My Top 10 Willy-Inducing Moments

I saw this first on the most excellent horror blog Day Of The Woman, but she was prompted by Andre at The Horror Digest to make HER list. Either way, they both encourage us to sally fur... sally firr... sally FORTH and post our OWN top 10 list of "willy inducing moments" from horror films. As Andre notes in her post, fear is an entirely subjective response, which is why there are probably going to be things on my list that you will laugh at. These are the first ten things that I thought of, ordered from least to most scary to me. It's not my definitive list by far, as it's somewhat off the cuff and it's entirely possible there are traumas I have blocked completely that only therapy will resurrect. If that should happen, I'll add to or amend the list. But for now, here goes!

10. The Fly II: mutated dog scene

This one is definitely a kindertrauma event, as repeated viewings as an adult failed to terrify me as much as this scene did when I first saw it. But it still hurts me deep inside. I've always had a deep and abiding love for golden retrievers and any dog resembling them, and when they sent that dog - poor mutated little Eric Stoltz's only friend - through the machine only to have it burst forth as this hideous mangled THING, and then later when he finds that they kept the suffering dog alive, OH, my young self was horrified as never before. Those MONSTERS.

Kindertrauma's excellent write-up on The Fly 2, complete with mutated dog photos

9. Gravedancers: dead in the bed

This movie was terrible, pretty much unredeemable in my opinion, but I had really high hopes when I first saw the trailer. I love a well-crafted ghost story, and ghosts are one of the few scary things that even as an adult can effectively give me the heebie-jeebies. I've also always been incredibly creeped out by things with bulging and/or colorless 'dead' eyes. Finally, I'm especially sensitive to situations where people are extra vulnerable, such as when they're asleep. The scene in the trailer where the guy seems to be trying to wake up his wife / girlfriend, and she rolls over only to be a horrible bulging dead-eyed ghost creature, scared the crap out of me. (Too bad the movie fell completely flat.)

Grave Dancers Trailer - 8 Films to Die For | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

8. Evil Dead: Cheryl in the cellar

I first saw the Evil Dead back when I was oh, probably 11 or so. I was sleeping over at a friend's house, and her parents had gone out for the evening, leaving us in the charge of my friend's older sister and a couple of HER friends, who were also spending the night. I was a GIANT chicken as a kid too. The older girls decided to watch Evil Dead, and bring us younger ones along for the ride. The tree rape scene and creepy 'we're alone in the woods and bad stuff is going to happen' vibe almost had me fleeing the room, but Cheryl in the cellar with her Deadite face, trying to get out, my poor little heart couldn't handle it. I jammed a Dorito in my eye (I was aiming for my mouth, but missed in my terror) and fled the room.



You should know that this musical piece created exclusively by sounds from the Evil Dead movies is one of the best things ever created and put on the internet.


7. Se7en - sloth

I did not deliberately plan out Se7en to be number 7 on my list, heh. The Sloth scene. I don't understand how anyone could NOT be affected by the Sloth scene. It's a masterful buildup of filmmaking; you're on the edge of your seat, thinking they're going after the murderer, knowing it's too early in the movie for them to catch the guy but never suspecting what exactly you're about to find. The slow buildup to get into the apartment, the juxtaposed shots of SWAT members, stairways, decrepit hallways. The puzzling air fresheners, hundreds of them, hanging from the ceiling. The shrouded body on the bed. The big reveal - IT'S A VICTIM. The horror that dawns as you take in his skin-and-bones, starved, bedsore-ridden remains. The judgmental detective leans in, whispers cruelly, and HOLY SHIT HE'S ALIVE OH MY GOD HE'S ALIVE, TWISTING AND MOVING UNNATURALLY, and for a moment he is no longer an object of pity but a creature to be feared.



6. Dawn Of The Dead (2004) - little neighbor girl in the hallway

I mentioned that I have a special terror of people being attacked when they're in especially vulnerable positions, like, oh, PEACEFULLY SLEEPING IN THEIR BEDS, didn't I? The beginning of the DotD remake is a great roller coaster ride, and the little zombie neighbor girl in the hallway really kicks it off for me. A doble-whammy of her just being there in the first place, and then the unnatural way she jumps up and goes running down the hallway after the attack.


Dawn of The Dead 2004 (The Beginning)
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5. The Vanishing (American) - buried alive

I never saw the original so I can't compare the two, but that moment after Kiefer Sutherland agrees to experience everything his girlfriend did in order to find out what happened to her, that moment when he wakes up from his drugged sleep to find that he has been buried alive, OH, I can't handle the horror. As women in today's world we are raised to be especially careful, because we seem to be the preferred victim of most rapists and murderers. We are especially aware of the dangers that could be lurking in every corner of the world around us, and the fact that the seemingly innocent teacher at the gas station was a murderous fiend who kidnapped one of our own and BURIED HER ALIVE far eclipsed most anything I'd seen up to that point in my life. I saw this movie as a teen, with my mother, and I don't think I've ever looked at the world quite the same way again. The fact that Kiefer gets away and exacts revenge is cold comfort, because it doesn't in any way fix the fact that his girlfriend was BURIED ALIVE, killed in one of the most horrific manners I can imagine.



