Because I’m in a giveaway mood, but not, you know, anything valuable (Patreon)

Always a fan of people moping and pining onscreen while trapped in the artsy labyrinth of their own quiet desperation, I tend to like a little dramatic gravitas in my horror—or at least the occasional unexpected tonal shift into something I wasn’t expecting. Oh, if someone could only create a sly hybrid of “Halloween III” and “Anna Karenina”! But until that day, here are a few scenes I’ve always been captivated by for the way they lend a little unexpected class to the horrific proceedings that surround them.  

Hannibal – So I’m sitting there in the theater watching the dinner party scene unfold at the end, and like the rest of the audience, I’m holding my hand to my mouth in disgust and shock as Ray Liotta runs into his memorable little difficulty with keeping his noggin fully intact. But then out of nowhere comes a beautiful bit of dialogue that took me by such surprise, I had to watch the movie again to be sure I had perceived it correctly. (I then watched it like 27 more times, ‘cause come on, it’s “Hannibal”!) As the lighting changes in a subtle way and soft music sneaks in, Monsieur Lecter proceeds to pay an extraordinary compliment to Clarice Starling as she sits totally stoned at the table. It’s a weird, awesome moment in which a superior mind selflessly acknowledges the worth of his rival face-to-face. Nothing even twisted or psychosexual about it, just… well…. nice.

Whistle and I’ll Come to You – Someone recently turned me on to this short BBC adaptation of the classic M.R. James story. Oh, there’s plenty of scarier and richer movies, but I’ve already sunk into this one multiple times for its spare style and cold black-and-white atmosphere. It also has a great performance by Michael Haldern as a pompous intellectual begging for his comeuppance, as demonstrated with technical perfection during a breakfast scene where he’s asked a simple question—“Do you believe in ghosts?”—and rambles on with a long, snooty, semi-incoherent non-answer that pleases himself to no end. I find it hilarious.

Christine - When Arnie (Keith Gordon, who later became a really good director) is slowly descending into madness, there comes a moment when he tells off his parents after his latest dark episode. His father demands that he apologize, and suddenly the kid flips in a near-violent way that is totally convincing and sad. I find it tough even to watch, it feels so real; a troubling glimpse of the kind of domestic reality that probably curses many families who have that one frightening child who grows up and goes bad.

Seven – I nominate this one for exactly one line of dialogue (yet not the interesting diner heart-to-heart between Gwyneth Platrow and Morgan Freeman). It’s in the scene where Lee Ermey, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are discussing case business and the phone rings beside Ermey, aggravatingly interrupting the flow of the conversation. In the theater I laughed out loud at the classic line he delivers angrily into the receiver before hanging up, and I seem to remember everyone else laughing at it too. I can’t believe anyone would have ever written it into the script; it strikes me as one of those inspired moments when one person says, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if….” and someone chuckles and everyone starts nodding and saying “Yeah, yeah, let’s do it!” And that’s how you get something crazy and unforgettable.

Dawn of the Dead – I was about 14 when George Romero showed me that a horror movie can be both supremely goofy and convincingly dramatic at the same time. I love the scene that comes after the four heroes have battled zombies all afternoon and collapsed in a storage room above the dead-infested mall, resting and talking about what comes next. It results in one of them getting drawn into an awkward and very quiet exchange with his fiancée; it brings the chapter to a perfect full stop. Through the mid-eighties, Romero was really good at straight drama whenever he felt the need to lightly apply it.

The Exorcist – Damien Karras’s first visit to his mother in the city, of course. Everything about that lonely apartment is so recognizably real and sad that I have a feeling only one person was put in total charge of creating that setting based on a very specific, very sad memory. The thing is, I sort of have a trace memory of that apartment too--a place I visited once long ago, another tiny home that felt like the end of a life.

Nosferatu the Vampyre – Toward the end, Mina Harker (sorry, Lucy Harker—Herzog’s movie has that odd name switch) wanders through a silent, plague-decimated city as its last few inhabitants dance meaninglessly in circles in the town square, waiting for certain death, kids included. She then comes across the most tragic outdoor banquet in history. Jeez, there I am enjoying some nice fancy vampire action and suddenly I’m slapped across the side of the face with the cold carp of my own mortality. REAL NICE, GUYS! 

Messiah of Evil - Thanks go to film critic and interviewer Max Evry for telling me about this wacked-out midnight movie from the team that brought you "Howard the Duck." Several parts of this odd mess are creepy in an unintentionally raw, zero-budget sort of way, like a good episode of "Dark Shadows." It features a super cool, big 70s-haired cat named Thom, played by Michael Greer, who's absolutely catnip to the ladies in his bellbottoms and is always trying to get it goin' with the actress playing the lead... until he just seems to give up out of apparently genuine concern for her safety. There's a scene where he coaxes her into bed during a meltdown and does not then make a move on her. And I saw that and thought "Awwwwww." See? People are good at heart, dammit!

The Dead Zone – This is one of my favorite movies of all time; we used to rent it every three days or so. It sat there in the horror section of the video store day after day being totally deceitful about its true nature as a very mature tearjerker. Its atmosphere is best summed up by its opening credit sequence, a montage of photographs of anonymous New England settings graced by a Michael Kamen score I’ve never been able to get enough of. I almost forget sometimes that there’s a suspense story going on among all the Walken, Cronenberg, and Kamen greatness. 

The deadline for you to tell me about your own preferred emotional or just plain out-of-left-field moment in a horror flick is… oh, let’s say next Thursday night. Imagine telling your friends you won a contest put on by a grown man currently wearing sweatpants with Yosemite Sam on them! 

All right, time for my annual viewing of “Sideways.” See ya!