This includes the Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow, the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz, the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the banshee or the ghost coach from Darby O'Gill and the Little People, the donkey parts in Pinnochio, Ursula from The Little Mermaid, Maleficent and the creepy lady from Sleeping Beauty, the scary forest scene and the Hag Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and the 101 Dalmations scary dog fight scene and scary close up of Cruella DeVil.
WHEW!!!! And I honestly don't think that I got them all.
But I think that the creepiest moment has to be the scene where Dumbo gets drunk and imagines pink elephants. It is so macabre and disturbing, that it looks like something Stephen King would make while on LSD. Even the parts where it is trying to be serene seem disturbing to me. Maybe it's even more relevent now then it was years ago. Elephants slowly multiply before turning into every single mindf*ck you could possibly think of, including snakes, a strange figure made up entirely of elephant heads, strange shapes, and eyeballs. Okay, I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. Read some of the lyrics:
I can stand the sight of worms, and look at microscopic germs, but technicolor pacoderms is really too much for me! Then the guy singing laughs and a pair of Cymbals smashes together.
What is the point of this scene? I think it is to teach us that everything has a meaning, but everything also means nothing. Total crap your pants philosophy.
And then, at the very end, elephants transform into trains, cars, planes, buses, and anything else that could possibly go fast and race towards each other until everything blows up. Dead elephants fall from the sky, turn into morning clouds, and... that's where it ends. That is actually where it ends.
You have got to see this if you haven't already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcZUPDMXzJ8&feature=related
9: A tie between Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Let's compare here: Beetlejuice is a comedy about a crazy zombie who helps a dead couple scare the people out of their old home. The film is dark and filled with jumps. All in all, it's played for laughs. The snake scene is an exception.
This scene really just has Beetlejuice transform into a snake and start tormenting the houseguests. He doesn't really hurt anybody, but his appearance still scares you, and the fact that it isn't really a funny scene is also strange, because you don't really know what the scene is about. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9A7lCQsqGg
But The Nightmare Before Christmas is a completely different story altogether. I don't know exactly which genre to classify it in. I wouldn't call it comedy, action, horror, or drama. Probably comedy-musical. DARK comedy-musical. It is a wierd film about a guy from Halloweentown who sets out to discover what Christmas is all about, and has to stop the boogeyman along the way. I just don't know. I always thought it was too dark for kids, and I never really liked it, even if it did have a happy ending. But, a lot of people seem to like it, so, that's okay. But I think the creepiest scene is the part where everybody sings This Is Halloween.
You can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOtEdhKOMgQ
8: The Joker from Batman.
Maybe I was the only kid who was scared of this guy, but 1989's Batman is one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. It basically involves a young boy who witnesses his parents killed by a street thug. The thug says "see ya around, kid" and leaves. The kid would grow up to be Bruce Wayne, billionaire and secret crime fighter by night. The thug, it turns out, grew up to be a mobster in crime-ridden Gotham City, but was set up to get caught in a police shoot by his partner, who wanted revenge for his affair with his girlfriend. The thug winds up getting hit in the face by a ricochet bullet, and falls into a vat of chemicals. The chemicals bleach his face white, and dyed his hair green. The thug goes for plastic surgery, but the nerves in his cheeks have been permenantly severed, and he winds up with a permenant rictus grin. The thug snaps, letting his sadistic sense of humor take over, and uses this as an outlet for his madness, kills his boss, and takes over the crime empire of Gotham.
But the scene that really creeped me out was the scene where you first see him. That, and the plastic surgery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wotScx3Q7ZY. And now, the plastic surgery clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiAonyJIV_A.
And, I think that special praise should be reserved for Danny DeVito's Penguin.
I will admit, if I had seen Batman Returns when I was a kid, you can bet your life that the Penguin would be on this list. That's a promise.
7: Ghostbusters.
