Jack Nicholson and actress Shelley Duvall in scene from film 'The Shining'. Source: Sunday Mail (SA)
- Five of the top 25 most disturbing horror scenes
- More: Read the full list at IGN
- Your say: What's your favourite horror scene?
THERE'S a lot more to Halloween than trick or treating.
A proper Halloween tradition, perhaps for the adults more so than their sugar-loaded kids, is watching horror films.
And the scarier, the better.
IGN's Lucy O'Brien has put together a list of the 25 most disturbing scenes in horror, and here we look at the top five.
5. The Shining: The Girl in Room 237 (1980)
The horror in The Shining is unsettling rather than scream-inducing, and there's a hell of a lot of creepy Kubrick abstraction that could have made it onto this list. But it's hard to go past the lady in the bathtub, the monster in the forbidden Room 237. At first, a beautiful young woman in Jack Torrence's arms, and then, in a brilliant reveal reflected in the bathroom mirror, a rotting hag. The kicker? She's still got a hand resting on Jack's shoulder as she begins to cackle.
4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Grandpa (1974)
The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is exhaustively horrific, a slaughter-fest so relentless it had critics at the time questioning the reasons for its existence (as Roger Ebert said, "it's...without any apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose.") The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a movie of a different kind, not a gore film or psychological thriller but a slick, deeply cynical comic horror that didn't give a damn for the rules laid down by its predecessors. And amongst all the slicing and dicing there's a singular scene which, while not overly violent or gory, chills to the bone above all others: grandpa. The corpse-like geriatric's feeble attempts to bash in the head of a young girl is director Tobe Hooper firing on all cylinders; it's a scene both hilarious (grandpa's too old and can't lift the hammer) and disturbing (grandpa's too old and can't lift the hammer). It's repugnant, peppered with screaming, and it represents, quite simply, everything that makes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre so terrific.
3. Alien: Chestburster (1979)
The reason the chestburster scene in Ridley Scott's '79 sci-fi/horror Alien gets under one's skin isn't because it's gory (although there's no denying its blood-splattered shocks), it's because Scott has briefly put us at ease before pulling his diabolical rug from under us. It's easy to forget that the moment the alien bursts out of Kane's chest is part of one of the more cheerful scenes in Alien, the crew genuinely relaxed around one another, cracking jokes about the crummy food over dinner. How quickly it turns; Kane laughing and chowing down one minute, the next heaving for breath, a sudden burst of red down the middle of his white t-shirt. Upon reflection the whole thing was inevitable, but at the time it's shockingly unexpected.
2. Audition: Needles (1999)
Takashi Miike's '99 Japanese head-trip is a smorgasbord of skin-crawling horror, but nothing tops its infamous needle torture scene, a venus flytrap of a moment that snaps nastily upon the unprepared viewer. The scene, involving methodical insertion of needles and limb amputation, is the culmination of slow-burning psychological warfare launched upon its protagonist by the object of his affections. It's vicious, not least because of the joy the film's villainess is expressing; it's hard to dispel the sound of her voice whispering 'deeper, deeper,' as she gently inserts a 10-inch needle into the soft, raw flesh beneath his eyeball.
1. The Exorcist: The Crucifix Scene (1973)
Did your parents see William Friedkin's landmark horror The Exorcist back in the '70s? If you don't know the answer, ask them. If their reply is in the affirmative, they'll likely go on to tell you how the movie made them feel: drained, shaken, nauseous. They'll recall a culmination of horrific moments - the pea soup, the tests in the hospital, the head turning round 360 degrees. But the one part they probably won't mention - unless you have awesomely open and progressive parents - is the crucifix scene. It's a scene so shocking upon first viewing, both in concept and execution, that it touches a very deep and private part of the psyche. It has the power to unsettle even those of us desensitised from years of exposure to shocking or obscene imagery; those who laugh during the scene tend to laugh a little too loudly. Linda Blair, who played 12-year-old Regan McNeil, has since said she had no idea what the implications were behind her actions, that she was just doing what Friedkin told her.
For her, and the rest of us, it's better that way.
What are your favourite horror scenes? Please leave a comment.
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