Other frightening films
Here are some other lesser-known horror films that TFP readers said could get a good scare going:* “The Entity” (“I had nightmares after this movie.” Alfie Dodd)* “Insidious” (“Had me sleeping with the lights on.” Ashley Nicole; “Terrifying concept and equally haunting score.” Michael Moore)* “When A Stranger Calls” (EVERYTIME the phone rings when I babysat I thought of that movie when the guy was inside the home and asked, “Have you checked the children?” And back then there was no caller ID!!” April Hulsey)* “Jeepers Creepers” (“Gave me nightmares then and still does.” Dale Reagan)* “Squirm” (“Thought worms were harmless till this movie.” Christopher L. Walton)* “High Tension” (“French made and dubbed, made me look at farmhouses in a different way.” Chris Rockefeller Grant)* “Wolf Creek (“One intense film.” Jeffrey Sartin)* “Frailty”* “The Conjuring”* The “REC” films* “Cannibal Holocaust”* “The Unnameable”* “The Brood”* “The Town that Dreaded Sundown”
The head-turning scene in “The Exorcist”? Yep, freaky weird and scary.
The dead woman in the bathtub in “The Shining”? Way too realistic – and horrifying.
The shower scene in “Psycho”? How many people quit taking showers after seeing it?
OK, so those are iconic scenes from horror movies that most of us know. But what about the equally frightening moments from smaller films? Some of the most-horrifying scenes are from movies that many people have either never seen or never even heard about.
We asked the readers of the Times Free Press to name some of these movies, the ones that tore them out of frame on first viewing.
For Rick Stanley, a Soddy-Daisy native now living in Kansas, 1979’s “Phantasm” “scared the bejezuz out of me when I was younger.”
The film, written and directed by Don Coscarelli (“Bubba Ho-Tep,” “The Beastmaster,” “John Dies at the End”), was a freakout about an undertaker – the unnamed “Tall Man” – who works in a mausoleum and apparently (it’s kind of hard to tell for sure), takes the dead, turns them into dwarf zombies in the afterlife and uses them to do his evil bidding. Or something.
One of the scariest elements of “Phantasm” – and the main thing that folks remember – is the flying silver orb that zips around the mausoleum, slamming into people’s foreheads, driving spikes into their temples, then drilling into their brains and spewing out blood.
“The silver orb flying through the sky and the ‘Tall Man’ were two of the biggest reasons” for his fear, Stanley says.
“Oh man, MEEE TOOO!!!” exclaims Maria Mendez of Ooltewah. “Such a creepy movie back in the day.”
Lonnie Anderson II of LaFayette, Ga., says he was terrified by “Drag Me to Hell,” the 2009 film directed by Sam Raimi (the first “Spider-Man” trilogy, the “Evil Dead” trilogy) about a loan officer who gets into big trouble when she callously denies a mortgage extension to a creepy old lady who turns out to be a gypsy with a talent for curses.
“‘Drag Me To Hell’ scared me when I watched it in theaters and to this day I won’t allow it in the house, and I am a horror fanatic,” he says.
“Same here,” says Brandon L. Blevins. “I love horror movies and can’t bring myself to watch it again. But it’s sooo good!”
Italian director Dario Argento received several shoutouts for his eerie, atmospheric and heavily art-directed films. “Suspiria,” a 1977 movie about a young ballet dancer who’s thrilled to be asked to join a prestigious European dance school, only to discover that things aren’t what they seem, was mentioned by several readers. One of Argento’s trademarks is to fill the screen from stem to stern with bright colors and vision-warping patterns, a technique he uses extensively in “Suspiria.”
“It may not be the scariest horror film, but the tone and atmosphere of ‘Suspiria’ chilled me to the bone,” says Steph Dickert Rutherford of Chattanooga. “The director’s use of color, imagery, and a gothic music score made it a very creepy and stunning movie. Probably the best cinematography of any horror film.”
Chattanooga’s David L. Pierce says “Dario Argento’s work needs to have a presence for anyone unfamiliar. His film ‘Suspiria’ is the place to start.”
La Ura, of Chattanooga, also likes “Suspiria,” but says the movie didn’t scare her. “I like it more for its atmosphere and score.”
“It’s very hypnotic,” says Ura, whose profile photo on Facebook is the demonic face that pops up in “The Exorcist” when Father Karras sees his mother walking up out of the subway during a dream sequence. “There are some definitely creepy scenes and images, but I’m a pretty hard person to scare. Fear is subjective.”
Chris Dortch, who organizes the Frightening Ass Film Festival, set for this coming weekend at the Majestic 12 theater downtown, lists 1980’s “The Changeling” with George C. Scott as one of his little-known favorites. In it, Scott is a composer who moves into a mansion, only to discover that someone else is living – or not living – there with him.
“If you’re alone in a room watching that movie, it will make you extremely paranoid. LOL,” says Togi Linderman of Ringgold, Ga.
A film about the tooth fairy ought not to be scary, right? After all, it’s the friendly, lovable tooth fairy. Yeah, not so much in “Darkness Falls.”
“Scared the crap out of me!” says Julie Taylor. “I guess mainly because the tooth fairy is supposed to be a good thing and happy thing and all the music and ‘surprises’ that made me jump and hide my eyes a lot!”
Alien abduction flipped out John House, mainly because he was very young when he saw “Fire in the Sky,” the allegedly true story of a man who was abducted in the Arizona desert in 1975.
“It’s an alien movie that frightened me to death because I saw it when I was 5,” House says. “Wonderful parents I had. LOL.”
Emily Smith of Rossville had a similar experience with “Fire in the Sky.”
“I was terrified of being abducted when I was like 6 years old,” she says.
“Ring,” a 1998 Japanese film, bent Jennifer Hudson Rimback so far out of shape, it changed her movie-going habits. The movie centered on a videotape that kills anyone who watches it seven days later. The film is best-known for the soaking-wet, evil-eyed girl that crawls out of the TV to do the deed.
“I remember seeing that in the theater and I was curled up not looking half the time,” Rimback says. “Haven’t watched a scary movie in the theater since!”
Samantha Niemeyer was equally freaked by the movie.
“The girl in ‘Ring’ creeped me out, along with the look on her victims’ faces. Still gives me the shivers,” she says.
Spelunking is not in the future for Kandle Lee of Cleveland, Tenn., not after watching “The Descent.” In the 2005 film, six women decide to explore an unmapped cave and run into some folks who’ve been living there for a while – and they’re hungry.
“Let’s just say I have never been cave exploring like that, and after that movie I never will!” Lee says.
The “Candyman” urban myth is alive and well in the mind of Misty Quarles of Chattanooga. The 1992 film explores the myth that, if you look in a mirror and say “Candyman” five times, he’ll come through. Oh yeah, one of his hands is a hook that he doesn’t use for fishing. Naturally, one of the characters in the film tests the theory in her bathroom mirror. It doesn’t end well.
“I still get scared and won’t say it aloud,” Quarles says. “I’m 30 and I am still terrified to close the bathroom door.”
And then there are the folks who find horror in unusual places.
“Nothing compares to the true horror felt from one’s first viewing of ‘Grease.’ I needed therapy for years. Truly disturbing,” says David Richardson of Chattanooga.
Contact Shawn Ryan at sryan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327.