"terrifying spectacle" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is typically used to describe a frightening or horrifying scene or event. Example: The crowd gathered around the accident site, transfixed by the terrifying spectacle of mangled cars and injured victims.
Being made into a show, a humiliating and terrifying spectacle, was part of the torment.
I leapt from pretty high up into this mixture, and just walked into the media tent covered in it, the terrifying spectacle of a mud-and-wood man.
The locked mental wards of our hospitals present a terrifying spectacle of seriously disturbed patients shouting, yelping, gurning and shaking – I know, I've seen them.
And the film that turned their invention, the "cinématographe," into a terrifying spectacle, "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat," contains the definitive and enduring gesture of acknowledged mutual implication, the glance at the lens of the camera.
Within the limits dictated by my various ailments, I would open the door, scan the terrifying spectacle clustering before me, and fling myself against the wall with a deep moan of anguish.
Viktor Grokhovsky, a researcher at Ural Federal University, 200km to the north of Chelyabinsk, missed the beautiful, terrifying spectacle that morning, but within minutes was watching video of the event.
Our joint appreciation for terrifying spectacles is one of the things my mother and I have in common.
Ronald's final emergence from his personal prison is as intense and terrifying a spectacle as a mid-70s Movie of The Week is capable of producing.
The 70s gave us terrifying revenge spectacles and spine-chilling predation tales in Carrie and Halloween, while the 80s arrived with a goldmine of A-grade scares, like The Shining, Poltergeist, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
A minute and a quarter was all it took – 77 seconds to be precise – but it was the most exhilarating, terrifying and triumphant spectacle I've ever witnessed.
The horror version of home movies is both terrifying and irresistible, as is the spectacle of a great writer playing lightly with his genius.