For the most part, Ghostbusters is a comedy. But when you are watching it as a kid, it is one of the scariest friggin' movies ever made! I know you will all think this is stupid, but I was always scared of Slimer. That's right, the little green blob that ate everyone's room service leftovers and never hurt anybody in any way. But the little thing creeped me out with his grotesque appearance, his disgusting teeth and slime, and the sound he makes while flying towards people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2nYqyfDMnQ
The opening scene with the ghost in the library was also pretty creepy,
and the part about the gargoyles or the marhsmallow man wasn't too sweet either.
But the scene that really creeped me out was the part in Ghostbusters 2 where all of the ghosts manifest themselves and run amok in New York. There's also a scene where the Titanic finally arrives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g42EG7LD1UY&feature=related
6: The Furnace Scenes from Home Alone.
Everyone has seen Home Alone, I am almost positive. If you haven't, you have to see it, and Home Alone 2. You might be able to handle Home Alone 3, if you are just looking to laugh at the traps, not the rest of the film, because the traps are pretty funny, and they take up a good portion of the film. Home Alone 4 is the ungodly Home Alone film, it is a cheap, made-for-tv sequel that lacks any Home Alone feel the rest of the series had. But the first Home Alone also had a scene that always creeped me out as a kid, and made me fast-forward through. It was the scene where Kevin goes to the basement to see if anyone is down there. Kevin, like all kids, is afraid of his unfinished basement, and doesn't go down there that often. So, naturally, he looks uneasy during this scene. Creepy music plays as the camera pans over the bizarre stuff in his basement, which only adds to the building tension in the scene. Then, he notices the creepy looking furnace. Suddenly the furnace comes to life and starts calling his name. Kevin flees. Then, it reappears later in the film, but Kevin isn't afraid of it.
5: The messed up tunnel scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
For the most part, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a very fun family film. It is about a poor boy who loves chocolate, who wins a once-in-a-lifetime tour to a private chocolate factory, with a bonus, a lifetime supply of chocolate! At the end, he is also chosen to be the future owner of the factory, as all of the other kids who won the tour were spoiled brats. So, why is this film on the list? Well, there is one scene that just comes out of NOWHERE!!!! It involves Willy Wonka's boat that is driving down the chocolate river, when it enters a tunnel that is just scary for no reason. Every phobia you can imagine is projected onto the walls, with enough grotesque imagery to fill a planet. All while a mercilessly fast theme plays and Wonka recietes a poem in the creepiest way possible and proceeds to scream at the top of his lungs. And it ends there. No more terror, chaos, and death. Just serene chocolate, strange oompa-loompas, and fun inventions. Okay. Let's just go with that, I guess. I would think that there would be talk of a lawsuit, or people leaving, or at least asking what was up with the tunnel. But no, nobody ever talks about it again, not even right after they stop the boat.
Well, you can watch it here and I really want you to note the change in mood about a minute in. Nobody expects it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X48RiKQmFQ
4: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come from 1984's A Christmas Carol.
Nobody has ever made the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come truly terrifying, not even Charles Dickens himself. It is simply meant to be a messenger of death. But in 1984's A Christmas Carol, they already had George C. Scott, (the best Scrooge, in my opinion) an actual England filming location, the best sets, the best cast, the best script, and the best Marley's ghost.
But, since they already had the creepiest Marley, they decided to use those elements that worked so well in that scene in the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Only one film has even come close to this version, and that is The Muppet Christmas Carol, and that still didn't work because it was shown in broad daylight, had no creepy music, and had no style.
In this one, right after the Ghost of Christmas Present does something creepy (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R_-cmdcQm0&feature=related) he leaves Scrooge abandoned on Christmas eve, in the middle of the night, under a bridge in a bad part of London. Scrooge nods off and wakes up to discover a heavy fog has shrouded the city, with a little bit of light illuminating a ghost right in front of a sewer tunnel. The ghost says nothing, in fact, you never even see it, you only see its black sillouhette. It looks like a person in a robe, only you can't tell which gender it is, and when it shows its arm, it doesn't look human. Scrooge asks the ghost questions, but it never says anything, and the ghost only gestures with a creepy chord in the background. If Scrooge wasn't convinced to change his ways before, he certainly would be after this specter got ahold of him. If you haven't seen it yet, please do. It is (in my opinion) the best adaptation of the story.
