All-time scariest TV episodes
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on October 11, 2012 – 1:10 PM114 Comments
Hey, folks. I’m sourcing a story for Yahoo! about the all-time scariest TV episodes, and I just know I’m forgetting some obvious ones. (I’m also a bit embarrassed that finding clips from Star Trek: TOS‘s “A Wolf in the Fold” online made my arm hairs stand up.)
What’s on your “three scariest episodes” list? It doesn’t have to be a show that identified as horror, either. One of mine is that Sopranos episode where Tony’s dreaming he’s a long-ago laborer, and that figure comes to the top of the stairs, and WIGGINS.
Plus I just love this stuff. ‘Tis the season. Let’s dare each other to watch things.
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The stabbing ER episode not only freaked me right out – but I owe my internet entertainment to it, because I searched (Yahoo, I guess? No google yet) online because I needed to read what others had to say about it – and I discovered MBTV!
Me too-ing “Hush” and the “It’s a Good Life” Twilight zone. As for “ER” this probably isn’t what you meant by scariest, but I saw the “Lov’es Labor Lost” episode while pregnant with my first and I nearly vomited from terror.
“Friday the 13th: the series” terrified me so much that I cannot for the life of me figure out why I kept watching it. Pretty much any of them could be on this list, but there was one with bees, that just, ugh, I’m freaking out just thinking about it.
In 2001 Henry Rollins hosted a horror anthology show called “Night Visions” and every single episode I saw scared the crap out of me. Lou Diamond Philips played a DJ hosting a late night show…with a unique caller (“Dead Air”). Brian Dennehy and Cary Elwes played two campers who encounter each other in the woods (“Quiet, Please”). Natasha Lyonne played a college student involved in a car accident in “If a Tree Falls.” GAH I get freaked out just thinking about it, and I wish they would release it on DVD!
@ Liz – OMG, “Blink”!!!! That’s one of the few I saw, and my mom and I joked for ages after that about staying away from statues… but you are so right, VERY CREEPY!
@ MJC64 – that particular show is the reason my mother wants us to be absolutely sure she’s dead before we then have her cremated, because she’s convinced otherwise she’ll be buried alive.
So much fun.
I agree with “Blink” (Dr. Who) – my mom and I joked about statues for ages after that.
But we stayed the hell away from them all the same.
@ Allison – Doug Hutchison is scary, period. And so is his teenaged wife!
@ Stina – “”Space Vampire,” Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Looking at him now, I’m not quite sure how to justify this one. He certainly doesn’t look as terrifying as he did when I was ten. My brother and I used to watch this show religiously when we were kids, and every time this episode would come on, I’d sudder in terror. I think it was the guy’s fingernails. Look at ’em. He didn’t need his mesmerizing power to cause havoc. All he needed was a good swipe, and your arteries would be severed like THAT.”
I REMEMBER THAT EPISODE!!! I thought I was the only one… saw it in reruns as a kid and it scared the hell out of me. Good one!
I like – well, “like” isn’t really the word, is it? – so many of the choices so far. (I’ve seen a *lot* of scary t.v., I guess.) The Star Trek episode “A Wolf In Fold” is one of the first things I thought of, too – saw that once when I was kid and avoided it for yeeeeaars thereafter.
I watched “The Calusari” the first time it aired on a little black-and-white portable tv – antenna, not cable. Possibly the poor reception added to the shadowy atmosphere, rather than detracting from it. I was definitely creeped out – but my poor sister-in-law was so unnerved she started vacuuming to distract herself. “La la la – I’m not listening …!” vroooomvrrr
It’s not a horror show (unless it was all a metaphor, and Governor Devlin really was the Devil) but I found at least one episode of OZ among the most disturbing things I’ve seen on television: the episode where Beecher wakes from a coma and, rather than trimming his long fingernails, he sharpens them into claws and lures Bill Fagerbakke’s guard into a dark corner and slices open the guard’s face and throat, leaving him to bleed to death. I was never able to watch another episode of that show. Talk about nightmare fuel!
OBVIOUSLY Dr. Who’s ‘Blink’ episode is top of the list. And I totally cosign on The Twilight Zone’s ‘Time Enough at Last’ which hit this avid reader like a ton of bricks full of horror. But, I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the Bionic Woman episode with the Fembots? For some reason, they really freaked me out when I was small!
@Lindsay: Right?! AND THEN the inventor guy turned out to be himbot? (Boy-bot? Er, masc-ot? I don’t know – I was hiding my eyes!)
TWIN PEAKS: I believe Leland Palmer just drugged his wife, and she was crawling downstairs in a stupor following that. It was his niece he (as BOB) beat up…and then some. Had no one mentioned it, I was going to call it “the episode in which Uncle Leland says goodbye to Maddy.”
This was one of the relatively few episodes David Lynch personally directed, and those were always great. I remember watching in 1990 and being shocked that the scene of Maddy’s assault was being shown on network TV in prime time. We see people punched in the face and thrown around on TV all the time, but if you saw the episode, you know this was different. There was *terror* along with the violence; there was nothing safe and stylized about it. Lynch managed to put us right there with those characters, and it was a place we may not have wanted to be.
Besides being scary, it was hauntingly done. There was a sense of loss. Right before the worst part of the Maddy sequence, there was a scene at the roadhouse, where other characters were chilling with their beers and listening to the narcoleptic stylings of that Lana del Ray forerunner who provided the show’s original songs, and they “knew” something bad was going on. Bobby Briggs was looking around, spooked (this was serendipitous, as Dana Ashbrook just happened to be on the set on his day off, so Lynch worked him in); Donna started crying for no reason; Cooper had his vision of the giant saying “It’s happening again.”
That series was ridic inconsistent, but 2-7 is one of its great episodes.
Having said all that, the series finale in the Black Lodge (another Lynch) was also nightmare material. Pupil-less Laura Palmer screaming “Meanwhile!” BOB taking Earle’s soul. The malevolent, cackling version of the dwarf. Agent Cooper’s evil double pursuing him through identical rooms and halls. The twist ending.
That Twilight Zone episode with Talky Tina still freaks me out. I had dolls as a kid that ended up being hidden at the bottom of the closet after I watched that.
I know I’m late to the party (and perhaps a bit older than the cohort), but the memorable one for me is a Twilight Episode, “To Serve Mankind.” In which the aliens had a book with that title that had people lining up to go to their planet and in the end translators discovered it was a cookbook. Freaked me out.
Late chiming in here, I know. Sorry.
“Blink” to this day gives me the wig, and it’s a big poufy one. There was an episode of “Happy Days”, a Halloween-themed one, about a haunted house where the headless ghost of some old lady would come creeping downstairs mewling at you, and I was about five or six when I saw it, and I STILL have nightmares 40 years later. Scariest “X-Files” would be either “Orison” (where we find out Donnie Pfaster isn’t just the Mayor of Creepytown but A DEVIL, GAAAHHH) or the aforementioned “Unruhe”, because icepicks and scary pictures, iiiick. The pilot episode of “Fringe”, with the melty airline passengers, definitely makes the list too.
Found this site while looking for the Fantasy Island episode Wendy mentioned above… holy hell! That scared me for decades. I just rewatched that YouTube clip and was freaked out all over again.
This is a gold mine of a post. I was also scared by many X Files and Supernatural episodes, as well as that ER where Lucy gets stabbed. Jesus! I went home that night from a friend’s house, turned on all the lights, and checked behind my shower curtain. And I’m glad someone else remembers the Twilight Zone with the woman who turns out to be a mannequin. Creepy as can be.
Thanks for the memories, everyone!