Nightmare Fuel: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
"One of the most frightening sequences in film history is the scene in which the huntsmen come to get Snow White, forcing her to retreat into the woods, which come alive and try to kill her."
— Steven Spielberg
, who also burst into tears as a child when he saw the Witch kicking the skeleton who died from starvation.
- The theme-park ride "Snow White Scary Adventures" is legendary for freaking out tots.
- The Huntsman attempting to kill Snow White. He doesn't go through with it, but he still draws the dagger and advances on her.
- The Queen in general.
- The Queen, even before her transformation into a witch, has a fixated angry face. It almost looks like a mask sometimes, which makes it eligible for the Uncanny Valley trope page.
- Snow White spotting the Queen staring through the window.
- Just the frontal shots of her Witch form in general. The way she stares into the screen makes you feel like she's watching you. The fact that it's like looking through a point of view shot at those points doesn't help.
- The Queen wanted the hunter to present her with the heart of Snow White when he's done killing her. In the original fairy tale, she planned to EAT the heart.
- The queen kicking the skeleton in her dungeon and laughing adds some gratuitously creepy Black Comedy. "Have a drink!" Because the guy died of thirst with the water jug just out of reach. Especially when you consider that the movie originally was going to show us the guy when he was still alive and not all skeletal. Maybe that wasn't a guy. Maybe it was the previous "fairest of them all"...
- The infamous "transformation into a witch" scene.
- The music during that sequence is absolutely terrifying! The queen's hands change into long and ugly fingers, her hair grows white and you don't have the feeling that swallowing the magic potion is a pleasant experience for her at all...
- The equally infamous moment when she reveals her ugly face to the camera for the first time.
- The final shot of that scene (pictured in the illustration to this article), where the Witch looks directly at the audience and the camera blackens out around her, while only her piercing eyes remain visible. This is really a chilling image that remains with you forever...
- The Scream of Fright, part of the Queen's potion, can genuinely freeze your heart.
- Her leaving the castle. Just the shot of her silently rowing her skiff through the night, surrounded by fog and in the looming shadow of the castle while very ominous music plays. Visually it evokes Phlegyas leading Dante and Virgil across the river Styx while the Queen herself resembles Death heading out to find Snow White, who is completely unaware of the danger already on its way. Spooky stuff.
- The infamous forest scene.
- The creepy looking expressions of the trees with the glowing eyes and gnarled faces.
- The alligator logs.
- The trees' branches trying to grab Snow White by the dress.
- The woods sequence was actually noted as being extremely scary to audiences during its initial theatrical run; some people even rushed out of the theatres in anguish.
- What makes this entire forest sequence particularly terrifying is the fact that for over centuries dark forests have scared travellers by night in similar ways. Every tree can get a scary, threatening shape in the dark. And every child fears the dark just as much.
- The animals' eyes glaring at Snow White from the darkness who look like eerie and evil.
- What the Queen actually does to Snow White is terrifying enough...what about the fate that she had planned for her all along? After Snow eats the apple, the only thing that saves her life is the fact that the dwarves couldn't bear to bury her, and left her in an above-ground coffin instead. Imagine what would have happened if they hadn't...
- The Magic Mirror. It having an unearthly, creepy face and voice must've scared a lot of young ones senseless throughout the film's shelf life.
- The birds are suspicious of the Queen at first, but they only try to attack her when they see the vultures following her.
- The evil Queen plummeting to her doom, being crushed afterwards by the very boulder she was trying to push onto the dwarfs. This is a pretty nasty death when you think about it.
- There's a certain evil look the flesh-hungry vultures give each other from their perches when the evil Queen falls to her doom that's... pretty creepy, to say the least.