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Typically, when a movie-goer wants to be scared, they’ll select one of the hundreds of high-quality horror films available. Fear is something to naturally expect and even want from this particular genre of movie, whether it delivers the fear through jumpscares, tension, or surrealism.
However, sometimes, movies that don’t fit into the horror genre can deliver some pretty unexpected frights. Whether the idea of it coming from an innocuous movie makes the fear factor better or worse is debatable. One thing is certain, though: these types of scenes are downright terrifying.
Helping Hands- ‘Labyrinth’ (1986)
Labyrinth is about a young girl named Sarah (Jennifer Connelly), who accidentally wishes her baby brother away. Realizing her horrible mistake, she embarks on a journey through a mysterious labyrinth to save her sibling from the wicked Goblin King, played by musical legend David Bowie. Sarah runs into many snares, traps and puzzles along the way. One of these snares is a pitfall trap that leads into a vertical tunnel filled with dozens upon dozens of hands.
What’s creepy is that the hands can talk, and can communicate by forming themselves into faces. While this scene is pretty quick and maybe isn’t too scary on the surface, the thought of hundreds of dirty and disembodied hands touching you from all directions is enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.
Judge Doom- ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ (1988)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was revolutionary for its time, as it was the first major film to seamlessly blend 2D animation and live action. More often than not, this effect is pretty amazing to see. The movie’s villain, however, isn’t. Judge Doom, played by Christopher Lloyd, is a human hellbent on exterminating the living cartoons from the Earth. But it isn’t until the movie’s climax that it is revealed that Doom is actually a cartoon himself.
This revelation is nothing short of horrifying. Doom’s eyeballs pop out and are replaced with a set of freaky cartoon eyes, and his voice changes from the deep and stoic rumble to a high-pitched screech, making for a pretty terrifying moment. Whether you’re an adult or a child watching this, this scene is pure nightmare fuel.
The Cemetery- ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ (2008)
The Indiana Jones franchise has some decently frightening moments, but there is one particularly eerie scene from its so-called worst instalment. Indy (Harrison Ford) and Mutt (Shia LaBeouf) travel to Nasca, Peru, to search for the fabled Crystal Skull, which they track to a nearby cemetery. Deciding for whatever reason to go there at night, they find themselves stalked by the cemetery’s guardians.
The guardians are a small group of inhumanly agile fighters, who all wear skull masks, screech loudly, and come out of nowhere at random times. As if that wasn’t enough, the tomb that houses the skull is even creepier, with mummified bodies that decompose in seconds upon being exposed to the air, and ragged breathing that has no origin, yet is strong enough to be noticeable. It serves as a warning as to why you should never investigate a cemetery at night.
Sméagol’s Transformation- ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ (2003)
The opening scene of the final The Lord of the Rings movie serves as a flashback depicting the previous life of Gollum (Andy Serkis), one of the movie’s antagonists. It details how Gollum, then a hobbit named Sméagol, found the One Ring lying at the bottom of a pond. The ring corrupts his mind immediately, and causes him to strangle his cousin to death.
Sméagol then begins the horrific transformation into the creature more commonly known as Gollum. His mind decays, his body transforms from a hobbit to a wretch, and he develops a taste for raw fish and dark caverns. Serkis, as always, brings an incredibly intense approach, which really shows just how tortured Gollum is. Though this scene is less scary and more deeply unsettling, it really does a good job of demonstrating the evil contained within the One Ring, and why it needs to be destroyed, once and for all.
The Tunnel- ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ (1971)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a classic movie for the ages. It stars Gene Wilder as the titular Willy Wonka, who gives a tour of his factory to five young winners of a contest. Not far into the film, the kids and their guardians find themselves on a boat sailing down a river of liquid chocolate. Wonka orders the Oompa-Loompas steering it into a dark tunnel, which may as well be a tunnel to the Ninth Circle of Hell itself.
Lights begin flickering, and grotesque images appear of insects and parasites, as colors begin to flash like some sort of bad acid trip. As the families beg Wonka to stop the boat, he begins singing a quiet tune of how their doom is imminent. As the boat speeds up, Wonka’s singing goes from a gentle lilt to maniacal screaming, only for the boat to suddenly stop at a dock. Wonka and the winners simply disembark and walk away like nothing happened. It’s an oddly disturbing scene in such a whimsical movie.
Fear Gas- ‘Batman Begins’ (2005)
Much of the plot of Batman Begins revolves around fear. Fear is the primary weapon of both Batman (Christian Bale) and one of the movie’s antagonists, the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy). Regardless, Batman Begins is still an action movie, and certainly not somewhere one should expect to have the pants scared off of them.
When Batman interrogates Scarecrow, he uses the Scarecrow’s own fear gas to make the villain cooperate. For a few brief moments, Batman can be seen through Scarecrow’s eyes, which is nothing if not frightening. The caped crusader appears as some form of demon with a distorted voice. Among the several fear gas hallucinations in the film, this one is definitely the creepiest.
Beware the Wheelers- ‘Return to Oz’ (1985)
Return to Oz is an underappreciated pseudo-sequel to the classic film, The Wizard of Oz (1939). The key difference being that while the 1939 film was bubbly and bright and innocent, this one is extremely unnerving. The film follows Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) as she returns to Oz and finds the kingdom in ruins.
In one abandoned section of the kingdom, graffiti warns Dorothy to “Beware the Wheelers.” It doesn’t take the audience long to figure out exactly what the Wheelers are. With wheels for limbs and freaky masks, these nightmares-on-wheels petrified many an unsuspecting viewer, especially children.
The Pale Man- ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006)
Whether Pan’s Labyrinth is a horror film or not is up for debate, and this scene is exactly the reason why. When Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), is instructed by the mythical faun to retrieve a dagger from the lair of the Pale Man (Doug Jones), she is instructed not to eat or drink anything from the sumptuous feast in front of her.
Ofelia, being a naturally curious child, eats two grapes anyway, which is when the unnaturally still Pale Man comes to life. What seems to be an eyeless monster is not actually eyeless at all, and begins chasing Ofelia, sporting eyes in its palms and a terrifyingly inhuman gait. The rest of the movie is dark, and definitely not for kids, but it doesn’t generally cross into horror territory until this particular scene.
Inferi- ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ (2009)
The sixth Harry Potter installment is quite possibly the darkest. Long gone are the days of magical bliss and whimsical discovery, instead replaced by war and death. Where once Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) encountered mandrakes and boggarts, in this installment, he encounters the Inferi–corpses reanimated by dark magic.
The Inferi suddenly appear when Harry and Dumbledore (Sir Michael Gambon) attempt to retrieve one of the Dark Lord’s Horcruxes from an island in an underground lake. They emerge from the dark water in hordes, shambling their way onto the shore. Many fans were frightened by this scene, and seemed to share the same sentiment as Dumbledore: kill it with fire.
Draining the Life Away- ‘The Dark Crystal’ (1982)
The Dark Crystal is a movie featuring an alien race known as the Skeksis who use the power of a huge purple crystal to drain the vital essence of the unfortunate creatures inhabiting the world around them in order to gain immortality. The first time the audience see this effect in action is a bit unsettling, to say the least.
The poor little podling who is first drained squirms and resists in a way that many viewers found distressing. Worse still, the effect of the creature rapidly aging as his eyes are fixated on the crystal’s light is a pretty creepy visual. It’s a wonder this flick was ever marketed as a kids’ movie.
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