After watching LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR again last night on cable, after quite a few years since seeing it last - it struck how truly shocking and horrific the ending is (the last image on screen is also handled in a truly disturbing way and must have had a huge impact in a movie theater).

I was just wondering if anyone can think of other films which wouldn't ordinarily fall into the genre territory but which feature such scarifying moments? HARDCORE's screening of the "snuff film" really got to me when I first saw it, mostly because I didn't understand the implication (I was a kid) until riding the school bus the next morning and mulling it over in my head.

GOODBAR is an interesting artifact of it's time - one the one hand, an attempt to honestly portray the lifestyle of a young woman at the moment - on the other hand, staggeringly reactionary in it's portrayals of the evils of drug use and homosexuality.

Can anyone think of any other horrific moments?

I would offer up VICE SQUAD starring Wings Hauser. The fllm is basically a action/drama but there is a scene where Hauser, playing a deranged pimp named Ramrod, is so terrifying as he coaxes his way back into the room of one of his ladies. When she finally opens the door, he burst in and grabs her and proceeds to beat and torture her. The scene is pretty terrifying. So much so that it made its way into TERROR IN THE AISLES.

Also, the bathroom scene at the end of the first segment of FULL METAL JACKET is pretty unnerving.

"I cannot believe how stupid you are." This was the scene that singlehandedly turned Hauser into one of the '80s biggest exploitation stars.

WAIT UNTIL DARK isn't a horror movie, but it contains what is probably the biggest jolt I've ever experienced in a film. A truly frightening "bus" well-handled by director Terence Young.

The "curbing" scene in American History X. Only time in my movie going experience where I had to cover my eyes with my hands. I *still* don't know how graphic the actual shot was, even watching it now I can't watch that one bit. What I imagine it looking like is probably much worse than the reality.

I for one don't ever want to watch the "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" sequence from CABARET ever again. It's a brilliantly staged sequence, but it so chilled me the first time that now I have to leave the room if someone is watching it.

Most of the good Chabrols, but especially 'La rupture' and 'La Ceremonie''..Also Michael Haneke's films especially his latest 'Time of the Wolf', and finally the ending of Catherene's Brilliat's 'A Ma Souer' which was possibly the most horrific thing I've seen since 'Last House on the Left' or 'Irreversible' or whatever...

The hypodermic moment from PULP FICTION. What can I say...I was skittering from one end of the theatre to another.

blanking on if it's JEAN DE FLORETTE or MANON DES SOURCES at the moment, but anyone who's seen both films will know what I'm talking about when I say "the sewing sequence". Ack. BETTY BLUE also had some moments that made me cringe.

Although I guess it depends on: what is horror? Gory shots? Disturbing sequences? Being scared? Sorry if this is getting too epistemological, but it is kind of a point ...

Me too -- BETTY BLUE was the first movie I thought about when I saw this thread -- the "makeup moment," I guess you could call it, scared me to DEATH. It's hard to put into words why. The image is just so "wrong" -- you know what I mean, I bet.

Some other films -- the fate of the baby in TRAINSPOTTING -- that left me sleepless for a night. I couldn't understand why people could overlook that and say it was a fun or exhilarating movie. Also, THE PASSION OF BEATRICE had some stuff that gave me nightmares.

Not to sound snooty but Bergman's HOUR OF THE WOLF and CRIES AND WHISPERS had some horrifying moments.

In CRIES, Liv Ullman's "encounter" with her dead sister that sends her running and screaming in terror is a shocking scene and Ingrid Thulin's soul-wrenching shout of pain after so calmly telling off her sister are chilling moments.

The James Glickenhaus film THE EXTERMINATOR had some very grizzly, nasty moments, particularly a graphic beheading scene at the opening of the movie. Plus the meat grinder...

Maybe I'm turning into a sissy in my old age, but the one movie gore sequence that has ever made me turn green, squirm, and close my eyes is the "broken nose" bit in the new Clint Eastwood film, MILLION DOLLAR BABY. I have rarely been so uncomfortable in a movie theater.

Mine would be in Casualties of War when Michael J. Fox wakes up in the hospital and that guy with his legs blown off is screaming and his stumps are kicking around. That one grabbed me.
or in Kill Bill 2 when... SPOILER...







Daryl Hannah gets her other eye ripped out by Uma Thurman. Even though I totally saw this coming, the presentation was great and very shocking.

