Top 10 Willy Inducing Moments

Well, I figured that I would do what I said that I would do and make my own Top 10 Willy Inducing Moments. The post was originally created over at The Horror Digest and I commented with my response but it was so quick and I never really thought of the concept. So I figured that I would sit down and go through a list of all my favorite horror movies and pick out which scenes gave me the willies. As most of you already know that The Thing and The Blob easily take my top 2 places so I decided, for this exercise, to leave them out and see what I get. So, I present to you my top 10 willy inducing moments.

Note: I couldn’t find some of the clips on YouTube so they are just paragraphs. Second, for one of the moments I could only find the Spanish dub of the scene so pardon the dub.

10: Halloween – Michael stares down Laurie
In this scene, Laurie gets the feeling that somebody is watching her so she cautiously approaches the window and sees Michael Meyers staring at her from the ground. I guess what gave me the willies in this scene is the fact that Michael is standing between clothes lines as the white linen is blowing in the wind. Michael as that dead, cold, lifeless mask and he’s just staring at Laurie contemplating. It makes him look less human and I got chills. I didn’t want to stare out my window for a while.

9: The Omen – Digging up Damien’s mom
Here, Robert and Keith travel to a cemetery to uncover Damien’s alleged real mom since the prophecy states that his mother was a Jackal. When they dig up the coffin and open it, they find the skeleton of a jackal. It freaked me out. The mere thought, and now tangible proof, that the boy’s mother was that of a wild animal. It scared me. If you, given the circumstances, had to dig up somebody’s mother and found out she was an animal… it would make you sick to your stomach and that’s what it did. It was probably one of the most psychologically disturbing points in the film.

8: It – The photo album
This series always scared me and I had to pick the right scene that really affected me. The reason why this scene was so scary and surreal because as a kid, when I looked at an old photo, I would always imagine looking at the picture while it’s in motion. It was sort of like flashback for myself. Well, I hated to see a monstrous clown roar at me from afar then lunge his hand right into my face. It made me jump back and it was almost like the film tapped into my subconscious.



7: The Shining: - The bedroom ghosts
A lot of people were confused by this scene but if you didn’t read the book, you’d never know who or what those people were doing. Well, knowing the story behind the characters and to see them just flash in one jump-out moment felt random and even more surreal. The scene also taps into a deeper meaning; it goes into latent homosexual feelings and I think with all these elements at work and that drastic zoom, it just made me feel so uncomfortable.



6: The Fog – The captain’s ghost story
I’ve always loved ghost stories and I was always the one to tell ghost stories as a kid and I think this scene really hit home. Accompanied with the score and the way the captain told the story kept me captivated but it sent chills down my spine. I’ve always been one for the kinds of stories in which a tragedy happened in the past but it never had closure. The score really makes the chills because it adds to the mystic legend that is being told, and with that somber lighting… it makes me feel like I really am in that scene listening to the story and smelling the firewood.



5: Jaws – Quint’s story
Much like the captain’s story in The Fog, this is a chilling tale of survival. It’s a real life story of horror and the idea that you waited there, waiting to see who gets picked off in a deadly game of Russian roulette. What made the scene even more chilling was Shaw’s performance and the way he delivers it. There is no music and it makes the scene even more realistic but the way Shaw smiles throughout the story, you can tell that you’re looking into his psyche… what’s he’s thinking. It was just as scary as a ghost story.



4: Signs – Aliens in the cornfield
It was hard for me to pick the scenes in this film because every scene was very Hitchcockian and there were a lot of scenes that scared me. I wanted to use the birthday party scene but I think this scene is a perfect example of the less you see the better. There is no music until the end and you know something is out there in the field but when light finally touches the alien… all you see is the foot. It made me jump back in my seat.



3: Poltergeist – The tree attack
Much like Spielberg’s experience, I used to have this really creepy tree in our backyard that casted a huge shadow in my room. I always pictured that tree coming to life and grabbing me and after I got done watching Poltergeist, it terrified me. I was yelling at the screen while closing my eyes. Accompanied with that tree attack was a tornado so it was like my worst nightmare rolled into one scene. I could remember the strobe lights flickering as I saw the tree carry away the boy and I ended up staying awake for a while just to make sure the tree in our yard didn’t attack me.



2: The Fly – The maggot birth
Talk about one of the most disgusting, disturbing and grotesque scenes imaginable. I saw this film for the first time after I had to see a live birth in our health class, and even then I was a little disgusted by it. So you can imagine how I felt seeing one of the slimiest living things in entomology force it’s way out of somebody’s birth canal. It was vile, it was ghastly and it made me scream ‘Oh!!” Looking back at it, I would argue that it was an homage to It’s Alive and thank God it was all a dream cause I could not imagine if that thing was alive.

