22 Moments of Horror

I love horror movies. Always have.

And I’ve always loved those small moments in film where you can see a defining line in the story, a clear mark of the director’s signature.

In Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (1986) it’s that fantastic scene at the dance where Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels bump into Ray Liotta as Griffith’s violent ex-boyfriend. The light changes, darker. The music, by The Feelies, takes an ominous turn. The story shifts into a gear you couldn’t have expected from the lightness before it.

I thought I’d run through some of the moments in horror films that have stayed with me since I’ve seen them. Some are throwaways, some are defining marks.

David Warner’s head flying off in multiple angles in the big budget showboating of The Omen (1976), as a plane of glass goes straight through him. That cravat is a sign.

The ghastly thing covered in a sheet, bearing large surgical cleavers, chasing after a nurse in a sudden shrieking fright in the otherwise surreal and hilarious Exorcist III (1990).

A camp blender suddenly making viscous red goo in a cheap but funny jump scare edit in The Evil Dead (1981).

Ernest Thesiger’s gloriously camp performance as Doctor Septimus Pretorius in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), showing Henry Frankenstein his homunculi experiments.

The deadly Headless Horseman against those pastoral landscape shots in Tim Burton’s gorgeous Sleepy Hollow (1999).

The all-time best internal-logic plot hole defense of Michael Myers suddenly being able to drive a car after being imprisoned since he was five. “He was doing a pretty good job last night!” says Dr. Loomis / Donald Pleasance, in the original Halloween (1978).

The way Teri Garr says “Woof!” In Young Frankenstein (1974).

The time and date establishing shots of The Legend of Hell House, a la The X Files or a globe-hopping mystery, grounding the viciously underrated haunted house film against Delia Derbyshire’s evocative synthesized moog score.

The garish intestines slowly coming out of Rosie’s mouth (played by Daniela Doria) in Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead (1980, released in the US as Gates of Hell, which is how I first saw it), preceded only by the slow puncturing of an eyeball on a wood splinter in Fulci’s Zombie (1979). Fulci’s gore is slow-mo, realistic and garishly cartoonish at the same time.

Robert Downey Jr’s slipping away as the drug and alcohol addicted journalist in David Fincher’s masterful true crime horror Zodiac (2007).

The way Mads Mikkelsen talks about the food he is preparing in the beautifully art directed, yet shockingly gory, NBC tv series Hannibal (2013-2015), as if we were in on the joke that the day’s protein is probably present company.

Richard Wordsworth’s silent staring visage as he slowly but effectively turns into a vegetable octopus monster in the smart, savvy original Hammer horror The Quatermass Xperiment (1955).

The utter confusion presented by two young nubiles in clown costumes and mod gear shooting it out on the highway to Dracula’s castle in Jean Rollin’s surreal, goofy, very French Requiem pour un Vampire (1974).

Albert Finney snapping his gum in the mortuary as a cooler-than-thou Gregory Hines performs an autopsy on a werewolf attack victim in Michael Wadleigh’s underseen, pulsating Wolfen.

Bruce Campbell’s “It’s a trick,” as we watch the familiar halting advance in negative space over a theoretically dead deadite in Army of Darkness (1992).

The police discussing photos by a dead journalist who went into the sewer chasing a lead, only to find an enormous alligator: “Imagine that thing snapping back at you!” Or the comments directed at Robert Forster’s hair loss, in Alligator (1980). John Sayles’ scripts for The Howling (1981), Piranha (1980) and Alligator, full of little character moments and characters named after classic horror directors.

Speaking of which, every time a minor character is named after a middling B movie director in Joe Dante movies, through Night of the Creeps, all the way to the Final Destination films. Who below the age of 50 recognized characters in FD named Val(erie) Lewton, or Larry Murnau, referencing both Val Lewton of the RKO chillers and FW Murnau of Nosferatu.

Christopher Lee pronouncing “MALARIA? I already have malaria!” in Gremlins 2 The New Batch, for which I have a remarkably soft spot.

Wilford Brimley’s “Watch Clark.” One of many bits of misdirection in John Carpenter’s The Thing, as our attention is shifted to Richard Masur’s human-adjacent-seeming dog tender instead of clearly batshit Brimley.

Not just the bleak ending of The Mist (2007), which is shocking and can feel unearned, but the colossal Cthulhu-esque tentacled monster that crosses the road in front of our heroes, for once truly giving Lovecraftian cosmic scale.

The dog and the little girl in When Evil Lurks (2023), a scene that is foretold for minutes but still startling and ridiculous when it finally happens.

The giant baby demon in Rob Savage’s anarchic Dashcam (2021), in which COVID-denier Annie Hardy livestreams her descent into madness after picking up an elderly woman. This one is not for the faint of heart, but it is one of 3 movies I immediately watched again after it ended (the other two being Cronenberg’s Crash and The Horror of Party Beach.)

Thanks for reading Ghosts In The Machine! I’m Nick Tangborn and I’m your weekly correspondent. You can reach me at nicholas@areyouexperienced.co. Of course you can also check out my work at nicktangborn.com