Like most truly scary scenes, this scene taps into a universal fear. Is there anyone among us who has never feared visiting the dentist? I doubt it. While any visit to the doctor can be frightening, few are as physically painful as a visit to the dentist. However, the pain is alleviated by the fact that the dentist means us no harm; however hard it may be to believe, hes trying to help us. This scene (well, technically, two scenes) takes that safety net away by showing us a visit to the dentist where the dentists ONLY intention is to inflict pain. Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) has already had a hard time of it in this film; hes discovered that his brother (Roy Schieder) is not the businessman Babe thought he was but actually a government assassin. No sooner does Babe make this discovery, however, than his brother is dying in his arms, victim of a fatal stabbing. Babe is given no time to recover from these shocks before hes kidnapped by the very man who killed his brother, a Nazi war criminal named Szell (Laurence Olivier, delivering a brilliant performance). Szell believes that Schieder was part of a conspiracy to rob him of a diamond fortune Szell has stashed in a New York City bank, and he now believes that Schieder has revealed the details of the conspiracy to Babe. Babe, however, knows nothing of his brothers operations. In an effort to extract information from Babe, Szell turns to his old occupation: dentistry. Szell straps Babe to a chair, grabs a dentists pick and begins to probe around in Babes mouth as he asks Babe if its safe for him to retrieve his diamonds. Receiving no answer, Szell attempts to provoke a response by jabbing the pick into a cavity of Babes. This action evokes a scream from Babe, but no information. Szell becomes convinced that the reason for Babes silence is that hes not inflicting enough pain. Szell picks up an electric drill and proceeds to create a new cavity by drilling into one of Babes teeth. The drills whine fills our ears as the device moves closer to the camera. The drill bit becomes blurry and the camera moves up to the stark light thats been illuminating the scene. As we shield our eyes, we hear a truly chilling scream come in over the drills whine. On the basis of those sounds, our mind is left to imagine the torture Babe is enduring. This camera move and use of sound effects is a brilliant stroke on the filmmakers part; the images our mind can conjure are always far worse than anything any filmmaker could show us.