Scenes that Scared you as a Child, Part II
14 points – Watership Down. OK, this film was horribly mis-marketed. Sure, it’s animated, and it’s about bunnies. But, oh my God, it’s dark, bloody, and violent – what the hell were they thinking? Is the scene scary? Sure – but then so is the opening scene to Saving Private Ryan, and is about the same level of appropriateness in truth. This whole damn film is adult scary.
15 points – Old Yeller gets rabies. This scene would be more sad than scary except that there’s an idiot kid who is trying to let the rabid dog out of the corn crib. This is tragic, sad, maudlin – name your adjective, scary is really not that high up outside of the stupidity factor. Still, it’s scary for that reason, and is a classic kid’s film – no arguments there.
16 points – The Skeleton army from Jason and the Argonauts. Harryhausen rules, and this is a classic scene. There’s just enough realism here to spook the hell out of kids watching. Admittedly the base material is not kid stuff, which holds it back a notch, but not by much.
17 points – The Angel of Death from The Prince of Egypt. My selection, and it is creepy, real Wrath of God Old Testament stuff. How many animated films show a human being dying right there on screen? Worse, it’s a kid lying in bed – the angel passes, and the kid breaths out his soul with his last breath. The symbolic candle snuffing isn’t much better. Then once the Angel leaves, you can hear the lamenting starting. Like the Argonauts in the previous selection, this gets a minor ding for source material being NOT kids stuff.
18 points – The Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia. Ooh, creepy. This scene is classic stuff – Demonic entities, the dead rising from the grave, spirits being hurled into hellfire, all to one of the best evil sounding pieces of music ever – it’s all good. However, Uncle Walt really meant Fantasia to be a culturally uplifting piece of cinematic art, not so much for little Bobby and Mary Sue. What I learned from this is Evil is way cooler than Good, as the follow-up counter piece here is the world’s most boring Ave Maria.
19 points – Bambi’s Mom gets shot. Basically everything from this point on is right on target frightening stuff, there’s not a lot to separate from here to the 25 point winner. This is the lowest ranked of the top notch stuff, as the death happens off screen and we never see her again. The death itself is sad, but losing a mother for a kid is so traumatic that it jumps over to scary.
20 points – Flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Quality scare here. Inhuman demonic flying critters find our heroine in a deep, seriously f-ed up forest and take her and her little dog, too – and do a number on her friends at the same time (a party member gets literally dismembered here – the fact he’s made of straw makes it a little less grisly) Plus Margaret Hamilton is one of the scariest baddies of all time.
21 points – The Haunted Forest from Snow White. Somebody at Disney was off their meds when they did this one – everything Snow finds in the forest as she’s trying to run away is inanimate, but it all comes to life in her mind and we have the clawing, grabbing, just plain evil stuff here. It looks like everything is out to get her, and really plays on the minds of those watching as well.
22 points – The donkey transformation from Pinocchio. Geez, wet down the whip before delivering the message, why don’t cha. Act like a jackass, turn into one. What makes this really scary is that the resulting transformed bad boys are sold into slavery in the salt mines as dumb animals for the rest of their lives – Gah.
23 points – Tunnel scene from Willy Wonka. The top three are a basic coin flip – any of these could easily be #1. I expected this to be the top scorer going in, but upon reflection it’s just as much of an acid trip as a wet your pants experience. It’s a great scare, but I dunno how much a child watching it will understand. Honestly it’s probably scarier for adults watching – we know this is wrong, wrong, wrong.
24 points – The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Child Catcher could easily come across as a traditional melodrama villain, but instead takes it to a whole other level of creep. Offer candy and pies to draw out your prey, and ice cream to get them into your van (err, wagon) moves this into way too realistic territory. Would ring the bell if not for the final, completely twisted selection.
25 points – The Brave Little Toaster. All I can say is wow. I hadn’t seen this before doing this ranking, and this is about as messed up as you can get. Animated as cutely as possible to keep you thinking this can’t possibly be this bad, we get fire, animated smoke hands, creepy clown fireman, the toaster being chased by water and forks, and finally, being suspended while plugged in over a tub of water!?!? Wow, how much suicide imagery you wanna jam into 60 seconds?!? This is so disturbing it bothers me NOW, and I’m 48. Totally sick and disturbed, and the list champ.
Accurate update would be nice. Any update to the standings would be nice. Is the scorekeeper on holiday with the rest of the judges?
I understand. I really, really have moved beyond being touchy at "ranking whining", because usually they are just that - whining. You did have a valid point - I could see where you felt "wait a minute, that wasn't what I selected". Your picked scene is indeed the scene judged - when I judged these, I searched the thread for every movie's "pick post" and cut/pasted the drafter's link. Most of the movies I have seen (including fallen, which I do like) and didn't really need to re-watch. Some I had to watch (I saw animal kingdom and spoorloos for the first time each because of this). I do think I must have seen a comment that said that was the end (or just had "the ending" stuck in my mind, because many of these were movie endings)
One more apology from me, though, because I find ranking-whining so tiresome and silly and hate myself for momentarily doing it. Now, about the absent draft steward . . .
