People have been dancing since the dawn of time.
It's one of the oldest artforms known to man.
But while dancing can often lighten the mood, sometimes it can be downright horrific.
While a good guy dance routine can make audiences smile, a bad guy breakdown is guaranteed to
send chills through the movie theater.
From psychopathic thugs with a love of swing tunes to disturbed supervillains with a fondness
for hip-hop, these are the creepiest movie dances of all time.
Candy-colored clown
Almost everything David Lynch has done feels like a dream.
Blue Velvet is certainly no exception.
While it's a little more grounded in reality than some of his other films, the movie has
plenty of eerie moments.
And when it comes to pure, surreal spookiness, it doesn't get any creepier than the "In Dreams"
dance sequence.
The otherworldly floor show gets started when college student Jeffrey Beaumont is abducted
by a savage gangster named Frank Booth.
Soon, Jeffrey, Frank, and their criminal companions wind up in the world's weirdest bordello,
run by a guy named Ben.
At Frank's request, Ben performs Roy Orbison's "In Dreams," an eerie song about a candy-colored
clown.
The entire sequence is more of a nightmare than a dream, and it's one dance that you
won't forget for a long time.
The goblin ball
Directed by Jim Henson, Labyrinth is a beloved coming-of-age fantasy, but really, it's about
a full-grown dude stalking an underage girl.
Okay, it's not really about that, but Jennifer Connelly being 15 does make the film feel
kind of freaky, as David Bowie was 23 years her senior.
And things get extra weird during the masked ball sequence.
After eating an enchanted peach that puts her to sleep, teenaged Sarah winds up in a
dreamlike party that has some serious Eyes Wide Shut vibes.
Everyone is wearing creepy monster masks, and the whole thing feels a little too sinister.
It gets even weirder when Jareth the Goblin King makes his move, seducing the girl with
his '80s hair, waltzing prowess, and tight pants.
Fortunately, when Sarah realizes it's all a distraction to stop her from saving her
brother, she snaps out of her spell and makes a grand exit, literally crashing the party.
Buffalo Bill boogie
The morbid world of Thomas Harris is populated with all sorts of serial killers, but none
of these psychos have moves like Jame Gumb, aka Buffalo Bill, in The Silence of the Lambs.
During his infamous dance scene, Buffalo Bill is down in his basement and totally oblivious
to the screaming woman he's stashed away in his dungeon.
Listening to "Goodbye Horses," Bill sashays around the room, wearing nothing more than
a robe, stockings, and a woman's scalp.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Levine said he'd originally prepared a stripper routine,
but ended up going with more of a David Bowie glam vibe.
Honestly, it would have been creepy either way.
Stuck in the middle
Mr. Blonde is many things.
He's a thief, an ex-con, a murderer, and a sadist, and to top it all off, the man fancies
himself something of a performer.
The nastiest thug in Reservoir Dogs, Blonde gets way too much pleasure torturing a poor
police officer.
"I don't really give a good f—- what you know or don't know.
But I'm gonna torture you anyway."
It's a horrific scene, even if the worst part does happen off-screen, but what makes it
worse is how Blonde is strutting around the warehouse, grooving to Stealers Wheel and
taking his sweet time before getting busy.
His twisted little dance draws out the tension as long as possible before the bloodshed begins.
As far as movie dances go, this is easily one of the most painful to watch.
Black Swan takeover
Sometimes becoming a great artist means working for untold hours until you one day achieve
perfection.
And sometimes it means you're haunted by doppelgangers, and you start morphing into a bird.
At least, that's what happens to Nina Sayers in Black Swan.
"It's my turn!"
A naive ballerina struggling to keep the lead role in Swan Lake, Nina falls deeper and deeper
into madness over the course of the film.
But when she finally gives in to the darkness, she delivers the performance of her life.
And while this creepy dance eventually climaxes with disastrous results, Natalie Portman danced
away from it all with an Oscar for best actress.
Dance ex machina
Everything about Ex Machina is unsettling, from the isolated landscape to Alicia Vikander's
chilling performance.
It's an unbearably tense movie, and it never lets up, even when the sense of dread gives
way to one of the greatest dance scenes in cinema history.
The sci-fi disco gets started after a computer programmer named Caleb is chosen by billionaire
inventor Nathan to help test whether robot Ava can pass for human.
However, things start getting creepy very quickly, and soon, Caleb suspects Nathan's
relationship with his robot Ava might be a tad unhealthy.
But when Caleb goes to confront Nathan about his obsessive behavior, the tech genius ignores
Caleb's questions and starts to boogie beside his mistress, Kyoko.
"However you would not be wasting your time if you were dancing with her."
Their choreography is a little too perfect, and this out-of-nowhere number will give you
the creeps even before you find out the secret to their musical success.
Hedwig busts a move
Anya Taylor-Joy is fantastic in Split, but it's James McAvoy who's constantly stealing
the show.
McAvoy plays Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with 23 different personalities, including a 9-year-old
boy named Hedwig.
But Hedwig isn't pure evil; he's just a scared, confused kid who wants to show Casey his CD
player.
Sensing an opportunity to escape Kevin's dungeon, Casey takes Hedwig up on his offer but winds
up witnessing one of the scariest moments in the movie.
On the one hand, watching McAvoy dance with such enthusiasm is pretty entertaining.
At the same time, Hedwig's dance is downright disturbing.
We're watching a truly sick man here, a guy grooving to hip-hop music while he's got several
girls locked away in his own private prison.
The look on Anya Taylor-Joy's face really sums it up: the perfect mix of horror and
bewilderment.
"Wow"
"I know."