10 Most Horrific Horror Movie Scenes Where Nobody Dies
6. The Realistic Cerebral Angiography - The Exorcist
The Exorcist is rightly often held up as one of the most terrifying movies ever made, and at the time of its release in 1973, it was famous for causing audience members to faint and vomit. Yet this mostly wasn't in response to the demonic shenanigans occurring throughout the film, but its extremely realistic and clinical depiction of a cerebral angiography.
After young Regan's (Linda Blair) behaviour becomes concerningly violent, her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) takes her to the hospital for a battery of invasive medical tests. Despite featuring no supernatural hooey whatsoever, this sequence has garnered strong reactions from audiences ever since the film's release, largely due to the detached, matter-of-fact way in which director William Friedkin shoots it.
Seeing a young girl stuck with needles, blood realistically spurting out, and the discomforting sound of the angiography machine doing its thing, makes it feel like we're watching someone being tortured rather than in the hands of medical professionals.
If this isn't eerie enough, the actor who plays the radiologist's assistant in the scene is Paul Bateson, who would later be convicted of murder and is still suspected of being a serial killer to this very day.