3. Pet Sematary – Jud Crandle Gets His Achilles Tendon Split, Adam’s Apple Bitten
Unlike the 2019 remake, Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary demonstrated some remarkable boldness by sticking close to the Stephen King book of the same name and bringing the nightmarish Gage Creed to the big screen (it obviously helps that King himself wrote the screenplay). There are some small moments that haven’t aged well, but what’s most important is that the sequence featuring Gage vs. Jud Crandle absolutely has, and it still registers as one of the most horrific deaths in a Stephen King movie.
The unsuspecting Jud first gets his Achilles tendon slashed by Gage, who wields his father’s scalpel, and then, when the innocent neighbor is prone on the floor, the two-year-old zombie chomps down on his throat. If you haven’t already noticed, violence against children has already been a big part of this list, but this is a reversal of that, and it has a kind of horrific extra edge as a result.