Scariest Movie Scenes

I - J

I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

Director Jacques Tourneur's zombie supernatural horror film, a variant of the Jane Eyre novel, was produced by famed RKO producer Val Lewton. The low-budget film was very effective for its moody and atmospheric tone and visually-stylistic terror regarding dark family secrets, voodoo rituals and legends.

The brooding, mystical melodrama told of the work of a trained Canadian nurse named Betsy Connell (Frances Dee). The retrospective film was her description of how she had "walked with a zombie."

She was hired to care for matriarchal Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), the invalid and comatose wife of melancholy Paul Holland (Tom Conway), a sugar plantation owner on the West Indies-Caribbean island of St. Sebastian. Jessica's doctor claimed that her catatonic, zombie-like condition (with no will of her own, no speaking, and seemingly lobotomized) was caused by an incurable tropical fever. One of the film's lobby cards described Jessica's fateful condition:

"Doomed to be one of the 'walking dead' by weird and wily witchcraft...her radiant blonde loveliness ravaged through the curse of vengeful voodoo!"

As Betsy cared for Jessica, she slowly began to fall in love with guilt-ridden Paul. She also learned that Paul and his younger, alcoholic half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison) had earlier quarreled over the love of the afflicted woman in a love triangle, and Wesley had an affair with Jessica.

Betsy was convinced that she could cure the "living dead" Jessica with a shot of insulin, but the shock treatment failed. She then learned from Jessica's native maid Alma (Theresa Harris) that a local voodoo priest cured a woman with her condition. Alma drew her a map to the "Home Fort" where a local voodoo ceremony would take place.

In an unsettling nighttime scene, Betsy took her patient, without permission, on a haunting, dream-like walk through billowing cane fields to the ceremony. She had to pass animal sacrifices along the way. As she went through a crossroads, there was the abrupt appearance in the darkness of a huge, eerie, bug-eyed and towering zombie-like guard Carre Four (Darby Jones). It was a shocking moment!

A major plot twist occurred next - Betsy entered a shack to consult with the voodoo witch doctor priestess, and discovered it was the mother of the family, Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett). When Mrs. Rand had discovered that her sons had fought over Jessica, Paul's wife, and threatened to break up the family, she had put a zombie curse on her.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

In this cautionary ecological documentary about climatic science, ex-Vice President Al Gore presented before-and-after slides of the disastrous effects of global warming. He refuted critics with data. The short clip "Global Warming or: None Like It Hot" from the animated TV show Futurama, from an episode in which he guest-starred, told about the effects of greenhouse gases.

He clearly illustrated a number of major developments, including:

• the shocking, frightening sight of the state of the Patagonia Glacier in Brazil after 75 years of global warming
• the near-complete melting of Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro's famous ice cap in Africa in the last 30 years
• Antarctic ice coring data that illustrated how CO2 levels were higher now than in the past 650,000 years
• the danger of massive ice sheets breaking off in Greenland or West Antarctica

Included was the famous scene using a scissors-style fork lift to raise himself up on the right side of a mammoth graphic to examine annual temperature and the drastically high, rising rate of CO2 emissions levels for the past 650,000 years, measured by Antarctic ice core samples.

Gore predicted higher temperatures, stronger storms, deadlier floods, and higher sea levels unless humanity's course was reversed in the next decade.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

In director John Carpenter's (and New Line Cinema's) fantasy horror-drama and thriller, the R-rated film gave convoluted, warped homage to Stephen King and famed sci-fi author H. P. Lovecraft in a script by Michael De Luca; it cleverly blurred the boundaries between fantasy and reality, fact and fiction, sanity and insanity, and reality and cine-reality. Its tagline provided a clue to the film's plot:

"LIVED ANY GOOD BOOKS LATELY?"

It was considered the third film in Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy":

• The Thing (1982)
• Prince Of Darkness (1987)
• In The Mouth Of Madness (1994)

The supernatural film's plot, told in an extended flashback, was about an insurance fraud investigator who ventured into a small town in Eastern New England (Hobb's End, NH) to look into the strange disappearance of a successful horror novelist named Sutter Cane, after his latest book's publication ("Hobb's End Horror"), and during anticipation for his next novel's manuscript for "In the Mouth of Madness." With a budget of 8ドル-14 million, the film turned away viewers with gross revenues of only 8ドル.9 million, but has since developed a cult following.