Grady just reminded me of a great moment:

In Chinatown, when Roman Polanski cuts Jack Nicholson's nose. So sudden and so.... YIPES!

SPOILERS, of course.

Going back to the 1930s I always found the scenes in the Weismuller TARZAN films where victims are strapped to cross-thatched trees and subsequently torn apart (screaming all the way) when the lines are cut to be among the most horrifying moments in any film genre.

HELL'S ANGELS (1930) also contains the disturbing imagery of the zeppelin crew stepping out into the inky darkness so that the aircraft may be lightened. Those bodies dropping to their deaths gave me the shivers.

One of the absolute worst is contained in the George Roy Hill / Robert Redford team-up THE GREAT WALDO PEPPER (1975). Redford and buddy Edward Herrmann are barnstorming for thrill-seeking crowds, and during a never-done-before maneuver Herrmann's plane crashes into the ground. The moment begins horrifyingly enough - you hear the plane coming in and crashing, with the camera on Redford. He knows it's gone wrong and tears down the field to his friend. Herrmann is alive, trapped in the wreckage; as Redford frantically tries to free him Herrmann begins shouting that members of the public crowding around the wreck site are smoking....and fuel is leaking away from the airplane. A cigarette drops, ignites, and flames engulf the twisted shell. Herrmann is screaming that he's on fire, and Redford is unable to free him. He grabs a piece of wreckage and starts clubbing his head as a desperate, futile gesture. While the crowd gawks at the fiery carnage Redford runs back to his airplane and begins buzzing those congregated around the fire, flying so low that he too crashes.

There's another moment in the film involving another barnstorming stunt - a woman (Susan Sarandon) on the wing of a plane too petrified to move - that goes awry, and it is frightening enough - but that crash sequence and how painfully Herrmann dies was truly horrifying to watch in the theater. It still gets to me.

I have CHOPPER on DVD and have tried getting through it at least three or four times without success. The violence of the opening prison scene horrifies me so much I always end up turning it off. I can't figure out if it's the scene itself or the combination of the scene and knowing that CHOPPER is grounded in fact.

The recreation of the Wonderland murders that climaxes 2003's WONDERLAND is pretty damn shocking and horrific.

Vincent

Todd, I strongly urge you to try again with CHOPPER - it's one of the most memorable experiences I've had in the cinema in the last ten years, and not simply because of the grue (which is, admittedly, knuckle-whiteningly horrific) - what mitigates the awfulness of the violence somewhat, for me, is the wry gallows humour so distinctive of the Aussie temperament, and the quite brilliant performance of Eric Bana, an alternately hilarious and terrifying figure you definitely wouldn't want to piss off. The fact that he's such an unreliable narrator - claiming credit for splashily extravagant crimes which might actually have happened in quite a different fashion - only adds to the fascination of the character. I'm usually dead against films which glamourise vicious criminals, while purporting to condemn their actions (BUSTER, anyone?), but this film took such an unusually amoral attitude in the telling of its fantasist antihero's life story that it (for me) transcended the "sensationalist low-life biopic" level I'd assumed it would be rooted in and became something quite exceptional. (Check out the DVD commentary by the real "Chopper", too, for an additional reality-warping experience.)

And it's one of the most quotable films since Mike Leigh's NAKED.

Back on-topic, check out Cedric Kahn's recent FEUX ROUGES/RED LIGHTS for a truly out-of-your-seat shock moment when the lead character is puzzled by a repetitive banging noise underneath his car, stops in a deserted country lane to look underneath and - AAARRGH! It's the first film that's ever made me exclaim "Jesus!" out loud in a packed auditorium.

Travis' rampage at the climax of TAXI DRIVER, and Marvin Nash's torture in RESERVOIR DOGS.

KIDS remains just about the scariest thing I've ever seen.

Once Upon a Time in America contains some pretty horrifying violence; the scene that gets to me the most is probably the beating administered to the young Max and Noodles. I really think it outdoes the Tuco beating from TGTB&TU, and violence involing children or adolescents is never fun to watch.

When I first saw Kill Bill: Vol 2 in a theater, the climax of "The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz" really unnerved me, it didn't have anywhere near the same impact either of the times I've seen it on DVD.

There are a million of them. The Graveyard opening of David Lean's Dickens adaptation GREAT EXPECTATIONS is as much atmospheric/powers of suggestion horror film as any scene in Val Lewton. Any Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation (of the kids' adventures, not IVANHOE lit.) worth its salt ought to have a similar heartstopping moment with some of the uncanny to it.

