20. The Wicked Witch's ultimatum
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939)
Directed by Victor Fleming

Victor Fleming's adaptation of L. Frank Baum's novel is practically a one-film insomnia-producing machine, chock full of moments so scary that they invade your dreams: the funnel cloud encroaching on Dorothy's Kansas farm; flying monkeys ripping the stuffing out of the Scarecrow; the Wicked Witch of the East's candy-striped shoes curling up right before her feet withdraw beneath the house that killed her. But arguably the most disturbing moment of all isn't about horrific spectacle, but philosophical implications: the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) realizing that she can't remove the ruby slippers from Dorothy's feet while she's alive, then brandishing an hourglass, flipping it upside down and crowing, "That's how much longer you've got to be alive. And it isn't long, my pretty. It isn't long." The Witch's gambit plugs right into the most primal of anxieties: our awareness (even as children) that life ends eventually, and we have no control over how or when it happens. -Matt Zoller Seitz

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19. What happened to Saskia
The Vanishing (1988)
Directed by George Sluizer

The most terrifying movie moments are drawn, however tangentially, from real life. "Psycho"'s shower scene wouldn't be nearly so frightening if it didn't tap into the very real vulnerability of a space where we are naked, deaf and blind. George Sluizer's thriller "The Vanishing" similarly literalizes an unspoken fear: What if the last words we said to a loved one were spoken in anger? Suppose the last thing that went through your sweetheart's mind was what a jerk you were. "The Vanishing" -- meaning the original Dutch version, and not Sluizer's dreadful 1993 American remake -- opens with an unremarkable domestic tiff between young lovers, after which Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) heads to a highway rest stop for drinks. She never comes out, and three years later, Rex (Gene Bervoets) is still searching for her. By then, the audience knows she was abducted by Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), a seemingly unremarkable family man with a deranged secret life, but we, like Rex, are still in the dark as to what happened next.

Although he has all but given up hope of finding Saskia alive, Rex is obsessed with finding out what happened, to the point that he strikes a deal with her abductor: He will submit to everything Saskia experienced, from the abduction on. The answer he finally gets is so much worse than we could ever have imagined, and yet perfectly in tune with the movie's logic of estrangement and reunion. It's enough to make you fear letting your loved ones pass out of sight, even for an instant, and a reminder that some secrets may be better left buried. - Sam Adams

18. The waters rising montage
"An Inconvenient Truth" (2006)
Directed by Davis Guggenheim

The trailer for Al Gore's global warming juggernaut advertised the eco-documentary as "by far the most terrifying film you will ever see." That's some big talk for what amounts to a filmed lecture -- one that the former vice president had been giving around the world for several years prior -- and yet it was packed with some genuine chills. I am all for hyperbole and horror film aesthetics if it gets people off their fat, complacent, mega-consuming asses, and "An Inconvenient Truth," while not quite exploitative, manages to assemble the facts in such a way that keeps you nailed to your seat. I was most frightened by the montage of graphics illustrating the effect that rising waters, brought on by the melting glaciers, will have on land masses around the world -- major portions of China, India, Florida, California and Manhattan are shown to be swallowed by the ocean. The film came out shortly after natural disasters like the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the images of swollen coastlines were the stuff of not just apocalyptic popcorn movies, but recent memory. "Nothing is scarier than the truth," the film's tagline went; many viewers were startled into sailing, tack by tack, against the rising tide. - Michelle Orange

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17. Scottie's nightmare
"Vertigo" (1958)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

By the time Scottie (James Stewart) has his nightmare freak-out two thirds of the way through the film, he damn well deserves it. He's witnessed the woman of his dreams, über icy Hitchcock blonde Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), seemingly be haunted to death by her great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes, a cabaret singer who committed suicide after being cast away by her lover at the turn of the century. And at the crucial moment, he failed to save Madeleine, and she drifted into the grave as if doomed from the start, as if repeating her ancestor's tragedy were inescapable. In the best of Hitchcock's dream sequences, Scottie's horror and guilt about what happened unfurl in flashes of color to the terrible clicking of castanets. Carlotta's made flesh, and she's there by the window at the inquest as Gavin Elster tells him "you and I know who killed Madeleine," and there in the portrait come to life, smirking triumphantly at the camera as it closes in with thudding dread on the necklace that links "Vertigo"'s women. It's terrifically frightening, and it's where the film turns -- ghosts may be scary, but so are crumbling heroes. Jimmy, we hardly knew you. - Alison Willmore

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16. Ellen lets Danny drown
"Leave Her to Heaven" (1945)
Directed by John M. Stahl

Perhaps the iciest, most complex femme fatale to grace the screen in Technicolor, Ellen Berent -- the narcissistic, pampered and highly unstable sex bomb, as stunningly played by Oscar nominee Gene Tierney -- turns the plot of this Golden Age masterpiece with a singular obsession: getting more alone time with her new husband Richard (Cornel Wilde). The '40s were the peak era for Hollywood film noir, but director John M. Stahl's glossy melodrama (of sorts) boils with noir tensions, then lets them pop in an unexpectedly shocking scene of sociopathic cruelty. Ellen has taken Richard's polio-stricken younger brother Danny (Darryl Hickman) out onto the lake boat, and helps him slather sunscreen while trying to convince him to travel to their Bay Harbor home alone, "just for a few weeks." But the lad insists on staying in Richard's company, and you can sense the menacing jealousy quietly congealing behind Ellen's emerald eyes. Danny thinks he has the endurance to swim across the lake, and Ellen eggs him on, prowling behind in the boat like a shark. Suddenly, Danny gets a cramp and screams out for her, but she says and does nothing but watch intently behind dark shades as the crippled kid drowns. Absolutely chilling. - Aaron Hillis

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