It ain't all Ewoks and Hoojibs. The galaxy can be a very, very frightening place. In 30 years of Star Wars storytelling, there are many examples of chilling moments, be it on the screen in the movies, in the dark corners of a video game level or within the pages of a comic or graphic novel. What follows is an inventory of 20 fright-filled highlights, not necessarily ranked in order but listed for your Halloween reading enjoyment.
20. Mynock Made You Jump
Some may accuse it as being a cheap "spring-loaded cat" moment, the kind of easy startle often found in horror movies when a forgotten feline, television or cell phone suddenly makes its presence known. In The Empire Strikes Back, while Leia Organa sits in false security aboard a darkened Millennium Falcon, something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye. She leans forward, squinting into the darkness, and there is no comforting strains of a John Williams score to fill out the unsettling silence. Instead, there's a sudden squawk as something slaps up against the transparisteel viewport and slathers against the window with a somewhat obscene drool-filled mouth.
Carrie Fisher will tell you that she had nothing to react to when they shot that scene. The mynock design was developed so late in production that none of the various published adaptations of Empire ever accurately describe the nasty looking beast, making this particular scare unique to the cinematic version of the story. For tightly wound viewers who tend to flinch at sudden jolts, the sloppy mynock kiss is good for a few tossed kernels of popcorn.
