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Frightening moments in comedy

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

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Twed

I was generally scared of Round the Twist. It felt off. I guess it was just Australian. Lift Off! was fucking petrifying.



Eerie Indiana scared me, mainly because of Mister Wilson:


Jumblegraws

That doll from Lift Off was horrible, I remember feeling an awful mix of pity and revulsion in an ep where two of the kids were fighting over it and started stretching its arms. It was I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, kids' edition.

Cuellar

Yeah the Limmy sketch where he's eating soup in the work canteen and the people suddenly cut to being covered in blood freaked me out a bit

dr_christian_troy

Quote from: Twed on October 30, 2019, 05:58:03 PM

Eerie Indiana scared me, mainly because of Mister Wilson:



I had a rewatch of the series recently and realised that Simon's acting is awful. Imagine watching Michael Caine in scenes of The Muppets Christmas Carol (when he's surrounded by Muppets) - if you only focus on him reacting it's like watching an old man who's pissed himself while having a hallucination. Simon's acting is like that.

alan nagsworth

Quote from: Psychotic Mongoose on October 30, 2019, 10:13:26 AM
Without a doubt, the Red Dwarf episode 'Quarantine'

Made excellent use of the claustrophobic feeing of being stranded in space being stalked by a crazed lunatic. Chris Barrie is brilliant in this episode. Particularly creepy part is when Rimmer is sat outside quarantine all along listening to the rest of the crew as they talk. I still find it an unsettling watch to this day.

The first time Rimmer reveals himself in the fuckin Pippi Longstockings outfit with Mr. Flibble and in between sentences he grimaces and lets out that "DHUUUEEGGHH" noise is particularly mental. Love that ep.

H-O-W-L

Newer one but the episode of Sunny's last season, "Charlie's Home Alone" is really gruesome and horrid and not in a funny way in the least. Probably one of Sunny's biggest comedic failures because it's not darkly humorous at all despite being clearly intended to be. All the "haha what if home alone traps were real" stuff is just so wrongly timed it comes off as gratuitous wanking over Charlie getting mauled.

Chriddof

I know a fair bit about Lift Off! because my younger sister loved all the non-evil-doll bits which involved some much more normal puppets running "The Wakadoo Cafe". She definitely did not like the horrible no-face doll. Apparently the idea behind the latter was to leave its face blank because then every single child who watched the show could theoretically see themselves in it and identify with the doll - which was not the case, due to the makers being idiots, or possibly psychopaths.

My sister was forever trying to find footage of The Wakadoo Cafe segments because she loved those bits so much. She once ordered an old Australian VHS of Lift Off! from the net, only to find that all the Wakadoo bits had been edited out and there was nothing but that fucking blank faced Auton-in-training. It was like getting a big box of chocolates and finding nothing but coffee creams.

alan nagsworth

Hey don't lump us coffee cream lovers in with that fucking abomination

Chriddof

Sorry. How about this: "It was like getting a big box of chocolates and finding nothing but razorblades".


TheMonk

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on October 29, 2019, 02:52:45 PM
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.


Also, The Goodies Christmas episode where the world explodes.

stranger

#71
The first 3 minutes of the "Who shot Alan B'Stard?" episode of the New Statesman made an impression when I first saw it. It culminates in Piers having his face agonisingly ripped off by the rotting zombie B'Stard in wig.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bdyyb



SteveDave

The end of one episode of "Bang Bang It's Reeves And Mortimer" has Bob covered in soap suds whacking Vic over the head with a cricket bat but Vic's head has been put in a tumble dryer so his features are all over the place. Bob's laughing his head off as he hits and the sound fades out and Adagio for Strings fades in and it's creepy as all fuck.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Robot George Washington's reaction to getting having his britches pulled down on The Simpsons.



It's the smile that makes it. Is he thinking of murdering Bart for his impudence? Streaking, with deadly consequences? It's so hard to parse.

Dusty Substance


A friend has recently been introducing me to clips of all these terrible U.S sitcoms from the 70s to 90s including the truly awful Small Wonder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go2mq3gs_3Y - I didn't think it had been shown here in the U.K but according to the Radio Times Guide To TV Comedy it was aired on Sunday afternoons on LWT in 1986 (the book also rates it as the fifth worst American sitcom ever).

The show is about an inventor who creates a robot girl for his family - The frightening part is when VICI the robot, the eponymous Small Wonder, speaks in a robotic voice: https://youtu.be/96z9DpYZURo?t=364. I find that kind of thing really creepy.


Swoz_MK

Small Wonder definitely used to be on Saturday lunchtimes after CHiPs and before A.L.F

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: stranger on November 01, 2019, 10:48:46 AM
The first 3 minutes of the "Who shot Alan B'Stard?" episode of the New Statesman made an impression when I first saw it. It culminates in Piers having his face agonisingly ripped off by the rotting zombie B'Stard in wig.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bdyyb




I was suprisngly fine with that bit, it was Rik Mayall with a mouthful of rice that sent the shits up me.