If you mean horrific, jolting effect, including terror and pity catharsis, any 'tragic ending' handled properly does the trick.

NIGHT MOVES with a plane and a swimming pool has a random, awful, things gone terribly wrong nightmare horror aspect to it...as I distantly (maybe confusedly)
recall

More David Lynch than not has an 'ultimate horror' grabber at some point, or two

DELIVERANCE "turns into" a horror movie. Is it one?

Those are old but representative examples of horrific elements.

The deeply disturbing murder of the mother in HEAVENLY CREATURES...I only watched the film once...but the murder just affected me to my core and I can't watch it anymore.

And the murder of the old lady in THE HONEYMOON KILLERS----really upsetting...

i guess these two scenes really depict how hard, brutal and involved it is to actually take someone's life.

It's MANON DES SOURCES. Youch! is a good way to describe that one!

THE VANISHING (1988) has one of the most horrifying scenes I've ever seen at the very end, when Rex finds out what really happened to Saskia. Haunts me to this day.

David Lynch has a good number of scenes and sequences in his ouvre that are much eerier than what you see in your average horror flick. Standouts include the "man behind the diner" scene in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, the scene where Mrs. Chalfont and her little nephew with the bizarre mask give Laura Palmer that strange picture in FIRE WALK WITH ME, and best of all, the entire first third or so of LOST HIGHWAY, which for my money ranks with the best, most carefully controlled, atmospheric and deep down creepy filmmaking ever.

Aside from Lynch, the extended version of Bergman's FANNY AND ALEXANDER has the scene where Alexander encounters the ghosts of two drowned girls, and both versions of the film have the scene featuring the disturbing Ismael, an apparent emmisary from another world, much like the Mystery Man in LOST HIGHWAY and the Cowboy in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, come to think of it.

The first thing I thought of reading this thread wasn't a movie; it was Chris Morris' JAM (BBC 4, 2000), possibly the most willfully perverse program ever to air on television. These are just a few of the shows' disturbing setpieces; if these sound strange out of context, just imagine them in the context of sketch comedy...
-A sweating, gyrating woman dances as if she's at a rave. The beat she's dancing to is the steadily slowing *beep* of her dying baby's heart monitor.
-A couple have decided that their young daughter would be happier living life as a man. They have the genitalia of a 40-year old male attached to her surgically. The couple are very pleased with the results, and are eager to show them to you...
-A six year old girl - her hands dripping with the blood of a man she has just shot in the face and helped dismember - dances gaily around his corpse as someone else is led away to jail for her crimes. She sings to herself, "Chopped-up man, chopped-up man..."
-A young and very stupid couple ask a doctor why the wife seems to gain so much weight for nine month intervals. They are concerned, as they are running out of ways to dispose of the "screaming red rabbits" that seem to drop out of her just before she loses the weight...
-And hands-down the strangest, most indescribable use of Piero Umiliani's "Mah-Nah Mah-Nah" - involving the air expelled from the lungs of a recently disinterred corpse.

There was a very good post that summarized JAM on the old board; I'm completely blanking on who posted it though.

But in terms of movies, it has to be OLDBOY. (This may not seem like a big SPOILER, but I assure you if you haven't seen OLDBOY, you shouldn't know about this plot element yet.)


SPOILER FOR OLDBOY







(the photo album)
Aaah! I was just white-knuckled when the last page was revealed! I knew in the back of my mind where it was going, but I was hoping against hope that it wasn't that...To think of what that would do to a person's psyche - it's more disturbing than any level of physical torture, to me.

OH!
and how could i forget Altman's 3 WOMEN?!?!

That movie is straight up HORRIFYING and endlessly fascinating---how about that dream sequence?

. . . Eastwood's first film as a director, PLAY MISTY FOR ME when he returns home, finds his bedroom torn apart, and Jessica Walter suddenly pops out of the shadows and starts swinging . . . I jump every time . . .

The climactic rape sequence of BAD TIMING: A SENSUAL OBSESSION was the only time I actually felt physically ill while watching a film. My vote for most memorable and unexpected death scene goes to SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

I have to add another vote for Lynch's TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (the ending with Leland forcing his daughter Laura and the other woman through the dark woods to meet their fates in the boxcar)

E. Elias Merhige's BEGOTTEN -- no specific scene. The whole affair exuded much unpleasantness and . . . dark wonder.

Lodge Kerrigan's CLEAN, SHAVEN.

