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by Ted Sherman

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I go back many years in watching movies, and as a kid of five or six in the early 30s, I shivered through the two all-time classic shockers, "Dracula" and "Frankenstein". By today's digital and bloodletting standards for horror movies, they were amateurishly hokey and clumsy, but for their time in the early talkies, some of their most memorable scenes scared the hell out of kids and adults.

In somewhat my preferred order, here are my top ten most shocking moments in movie history:

1. Planet of the Apes (1968) had several shocking moments. One was when the astronauts, who thought they were on a distant planet, were watching peaceful people wandering in a field. Suddenly, the humans were pounced on to be captured or murdered by military-clad apes. However, the most memorable shock scene was the finale, when surviving astronaut Charleton Heston discovers the sunken remains of the Statue of Liberty in the surf, and realizes that humans had destroyed themselves, giving way to the apes taking over the planet Earth.

2. The Godfather (1972) There were many gruesome killing scenes, where the Corleone family revenge took out rival crooks and crooked cops with bloody efficiency. The most remembered shocker was when the victim was a horse. After a snotty Hollywood director refuses to give the Godfather's singer a role in a movie (somewhat based on Frank Sinatra wanting to star in "From Here To Eternity"), he wakes up one morning with his expensive racehorse's severed, bloody head in bed with him.

3. Saving Private Ryan (1998) Right out of high school, I served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II. In reality, I saw some of the worst horrors of battle, but Hollywood war movies of the time never did. Heroes and villains died nice and neatly, in clean uniforms, never blasted to unrecognizable bloody blobs, and often survived just long enough to utter memorable dying lines. This film captures some of the terrible, graphic horror scenes of combat in the Normandy invasion. While seeing bloody limbs and heads flying was shocking enough, I believe one of the final scenes is most effectively disturbing. It seems to be a quiet moment after a GI battle with German soldiers. The steadfast GI captain, played by Tom Hanks, has taken his men through all kinds of danger, and we see him sitting against a fountain. Until the camera comes close, we don't realize he is dead.

4. Jaws (1975) It was a corny scare movie, obviously contrived from every beach swimmer's fear of being chomped by a shark. The thumping music theme helped to set up the upcoming disaster each time someone got pulled under. I thought the most scary moment was when the grizzled captain, played by Robert Shaw, was dragged off his sinking boat and slowly injested by the great white. Burp!

5. The Shining (1980) Also aided by clanging music, nutcase Jack Nicholson tries to pry open a door and slash his wife and son to death. As his insanely grinning mug appears, he growls out, "Heeeere's Johnny", at the time a well-known nightly entry line for late night talk show host, Johnny Carson. Only Nicholson, with that distorted evil face and bared teeth could make the scene both funny and frightening.

6. Battleship Potemkin (1925) All right, contemporary movie mavens, I had to include this old Russian silent classic based on the revolution of 1917. Maybe the reason was that I had to do a report on it in grad school, and I found it fascinatingly funny in its political propaganda excesses. The rioting sailors were the goodest of the good guys, obviously members of the glorious new Communist Party, while the battleships's officers were preening autocrats who treated the crewmen like dirt. When the revolution starts, the officers are duly killed, because, damn it, they deserved it. The shocking scene most film schools consider the best is the baby carriage bumping down a flight of steps after the mother has been shot by Imperial soldiers. It seems to go on forever, as other innocent people are shot down nearby, until a brave revolutionary saves the baby.

7. Dracula (1931) All right, you gotta allow me to include the toothed one here, because he caused my little six-year-old heart to thump with terror. I liked this film better than "Frankenstein", because of the scene-chewing acting and goofy sccent of Bela Lugosi. I never could figure why he had to schlep around in a tux, but on him it looked appropriate. The most shocking scenes, for the time, were when he flew into the lady's room as a bat and turned himself into the grinning Count. I cringed and shook as he stalked closer and closer until he could do his puncture business on her tender neck.

8. Psycho (1960) No horror scene list could be authentic without at least one Hitchcock movie being on it. And, of course, except for those who like watching birds peck peoples' eyes out, this has to be the first choice. Without resorting to all the gore and graphics of most horror films, Hitchcock made the viewer create imagination. We knew Janet Leigh was naked and being stabbed to death behind that shower curtain, but one of film's all-time horror scenes was all in our imagination. I always wished it could have been filmed in color, particularly for the end of the shower murder scene, when we saw black blood pooling around the drain.

9. The Exorcist (1973) Not many people know that this scary film was released in two forms, an R rated and an X rated one. The R version was revolting enough for most people, but the X version was far more graphic with sexual situations and four-letter words. The most memorable scene is when Linda Blair turned her head 360 degrees, and another when she emitted a long stream of green puke. All of today's horror movies are much more graphic and gory, but this film still holds up as the classic of the genre.

10. Misery (1990) How can you not love the gentle, admiring voice of smiling nurse Kathy Bates, especially in the scene where she broke the James Caan's legs with the sledge hammer. Another memorable moment was when the crippled Caan drags himself around trying to kill her, and having her come back at him time and time again. In its tension, it is also an enjoyable nightmare. No fancy-schmacy computer graphics or drooling ghosts could have been more effectively horrible than those scenes.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.

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