10 More Moments That Literally Stopped Horror Movies

The deepest and weirdest cut on this list now, with 1959's Vincent Price-starring The Tingler.

The titular entity is a parasite which uses human hosts, and as with William Castle's other films - namely House on Haunted Hill - Castle relied upon gimmickry to help sell the movie.

One such trick involved pulling back the fourth wall when the titular creature is let loose in a cinema, evidently hoping that audiences watching the movie in an actual cinema will feel especially on-edge.

More to the point, when the Tingler runs amok in the cinema, Dr. Warren Chapin (Price) literally stops the movie - both the one screening in the movie and effectively this movie itself - the screen suddenly going black as he warns audiences not to be alarmed.

The film-within-a-film resumes for a moment, before it suddenly stops running as the Tingler crawls across the projector's lens, broadcasting the Tingler's terrifying shape onto the screen.

At this point the screen again goes black, with Chapin this time imploring the audience to scream for their lives, as screams prevent the Tingler from maintaining a grip on its host.

Evidently Castle expected audiences en masse to scream their lungs out on Chapin's instruction, after which he announces that the Tingler has been paralysed by the screams and the rest of the movie can now resume.