4. Ghosthouse - creepy ass little girl loves her terrifying chanting giant clown doll

I saw this movie with some friends as a teen, and though the movie itself is god awful, the little ghost girl with her scary clown doll, and the truly unnerving chant-song that accompany them, terrified us. Creepy children. Clowns. And what the hell IS it saying, exactly? "Burial? Burial?" I'm not sure we finished the movie the first time around. We just couldn't HANDLE that clown.

This video sucks simply because the person that uploaded it put stupid captions on it, but it gives a much better idea of how creepy the little girl is than the other video I found.


This video showcases the creepiness of the clown quite well, but doesn't convey the little girl's weirdness as well


3. The Exorcist - spider-crawl

Bodies moving in an unnatural fashion are just downright WRONG. It's mere seconds of a truly disturbing film, and it wasn't even included in the original cut, yet for me, it's the most disturbing part of all.



2. The Ring (American) - it's a tie between the dead faces and Samara coming out of the TV

As a whole, The Ring works as a genuinely unnerving and frightening movie. I've only seen it twice, because it terrified me so the first time. I recently watched it the second time, with my husband, after I found out he hadn't seen it yet and I felt it was an important piece of his horror movie education. It was slower than I remembered, probably because the final scene (Samara coming out of the well and then crawling from the TV into reality) is so intense that I practically shit my pants just THINKING about it. By now, everyone knows about it and if you haven't seen it, seeing it the first time is probably less scary than it was when I had NO idea what I was about to experience and it was a total shock. But it still manages to deliver a healthy dose of fear.



The other moment(s) in The Ring that I can't watch, and that haunt my nights sometimes, are the split-second reveals of the dead faces of Samara's victims. Most notably Katie in the closet. It's early in the movie, unexpected, and utterly horrifying, and it really sets the tone for the rest of the film.



1. Arachnophobia, or anything with spiders

I'm a severe arachnophobe. ANY scene with a spider in it is going to give me the willies. This is probably the only spider movie I've ever actually SEEN, and it may very well be the only one I EVER see. I saw it back when I was a teen, and my spider phobia wasn't too bad. I STILL check under my toilet seat for spiders, and always look in the cereal box before pouring myself a bowl, and I check the shower thoroughly for spiders before getting in. I even check my TOWEL to make sure there are none on it, waiting to crawl on my flesh.


yeah, I... can't even look at pictures of spiders.


So, what are yours?

Horror Fans Get Scared Too

I've been a horror fan since youth. I do remember a time when I was a chickenshit little thing who ran with fear every time my mom tried to introduce me to anything remotely scary, but growing up with the family I did (especially around Halloween), it was inevitable that the horror bug would eventually bite. And once it did, it dug its teeth in fiercely and hasn't let go to this day (not that I want it to).

Though this isn't true for all horror fans, I myself am also a believer in the paranormal. The supernatural. As a youngster, I desperately wanted to grow up to be a parapsychologist, until I grew old enough to learn that there wasn't a lot of money in that field. (Then I decided I wanted to be a writer and film maker who would go ghost hunting in her 'spare time' - a concept which I don't tend to see much of in my current life, given the absurd amount of hobbies I have.) I believe that one day the zombies will rise up and come after us all. More than anything, though, I believe in ghosts. I am FASCINATED by ghosts, desperate to have encounters of my own.

Over the years I've met, befriended, and had discussions with a variety of horror fans, and it seems to be a universal truth that the longer you've been a fan of horror, the harder it is to scare you. We hit a point where we've seen most of what's out there, we've read just as much, and we've probably thought about it all to (pardon the pun) death. Sure, you might get a startle out of us now and again (which is NOT, to my way of thinking, the same as SCARING someone, but that's a whole blog entry on its own), but a good lingering scare? Hard to do. I don't scare easily. I go into most horror movies with glee rather than anticipated dread. I don't cower behind my hands or squeal in terror (usually, heh). I've been on real ghost-hunting expeditions to places rumored to be legitimately haunted - sometimes with permission, sometimes sneaking in in the middle of the night. I've been used as 'ghost bait' on some of these. The only thing that ever scared me on any of these was other people.

And yet, sometimes... sometimes something will grab a hold of my mind and not let go. Something will leave a lingering sense of dread that grows in me, takes a hold of my imagination (which is a formidable force in its own right), and I'm left sitting in bed with all the lights, terrified to go to sleep. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it's nearly impossible for me to shake, no matter how many times I tell myself I'm an adult and I'm safe and should just GET OVER IT ALREADY. Usually it's ghosts that do it in some fashion, and I'm sure that's because I believe they're real. If I didn't believe in them, there would be no reason for them to scare me, after all.