• in the film's opening, John Trent (Sam Neill) was delivered by ambulance to a mental hospital - he was a violent, strait-jacketed and delusional asylum inmate placed in a padded cell; he complained: "I am not insane," and became upset by the music system playing a song by The Carpenters; then, he spoke out and protested: "This is a rotten way to end it," when he was told: "This is not the ending. You haven't read it yet" - these were extraordinary clues to the film's frame of reference; after requesting a black crayon, Trent had drawn crosses on his face
• he was visited in his cell by Dr. Wrenn (David Warner); the main content of the entire film consisted of a flashback, detailing Trent's description to Dr. Wrenn about what had happened to him, and how he ended up incarcerated
• Trent began the flashback by describing how he was a very effective freelance insurance investigator looking into fraudulent scams and cons; at the same time in NYC, an upcoming book ("In the Mouth of Madness") written by best-selling author Sutter Cane was being hyped and advertised - with the subtitle: "YOU'LL GO MAD WITH FEAR" - it was about to be published by the New York-based Arcane Publishing Company

• while Trent was having lunch in a mid-town Manhattan cafe with one of his clients named Robinson (Bernie Casey), a crazed axe-wielding maniac (Conrad Bergschneider) approached the window and blasted it with one swing of his axe, and then with dilated eyes (in close-up), the lunatic asked Trent: "Do you read Sutter Cane?"; the maniac was shot and killed by police gunfire before he could murder Trent
• a TV news broadcaster hypothesized about Cane: "Horror writer Sutter Cane -- a harmless pop phenomenon or a deadly mad prophet of the printed page?"; riots had developed at several NYC bookstores because of the huge demand for advance orders of the new, hard-to-find Sutter Cane publication (that hadn't been published yet)
• because of the uproar and negative publicity, Trent was invited into the offices of Arcane where he was introduced to its director Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston), and Cane's editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen); she offhandedly mentioned: "You can forget about Stephen King. Cane outsells them all" [Note: The Sutter Cane author was based on John Carpenter's novelist friend Stephen King.]
• Trent was being considered to investigate the publishing company's claim that their popular, best-selling horror novelist Sutter Cane had mysteriously disappeared two months earlier; Trent was told that several chapters of Cane's new manuscript that he had written had been sent to his crazed agent (the axe-murderer) two weeks earlier: ("Plain brown wrapper. No return address"); it was a shock for Trent to learn that the lunatic axe-carrying maniac who had attacked him was Cane's deranged agent!!; the publisher was concerned with retrieving the remaining manuscript for Cane's new novel, since Arcane had already sold the film rights to Cane's new unpublished book as well as publication rights in eighteen languages; turning dubious, Trent suspected that Cane's disappearance was all a hoax and a publicity stunt designed to promote his book
• apparently, according to Linda, the readers who consumed Cane's horror novels (especially "less stable readers") were powerfully affected after reading the stories; many were afflicted with disorientation, memory loss, paranoia, lost time, hallucinations and more; Cane himself became a victim of his own writings - during the previous year, his work had become more erratic and bizarre: ("He became convinced his writing was real, not fiction. Then the work stopped coming. l need to know if he's alive or dead. And l need that book. We've delayed publication as long as we can. His fans are getting really restless")
• Trent remained skeptical about reports of mass hysteria, and believed it was a manufactured set-up: "It's a pop phenomenon. lt's a craze. lt'll pass. lt's this year's Hula-Hoop"; but then, as he prepared and researched the case by reading some of Cane's previous horror works, he began to have strange visions and weird hallucinatory dreams of his own, first of a grotesque-faced policeman, and then of the axe-murderer from the cafe (who ominously spoke: "He sees you!") and other blood-thirsty monstrous humans who axed him to death; his unusual nightmares were the frequent content of Cane's books
• now seemingly possessed by the books himself, Trent believed that Cane could be located in a real small town in northern New England, in Hobb's End, New Hampshire that resembled a fictional place in Cane's last novel; Trent proposed traveling there to locate and find Cane, although as Harglow noted: "It's not on the map"; Cane's editor Linda Styles was told to join Trent [Note: Hobb's End was fictional - it existed entirely as a product of the writer's mind.]
• during their car trip north from NYC, Linda remained skeptical: "There is no such place"; she shared her prophetic fears about Cane's non-fictional books that might become transformed into reality:
  • "What scares me about Cane's work is what might happen if reality shared his point of view...Sane and insane could easily switch places if the insane were to become the majority. You would find yourself locked in a padded cell wondering what happened to the world...if you realized everything you ever knew was gone, it'd be pretty lonely being the last one left"
• as the radio broadcast a report about fantasy becoming reality, their night-time journey became surrealistic - the double yellow lines on the road kept changing (and then disappeared), and a bicycle-riding boy (who changed into a ghoulish-looking elderly man) struck their vehicle head-on, but then rode off unharmed; as billowing storm clouds formed, the roadway seemed to be composed of wooden planks, and then suddenly after crossing an old-fashioned covered bridge, it was daylight and they were on the outskirts of Hobb's End identified by a sign
• the town's deserted center, although it appeared to be like a "picture perfect" Main St. USA, was also revealed to be a fanciful gateway into Cane's fictionalized world of evil and madness; its landmarks and people resembled the contents of Cane's novel "Hobb's End Horror," including innkeeper Mrs. Pickman (Frances Bay) at the Pickman Hotel where they checked in; Linda's fears were coming true about how Cane's writings were being reflected in reality, although Trent disagreed: ("We are not living inside a Sutter Cane story"); she was unnerved and upset after viewing a painting in the hotel lobby that seemed to be alive and kept changing; she asked Trent: "What if Cane's work isn't fiction?"

