CT Who or what scared you from the CT?

I never had any real nightmares from any of the Star Wars movies. Moments of trepidation or dread, sure. But not fright.

 

If you had asked me as a kid if I thought the actor who played the Emperor would still be alive and well in 2020 I would have thought you mad.

I assumed they had hired an actor that was at least 90 years old.

Funny how credible you are at that age.

 

Yoda. That "You will be. You will be." Line was scary. On the flip side Yoda is so funny and like able. Maybe that's what makes the one moment so scary.

 

Fun topic! I also grew up watching horror movies and loved a good scare. Maybe this is what made SW so memorable. Anyway, my picks:

1. Luke facing Vader in ESB. The tone of the cryogenic freezing room was so memorable, and I felt like Luke was so out of his league. I still remember the feeling that I had with the sound of their lightsabers igniting. I was just like, "oooh crap, this isn't gonna be good for Luke."

2. All of the cliff-like surfaces. This wasn't horror movie scary, but in ESB when Luke crawled out above the abyss, forget about it. I was at the edge of my seat. Ditto for when he was hanging from the antenna below Cloud City. I remember feeling terrified for him. Even Obi climbing around that center console on the death star to turn off the shields made me anxious.

3. The RotJ throne room scene. The Emperor scared the crap out of me. I don't remember being scared of Vader in a horror movie kind of way, I just more felt super intimidated by him on Luke's behalf. But the Emperor I saw as almost the perfect horror villain.

4. Han getting frozen. Damn. Crazy how much that freaked me out.

I'm so glad I didn't see these movies for the first time as an adult.

 

In ESB, during the dealings before Han gets frozen, there's a cut to Leia looking at Vader where you can see just utter terror in her as he stares right back at her without hesitation. There's something about Vader's demeanor in just that quick exchange that, again, is something I only picked up on as an adult. Carrie's acting in that moment is superb as she realizes what she is faced with, especially when you realize that she had previously been held hostage by Vader some time prior to that. I wonder if that was something Carrie thought about, is how Leia would react to seeing her abductor again.

I often compare Vader to Michael Myers in that it's this faceless emotionless unstoppable entity that elicits complete fear in those who come face to face with it. I can't think of any other characters in film that accomplish this better, not only within the movie itself, but in the viewer as well.

 

Thinking now, the wampa and the thing which swallowed the Falcon scared me as a kid too. Not as much as Jabba’s pets though. I guess I was just scared of being eaten. I was scared when Vader choked his own officers. The Death Star would probably have scared me if they showed the people before they died like TFA/RO

 

I feel the saarlac pit has to be mentioned again.
I mean, just LOOK at that thing! The idea of falling into it is extremely disturbing especially as you're told you are going to somehow be kept alive (although that's probably just my child's mind reading that) for a thousand years to be digested in the darkness.
I found it far more horrific in it's original version though, just this big gaping sphincter of doom than when they added the beak.

The beak made it weaker somehow in a way I dunno how to explain. Slightly more comical?

Also, I imagine the stench off the thing.

 

I was really nervous during the whole sequence that ends with "I am your father."

 

Can't say anything really scared me, but the creepy way Yoda looks in the "You will be" scene stuck me with me more than any close-ups of the Emperor.

 

I also imagined being kept alive those thousands of years. To be fair, it is kind of irrelevant info if you’re not gonna be alive for it

 

All the usual scenes made me uncomfortable as a kid but it was many years before I actually kept my eyes on the screen for the Emperor electrocuting Luke. The sheer agony in Luke’s screams plus the seeing his skeleton thing was too much for me.

 

I can’t say that it scared me, but the dianoga is the most memorable eyeball that I have ever seen on film. I vividly remember seeing it in a movie theater as a kid, and it was not even blinking back in 1977. As a matter of fact, the entire garbage compactor scene had me mesmerized. I should have known then that I would be a fan of Edgar Allan Poe.

 

Vader scared me when I was young. I thought he was an evil killing droid and had no idea he was actually human.

 

The scariest part is when Luke goes into that quiet hallway and suddenly Darth Vader jumps out. The whole game between them after he falls from the freezing chamber is really suspenseful and effectively scary.

 

True, that is quite a startling moment. Also a little bit spooky and intimidating is when Vader then lowers his saber and meditates, you don't know
what's going on until the boxes and crates start flying at Luke to bash him from all sides. I loved that. It was as if he was showing contempt for Luke's feeble
lightsaber skills and thought he was only at a level where even fending off a few bits of junk was too much for him.

 

When I was little, and with an over-active imagination, in the darkness under my sister's work desk...I could swear that I saw spaced beady eyes, a wide fanged mouth gapping open at me, and talons un-curling and reaching for me in my bed. And this was shortly after watching "Return of the Jedi"... so I was pretty sure that I was staring at a dog-sized rancor in the darkness.

 

Vader coming at Luke in the cave seemed pretty scary to 7 year old me at the time.

 

As a kid I was scared of The Emperor. I thought his face was so ugly and scary and he could shoot lightning from his fingers.

Ironic isn’t it? I became the thing I feared.

 

I can't remember not having seen Empire Strikes back in 1980, but I remember seeing Yoda for the first time. In the moment he goes from this silly fun character, to realizing he's actually Yoda just a moment before Luke does on screen, and then that scary side.

I think that's why I'd show someone whose never seen Star Wars before the movies in release order. Mostly because of Yoda. Especially now that we get the ghost scene in The Last Jedi with Luke.

 

No nightmares, but I was really worried when Vader stormed through the base on Hoth while Han and Leia were trying to get to her transport, then ultimately to the Falcon. As a kid, that was an excruciating amount of time to figure out your evac.

 

1) Ok, not so much that they flew down the gullet of a giant space worm dwelling inside a large asteroid, instead it was the mynocks. Creepy flying creatures that you barely got a glimpse of other than the suction mouth of one that latched onto the Falcon's cockpit window. Scared the beejezus out of me as a kid watching ESB in the theater.

2) Han being frozen in carbonite. The chamber looks like some mechanical hell and the look on Han's frozen face, yeah, he looks scared and looks like that hurt quite a bit. No thanks.

3) After hearing the Revelation, Luke lets go of the antenna and falls down the air shaft, the impossibly wide, HUGE AIR SHAFT! Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nuh uh, no way. That's my acrophobia on steriods multiplied by a million. Couldn't have done it. I would have been saying, "Sounds good to me Dad. Let's go kick some rebel butt" and grabbed Vader's hand.

 

This.

The audience by now has grown use to the fact when you hear Vader's breathing, he's somewhere near. So it was quite a shock for me as a kid when Vader suddenly jumps out at Luke and with even more ferocity then before. Vader being able to hide his breathing really is presented as a terrifying concept.

 

I recall being scared by various situations in ANH, such as the Jawas capturing the droids, Obi-Wan severing Ponda Baba's arm (although at the time I thought he was severing Dr. Evazan's arm), Luke getting dragged underwater by the dianoga (I literally thought he was dead the first time), and Vader during the Battle of Yavin. Vader frightened me throughout TESB, particularly during his duel with Luke and afterward. I recall finding Jabba and especially Palpatine terrifying in ROTJ.

Granted, I think I felt this way because, ya know, I was nine years old. But up to that point, I had primarily seen Disney movies, and I thought that these were movies for adults. This was evidenced by the use of words like damn and Hell in ANH and TESB. Overall, Jabba's palace seemed dangerous, and I think that Lucas should not have redone this scene:



I like how Lando is just listening to the song. I will say, however, that it was impressive for Femi Taylor to have barely aged, which enabled her to return as Oola. But I felt horrified for her.