Last night was one of those 'sometimes' when creepy thoughts grabbed my mind and wouldn't let go. It wasn't even triggered by anything specific, it was just a bunch of things that snowballed thanks to creepy memories and my overactive imagination. I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Kindertrauma, and came across this post about the film Lake Mungo. I haven't seen Lake Mungo; I knew it was a part of Horror Fest this year but the films they've picked for past Horror Fests have done NOTHING for me, and after initially reading the synopsis a month or so ago I must admit my initial thought was "meh", and I moved on. After reading the Kindertrauma post about the movie though, my interest was piqued. I was especially intrigued by the mention of a 'horrific and iconic image' at the end.

CONFESSION TIME! I love spoilers. I'm incredibly impatient and, since I have young kids, we don't get out to movies very often. So I spend a lot of my time scouring the web for spoilers, synopses, trailers, clips of movies, and pictures. 99% of the time, when I eventually DO watch the films, I still get a huge amount of enjoyment out of them and am not sorry I spoiled myself. So, until my lifestyle is such that it allows me to go out and see as many movies as I want whenever I want to see them, I will continue to read spoilers. I understand that not everyone has the same view of spoilers as I do, and the folks at Kindertrauma were kind enough to NOT post a picture of said image for their readers. BUT I WANTED MORE.

So I went on a web hunt. And despite my excellent google skills, I did NOT find the image. I did find enough spoilers to read the context of the image and it does seem to have scared a number of people, but the end image / video itself I could not locate (still willing to view it if anyone else has better google-fu than I though!).

As I was searching and getting increasingly frustrated, my mind started wandering to other things, similar things that have scared me. Gradually I began to grow unsettled as I read more and more about hauntings and ghosts and premonitions of death. It was 2AM. Dark outside. The house was quiet. I had just returned home from a weekend road trip, from eleven hours of being on the road that day, from three days of not-enough-sleep. My computer is in the corner of our dining room, with windows in front of me and on the side / back of me. The world was dark, quiet, sleeping. My mind settled on an old terror, a memory of a story that's haunted me since I read it when I was a kid; a story about some lady who purchased a jigsaw puzzle at a thrift shop. The puzzle had no picture on the box so she didn't know what it was, and being a puzzle enthusiast she took it home and began assembling it. As she assembled it she began to grow unsettled as she realized that the puzzle was a picture of the VERY ROOM SHE WAS IN. She continued putting it together; it even showed her putting the puzzle together. The last piece she placed was the room's window - and in the puzzle, in the window there was a horrific fiend staring in the window at her! AHHHH! FREAKED MY SHIT OUT AS A KID. And to this day, I sometimes turn to windows and expect to see a hideous mangled face staring in at me, right before I DIE HORRIBLY.

Once that entered my head last night, naturally I couldn't get rid of it. Sitting next to darkened windows while you're reading creepy things and thinking about monsters standing RIGHT NEXT TO YOU, separated only by a measly pane of glass, will do wonders for your heart, let me tell you. I couldn't stop looking out the window and I really EXPECTED there to be something there. I started thinking about how ghosts could be anywhere at any time, watching you, watching me RIGHT NOW, plotting malevolent plots (generally I don't believe spirits are malevolent, but in the middle of the night when you're already letting your mind run out of control, logic does not prevail). I started remembering other movie images that scared me (the dead closet-girl in The Ring, Samara from The Ring (did I mention I found The Ring to be genuinely frightening? At least that little girl freaked my shit out!), some other story that I read about a monster in a mirror that was very scary and I can't FIND it but I can't get it out of my head even though I only read it once, other stuff I can't recall right now), and so I gave up and crawled into bed with my husband.

Once there, I still couldn't stop thinking. I haven't seen Paranormal Activity yet, but I've seen the scene in the trailer where something moves under the bedclothes while the couple is sleeping. I've seen other movies where things are in the bed with the couple that aren't supposed to be in the bed. I laid next to my husband, stiff as a board, eyes darting around the room, while he sleepily cuddled up to me and began trying to put the moves on me. "I'm scared," I told him pitifully, and he laughed and tried to comfort me by telling me the same thing he tells the kids: that he put signs outside forbidding monsters, zombies, vampires, ghosts, etc to enter the house. "I'm an adult," I tell him with a sniff. "I know those signs don't work. There could be ghosts in here RIGHT NOW." Yes, and they would LOVE it if we got down to business time, he tells me. But I just can't get past the thought of being vulnerable while something tries to get me. And being caught IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO is one of the most vulnerable states I can imagine. Try as I might, I can't push past my irrational fear. My poor husband resigns himself to the fact that ghosts mean NO BUSINESS TIME TONIGHT, and cuddles me instead. "I need to sleep with the light on," I tell him, and he says OK to that too. None of this stuff spooks him, so he doesn't understand it at all, but at least he's supportive of my fears, lol.

Eventually I fell asleep, even being able to turn the light off shortly before sleep overtook me. And it's morning, and I'm fine now, looking back at the events (or non-events, or events-in-my-head) of last night with a little bit of sheepishness, a little bit of wry humor. But last night, I was genuinely scared.

So, horror fans, what scares YOU? I'm always interested in the thoughts, concepts, and stories / films that have left people with a lingering sense of dread and unease... and if it gave you a sleepless night, more's the better. Hit me with your best scary shot! I'll share mine in my next post.