• at the local black ornate Byzantine church (an evil edifice that had swallowed up the previous old stone sanctuary built in 1788), an angry mob of townsfolk arrived carrying shotguns, led by Simon (Wilhelm von Homburg); they complained about the kidnapping of their children by the ominous Cane - he was inside the church's front doors where he commanded and dispatched a pack of snarling Doberman Pinschers to attack the men
• back at the hotel, Trent complained to Linda that everything was a hoax and had been "staged" - to report to the media about the "haunted" town in order to sell more of Cane's books; she disagreed: "We didn't stage any of this. lt's all happening for real, Trent. And it is all in that book, and that's how l know"; according to Linda, the events that they were witnessing were elements in Cane's latest manuscript - the contents which were only known to Linda and Cane's agent; as foretold by Cane, civilization in his imagined town had entirely broken down and the world was about to end
• Linda admitted that there was a slight con-job on the part of Arcane to create publicity, but she hadn't realized until now that Cane's books were causing real damage; Linda urged Trent to understand that they were beginning to witness what Cane had described - strange apparitions, townspeople mutated or turned into psychotic zombies, surreal and hallucinatory nightmare sequences, an ancient race of otherworldly creatures, and people with facial deformities; she suggested they could fight against these forces:
  • "We need to read the new book to find the way out...We could skip to the ending"
• she began kissing Trent to entice him to help her find a solution, but when Trent refused, she drove off without him to investigate the town on her own; later that evening, Linda returned to the church where the missing children reappeared outside and approached her; one of the facially-deformed children called Linda her Mommy: ("Today is Mommy's Day"); at the entrance to the church, Linda ignored a sign warning: "Any Who Dare Enter This Unholy Site Be Damned Forever," and entered; inside, she noticed an upside-down cross
• inside a dark room, she was greeted by Cane, who was seated at an old fashioned typewriter, clacking the keys as he typed more of his unfinished manuscript; as she walked forward to him, he told her that contrary to his previous belief that his stories were fiction, he now accepted the fact that he was being guided by evil forces: ("For years, I thought I was making all this up. But they were telling me what to write, giving me the power to make it all real. And now it is!"); he enticingly spoke about his new book, calling it "the new Bible" as he slowly fondled her hair, and made claims about his new novel: "It starts the change, helps you see"
• he pushed her head down to reveal the title page of his unfinished manuscript for "In the Mouth of Madness"; she instantly had an understanding of the entire book, including its ending that she had hoped to read; a flurry of disturbing images (past, present and future) broke forth onto the screen; he asked:
  • "Do you like my ending? Any suggestions?"
• with both of her eyes bleeding, Linda lovingly kissed Cane, and as she caressed the back of his head, it was revealed to be composed of slimy, creature-like sinew and bloody muscle tissue from a back view

