3 of 10

by Jackie Youngman

• Writing:
• Rating:

• A
• A
• A

Reading about people's most shocking movie moments, made me think back to all the movies I have ever seen. I believe cinema is a very powerful tool in absorbing a person into a well-made film. We seem to let go of our sense of NOW, and become part of the scenario on-screen of a truly good, atmospheric movie. I love those movies which are so powerful, that when it's over and you walk out of the cinema into the street, it's as if you are walking out of one world and into another and there is an accompanying feeling of disorientation.

Here are my own most shocking movie moments..................

1. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON - Where the main character is having a nightmare that these monster-like creatures have broken into his American home and begin machine-gunning his family. So very well-filmed, and truly shocking as it is totally unexpected. Even if you've seen the movie a few times, it can still make you jump.

2. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (again!) - Close to the beginning of the movie when the two guys are walking on the Yorkshire Moors, and the werewolf attacks. Though it is expected, as you can hear the werewolf howling, the actual attack is very well filmed and appears totally real.

3. THE ACCUSED - I find the gang-rape scene in this movie very, very disturbing. I have a friend who tragically has been through the experience of rape and it has blighted her life (she is now middle-aged). When "The Accused" was doing the rounds at the cinemas in the UK, she wanted to go and see it as at the time, she was having rape counseling and felt that to see the movie may assist her with the healing process. During the rape scene though, she had to leave the cinema. Of course I left with her (I later saw the movie at home when I bought the video) and she was in deep shock, claiming that the rape scene was so very realistic, it had plunged her straight back in time to her own terrible experience.

4. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - Watching the part where Malcolm McDowell has the "lid-locks" put on his eyes to keep them open while he's being forced to watch various movies of war, violence etc.

5. MIDNIGHT COWBOY - When John Voigt (Joe Buck) is forced into prostitution to try to get money for taking Ratso (Dustin Hoffman) down to Florida. He goes to a man's hotel room, and after the act, beats the man up. The shocking moment there for me is when he beats the guy up and shoves the phone in his mouth when he tries to phone reception for help.....and the camera shot moves in on the guy, bloody, beaten & battered, losing consciousness with the phone wedged in his mouth.

6. MIDNIGHT COWBOY - When John Voigt (Joe Buck) is in the cafe in New York sitting at a table with a mad woman and her son, and she is obviously very disturbed or on some kind of trip, running a plastic mouse all over her face, her body, and tangling it up in her hair.

7. CARRIE - I think this is probably most people's shocking movie moment, at the end, when in her dream, Carrie's bloody hand comes up from the grave and grabs the girl by the throat.

8. THE SHINING - when the little boy is riding his trike round the corridors of the hotel, and sees the two little ghost girls who ask him, in their ghostly voices, to come and play with them.

9. THE SHINING - When Jack Nicholson "sees" a beautiful woman taking a bath...looks away for a second, and when he looks again, she's turned into a slimy, sore-encrusted old woman.

10. THE EXORCIST - When Reagan is in the early stages of possession, the menacing look in her eyes when she says certain things.

11. BLACK CHRISTMAS - OK a black comedy, yes, but it's very creepy in parts. For me, the bit that really scares/shocks me is the verbal content of the mysterious calls the girls in the house get.

12. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE - Yes another black comedy, but the first time I saw the film (I was aged about 12 or 13 and it was on British television), I found "Baby Jane" singing and dancing "I've Written A Letter To Daddy" with the pianist she'd hired, deliciously shocking.

13. TRAIN SPOTTING - Where the guy going through heroin withdrawal hallucinates the baby crawling on the ceiling.

14. AUDREY ROSE - At the end, where the little girl is in regression and gets locked into the last moments of her previous life where she burned to death in a car.

15. MARATHON MAN - Where Dustin Hoffman has his teeth drilled without an anesthetic as a form of torture.

16. ROSEMARY'S BABY - The sheer empathy one feels with Rosemary's frustration as she tries to escape the devil worshipers and find a safe place to have her baby.

17. THE DEERHUNTER - Christopher Walken, by this point in the film suffering serious PTD, plays his final game of Russian Roulette....only to catch the bullet.

18. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST - Billy's reaction to Nurse Ratchit's coldness after she discovered he'd had sex with Candy.

19. CAPE FEAR (the Robert de Niro version) - The end of the scene where Max Cady manages to fight off the men Councilor (Nick Nolte) and realizes Councilor is hiding, watching...and that classic line ".....Councillor...could you be there?" said in that menacing voice.

20. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN - The merry-go-round scene where an old man crawls underneath the speeding ride after the operator has been shot, to try to reach the "stop" lever. When he reaches it, he pulls it hard and the ride crunches to such a violent halt, that all the wooden horses and people fly off the collapsing ride. Maybe not shocking as such, but just imagine if that really happened?

Learn more about this author, Jackie Youngman.

Add your voice
Know something about Shocking movie moments? We want to hear your view. Write now!