1: Arachnophobia – Spiders in the shower
As light as this may be and as funny as the scene was, I remember screaming like a girl when I saw the spider glide down her body and then pulling my legs up from the ground and shaking. But why does this scene give me the shakes of death? It’s because I have arachnophobia and I am literally scared to death of spiders. Its very plausible for a spider to be in your shower since I saw an earwig in my bathtub at one point. I could not stand this scene it made me double look before I got into the shower. As funny as the movie is, it’s the only movie that still scares me.



So, I ask you my horror friends (that haven’t already participated in this) to give me your top 10 willy inducing moments.

Also, I gotta thank Andre for making me almost piss my pants for the title she gave to her post banner. The piece name is simply named "Willies!"

The Natural and the Unatural Killer Spiders

If you are someone like me, who has a morbid fear of spiders, than any kind of killer spider movie no matter how low budget or funny it is will make you squirm. Yes, it’s funny… I have arachnophobia yet I still subject myself to watching movies with killer spiders in it. The question that many will ask is, “why?” The answer is simple: because they are the only movies that really terrify me nowadays. Although there is a certain type of killer spider movie that really hits home and it’s a sort of film that there isn’t a lot of. When we think about killer spiders we think about mutated monsters or genetically engineered spiders but it’s the ‘natural’ spiders that freak me out; the ones that are not mutated but do just as much damage.

Specifically I am talking about Arachnophobia. You see, unlike most killer spider movies these spiders are not genetically altered or mutated or super insect. The film was made to be a serious movie, from what I heard, and it became a cult classic as well as an unintentional comedy. I find it funny that a comedy makes me cringe and squirm while a movie like Hostel makes me smile. The spiders in the film are South American; therefore they are probably more poisonous and slightly bigger than your average house spider. It mates with a field spider and creates a slew of toxic spiders. Here, the spiders are not oversized due to mutation so you would think that humans would have the upper hand, right? Also, they are not super arachnids that have the ability to coat an entire town in their webs so another advantage for humans, right? Wrong! These tiny little monsters have the element of extreme toxic venom and the element of surprise. They are sneaky and there are a lot of them so that’s why they’re frightening. Numbers out-beat size.

But what about Kingdom of the Spiders? Yes, here the spiders are ‘natural’ and not mutated by chemicals or space bacteria but they are super arachnids. This term means that they somehow managed to spin the entire town in their steel-like webbing in under a few hours. The spiders in Arachnophobia spin webs but it’s not nearly as grand as the ones in this film. However, Kingdom of the Spiders is one of those movies that made me squirm because aside from the web spinning they are small and rely on their numbers and secrecy to attack and it’s frightening. It’s more close to reality and it’s very possible for a colony of spiders to attack and kill people and I think that’s why it’s so frightening as opposed to mutated spiders. Spider attacks happen all the time, but how many of those times are the spiders mutated?

Films like Ice Spiders, Spiders, The Giant Spider Invasion, Tarantula, Arachnid and Eights were scary to me and they made me uncomfortable… but deep down inside I knew it would never happen. For arachnophobic folks like me, giant mutated spiders are still scary but the films that have them are executed as though they were b-movies or campy horror flicks. The films that have small spiders that are not mutated are executed as serious movies or in Arachnophobia’s case… tried to be a serious movie. However, with giant spiders you get great scenes that are either extremely gory or they have people getting eaten and spun into webs. Either way, it’s fairly entertaining but takes away from the squirm factor.

The bottom line is, and I reiterate it, that while mutated spiders are usually scarier because it’s bigger and it has eight legs, the small natural spiders hit closer to home because the situation is very plausible. When we see those tiny or regular sized spiders we can’t help but squirm and feel that tingle up our spine because we’ve all had that freak out experience. How many of us will encounter a giant mutant Wolf Spider? None. How many of us will encounter a swarm or even a single Brown Spider? Many of us.

Arachnophobia

I am currently watching one of my favorite horror movies “Arachnophobia” and what I noticed is that this movie is the perfect blend of horror and campiness and John Goodman steals the show. I have always admired this movie for what it was and someday, in the near future, I will do an extensive review on why I love this movie so much. It’s a paradox; I have a morbid fear of spiders yet I love this movie… I guess, I truly to enjoy getting pants shitting scared 

Below is the song “Don’t Bug Me,” sung by Jimmy Buffett who is my favorite artist. When I first heard it I thought it was some other guy but then when I looked on the soundtrack listing it said that it was actually Mr. Buffett himself and then I realized: so that’s why it sounded so good.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.