• shortly later, Linda reappeared in the hotel, where she collapsed in Trent's arms and onto the bed, as she told him: "l'm losing me, John...l saw the book. Don't look at it. Don't read it, John"; she was beginning to go insane and become one of Cane's monstrous minions
• Trent raced to the basement, where he found Mrs. Pickman (who had earlier been seen keeping her husband captive), who was revealed to be an axe-murdering demonic creature with tendrils or tentacles whipping out of her body as she chopped her husband into pieces
• upstairs, Linda approached Trent with an intoxicated, hungry grin (after revealing the growth of additional appendages); Trent fled, but in town, he found himself surrounded by a mob of mutant-like creatures, torch-carrying bloody axe-murderers, and the deformed children with their "Mommy"; he spoke to the bloody, axe-wielding Simon and began to wonder if everything had been faked, although Simon declared that everything that was happening had been written by Cane for his book:
  • Trent: "Special effects, hidden speakers. You people are professionals, l'll give you that"
    Simon: "The thing l can't remember is what came first. Us or the book"
    Trent: "We are not living in a Sutter Cane story! This is not reality!"
    Simon: "Reality is not what it used to be"
• Trent watched as Simon aimed his shotgun under his neck and blew his brains out; as Trent attempted to leave town with the possessed Linda, she swallowed the car keys, forcing him to hot-wire their car; she demonstrated how she was able to twist and contort her limbs and neck around
• his attempted escapes to leave town were all thwarted, and he was teleported thrice back to the main street in the town where the mob was located; he attempted to ram the mob, but crashed his car; another teleport brought him to the Hobb's End church for a final showdown with both Linda and Cane; Cane spoke to Trent from outside a wooden box that he was trapped in
• Cane asserted how all of his books had sold over a billion copies, and more people believed in his work than in the Bible; he boasted about his new book: "This one will drive you absolutely mad" - literally; anyone who read his books would become new believers (paranoid, fearful and delusional minions), unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality
• the god-like Cane began to convince Trent that he was creating new realities, and that Trent was one of his invented characters: ("You are what I write. Like this town. lt wasn't here before l wrote it. And neither were you...I think, therefore you are!"); Cane also mentioned how Trent had helped to implement his take-over plan to change the world, and challenged Trent to read about what would next happen to him: ("Read it if you don't believe me. See what l have in store for you"); Trent tried to counteract Cane's assertions:
  • "l know what's real. l know what l am and nobody pulls my strings....I'm not a piece of fiction"
• Cane ordered Trent to deliver his finished manuscript back to Arcane through a passageway that he created - "Your world lies beyond that passage"; then Cane ripped at his face, to create a portal connecting himself to an evil dimension; it was as if Cane had disappeared through a ripped hole in a page - a fissure or gateway from the real world to the black abyss beyond; Cane was revealed to be the puppet (through the portal) for monstrous evil creatures from another dimension who wanted to take over Earth
• Linda began to read a passage from Cane's book, as Trent went over to the hole leading to a black universe:
  • "Trent stood at the edge of the rip, stared into the illimitable gulf of the unknown, the Stygian world yawning blackly beyond. Trent's eyes refused to close, he did not shriek, but the hideous unholy abominations shrieked for him, as in the same second he saw them spill and tumble upward out of an enormous carrion black pit, choked with the gleaming white bones of countless unhallowed centuries. He began to back away from the rip as the army of unspeakable figures, toiled by the glow from the bottomless pit, came pouring at him toward our world."
• Linda refused to join Trent, claiming she had already read the ending, as Trent was pursued down the immense corridor or passageway by an "army of unspeakable figures" brought to life out of the pit - all creatures from Cane's writings; Trent was chased by the evil, tentacled, growling, giant-toothed monster creatures (mutated humans) into the passageway as he raced away from them to return to reality
• Trent suddenly found himself on a country road, where a friendly paperboy (Hayden Christensen) answered that he had never heard of Hobb's End; he dropped the manuscript on the road, and then waited for a hitched ride on a tractor-trailer; in his Woodbine Motel room, he watched the classic alien movie Robot Monster (1953) on TV; the next morning at the front desk, he was shocked to see a package labeled for him containing the manuscript that had been anonymously delivered; Trent attempted to burn all of the pages in his bathroom sink; he then returned to NYC via a public bus; during the night, he dreamily hallucinated that the "hack horror writer" Cane was sitting next to him: "l'm not going anywhere. l'm God now. You understand?"
• Trent was finally able to return to the Arcane Publishing Company in New York with Cane's completed manuscript; after explaining what had happened to him, Trent was told by Harglow that he had taken the trip alone (apparently, Linda had been "written out" of the story); Harglow wondered if the book had somehow "infected" Trent, because Trent had already delivered the manuscript months earlier
• Trent was also told that the book had been published and on the market for seven weeks; Trent begged for the book to be pulled and not distributed ("l know this book will drive people crazy"); however, Harglow mentioned how he was eager for the film adaptation to be released in the next month; undoubtedly, Cane's story (and horror) were being spread with each new reader; those who didn't like to read (or didn't read the book) could be converted by watching the movie adaptation of the book
• Sutter Cane's newest, and presumably posthumous work became the number one best-seller (breaking previous records), concurrent with rising violent crime in the city that appeared to be an "apparent epidemic of paranoid schizophrenia...an epidemic of monumental proportions of senseless, seemingly unmotivated acts of violence"
• Trent was caught up in the violence - and became a psychopath; he had become an agent of the novel's author and was transformed into an axe-murderer himself; after asking a reader (with bloody eyes) about the newly-released popular horror novel: "Like the book?", Trent brutally axe-murdered the individual
• the flashback ended - Trent was still speaking to Dr. Wrenn in his locked cell in the insane asylum-hospital; Trent was worried that the spreading symptoms were being passed on by readers of Cane's books, and by those who watched the movie adaptation
• the film ended with a slaughter at the asylum by the ancient race of monstrous creatures prophesied by Cane, allowing Trent to be free and wander out into the world that was alarmingly empty
• the epidemic of random mass killings, bloody slaughters, multiple suicides, and devastating fires had spread to all countries throughout the civilized world; one of the last broadcasts described the horror of how civilization (and the entire human race) was being destroyed by Cane's mutant creatures:
  • "Every hour, more people are becoming infected, being driven to senseless acts of extreme violence. We have gotten reports, sketchy at best, of people mutating, their bodies swelling and distorting, changing somehow. Locally, the mass killings appear to have moved inland. All the major cities on the East Coast are silent. We lost contact with Los Angeles and the West Coast last night so it is impossible at this time to know how many unaffected people are left. lf for any reason you are one of us who hasn't become infected, take shelter immediately. Do not trust any friends or family members"
• the film concluded by being folded back upon itself - madman Trent entered an abandoned and almost empty movie theatre that was showing the movie adaptation of Sutter Cane's latest book: "In the Mouth of Madness"; he sat there with a giant tub of popcorn; as one of Cane's crazed, mutant creatures, he watched himself starring as John Trent in his own film
• in the film, he saw himself in the asylum's padded cell, heard himself cry out: "I am not insane!", and saw himself screaming on the bus; he was reminded by an off-screen asylum attendant that he was now awake, and then observed in the film as he shouted at himself:
  • "This is not a Sutter Cane story! This is not reality! Not reality! It's not reality!"
• the final line of the film was Trent trying to convince himself: "This is reality!"; in the audience, Trent laughed maniacally as he watched himself on the silver screen - a fictional creature in Cane's fabricated world of horror
• the film's open-ended conclusion let the viewer decide whether Trent was insane or whether what he had experienced (once again seen in brief glimpses) was actually reality

