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Five-link Friday
One note: If you weren't able to send your nominee for earlier in the week, try again. The mailbag wasn't working for a day or so.
• I once worked for a company where we won the company-wide pumpkin-carving contest by putting a carved pumpkin on a tall co-worker's head and lowering him into a shredder, a la (Sheesh, we didn't turn the shredder ON.) So of course I get a kick every year out of "
• Also on the Halloween side of things, check out this . Just how creepy is this ? And I am so not handy (pardon the pun) enough to build this .
• Always worth a scan, at this time of year especially: The . If I remember correctly, Purple Passion Fruit Sorbet was just awesome, and is sadly missed. That said, if they ever got rid of New York Super Fudge Chunk, I'd be doing some serious mourning.
• Andy Dehnart and I have started MSNBC.com's , so I am especially interested in seeing how other sites tackle the concept. The Internet Movie Database has which looks pretty interesting. But of course, no one can top .
• Remember hunky Brady from "Survivor"? His fiance about what was like being engaged to a contestant. Although this would really have been more interesting if he hadn't gotten the boot so fast.
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Scariest movie lines
I've been pretty upfront about my , and with Halloween approaching, I've been thinking about what makes them scary. Sure, sometimes it's the plot, sometimes the scary music, sometimes the moments that make you jump (whew, it's just the cat, AAUGH, this time it's the monster!).
But oftentimes it's the lines, or in particular, one chilling line that makes goosebumps rise on your arms and a shiver run down your spine.
Like this one, from 1986's
"They mostly come at night. Mostly."
Man, I can't even type that without starting to shake. Part of it was child actor Carrie Henn's dead-on delivery (did you know she ?), part of it was how the film had already built up this incredibly heavy sense of doom that grew from minute to minute.
"Aliens" had a bunch of great lines — "They're comin' out of the walls!", "Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?", "It's a bug hunt!", "Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." But to me, nothing is as heart-stopping as the idea, expressed so innocently by a child, that horror will surely come with the darkness, but then again, it might not wait that long.
Another good one is part of why my generation was severely freaked out whenever we babysat. 1979's had a couple of chilling lines, including the ominous "Have you checked the children?" But I have to say that the most gulp-inducing line in that movie was not delivered by the killer, but by a cop, who calls to say:
"We've traced the calls. They're coming from inside the house."
Never babysit again? I swear, that line made me never want to pick up a phone again.
So now you've got the idea, so go ahead and send in the movie lines that you think are among the scariest. Send in the line, the movie it's from, and any other info, like where the line occurs in the film and why you think it's so doggone scary.
Need a memory refresher? The and are great resources.
I'll post a collection of the best ones sometime before Halloween. Happy haunting!