Boo!
Retrocrush has listed their top 100 scariest movie moments of all time.
I read through that last night and was surprised at how many movies I hadn't seen on their list. However, they did have the movie that gave me my first real fright: Salem's Lot, a movie directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame and based on a Stephen King novel. I don't remember how young I was, but I do remember TV 38 in Boston played it a least a few times while I was growing up.
That was the movie that made me sleep with the covers pulled up to my chin for years and years, in the firm belief that if I didn't leave my neck exposed a vampire wouldn't be able to bite me. That movie caused me to have nightmares for three nights straight as I replayed one particular scene over and over again in my mind.
A man walked into a room to see another man sitting in a rocking chair, with pale skin, sunken cheeks, and yellow eyes. As the pale man rocked back and forth, he opened his mouth and gave a long hiss while showing off his long incisors.
In my nightmares, I dreamed of a long hallway, with nice woodwork and filled with more doors than I had time to count. I was frantically trying to escape from something, and I opened each and every door I found. Each room held that man, sitting in the chair and hissing. Each time I entered a room, I ran screaming from it only to find all of the other rooms filled with the same frightening image.
I woke up for three nights straight, sweating, clutching my stuffed Chewbacca doll and the torn piece of an old pajama top that served as my security blanket. I then spent much of the next 20 years looking for another fright like that one. I also developed a fascination with vampires.
Funny how that works.
Posted by Mr. Eff on 10/30/2003 || link