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

#88

This influential science-fiction film was based upon Jack Finney's novel The Body Snatchers - it was a cautionary sci-fi film, a metaphor for the Communist threat in the mid-1950s.

The opening prologue (and closing scene - added bookends) showed Dr. Miles Bennell's (Kevin McCarthy) paranoic fear and mania about alien takeover in Santa Mira, California - as he shouted to an unbelieving group of nurses, interns, psychiatrists (including Whit Bissel as Dr. Hill), and doctors (including Richard Deacon as Dr. Harvey Bassett) in the emergency room of the city's Emergency Hospital. He warned them about seed pods taking over the planet:

"Doctor, will you tell these fools I'm not crazy? Make them listen to me before it's too late."

In the notable greenhouse scene during a barbecue at Miles' home with friends Jack and his wife Theodora (Carolyn Jones), they discovered two giant seed pods that burst and exploded open like rotten cabbages, with a milky fluid bubbling out [a mock birth scene]. In the terrifying scene, the disgorged pods revealed grotesquely duplicate similarities to their human counterparts - replicas covered with a sticky, sappy foam - Miles took a pitchfork and stabbed at the pods' hearts in a vampire-like killing.

Miles and Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), his intelligent ex-girlfriend/ sweetheart-fiancee, now recently divorced, both became exhausted fugitives. They ended up cornered in his office where they were forced to hide, fleeing from the police, as Miles pondered:

"In my practice, I've seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn't seem to mind...All of us - a little bit - we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear."

In the film's most memorable and frightening sequence, the two fled from the town's space pods to try to elude the enemy and get help, while struggling to stay awake and remain human. As the last two humans (non pod-people) left, they escaped into a hilly wooded area and found refuge in an old abandoned mine, as scores of townspeople followed after them.

