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Frightening moments in comedy

Started by madhair60, October 29, 2019, 12:49:43 PM

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madhair60

We've done this before but I used to be genuinely terrified of the "Live Organ Transplants", "Find the Fish" and "Mr Creosote" segments of Meaning of Life. Nowadays I find them joyous, but to young me they were like being trapped in a nightmare.

samadriel

I only vaguely remember it, but isn't there a bit at the end of the first episode of The Heart, She Holler where an old woman is staring at the camera and her eyes glow red while she's saying something?  That startled the fuck out of me, put me off watching the rest of the show.  Also a very brief snippet of that episode of Community where Annie turns into a werewolf and her eyes start glowing yellow while she's talking to Jeff (I think she's nearly facing the camera too).  Obviously gradually changing weird eyes staring at me unnerve me.

Petey Pate


When Richie gets given the birthday bumps and his leg plaster-casts shatter used to really unnerve me as a nipper.

While both Richie and Eddie usually bounce back from ultraviolence relatively unscathed, I think it was the end freeze-frame on Rik's howling face that seemed to imply this one was a new level of agony.

willy crossit

lots of 'smell of' era R&M - most notably masterchef. but also stuff like bob's head turning into a peach and then splitting to reveal a floating worm


dr_christian_troy

Lots of moments in Spitting Image.

The Thatcher Alien scene is still fucking terrifying for so many reasons.

magval

Alexei Sayle in Nasty. Always frightened me.

The Low ship in the Red Dwarf Demons & Angels episode used to terrify me too.

Main offenders: 1) mouldy Kryten bursting through a wall and strangling Lister, then twitching and gibbering like a loon as he chased after him.
2) Lister being made to eat the tarantula. His greasy face slurping that last hairy leg is the stuff of nightmares.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

The episode of Bottom in which they get burgled. At one point one of them sticks their head out the window and the camera cuts to outside, where - unseen by them - the burglar is lurking nearby in the darkness. I was already scared of blokes in balaclavas after seeing Short Circuit 2, so this shat me right up as a kid.

neveragain

League of Gentlemen/Psychoville/Inside No 9 - plenty there.

dr_christian_troy

Quote from: magval on October 29, 2019, 01:23:26 PM
Alexei Sayle in Nasty. Always frightened me.

I always found the music trailing off at the end of the episode unnerving.

Brundle-Fly

The vicar's son Private Lilley getting stripped naked on a playing field by his platoon mates in an episode of Get Some In! He is utterly humiliated and clearly traumatised. Really upset me as a kid. It was the fact they were supposed to be his comrades. Tony Selby's sadistic portrayal of Corporal Marsh unnerved me too. Jonesy he was not.  I would never have got through national service.

Tony Yeboah

The start of Mr Bean where he falls from the sky to haunting music. And Bobby Davro falling over in the stocks.

Utter Shit

The first time I saw the episode of Men Behaving Badly with the dream sequence where Gary gets stabbed in the throat with a pair of scissors, it scared the life out of me.

Speaking of Red Dwarf, I was a little bit scared of the taxman who came aboard to break their fingers in one episode (Better Than Life?).


Egyptian Feast

I used to freak out as a child at the end titles of Worzel Gummidge. The look on his face before he fell backwards scared the shit out of me for some reason.

Phil_A

That oddly sinister Fry & Laurie sketch where Steven is trying to persuade Hugh to blow up a restaurant (at about 9.25 in this clip)

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ke0zx

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Utter Shit on October 29, 2019, 02:25:54 PM
The first time I saw the episode of Men Behaving Badly with the dream sequence where Gary gets stabbed in the throat with a pair of scissors, it scared the life out of me.

I remember that, here it is. Really unbelievably graphic and realistic, especially how he spasms and twitches and clutches at his throat in disbelief. Just utterly ghastly. There's an earlier dream sequence where Tony stabs himself too and it's unbelievably graphic. Like, more graphic than Wire in the Blood.

Utter Shit

Yeah it's bonkers isn't it, you really aren't expecting it the first time. Particularly in a show like that.

grassbath

Tons of Jam, of course. It was the first Morris thing I saw, when I was quite young, and back then was disturbed by the more conventionally frightsome sketches (boiler baby, little girl body disposal etc). Now it's the sheer misanthropy of it that gets to me, how many of the sketches seem to present a society that's gone wrong in a weirdly believable way, where the UK's mental illnesses, fetishes, dark secrets and antisocial behaviours are no more exaggerated, just brought gently up above the surface.

dr_christian_troy

Quote from: Utter Shit on October 29, 2019, 04:11:49 PM
Yeah it's bonkers isn't it, you really aren't expecting it the first time. Particularly in a show like that.

I think when I first watched that episode, because both build-ups are game-changing revelations (asking Dorothy to move out, asking Tony to move out), I remember feeling relieved by the absurdity of the violence illustrating that it was a nightmare, because I was initially genuinely upset that the revelations may change the series altogether.

They had a few weird dream sequences though, another being when Gary and Dorothy get married and the camera pulls back to reveal Gary is heavily pregnant.

dr_christian_troy

Quote from: dr_christian_troy on October 29, 2019, 01:17:22 PM
Lots of moments in Spitting Image.

The Thatcher Alien scene is still fucking terrifying for so many reasons.

Another moment that just came to mind was when Norman Lamont is put through a giant mincer and comes out as horrible pink rubber tubing while singing Non, je ne regrette rien, while John Major plays the organ. Really creepy.

Stoneage Dinosaurs

The bit in the League of Gentlemen with the toad melting on the electric heater freaks me out so much that I still haven't got around to rewatching series 1.

Clownbaby

Quote from: Angrew Lloyg Wegger on October 29, 2019, 06:01:57 PM
The bit in the League of Gentlemen with the toad melting on the electric heater freaks me out so much that I still haven't got around to rewatching series 1.

Yeah that got me when I was little. Papa Lazarou didn't but that did, for some reason

alan nagsworth

The Helvetica Scenario on the "Calcium" pilot episode of Look Around You. A faceless Peter Serafinowicz banging on the glass to get out of a sealed room whilst his colleague outside furiously writes the findings down, soundtracked by a piercing synth alarm siren and the sound of bees swarming. Fucking horrible. Chills my blood and widens my eyes to a petrified stare.

There's a vintage resonance to that first series of LAY which is thoroughly excellent, but coupled with the somewhat somber tone and slow pacing of the pilot - twice the length of the episodes in the actual series - it has a haunting and transfixing quality. Series 1 definitely does benefit from the shorter episode duration but I love this pilot almost as a standalone thing. The bit near the end where they ask the intelligent calcium three basic questions and then starve it of oxygen is wonderfully weird and disturbing.

Clownbaby

Look Around you is great, I've just been watching it recently actually. So many strange little eerie/absurd moments but it still feels like a really straight accurate recreation of old telly. I like the face-hidden Peter Serafinowicz in series 1 cause he's just a faintly imposing silent presence that won't stop putting his hand in boiling water to get a egg

Bently Sheds

The vox pop on Day Today where the normal bloke says something like "and then his face did this" and his eyes and mouth went abnormally large. Freaked me the fuck out when I first saw it. Then I saw Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun video and I was all "meh".

Shoulders?-Stomach!

The bit where Lister fakes being sucked against the glass and mangles his face freaked me out as I was only about 7 when I first watched Red Dwarf.

Also Demons & Angels. I probably should have been the right age to watch Red Dwarf, ie. 14.

Ftumch the midget devil in The Young Ones gave me nightmares for about a week as a kid

Ever Decreasing Circles used to unnerve me as a kid. Just the whole bleak beige atmosphere. It was a really weird show.