Well it got me thinking about what scared me as a kid and I thought this could be a really fun list - and group activity. So I ask you, what do you think were the scariest moments on film? And, like my Throwaway Movie Lines list, I don't mean what do you think the AFI would pick. I mean, what creeped YOU out, gave YOU nightmares and scarred YOU for life? Anybody who has suggestions, feel free to e-mail them to me.

3/16/06

The moment of realization . –What Lies Beneath (2000)
This really was a dumb movie and yet I couldn't help screaming every time something, or somebody jumped out at you. I won't give it away too much, but no scare was more well done than the moment Michelle Pfeiffer, along with the audience, suddenly realizes who the killer is. Just the microsecond the realization kicks in, the killer suddenly appears in the mirror with a terrific screech of violins and I jumped, actually JUMPED out of my seat.

1/15/06

Brontosaurus eats a man. –King Kong (1933)
It wasn't the giant ape that scared me. It was all the innocent people who died. In this scene, all the men go after Fay Wray and a brontosaurus starts chasing them. They're all running away and one dumbass decides to climb a TREE. Well the brontosaurus finds him and eats him. He eats him off screen, but oh my god, the blood curdling scream that he makes still makes my stomach drop out just thinking about it.

Kong drops a woman. –King Kong (1933)
A second scene in that same movie was when Kong climbs a building (not the Empire State) and pulls a woman out of her bed thinking it's Fay Wray. The woman screams until Kong gets tired of her and drops her, and you see her falling falling falling away from the camera and screaming the entire time. Ugh. Gut wrenching.

Zombies eat people. –Zombies (?)
I wrote a whole column about this one. I have been unable to locate this movie on IMDB, but suffice it to say I saw it at a time when Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was huge and I thought zombies were the coolest things. I mean they break danced and punched through walls and stuff. So I talked my mom into letting me watch this movie only to be BEYOND horrified when the zombies started EATING PEOPLE. Never fully recovered from that one.

Buffalo Bill's night vision goggles –The Silence of the Lambs
This one was perhaps more suspense than scary, but the whole last scene where Jodie Foster is alone in the dark with a serial killer who can see her through his night vision goggles made me leave the theater shaking.