The Most Terrifying Scenes Featuring Satan
			Prince Of Darkness John Carpenter's strange combo of quantum physics, apocalyptic horror and icky zombie violence is one of his most under-rated flicks, and may well be his last great work. A sense of dread permeates throughout, even when Alice Cooper is impaling people on bikes, or when our heroes are being attacked by what seems to be a lava lamp – but most memorable are the recurring shared dream sequences (actually, a vision broadcast from the future), where each of the characters, trapped in a church with the spawn of Satan, dreams of a fuzzy, camcorder-style image of a black-cloaked figure emerging from the front of the church. The implication is clear: this is the emergence of an evil figure, perhaps Satan itself, and the world is in deep.
			The Exorcist Take your pick from William Friedkin's skin-crawling tale of possession. We're going to go for the sequence where Jason Miller's Father Karras dreams about his mother. Not just because it's shot through with unsettling dream logic, or because of that subliminal splice of the demon Pazazu, but because of the feeling of sheer helplessness it engenders in Karras – and, by extension, us – when he sees his mother descend into a subway station that is more than just a subway station: it represents death, it represents Hell, it represents temptation and corruption. There's a lot of catholic guilt at work in this scene.
			Rosemary's Baby The eyes have it, yet again, as Mia Farrow is introduced to her hellish spawn in Roman Polanski's eerie horror. Reluctant at first to accept that she's given birth to the son of the Devil, she relents a bit when she's given the cooing infant to hold. “He has his father's eyes,” she's told – and then, superimposed over the top of the frame, we see them: reptilian, yellow, impossibly evil. The true horror here comes from Farrow's fawning over a child that is anything but human.
			The Wicker Man “Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ!” From the off, we know that The Wicker Man is not going to end well. The atmosphere is doom-laden. Christopher Lee has danced, and that's never a good sign. And it's all a bit weird. But nothing prepares you for the mounting horror of the final sequence, when E-war Woowar's puritanical Sgt. Howie is led to his fiery doom. Whether it's Robin Hardy's matter-of-fact refusal to sensationalise the sacrifice, the final shot of the giant burning effigy, Woodward's defiant preaching, the pounding drums, or Lee's hairdo that terrifies, the end result is one of the bleakest and most horrifying moments in cinema.
			The Omen The genius of Richard Donner's classic tale about the rise of the antichrist is that, despite the clearly supernatural elements that surround the story, demonic histrionics are conspicuous by their absence. There are no glowing eyes here, no guttural voices, no hideous make-up jobs. Which, in a way, makes the sequence where Lee Remick's Cathy meets her doom somehow even more affecting. Having survived one Satanic attempt on her life, Cathy is getting changed in her hospital room when the door opens silently behind her. A figure, out of focus, approaches. Jerry Goldsmith's portentous soundtrack builds. And, then Cathy turns to face her killer: her trusted nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw) who is, of course, an agent of Satan. And, as Goldsmith's sinister choir kicks in, it's the eyes that get us. They may not be glowing, but when director Richard Donner cuts to a close-up of Whitelaw's blazing, insane, infernally committed eyes, it's a vision that bores deep into the recesses of your brain and refuses to leave. There are more spectacular moments in The Omen – David Warner's sensational flying head, of course – but none that scare so profoundly .
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