The Most Terrifying Horror Scenes In Non-Horror Movies
			The Fellowship of the Ring It seems a little strange that a director who made his name with horror films – Bad Taste, The Frighteners and the awesome Braindead – might save his best scare for a fantasy epic. But that's exactly what Peter Jackson did in the first and best of the LOTR trilogy. We've already seen that Ian Holms' Bilbo Baggins is terribly attached to his Ring, but even that doesn't prepare us for what happens when he encounters his nephew, Frodo, at Rivendell about halfway through. One quick glimpse of the Ring turns Bilbo – previously so peaceable – into a snarling, demonic figure, and the CG-augmented transformation from Holm's calm features into a fanged beast with dark circles under his eyes is superbly executed. Not least because it's over almost as quickly as it began.
			Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Once upon a time, kids' films weren't safe, colourful environments where bunnies danced on gumdrop clouds and pixies frolicked beneath a rainbow bridge. No, they were deeply fucked-up, nightmare-inducing psychological minefields – and never was that more true than in this sequence in the otherwise fairly innocuous Gene Wilder musical. As Wilder takes the remaining kids on a boat down the chocolate river (not, thank God, a euphemism), things take a turn for the trippy as Wonka starts screaming an epic, William Burroughs-esque poem while, projected onto the walls all around them are hideous, hallucinogenic images, including – infamously – a chicken getting its head cut off. It's an extraordinary sequence that remains disturbing to this day – it's like the brainwash sequence from A Clockwork Orange but, y'know, for kids.
			Mulholland Drive David Lynch has never made a straight-out horror film and it's perhaps just as well. For there's a feeling that, if he did, it would be the scariest motion picture since Problem Child 2. But Lynch has proved, time and again, that he is a master at inserting unsettling, downright disturbing scares into his films, from Blue Velvet to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Lost Highway. But his piece de resistance comes in the gruelling, yet brilliant mood poem that is Mulholland Dr., and the sudden appearance of a horribly burned homeless man-or-woman, just behind a sunny LA diner, that will freak you out. Even though – and this is the genius of Lynch – that the previous scene actually explains what will happen next, down to the tiniest detail. And yet, when the thing pops out and leers at the camera, it's new pants time.
			Ghostbusters Ivan Reitman's comedy horror has a few excellent jump scares – the sudden transformation of the library ghost, for one – but it has something a little deeper and more disturbing up its sleeve as well. Take this scene, for example – when Sigourney Weaver's Dana arrives home and settles down in her favourite armchair, only to find a creepy light and low growling emanating from her kitchen door. Before she can find out what's going on, though, the big shock happens: blue-skinned arms rip through her armchair and pin her down. Never mind the logic – where did the arms come from? Who did they belong to? Just give into the deep-seated unease – if even our armchairs are no longer safe, what is the point of living?
			The Dead Zone Technically speaking, of course, you'd expect a David Cronenberg film, based on a book by Stephen King, to be a horror. But The Dead Zone – despite featuring a sub-plot about a serial killer – isn't, strictly speaking, a horror, but instead a psychological thriller in the truest sense of the term (before it became a cop-out phrase for directors who didn't want to demean themselves by calling their horror films 'horror films'). It's also not that great – stilted, episodic and sloth-like. But it's got one truly terrifying sequence which, given the current state of the world and the debate about the importance of faith to the President of the United States, may even be as prescient as the film's hero, the visionary Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken). In a flash-forward when he finally grasps hands with oily politician Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen), Johnny sees a terrifying glimpse of what will be: the evangelical Stillson, putting the mentalist in 'fundamentalist', now President, ranting and raving about his destiny – which is to nuke Russia right off the face of the map. It's not the way that Stillson bullies his VP into placing his hand on the nuclear briefcase's scanner that sends shivers down the spine – but the way that, after the deed has been done, a peaceful, beatific Stillson greets his horrified aides with a self-satisfied grin and the immortal words, 'The missiles are flying, gentlemen. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.' What would Jed Bartlet think?
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