Elem Klimov's COME AND SEE -- the most haunting and disturbing war film I've ever seen. War as nightmare struggle indeed.

But the most recent, horrific non-horror film that I still can't shake from my imagination goes to Gaspar Noe's IRREVERSIBLE -- of course, the rape scene. But the opening moments and murder inside the sex club was also unforgettable.

Another Fire Walk With Me moment - When Laura goes into her bedroom and sees Bob behind her night-table.... I can still hardly watch it!

Lynch seems to be able to length visuals/sound effects so they become physically difficult to sit through. He does it again in Mullholland Drive, near the start of the movie... what's behind the dumpster :unsure:

The mom's wail in HEAVENLY CREATURES, or however you would describe that sound she made, was the most disturbing part of the movie.

Another one, that made me leave the theater for a while, was the biting scene in Scorcese's CAPE FEAR. I thought it was unnecessary to show it so explicitly. It seemed like a childish choice to me. The whole movie was unpalatable -- I felt like the whole "Will Max rape the girl or not" vibe during his first encounter with the girl was meant to be titillating or something -- but to try to use that sort of thing for titillation value turns my stomach.

You want horrific? Try Donald Sutherland and Laura Betti playing "spin the child" in Bertollucci's 1900.

In the tear-jerker melodrama SUSAN SLADE, which I haven't seen since I was a kid, there's a hair-raising scene of an infant standing in its crib -- screaming and on fire!

The appearances of "Madame X" that herald the nervous breakdowns of Liv Ullmann in Bergman's FACE TO FACE.

The last 45 minutes or so of AT CLOSE RANGE.

The last 30 minutes or so of BOYS DON'T CRY, a movie which I found so upsetting I won't go near it again. Kudos to all, but no seconds for me.

PS: I can't look at the title of the movie CHOPPER without hearing Yakky Doodle say it. I guess I watch too many cartoons.

Ed Harris & Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio face up to their situation and to their feelings for one another in THE ABYSS...

Sister Ruth's descent into madness in BLACK NARCISSUS is a segment of the film that finds it with all the trappings of a horror film for the duration.

There's an old "Far Side" cartoon about nature's way of telling others to back-off. The look on Kathleen Byron's sweat-drenched face as Sister Ruth - a combination of desire, sickness, and the living dead - just sends out an "Oh $*#&!" moment in the viewers when she appears near the end of the film (or, rather, it did for me at least). Match that with Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh reading her book trying to simultaneously keep an eye on Ruth; and Sister Ruth's smile, knowing that she will eventually escape to pursue her plans, just speaks volume.

Maybe not quite a "horrific" moment, but certainly one that is an excellent example of horror-film pacing in an otherwise straight dramatic film.

**SPOILERS**
In CRISS CROSS (Siodmak, 1949) I always find the final scene rather horrifying. Having crossed and double crossed throughout the film, Yvonne De Carlo comes to the realization that Dan Duryea has tracked her and Burt Lancaster down and is about to shoot them both. She knows there is no escape. Duryea enters, his gun firing as the Rozsa score surges around him.

Early on in THE SEARCHERS (1956)--there is a horrific scene when Pippa Scott realizes that the indians circling the house are going to attack and murder her and her family. The look of utter horror on her face is unforgettable

**SPOILERS**

After giving it some more thought, I should add:

The final moments of Pasolini's SALO.

About ten years ago, while I was riding the bus from work, I overheard a young man bragging to his female companion about a "snuff" film he had watched the night before. I immediately started eavesdropping. The young man described scenes from the film in grusome detail and it didn't take me long to realize that he was actually talking about SALO. I normally wouldn't have said anything to him, but I couldn't resist bursting his bubble as I got ready to step off the bus. But even after I told him what the film was and that it was made by a well-known Italian director, he still looked horrified that I had seen the same "snuff" film as him.

Insightful choice, Jeffrey.

I'd have to say Hitchcock's 'Frenzy' (1972). Whilst the rape scene has been discussed frequently, the potato truck sequence is simply horrible. The line by Rusk ("Got a place to stay?"), and the way Hitchcock drops everything from the soundtrack at that very moment with a tight close up of Babs, has stayed with me forever.

Indeed, the whole tone of the film is exceptionally dark (even with the humour and rousing score). But one of his greatest films.

Two that come to mind:

The siege at the end of STRAW DOGS. From the death of the constable forward.

I don't think anyone who has seen SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION can forget the death scene with Richard Jaekel.