10 Horror Movie Scenes That Genuinely Terrified Actors

Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist boasts, not one, but two scenes where the actors were utterly terrified.

In one scene, Oliver Robins' character, Robbie, finds himself being strangled by a possessed clown doll. During filming, the toy's arm got stuck, causing it to throttle Robins for real. Worst still, nobody helped him at first since everyone on-set thought Robins was just REALLY good at acting.

But that's not all. When JoBeth Williams' character, Diane, falls into her muddy swimming pool, she becomes understandably spooked when several skeletons rise from the water. Luckily, JoBeth didn't need to act scared in this moment, since she thought she was about to die.

Bizarrely, it wasn't the skeletons that scared her. Because the crew set up numerous electrical cables around the pool, JoBeth was deeply concerned one of them would fall into the water and fry her to a crisp. The film's producer, a young whippersnapper called Steve Spielberg, waded into the water with JoBeth to assure her there was no danger. It all worked out, since JoBeth nailed the scene and the filmmakers captured her reaction on camera.