ETA at the time, I mean, Riks mouthful of rice no longer scares me as I'm now a big boy.

neveragain

Didn't B'Stard get shot to shit in the last episode? Some surprising gore from the Birds of a Feather writers.

purlieu

Quote from: Old Gold Tooth on October 29, 2019, 01:25:39 PM
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.
I always found the tarantula bit funny, until I stopped to think about it: he's being forced to eat a live tarantula. The creature's live body squirming and then cracking and popping in his mouth. It makes me feel ill to these days. Absolutely hideous.
Quote from: alan nagsworth on October 29, 2019, 06:31:01 PM
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.
Fucking hell this genuinely terrified me on first view. The way it freezes as his face turns to the camera. I just got goosebumps watching that YouTube. Christ.

Quote from: Twed on October 30, 2019, 05:58:03 PM
I was generally scared of Round the Twist. It felt off.
Yes, I actually hated it because it unsettled me every week. I still have images of weird green goo, a bloke whose mouth has been turned tiny by evil Santa, someone licking flies off a swatter and someone hypnotised into eating live snails, lodged in my head. Horrible, horrible show.

The Jam sketch that always got me was the opening one that ends on Mark Heap with a worm's body, and the barn full of terrifying characters jerking towards him.

The Blackadder episode The Witchsmeller Pursuivant always made me feel really uncomfortable episode. That whole series is pretty grimy and bleak, but there's not a moment of hope in that episode, right down to the 'Edmund nearly getting burned alive' climax. Utterly horrible.

The Big Train sketch with Mark Heap as the guy who chops his fingertip off with a miniature guillotine always made me queasy too,

The 2point4 Children episode that starts with a chain letter and gets increasingly fucked up until, I think, at least one of them dies, before it turning out to be a dream and then all starting again. That left me so uncomfortable when I first saw it. It always had moments of queasy surrealism, but that one had this horribly inescapable hopelessness to it for me. I'd fucking love to watch that show again.

Twed

Yeah, 2point4 Children unsettled me too.

The Big Train sketch where Mark Heap is being reunited with his birth mother and she comes in and she's like a tiny monster lady with a really long tongue. Ugh even thinking about it now makes me shudder

https://youtu.be/kxEhKjUwqAQ

About a dozen years ago, I remember a sketch show presented by Australian woman.  I can't recall the programme's name, but one sketch had a woman in hospital being visited by a toddler she does not know, who wanders in unaccompanied, talks in a weirdly precociously way, then does this weird little dance.  Not frightening as such, but weird and creepy.

Jumblegraws

Quote from: purlieu on November 01, 2019, 06:36:07 PM
Yes, I actually hated [Round the Twist] because it unsettled me every week. I still have images of weird green goo, a bloke whose mouth has been turned tiny by evil Santa, someone licking flies off a swatter and someone hypnotised into eating live snails, lodged in my head. Horrible, horrible show.

It might be of minuscule comfort to you that the "flies" were revealed at the end of the episode to be liquorice squashed against an unused fly-swatter.

Cuellar

Quote from: Misspent Boners on November 02, 2019, 07:53:09 AM
The Big Train sketch where Mark Heap is being reunited with his birth mother and she comes in and she's like a tiny monster lady with a really long tongue. Ugh even thinking about it now makes me shudder

https://youtu.be/kxEhKjUwqAQ

Oh god yeah, can't watch that sketch. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

Glebe

Kenny Everett's Reg Prescott was somewhat unsettling.

Quote from: StewartLeehaslethimselfgo on October 29, 2019, 10:26:52 PMFtumch the midget devil in The Young Ones gave me nightmares for about a week as a kid

Surprized it hasn't been mentioned already, but Vyvyan getting his head chopped off was pretty horrifying for me as a kid.

Quote from: madhair60 on October 29, 2019, 12:49:43 PMWe'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.

Not to mention some of Gilliam's animations throughout the Python canon, such as this.

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

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

Oh fuck, yes.

Quote from: H-O-W-L on October 29, 2019, 03:51:07 PMI 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.

Fucking hell, that's horrific!

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on October 29, 2019, 02:52:45 PMI 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.

Also the anticipation of "Will he fall backwards or forwards?", and changing his heads, of course.

Quote from: dr_christian_troy on October 30, 2019, 04:24:22 PMHere you go.

Thanks for that, never saw it before. The eyes in the mask bit was quite creepy.

purlieu

Quote from: Glebe on November 02, 2019, 05:54:47 PMNot to mention some of Gilliam's animations throughout the Python canon, such as this.
As a kid I thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.


Gurke and Hare

Quote from: purlieu on November 02, 2019, 05:59:11 PM
As a kid I thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.

The bit where he adds the last bit of foam over his mouth is very satisfying.