You can see the ghost scene here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN1skEKYges
3: Large Marge from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.
Let's talk about Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Made in 1985, it was director Tim Burton's first movie, and it was also a first for Paul Reubens, also known as "Pee-Wee Herman", who continued to appear in programs like Big Top Pee-Wee and even his own show, known as Pee-Wee's Playhouse. But it all started with this movie. And don't get me wrong, it is one of my favorite movies. It is truly timeless and hilarious. But there is one scene that just comes out of nowhere. Nobody expects it, not even the grown-ups. Pee-Wee, while hitchhiking at night, gets picked up by a trucker named "Large Marge", who tells a ghost story about the worst accdient she's ever seen. This story, although played for laughs, builds up some kind of suspense, right as Large Marge's face just explodes into some kind of monster! And then, that's it. The scene is over. WHAT WAS THAT?!?!! Even today, people are scared of this scene, because it just comes out of NOWHERE. And at the very end, something is said that gives everyone chills and effectively ends the entire scene. If you haven't seen Pee-Wee's Big Adventure yet, do. It is a very funny film, and good for all ages.
Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RryZV8NK9-QHere it is:
2: Pretty much anything from Goosebumps.
Okay, it is pretty obvious to me that Goosebumps is one of the greatest nostalgic television shows ever. Basically, in the mid-90s, Goosebumps was a scary series for kids. Back in the 90s, it was okay to expose kids to different generes. Comedy (spongebob), drama and action (Sonic the hedgehog or Batman), and even horror (Goosebumps). But nowadays, kids are exposed to comedy and ONLY comedy. There's no diversity. That's why books are so important. But back in the 90s, Goosebumps was able to scare the living crap out of us without traumatizing us. The direction was superb and slick, the special effects were amazingly realistic (at first) and the music was so creepy.
Among the best of these episodes are Werewolf Skin, Werewolf of Fever Swamp, the Haunted Mask, Haunted Mask 2, Welcome to Dead House, Ghost Next Door, Perfect School, and anything with Slappy. But, as the series wore on, the series just lost its quality. Episodes like Shocker on Shock Street, How I Got My Shrunken Head, and My Hairiest Adventure came along with inconsistent plots, bad acting, lame special effects, and horrible differences from the books.
1: The Shark from Jaws, the Clown from Poltergeist, the Dinosaurs from Jurassic Park, or anything else from a PG or PG-13 rated scary movie.
Back in the '70s and '80s, horror films that weren't very graphic could be rated PG, as the PG-13 rating did not yet exist. So, kids flocked to these movies, and boy, did we regret it. PG films now look like this:
But in the 70s, this passed for a PG rating:
I think the creepiest scene from Poltergeist was the one with the clown. It was basically just a big clown doll that just sat there for the entire movie, but the audience was waiting for it to do something. It finally did, but we still jumped when it came to life. It went from this
to this
And I think that it is also pretty fair to mention Gremlins. Ah, Gremlins. The movie about Christmas that doesn't feel like a Christmas movie in any way. It's dark, spooky, and the puppets put CGI to shame. Ah, back in the 80s, things were real, so they looked real. But now they're not even there, so they look, not even there. If you are told something's CGI, you're like, yeah. But with puppets, you kind of question it.
Gremlins is about a dad who buys a mogwai, a type of furry creature from an Asian man in San Fransisco's Chinatown. But, he accidently gets splashed with water and multiplies, but those aren't as nice as Gismo. Suddenly, the other mogwais trick the people into feeding them after midnight, and then, they turn into hideous reptillian creatures called Gremlins, that wreak havoc all over town. This is where the film becomes disturbing. I mean, they kill people. They actually kill people. They throw an old bag out of a window on her chairlift, they shut off traffic lights, and they destroy property. Seriously, rent it, or google it. You will be shocked.
The kitchen scene is worth a watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIrd4172Czw&feature=related
This "spider" scene from Gremlins 2 is worth a mention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=IX8FouoBf04&NR=1
By far, the movies that were thought of as something your parents could take you to, when they should be the only ones watching them, are the scariest parts of our childhoods.
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