part of the story.
For me...
The Vanishing
Repulsion
Dead Of Night
Exorcist **3**
Mad Love
The Pit and the Pendulum
Dead and Buried
Devils Backbone
Eraserhead
Blair Witch
Tales From the Crypt
28 Days Later
Ghost Story
Night Of the Living Dead
Carnival Of Souls
When a Stranger CallsI gotta go - I'm getting scared! -Campy
The Vanishing.
From way back, of the unknown movies, I'd have to finger "Homicidal." A VERY underrated film.
Living Dead & Exorcist---Since then I am not really afraid anymore. It may have something to do with aging....
that, lamentably) but you are perfectly correct: those ARE the two scariest.
..The Innocents (Jack Clayton).
Alien was good & the Exorcist but not as fine as the ones above, IMHO.
The rare times I catch it on TBS I realize just how cheesy it was but when you are 10 years old--yikes.
Probably the original House on Haunted Hill. Alien, The Eye (that'd be creepy to suddenly start seeing dead people). Honorable mentions to 1984, Ju-Rei, Ringu, The Omen, Eiga no Tokibetsu-hen (the story with the chess board), Memento Mori, Ju-on and the like.
I was just a kid when my folks took me and my sisters to see it. They probably assumed it was a samurai movie, which it was, but it included one disembowelment scene that gave me nightmares for a real long time!Uzumaki: Liked it, but would not rank it among the scariest.
Ju On (#3?): Oh yeah! So much for ducking beneath the sheets for comfort.
My cousin took me to see "The Exorcist" when I was young, and it scared the absolute shit out of me. I still remember all the controversy it generated at the time--and still generates. My parents, who were church-going Catholics, grounded me for a month when they found out I saw it, and my poor cousin was banned from the house for several weeks after that. As for "Alien," I snuck into the theatre with a few friends of mine the day it came out. When the alien came out of John Hurt's chest, you could hear a pin drop. I was absolutely stunned. I had nightmares for months after that. "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark," which was a mid-'70s made-for-TV movie, perhaps creeped me out most of all. We lived in an old, dark restored farmhouse at the time, and I saw the movie one Saturday afternoon. Those little conehead creatures so disturbed me that I looked under my bed and in my closet before going to bed for months afterward. There are plenty of other great candidates, but those are the ones I remember right now.
I agree with Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. "Saalllly... We want you Sally."Also, I would add Horror Hotel to the list.
Juon (Japanese theatrical release)
The ExorcistThose are the only movies that *really* scared me, though I found the Exorcist more disturbing than scary.
To a lesser extent:
The Ring (either version)
Kairo (aka Pulse)
Cursed (Japanese)
Uzumaki
Seems the makers are really adept at making disturbing scenes and images... :)
Try A Tale of Two Sisters, Phone, or Into The Mirror. All very good, comperable to the Japanese movies in atmostphere. Asians seem to get the "atmosphere" better than most US movies. Korea may be the next major force in Asian cinema. They seem to have *excellent* production values too.
Jack
f
Ju On is now playing in High Definition on HBO HD (could be SHO HD), so I watched it in HD last night again. However, I was alone and it was dark outside, so I had to stop watching in the middle...
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