20 Anxiety-Inducing Moments That'll Terrify You Senseless
8. Marathon Man - "Is It Safe?"
No-one who has watched Marathon Man will ever look at a visit to the dentist the same way again.
In this 1970s conspiracy thriller, Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is an everyman who gets involved in a frightening conspiracy involving a Nazi war criminal, Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), trying to retrieve some diamonds. As Babe's brother Doc (Roy Scheider), a government agent, was investigating Szell, the vile doctor decides to kidnap and torture Babe for information. He does this using his training as a dentist.
Szell subjecting Babe to sadistic dental torture while mechanically repeating the phrase "Is it safe?" is unforgettably horrible, mainly because of the masterful way in which it plays on the very universal fear of going to the dentist. Dustin Hoffman's fantastic acting makes it even more harrowing.
Marathon Man was already a good flick, one which was as paranoid and tense as you'd expect from a '70s thriller, yet it's this sequence that single-handedly ensured that it's lived on in cinematic legend. Screenwriter William Goldman really struck gold here.