Bloodless Coup

I'll write more later, but I'll start with these.

Maddie's murder (and the preceding and following moments on Twin Peaks) - The comments thread in the original post discusses this at length. It's an amazing and chilling piece of work. Brutal, vicious, cold, oddly true yet distant, terribly sad and probably the most chilling thing that's ever been on network TV (provided you watched the full series from the start to get the full effect).

Madeliene Elster plunging from the tower in Vertigo, and when a certain character is uncovered on the last episode of The Prisoner. I saw both of these things when I was a little kid (and maybe that should be a whole separate category - things that warped you as a child). And they led me to be aware of all kinds of life's darker points. What you see isn't always what's really going on. But of course these events also point to much darker forces - passion, violence, self-denial and delusions - it's a scary world out there, both what we see and what we don't. Best to try and figure it out - though you might not like what you find.

I'd have to go with one from Star Wars, the death of Obi Wan. Of course, the entrance and interrogation by Vader would also rank highly, as would the destruction of Alderon, as well as the later scene with the interrogation droid with the needle pointed at Leia, and why not throw in the scene with the trash compactor just to round out the whole list. The only other movie I really remember scaring me at that age was The Fog.

As for more recent disturbing scenes, I like Armand would have to tip the hat to David Lynch, but for Wild at Heart, for that weird scene with Harry Dean Stanton. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer would have been up there, just for his absolute coldness. And Mad Max would be up there too, for that scene where the bikers run down his wife and child. But I can't leave out Prince of Darkness.

I remember virtually nothing about The Fog except that I liked it quite a bit - to me, as a kid, it was very effectively creepy.

The needle pointing at Leia thing was unnerving, but that didn't really stick with me over time.

Of course the weirdest thing to really freak me out when I was tiny was the end of Murder by Death (which is a tremendously great, classic, can't praise it enough Neil Simon comedy - see it if you haven't, particularly if you know old detective and mystery stories). That bit with Nancy Walker cackling in a very deep insane laugh that seemed victorious and completely disconnected from her actual form - shudder. Though that's really more unnerving b/c of the sound than b/c of the visual.

when i was no older than five or six, my hippie dad took me to see altered states. there's no one scene to point to; the whole movie irked me rather a lot.

a few years back, an ex-girlfriend and i decided it would be wise to revisit the trauma. although i had many times caught bits and pieces of the film, i'd never watched it all the way through as an adult. it's a fascinating, creepy, and powerful film, and i think it got to me almost as much in adulthood as it did in childhood.

my parents didn't shield me from much growing up, and i credit that on a lot of levels and would expect to raise any children of my own similarly (although given the sanctimoniousness with which people hurl around opprobrium for failing to raise one's children in line with the latest orthodoxy provides a powerful disincentive since by today's suburban swaddle your kid in bubble wrap and sit him in front of the tv standards, a few of those things my parents showed me for which i'm grateful might get a kid taken away in today's world). really, it was only altered states that hit my hard enough to shake my conviction in rearing by exposure; that movie, with all its complex sex and violence, was pretty hard to process.