Sometime during my youth (aka “Ancient Days Past” by my kid’s standards), scary movies just got too gross – chopping off body parts, exploding heads…. Just not my brand of entertainment, I guess. Sometimes it’s what is missing that makes it scary in my opinion, not what you see…
That’s why I think the best scary movie that has never been made comes out of the book of Daniel; this is my all-time favorite scary scene from the bible. The story picks up as King Belshazzar (the son of the infamous King Nebuchadnezzar) is throwing a huge bash. All is going fine until the King decides to disrespect the God of Israel (never a good idea).
Daniel 5:2 says “While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them.”
Then in verse 4, they really ask for it… “As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.”
This is the ancient equivalent of the girl in her nightgown that hears a noise in the dark cellar and decides to go check it out… you just know it’s not going to end well…
Kick in the dramatic and powerful harpsichord (or if you’re really old school, pipe organ)… or maybe imagine the “Jaws” theme, to build up suspense for what’s coming…
“Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote.”
Notice what isn’t there… it says “the fingers of a human hand” – that’s it… just floating there writing on the wall… can you hear the scratching sound as the fingernails scratch the words into the plaster? Spine tingling yet?
Then the King does what any one of us would do in this situation. He loses it!
“His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs became weak and his knees were knocking.” (Verse 6)
I mean, who would not be freaking out at this point? I have a feeling Michael Myers would be crying for his Mommy…
So the freaked out King calls in all his ‘wise men’ - and they are clueless. The queen hears the racket and has the same reaction as my wife probably would in this situation. Not a word is said about her panicking - she says “Don’t look so pale!” and tells him to go get Daniel to explain what it means. “And make sure you have clean underwear on…” (okay she probably didn’t say that).
So Daniel shows up….and it’s not good news for King “I’m all that”… Daniel explains that God sent the original Thing (re: Addams Family) to write the words; basically telling Belshazzar his time is up:
“This is the inscription that was written:
mene, mene, tekel, parsin (Verse 25)
(Think about how long that must have taken for Thing to write - that's patient endurance)
“Here is what these words mean:
- Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.
- Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.
- Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Verses 26-28 – “Peres” is the singular of “Parsin” above)
And finally, the big climax:
“That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain...” (Verse 30)
The bible does not explain how he was slain, but I’m thinking a little “artistic license” could be taken here, for the movie version…
King Belshazzar, shaken from the nights events, goes to his bedroom and closes the door. Suddenly, the fingers of a human hand appear out of nowhere and lock the door…the fingers then snuff out the candles (they didn’t have light switches), and as the room goes pitch black, you hear Belshazzar’s final scream…AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!
The End