Weary and desperately exhausted, they were again compelled to hide in a constricted place - under floorboards in a pit, located in the dark, deserted cave or tunnel that was perilously close to their pursuers. When the aliens departed, Miles left the faint Becky, who was falling asleep, to discover the source of beautiful singing or music that they heard.

Becky couldn't keep her eyes open any longer. She fell asleep briefly. When he returned to the mine, he found her lying slumped over and prostrate with fatigue. He tried to force her to go on, started to carry her, but fell in a puddle at the mine entrance.

He took her in his arms to kiss her, and then drew away from her unresponsive lips. In a tight closeup shot of her face, he looked into the blank, dark, expressionless and staring eyes of his fiancée, realizing with a look of utter fright that she was now one of "them" - her body had been invaded and snatched. He knew instantly that this was not Becky but a treacherous imposter and victim. She confirmed: "I went to sleep Miles, and it happened...They were right." He was unbelieving: "Oh, Becky...I should never have left you."

His sweetheart of a moment ago now asserted: "Stop acting like a fool, Miles, and accept us." She screamed to the pod-people searchers as he fled: "He's in here! He's in here! Get him! Get him!" In voice-over, Miles explained: "I've been afraid a lot of times in my life, but I didn't know the real meaning of fear until, until I had kissed Becky. A moment's sleep and the girl I loved was an inhuman enemy bent on my destruction. That moment's sleep was death to Becky's soul just as it had been for Jack and Teddy and Dan Kauffman and all the rest. Their bodies were now hosts harboring an alien form of life, a cosmic form which, to survive, must take over every human man. So I ran, I ran. I ran as little Jimmy Grimaldi had run the other day. My only hope was to get away from Santa Mira, to get to the highway to warn the others of what was happening."

In the final sequence, Miles fled to a busy highway, filled with heavy traffic, as he attempted to flag down cars; crazed with fear, he rushed into the onrushing traffic, nervously shouting and crying words of warning to the unheeding cars and unconvinced drivers; Miles climbed onto the back of a passing truck with the names of cities on it, horrified to find it loaded with pods to be distributed and spread throughout the nation; he dropped off, jumping back on the highway - feeling completely helpless; as a crazed prophet of doom, he looked directly into the camera, desperately trying to warn others and the audience:

"Help, help, wait. Help! Help! Wait! Wait! Wait! Stop! Stop and listen to me! Listen to me!...Those people that are coming after me! They're not human! Listen to me! We're in danger!... They're after all of us! All of us!....Listen to me! There isn't a human being left in Santa Mira!... Stop! Pull over to the side of the road! I need your help! Something terrible's happened!...Look, you fools. You're in danger. Can't you see? They're after you. They're after all of us. Our wives, our children, everyone. They're here already. YOU'RE NEXT!"

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

In the despairing, climactic ending of this horror remake by director Philip Kaufman, San Francisco health department field investigator Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) had seemingly escaped being replaced by a pod likeness.

After leaving work near City Hall, he was summoned by the still-human Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright) - the last to not be absorbed. After she called out his name ("Matthew, Matthew"), he turned to confront her.

He screamed with a piercing, accusatory howl (and the camera descended into the blackness of his open mouth) while pointing his finger at her. She also screamed, realizing that he had become a cloned pod person.

Other earlier scary scenes included the first examining views of a still-forming pod person, a near-perfect duplicate resembling Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum), when a sheet was pulled back. Matthew noted that the creature had adult characteristics but was still like a fetus without fingerprints - and then slightly later, the creature opened its eyes when Nancy was looking at it by herself. She jumped back and rushed to her husband Jack, trying to rouse him from his sleep. When he was jolted from his sleep and opened his eyes, the eyes of his pod double closed.

Also near the end of the film, Matthew and Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) were exposed as human when Elizabeth screamed after seeing a talking, human-faced mutant dog. Matthew and Elizabeth ran from the pursuing pod people, and jumped into the back of an open truck. They were driven to a giant warehouse at the docks where they saw pods being grown before being loaded into cargo ships.

It's Alive! (1974)

#43

This classic over-the-top horror film from writer/director Larry Cohen, reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) , told about the Davis middle-class family expecting a baby in Los Angeles. The title of the film "It's Alive!" referred to the very famous line of dialogue shrieked by Colin Clive (as Dr. Henry Frankenstein) in the classic Frankenstein (1931).

There were two sequels and a remake:

• It Lives Again (1978)
• It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)
• It's Alive (2008), a remake of the original

The low-budget film's tagline warned:

"There's only ONE thing wrong with the Davis baby... IT'S ALIVE."

