Once upon a time there was a man whose wife had a golden arm. He was a greedy little man, and he hated his wife. So late one night he strangled her to death. Before she was buried, he sawed off her arm and kept it.
The night after her funeral, he lay awake, tossing and turning. Just before midnight, he thought he heard a voice from outside. It came from far in the distance, little more than a faint whisper. It sounded like a woman moaning “Who’s got my golden arm?”
A few minutes later he heard it again, much clearer this time, as if the source was in the street in front of his house. “Who’s got my golden arm?”
He hid under the covers, praying that whoever it was would go away and leave him in peace. But then he heard the voice again, close now, right outside the bedroom window where a cool wind blew in through the curtains. “Who’s got my golden arm?”
The man prayed even harder, swearing that he’d take the arm right away and bury it with his wife if only the owner of that terrible voice would return to the grave. For a moment everything was silent. Then right at the edge of the bed, so close he could feel its icy-cold breath on his cheek right through the thin covers, it spoke again. “Who’s got my golden arm?”
Then the kid telling the story grabs the arm of the person sitting next to him and yells “You’ve got it!”
I can still smell the mothballs. My family kept all our camping gear in a closet full of the things, and to this day my childhood memories of sleeping bag adventures – campouts and sleep-overs alike – smell like mothballs.
The other strong memories I have of sleep-overs are ghost stories. The Ghost of the Five Bloody Fingers. The Ghost of Able Mabel. And of course the ever-popular Golden Arm. Evidently I’m not the only one who remembers this moment – or one much like it – from childhood. Over the years, the sudden shock – the essence of the Golden Arm – has become a staple of horror movies.
A terrible, horrible staple.
Of the many problems with jump scares – also known as booga booga shots – the worst is that it takes skill and planning to make them actually scary. That’s way more than most filmmakers are willing or able to devote to horror movies in the 21st century. As a result, what we almost always end up with is some witless teenager wandering around in the woods, and just as the minor-key soundtrack revs up to a crescendo out pops the killer with some damn gardening tool or another and we’re off to the races. Snore.
On the other hand, every once in a great while someone will come up with a booga-booga shot that works. Usually they succeed by adhering to two simple principles: come up with something genuinely frightening, and don’t over-use it. Take these eight, for example.
The face reveal in The Phantom of the Opera
– The great-granddaddy of them all, and still one of the best. As Mary
Philbin reaches for the Phantom’s mask, everyone in the audience is
screaming (in their hearts if not out loud) “don’t do it!” But of course
she does. Lon Chaney’s corpse face created with little more than
greasepaint and tape more than measures up to the following century’s
worth of latex, CGI and other more expensive tricks.
The fangy face from Fright Night – The vampire has bitten our hero’s girlfriend, and he’s trying to ward her off with a cross without killing her with a stake. She turns her back on the holy object, crying into her hands “Charlie, I thought you loved me!” But the moment he lowers the cross she uncovers her face, and suddenly she’s all devil eyes and mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. It’s a great moment the first time one sees this movie. Unfortunately they keep right on using the same mouth appliance, and after the initial shock wears off the thing turns cheap and dull. Way to run a solid booga-booga into the ground, guys.
The nightmare boat from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – The great thing about Willy Wonka (and here we’re discussing Gene Wilder’s “old school” Wonka, not Johnny Depp’s creepy Michael Jackson version) was that he came across as a genial, somewhat-nuts-but-generally-pleasant kind of kid-friendly candy maker. But the dude had a serious dark side, demonstrated most graphically after the chocolate river boat leaves the “world of pure imagination” room and enters a dark tunnel. The sequence that follows includes a vaguely seasick poem recital and a montage of disturbing images, including crawly bugs, a chicken beheading, and spooky Mr. Slugworth. By the end of it, we’re all thoroughly booga’d.
Tom Skerrit bites it in Alien – Of all the moments on the list, this one’s the closest to the Hollywood standard something-jumps-out-and-gets-someone booga-booga shot. We know Skerrit’s going to get got. After all, he’s crawling around in ventilation shafts trying to find a fast-moving, powerful, teeth-intensive monster. And his compatriots have just lost the tracking signal they were using to keep him posted about the beast’s location. Even though we couldn’t be more prepared for it to happen, it’s still a good shock when it finally does. Heck, the scene even worked pretty well in the comic book version.
The no-mouth girl from Twilight Zone: The Movie – The “Little Dude with the Gnarly Powers” sequence from this anthology piece features several solid shocks cooked up by director Joe Dante and effects wizard Rob Bottin. But the best of the lot is a brief shot of one of the kid’s “sisters.” This unfortunate girl sits and watches TV all day. And does she ever complain about her fate? No way. A quick shock shot reveals why she remains reticent.
The sliding door in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – It’s nothing short of miraculous that such a parade of mistimed nonsense actually includes one killing that qualifies as a decent booga-booga moment. When the guy bites it – the one who’s not in the wheelchair, whose name escapes me at the moment – the death isn’t long, drawn-out or especially noisy. Leatherface appears suddenly, smacks him with a hammer (an eerie choice of weapon given how mundane it was), drags the still-flopping body down the hall and slams the door behind him. It happens so quickly that we don’t get the chance to think about it until it’s already over. It also seems strangely like an animal slaughtering, which was most likely the point.
The beheading in Exorcist 3 – We know Nurse Amy’s going to get it. We know when, and we’ve got a pretty good idea of where. But the sequence is so quiet, so drawn-out and so otherwise ordinary that it proves to be the ideal set-up. The killer’s choice of outfit and implement also do wonders for the booga-booga value.
Large Marge – That last one is probably the best of all time. But let’s finish this list up with something lighter: a comedy moment making fun of jump scares. In Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Pee-wee Herman hitches a ride with a trucker named Large Marge. She proceeds to tell him the story of a terrible truck wreck. And when she gets to the booga-booga, well, suffice it to say that it’s a very Tim Burton moment. I must have seen this dozens of times, and it still cracks me up every time I see it. Reminds me a little of mothballs, too.
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