Twitch-O-Meter: The Heebie Jeebies

Generally I don't watch horror movies for two reasons. One is the cheap shock. Something jumping into frame and the music spiking is just cheap and dirty. The second reason is the pointless gore. I can take violent decapitations and the like, but it's the slow torture stuff that makes me queasy.

Heebie Jeebie stuff, though, I love. Ju-On did it for me again and again: the room turning dark, just off-frame, behind the main character; the news footage getting all skewing, I loved it. Blair Witch Project did it for me too, exploiting the tent factor: you're in the middle of a spooky forest with some unseen evil, and you climb into a *tent* -- you can't see out, you can't easily escape, and the thing is circling around you at night. Creeped me out.

The biggest HB I've ever experienced though is from an episode of the X-Files called Badlaa. The antagonist of the episode is this shrivelled Hindu mystic cripple who drags himself around on the floor. Whenever I want to creep myself out, I picture him in the hall outside me room, or at the foot of my bed. Gah.

I'm with you on Event Horizon, Mack. That scene really mess with my head. When I think back to it, I would curl up in a ball and shudder in fear.

Bascially any scene with slow torture like in the Saw series creeps me out. Its enough to make me cry.

A scene in Full Metal Jacket that freak me out is when private Piles gone a-wall in the bathroom. The psychotic look in Pile's eye before he shot R. Lee Ermey had a long lasting effect on me

I'm not sure if I ever experienced Heebie Jeebies. I only once (as far as I can remember) had my neckhairs stand on end; with the Eye (the scene were a ghosts not only appears but suddenly launches forward in attack) and I can't think of any case were a scene or image 'haunted' me or caused nightmares. Ofcourse as a kid I was afraid to watch horror. I tried a nightmare on elmstreet once, but as soon as I saw a glove with knives attached (the very first scene! :-) I turned it off. At that time seeing the skinned soldiers in Predator was about the creepiest thing I had ever seen. I did felt suddenly sick in cenema twice though. Recently with Hard Candy. the prolonged preperations for the DIY operation suddenly made me gasp for air. And similarly with Imamura's Narayama Bushi-ko and the scene were an old but vital woman smashes her teeth on the edge of a waterwell just to prove to her son that her time has come to go up the mountain and die. Teeth are a sensitive subject for me and they are the reason that I still haven't seen American History X. O, and a final confesstion :-) there was a rare moment that I looked away in cinema: during the final torture scene in Audition. So, torture is true horror for me and I don't like watching it at all. I also don't watch horror to 'get a good scare' (because I don't :-) but for various reasons. the fantasy or sometime comedy aspects of these movies or, if they are more arty, the psychological (catharsis?) elements.

two more comments:
Horror has become very popular in let's say the last five years, but most of these movies are ghost and slasher horror filled with, like rek said, cheap shocks. I have become very tired/sick of them even to the point were I really disliked a film, the Descent, that actually has some good visuals and fantasy elements just because of these pointless scares that you always see coming but also always make you jump a bit just because the audio-cue is so loud. let's stop that kind of annoying and cheap filmmaking :-)

Also forgot to mention that I totally agree with you on the creep factor of the knife scene in saving private ryan. It didn't haunt me, but it sure was f#@&ed up. A lot of recent war movies have far stronger horror/gore scenes than most horror movies do! In the horror genre I actually like it when it get's so weird that you start thinking wtf?! Dead Ringers comes to mind and there are a few others

The Curbside Smile scene in AHX bothered me for a long time; the facial surgery in Pan's made me dizzy in my theatre seat -- that's not cheap shock, but I wouldn't call it HB material either.

I think I love horror for the exact same reason you don't like them. But films have become saturated with the same crap over and over again that I have really no interest in seeing them. I think sound does more for me than the image. My first recolection of sound creeping me out was in Nightmare on Elmstreet 1 when the main character watches her dead friend being dragged in a clear plastic sheet in the school corridor. The sound when her limp hand slaps the floor is very icky for me.
But I totally agree with the knifing scene in Private Ryan. That's some fucked up scene.

My good friend doesn't watch horror after he went in to shock watching Event Horizon. He got so scared that he simply shut off and had to be removed from the theatre. He hasn't watched a horror film since.

Gotta say, the first time I saw Ringu, it blew my mind -- not so much at the point you mentioned, but on the money shot. That one did get my blood up a bit.

Like your reference to knives -- anything with teeth creeps me out: Self-dentistry in 12 Monkeys and Castaway, psycho nazi dentist in Marathon Man (the list goes on and on).