The scariest scene was the opening jaw-dropping birthing scene - with a ghastly twist. Joyful anticipation turned to torturous damnation when a monstrous mutant with an enlarged vein-studded head, bug-eyes, fangs and claws was born during a difficult procedure.

When the infant beast child was born in the Community Hospital maternity ward's operating room, the killing creature attacked the nurses and doctors, creating a bloodbath massacre, and then escaped through a ceiling skylight. It went missing, and continued to attack unsuspecting victims (including a musician and a Carnation milkman). When the milkman was killed, white liquid spilled against his red and white vehicle.

PR consultant father Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) became obsessed with destroying the monstrosity that he had helped to father, and joined the hunt. He compared himself to Dr. Henry Frankenstein in Frankenstein (1931) who created the original Universal Studios monster creature. Frank was suspended from his job by his boss Bob Clayton (Guy Stockwell) and was hounded by reporters.

Eventually, the child - who was mostly hidden and only seen in brief glimpses, quick cuts, and extreme closeups throughout most of the film, to create further tension - returned to the Davis home. There, Frank's protective wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) and young 11 year-old son Chris (Daniel Holzman) became sympathetic to the scared and frightened creature, offered it food and love, and hid it in the basement.

It was revealed that the baby was possibly the result of untested birth control pills prescribed by a Doctor (Shamus Locke) for Lenore, or environmental pollution (from pesticides, lead spills, smog), or extensive exposure to radioactivity.

The anguished Frank went on a shooting rampage to kill his 'infant' son - his own flesh-and-blood. He wounded him in the basement, just before the marauding infant bit and killed Chris' friend Charley (William Wellman, Jr.) in the neck.

Later, when Frank found the infant in the city sewers during a hunt, he too had a change of heart and cradled his son to rescue and protect him before federal authorities closed in.

However, during an ensuing confrontational ending with a lethal hail of gunfire, the child attacked the Doctor, forcing the cops to kill both the Doctor and the child.

Jacob's Ladder (1990)

#21

In the prologue of this psychological thriller, Vietnam vet soldier Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) suffered a serious bayonet wound to the stomach, and was helicoptered out of the fighting zone to an army hospital.

The film led one to believe he survived, but in reality, he died in combat on an operating table (revealed in the final scene). Singer's horrifying, hallucinatory visions of horned creatures and demons were the fantasies and dreams of a dying (or dead) man (experiencing death-bed visions) who couldn't accept his death and was unwilling to let go.

Jacob's hallucinations upon his return to NYC were not caused by the drug, or battle stress, but because he wasn't freeing his soul.

The troubled and lethally-wounded Vietnam vet Jacob Singer had a frightening vision when he was at an erotic disco dance (to the tune of James Brown's Ma Thang (Sex Machine)) on a crowded dance floor with his temptress Latina girlfriend Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena). He saw a snake-like devil with a scaly reptilian tail curled around her and then a horn abruptly ripped open her mouth.

Jacob took a disturbing trip through a decaying, underworld hospital (purgatory or hell?), when he was strapped down on a stretcher-table-gurney and wheeled through a corridor littered with bloody human body parts on the blood-stained floor, stacks of amputated limbs and appendages, and populated by deformed mental patients.

When he was being operated upon with barbaric surgical instruments, he asserted: "I'm alive" - the Evil Doctor (Davidson Thomson) with flesh-covered eyes (no eye sockets) retorted back with a blunt question, implying that he was dead:

"Then what are you doing here?...There is no outta here. You've been killed. Don't you remember?"

He was injected in the center of his forehead by the featureless-faced Doctor.

Jaws (1975)

#1

This masterful, visceral and realistic science-fiction suspense/horror-disaster film by director Steven Spielberg tapped into the most primal of human fears - what unseen creature lurked below the dark surface of the water beyond the beach? The tagline for the tensely-paced film: "Don't go in the water," kept a lot of shark-hysterical ocean-swimmers and 1975 summer beachgoers wary.

The ominous, well-known, 'shark theme' - the two-note (E and F) 'da-dum...da-dum' cello and bass chords of John Williams' moody, driving musical score, played under the opening credits, followed by a subjective camera view of an underwater creature swimming along. The sound signaled an imminent shark attack in the opening scene, shot day-for-night. It was marvelously visual and terrifying.

