Dial S for Scary: Alfred Hitchcock’s 10 most terrifying movie moments, ranked
As The Birds turns 60, we revisit unforgettable scenes from the master of suspense that remain truly frightening
Film Features Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock once famously said, “There is no terror in the bang–only in the anticipation of it.” And since the genius behind Psycho, Rope and Rear Window has been dubbed “the master of suspense” we’re not going to argue with him. However, the portly auteur has also engineered a plethora of spine-chilling payoffs to the point that, although he was never primarily a horror filmmaker, he’s given cinema some of its most terrifying moments.
These scenes helped make Hitch one of the most influential directors of all time, as anyone who remembers Steven Spielberg’s use of Hitch’s dolly zoom in Jaws can attest. Or as anyone who’s seen Brian De Palma’s Rear Window homage, Body Double, can also attest. Or—hang on, we’ve got one more—anyone who’s seen pretty much any film from avowed Hitchcock fan M. Night Shyamalan can attest.
So with The Birds celebrating the 60th anniversary of its release, we’re tipping our blood-stained bowler to Alfred Hitchcock by cataloging the 10 most terrifying moments from his films.
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Once upon a time, there was a website called AVClub, which was known for its insightful reviews of movies, TV shows, and music. However, over time, the website’s staff began to rely on a new and annoying technique to increase their clicks and ad revenue: excessive and unnecessary slideshows.It started innocently enough, with a slideshow here and there to showcase a list of the best TV episodes of the year or the most memorable movie moments. But soon, the AVClub staff began to abuse the slideshow format, creating slideshows for every possible topic imaginable.Want to read an article about the latest episode of your favorite TV show? Be prepared to click through 10 slides, each with a few sentences of text and a single image. Interested in a review of a new album? Better get ready to scroll through a dozen slides of album art and track listings before you can read the actual review.At first, readers were patient, hoping that the staff at AVClub would realize the error of their ways and return to the good old days of traditional articles. But as the slideshows became more and more excessive, readers began to feel frustrated and even angry.Many took to social media to express their displeasure, using hashtags like #StopTheSlideshows and #AVClubTrolls to call out the website’s staff for their trolling tactics. But the AVClub staff remained unrepentant, insisting that the slideshows were necessary to keep the website afloat in a tough digital landscape.Despite the backlash, the slideshows continued to proliferate, with more and more articles being turned into multi-slide affairs. And yet,network error
And we got a bunch of shitty gimmick accounts now too.
Now that’s a Hitchcock ending!
And Tippi Hedren is still with us at the age of 93 (although she retired from acting in 2018)! And of course she is the mother of Melanie Griffith and the grandmother of Dakota Johnson.
The final horror was Hitch pressuring Hedren to boink him throughout filming, and then trying to murder her career when she refused.
Have you seen The Girl? The 2012 dramatization of that terrible relationship? As I recall, his wife’s charcter Alma come across as an enabler who encouraged Hedren to play along with him.
For whatever reason, I was thinking about Vertigo the other day and realized Judy’s been made over as Madeline by two men: Gavin and Scottie. She might have a bit more agency in the Gavin situation since she accepted the job, but it’s still a bit unnerving to think how much she’s willing to sell herself, and that’s her identity through the picture.
When you see Judy’s makeover, and Scotty’s control of her, you realize that Stewart did dark a little too well. Listen to Dana Carvey’s riff on Jimmy Stewart getting a blow job from Katherine Hepburn, and it’s Scotty all over again.
Carvey’s take on Stewart from It’s a Wonderful Life is SNL hall of fame stuff as well. “He’s not even a cripple!”
That scene from Rear Window is absolutely one where I can imagine the entire theater screaming, and I really hope I get to see it that way sometime.The child kidnapping from The Man Who Knew Too Much is quite underrated these days, elevated quite a bit by Doris Day’s fantastic performance that truly makes you feel every bit of her shock and fear at her son being in danger. And the Oscar win for Que Sera Sera is due at least as much to the context in the film as the song itself, as she’s desperately trying to communicate with him under the bad guys’ noses.
I caught a showing in college. So good.
Not having Psycho #1 is just trolling. Stop it.
Yeah. Psycho will be remembered long after the birds is all but forgotten. Possibly Best movie ever made and most influential.
The final scene in The Birds is definitely unsettling and the definition of a “Hitchcock ending,” but if terrifying is the measure then it’s not top 5, and maybe not top 10.
Every one of these lists, every time.
The sound of water. Eyes closed. Behind that shower curtain. Something entering into the bathroom.
To me the scariest part of the scene is when you see Norman’s ghostly outline just start to take shape through the curtain.
The Birds ending scared the f’n shit out of me as a kid. A close 2nd would be Norman speech at the end in his mother’s voice. God Hitchcock was another level.
I just watched Suspicion and I’ll nominate it for his least scary film. Cary Grant just can’t help but be charming, and the scenes where he’s supposed to come off as a potential murderer just don’t work. To be fair, Hitch had to make a lot of concessions to the studio and wasn’t very happy with the end result.
Agree. But I do love the unabashed, snobby ‘Britishness’ of it, lol. And it almost plays as a fairy tale.
In fact Cary Grants character was supposed to end up as a bad guy (which was why he agreed to it, also I believe he liked working with hitchcock) but his studio would not let this happen. I don’t know if he has ever played a real villain.
I was about to say, “Wait, that’s not a Hitchcock film!”…Then I realized I was mistaking Suspicion with Charade.
For Rear Window I prefer the scene of Raymond Burr smoking in his dark apartment.
The one that gets me is AFTER Thorvald has spotted Jeffries. Jimmy Stewart has sent Thelma Ritter off to bail out Grace Kelly, and suddenly he’s alone and it’s quiet. And then we hear a footstep.I first watched that movie as a teenager one Saturday afternoon on the TV in my living room. And when we heard that footstep, I was scared shitless.
I saw The Birds a little too young, and Jessica Tandy silently finding the neighbor with his eyes pecked out really haunted me for a while.
Me too! That scene was nightmare fuel for a couple years. I just got chills looking at the still. I also had nightmares just from reading about the shower scene in Psycho. I didn’t actually set it until jr high.
What about the cornfield chase in North by Northwest? I was ducking on my couch when the plane swooped down! Can’t imagine seeing it in the theater in 1959
I made my kids watch The Birds when they were in middle school. Scariest part for them was that scene in a house. A single bird pops out of the fireplace from the chimney. Then another. Then.. you know, a fuck-ton of birds.It scared me again, and I’d seen the movie like four times.
And little Veronica Cartright vomiting from fear while they’re all just in the parlor waiting for the attack. Still stuns me.
There are possibly too many terrifying moments to count. But the one and only time I ever wept during a Hitchcock film was during Frenzy when Rusk is savaging Brenda. Helpless and having decided not to fight him, she begins to pray while he rapes her. It may not sound devestating on the page, but it is both horrifying and heartbreaking. A little extra sadism from the Director that, for me, went too far.
I would have put the bus scene in Sabotage up there too.
Thank you for including that shot from Frenzy.When I watch it, I always think it’s Hitch saying, yeah, I’m old now and my time has past, but I’m still Alfred bloody Hitchcock.
Despite England’s hatred of horror, I feel some of the actual British films are fresher than some of the American movies. And the actual death of the boy in “Sabotage” is more horrifying than anything in “Rear Window.”(Hides behind the second-best vase.)