I know there have been others too like what you're describing, but none else are coming to mind, even after I went through my DVD list again. I generally don't check out too many horror flicks (depending on type) in the theaters either -- I guess sometimes it's easier being at home with the remote control if necessary.

Call me a wuss but the films that have scared me the most are Westworld (he just keeps coming!) and Return to Oz (monkey dudes with rollerskate feet!)

Oh and gotta mention Halloween, for me the heebie jeebiest film ever made.

Whoever mentioned the Pang Bro's "THE EYE" is not alone. I've talked to many people who have had that experience with that scene. I'm convinced there is something buried in the music or framing of the scene which hits a common spot in the human psyche. I get goosebumps, even knowing that scene is coming.

Other moments are the "5 seconds of Violence" in Haneke's Cache

And the "Kathy Bates Hobbles James Caan" scene in Misery.

There is particular scene in ¿Quién puede matar a un niño? involving a pregnant lady which won't leave me any time soon.

Yeah, that scene in the Eye gave me a heart attack.

War movies tend to disturb me as much as horror. I guess its because I know what I'm seeing can exist in reality. I remeber watching the Killing Field as a kid and when Pran stumbles to the infamous killing fields, oh man....I got psycholgically screwed.

That death in Saving Private Ryan got to me so bad that there's an unopened copy of the film in a trunk in my room which I've had for six years and I still won't watch it. There was something about the way Adam Goldberg started sputtering, "wait, wait-" that made me feel like I was watching a real person die in front of me instead of some character.

jacobs ladder - the deleted scene where the eye cracks through the ceiling. Actually most of the scenes in the movie are disturbing.

the shinning - the bear scene or the bathtub scene.

in the mouth of madness - the idea that everyone is slowly turning into monsters and you are the last one alive. creeped me out.

Event Horizon - agreed followed by the best delivery in a movie... "that's it we're out of here"

When violence is treated realisticly, with the victims reacting realisticly that's when I cringe. Like Hostel which made me squirm allot especially the scene where the character's tendons is severed. Ugh. I got the same reaction when watching Pet Cemetary when the kid cut the old man's tendons from under the bed.

Touching the void was extremely painfull for me to watch. When the guy broke his legs and they explained how he broke it just made me queezy.
In fact bone breaking makes me uneasy more than anything else. I've never broken a limb and I don't want to find out how painfull it actually is. Once a friend described in detail how he had broken his leg during a drunken night out and didn't discover it untill the morning after. I kid you not that I almost fainted. A first for me.

I just remembered a scene from Titus that borders on the gross-out and heebie jeebie for me. The discovery of the daughter, who has had her hands cut off and sticks shoved in their place....

Swarez - In grade 3 or 4 I had a teacher describe in class how she'd fallen during a ski trip and sliced open her chin. I thought I was going to pass out. Broken/sliced or stretched skin makes me want to puke.

Yeah, the knife scene in SPR. *shudder*

The most disturbing scene in Pan's to me was the bottle/nose scene. It was so unexpected and so brutal.

Two other scenes that left a mark on me are...

Dawn of the Dead - when the biker gets pinned to the floor and gutted.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre - hammer to the back of the head that puts the guy into seizures.

This will probably date me, but I can't believe that no one has yet mentioned the Zuni Fetish Doll segment of Trilogy of Terror. Not only is the doll friggin' creepy, but so is Karen Black, like, 10,000 times more so when she becomes 'infected'...scarred me for life, but I forgave Matheson after I read 'I am Legend'...

Long haired ghost climbs up onto bed in broad daylight in A Tale of Two sisters. The sounddesign in that scene is so damn convincing that it creeps me out. How do you admire something technically and at the same time be taken in by it? A Tale of Two Sisters found a way...

Moment in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo when guy went through the dark corridor and ghost of a girl appears. I have gooseskin everytime i recall it.

My fav 2 'heebie jeebie' TV moments from the 1980s (i'm 31 now, so these were impressionable times ;)

1) A Stephen King-penned episode of The Twilight Zone, 'Gramma' -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramma_(The_Twilight_Zone)
Child. Old Grandma. Wheelchair. Alone. Rain. Noises. Monster.

Ya, this one freaked me out even though I had been reading King for a year or two - (bachman books, thinner, etc in 5th grade)

2) An episode of 'The Bloodhound Gang' from '321 Contact', "The Case of the Flying Clock, Part One" (A clock collector files an insurance claim that a precious clock has been stolen. ) - has one scene where the kids go into this guy's house and there are hundreds of clocks of different sorts on the walls. Something about the clickings and the different times freaked me out to no extent.

Cheers!
kiddphunk