A carefree blonde Christine "Chrissie" Watkins (Susan Backlinie) was skinny-dipping during a beach party, followed by her brutal, unexpected murder. It was the most remembered, gripping scene in the film, and prominently displayed on the film's poster in distinctly Freudian terms (showing the ventral view of the shark's gigantic, pointed head, positioned vertically in a phallic position, with a dark mouth filled with voracious, jagged teeth). A metal buoy's bell on the surface of the water 'tinged' at various intervals. In what may have been retribution for teen immorality, her nude body was suddenly jerked under, and then dragged helplessly (pulled this way and then that way) on the surface by the unseen shark underneath, as she screamed: "God help me!" For a brief moment, she desperately grabbed the buoy and rang it for help (sounding a death knell), but was then attacked and submerged for the last time in a horrifying sequence. The water surface was again still and deathly quiet.

Another shark attack was on young Alex M. Kintner (Jeffrey Voorhees) swimming off the Amity Island beach. The familiar score was repeated. Gyrating, wiggling leg movements were photographed from underwater. Another underwater view showed Alex's legs vulnerably kicking off the back of his raft. There was a momentary view of a giant fin slicing through the water. A strange shape surfaced beneath Alex's raft, grabbing him and overturning the raft. A vacationer on the beach remarked: "Did you see that?" Blood gushed from Alex's body like from a fire hydrant or fountain. The boy screamed and then was dragged underwater - his yells turned to bubbling gurgles. Around the raft, the water became red - Alex was the great white's second victim.

Honorable Mention:

Diving into the murky, claustrophobic water, shark specialist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) found a huge, serrated tooth embedded in a large hole in a sunken boat's hull. Then, in the biggest, single-most shocking moment of the film, when he examined the tooth and came in for a closer look, the severed head of shark victim Ben Gardner's (Craig Kingsbury) corpse appeared in the gaping hole of the hull - he was a local fisherman in Amity. Hooper, scared to death (with the audience), accidentally dropped the tooth as he struggled to the surface of the yellowish water.

Many others noted the first terrifying appearance of the gigantic shark behind Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) as he spooned out chum.

In one of the concluding scenes, the shark devoured Quint (Robert Shaw). Screaming, he slid down the slippery deck into the open jaws of the monster Giant Great White - kicking his feet to prevent the inevitable. He was bitten in half - and blood spurted from his mouth. Quint stabbed at its eyes with a splintered piece of the deck as he was swallowed whole and devoured by the killer shark in a horrifying scene.

Jurassic Park (1993)

#95

The spectacular Jurassic Park, in the first of a long-running franchise series of Jurassic Park films, was located on the secluded island (fictional) of Isla Nublar 120 miles west off the coast of Costa Rica.

A horrifying chain reaction of events including the scary breakout of the giant ferocious, carnivorous Tyrannosaurus Rex, which attacked two stranded tour vans. There was a scary build-up to the T-Rex's first appearance, with the glasses of water vibrating on the van's dashboard from the dinosaur's ominous footsteps - signaling the coming disaster.

This was followed by the sudden dropping of a bloody goat's hind leg onto the van's windshield after teenaged Lex (Ariana Richards) wondered: "Where's the goat"? The first sight of the giant monster was its chomping on the poor animal.

The T-Rex suspensefully stalked around the vehicle with the kids trapped inside, including the monster's giant eyeballing of Lex and then crashing through the vehicle's viewing roof with its giant jaws. The monster also stalked and devoured cowardly lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) who had fled from the van and was cowering in a thatched-roof toilet stall.

Later during the rescue of injured Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), he sarcastically remarked: "Remind me to thank John for a lovely weekend." Impact tremors from the T-Rex were heard approaching toward them as they pulled away and fled from the menacing, approaching monstrous T-Rex; Malcolm warned: "We've got to get out of here," and screamed: "Must go faster!"; as they were chased, their rear-view mirror image showed objects closer than they appeared (OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR); after escaping, he quipped: "You think they'll have that on the tour?"

In a tense, hide-and-go-seek stalking scene, the two kids Lex and Tim Murphy (Joseph Mazzello) found themselves cornered in the Visitor Center's restaurant-kitchen by a pair of velociraptors; meanwhile, Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) was ironically assuring Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) that they were probably safe, since she had locked a third raptor in the maintenance shed: ("...unless they figure out how to open doors...") - with a cut to a close-up of the kitchen door handle turning and the creature pushing the door open; the two kids were huddled together worrying: ("It's inside!"); the two kids were eventually able to outsmart the creatures by locking one of them in a freezer.