---possible spoiler---
We've all seen this over and over again where you think Jason, Freddy or Michael or whatever evil dude has been snuffed and then they leap out for a "scare take" or whatever the term is, but is Wait Until Dark the first major Hollywood film to do this? Psycho had lots of jolts but not in the same way.
I was wondering this too.
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It is the first "scare take" of a specific type:
The audience thought that Roat was dead...and he wasn't.
However, I would contend that the first "jump out of your seat and scream" sequence is, indeed, in "Psycho" (1960.)
It's not the shower scene.
It's the scene where the detective comes up the stairs and the mother comes rushing out at him and kills him.
I've seen both scenes in theaters ("Psycho" on a re-release), and the screams were huge in both cases.
The shower scene reportedly got huge screams in 1960, but it is "telegraphed" so that people know it is coming.
Oh I definitely jumped out of my seat during the detective getting killed scene in Psycho...My friend jumped WAY out of her seat during Wait Until Dark so I would say Psycho was 1st followed by WUD.
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Who~Dey!!!
"Wouldn't kiss all the asses that they told me too!"
Psycho probably stays with you longer... in general, I'd say it as a movie is scarier than Wait Until Dark. But I think Wait Until Dark has a bigger jump scene. At least, it made ME jump more...
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The first time I saw this, I thought, "This had better not be one of those movies where they make us think Alan Arkin is dead but he really isn't and he jumps out at her right when we've calmed down." I still jumped.
shareI didn't know how far back this tradition went, so I just figured, oh he's going to come back, they always do. But I wasn't prepared for him jumping out of the dark like a panther, that got a pretty big jump out of me.
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