Movies
A ‘Thirst’ For Redemption: 12 Movies They Won’t Show You At Bible Camp!
To go along with the exclusive clip we just posted, Bloody-Disgusting’s Ryan Daley has compiled a very special list in honor of Focus Features’ forthcoming Thirst, which arrives in theaters July 31. A huge subplot of Park Chan-wook’s film is the conflict between faith and sin. So we decided to throw together a list that we like to call “A ‘Thirst’ For Redemption: 12 Movies They Won’t Show You At Bible Camp!” Read on and then say 10 Hail Marys.
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In Thirst, the new horror film from highly acclaimed director Chan-Wook Park (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance), a well-respected priest is inadvertently transfused with vampire blood while volunteering for a vaccine development project. Suddenly cursed with an insatiable appetite for human blood, the clergyman is torn between faith and desire. His unwavering belief in God forbids him to kill, even as his instinctive need for the red stuff grows stronger and stronger. Thirst opens in selected cities on July 31st.
Like Thirst, many past horror films have explored the ages-old conflict between faith and sin, some with lessons of dubious spiritual worth lurking in the subtext. What follows is not a definitive list of the hundreds of films that explore similar pseudo-religious themes, but simply a flesh baker’s dozen of beloved horror films you’re not likely to find in God’s Blu-Ray collection.
THICK MEATY SPOILER ALERT!!! Major plot points are discussed below.
“It’s like a wire inside me getting tighter and tighter.“-Rosemary Woodhouse
After being slipped a roofie by her Satan-worshipping neighbors, young Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) is date-raped by Lucifer. She chooses to carry his evil spawn to full term, only to be understandably horrified when her baby is born with glow-in-the-dark devil eyes.
Moral: Only party with people you trust.
“Your mother sucks cocks in Hell, Karras, you faithless slime.“-Regan MacNeil, as possessed by Pazuzu
The ancient demon Pazuzu spews outrageous blasphemy, yaks soup onto nearby clergy, masturbates with sharp-looking holy relics, and airplane spins visiting neighbors out of upper floor windows, all while possessing the body of helpless 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair).
Moral: When provoked, evil spirits aren’t above resorting to “yo’ mama“insults.
“You’ll see me in hell, Mr. Thorn. There we will share out our sentence.“-Father Brennan
Plagued by a sudden baby shortage after his wife’s stillbirth, diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) secretly obtains a black market infant from a mysterious priest slinging babies in the hospital hallway. Thorn eventually discovers that the adopted boy hates church, attracts dangerous dog breeds, is always accompanied by eerie music, and inspires others to commit suicide, all of which are textbook signs of the anti-Christ. Daddy Thorn eventually attempts to execute the youngster with a dull-looking ritual dagger.
Moral: Stay away from jackals. Jackals are Satan’s booty calls.
“And the Lord visited Eve with the curse, and the curse was the curse of blood!“-Margaret White (Piper Laurie)
Religious fanatic Margaret White is alarmed when her daughter Carrie finally gets her period at age 16. After Mrs. White delivers a bible-thumping lecture lamenting her daughter’s “dirty pillows“and the dangers of consensual sex, an enraged Carrie is compelled to burn down the high school on the night of the prom, with all of the students still inside.
Moral: Girls who don’t get their period until age 16 are highly likely to commit acts of mass murder.
“No matter how cleverly you sneak up on a mirror, your reflection always looks you straight in the eye.” Louis Cyphre
Rumpled private detective Harry Angel is hired by a Luciferian Robert DeNiro to locate a missing singer who has bartered away his soul. Along the way, Harry eagerly spends his spare time boning voodoo enthusiast Lisa Bonet, who introduces chicken blood and intense African chanting to their love making routine.
Moral: Satan likes eggs.
“The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits… pain and pleasure, indivisible.” Frank Cotton
As a reward for solving a complex puzzle box, everyman Frank Cotton is whisked away to hell to be tortured for all eternity by the malicious Cenobites. Luckily he manages the occasional escape back to our dimension, lacking skin, to request blood offerings from any willing ex-girlfriends.
Moral: Hell isn’t such a bad place as long as you’re into the whole S&M scene.
“I can lay you out and fill your mouth with your mother’s feces, or we can talk.” Lucifer (Viggo Mortensen)
Disgusted with God for allowing lowly humans into heaven, Gabriel the sort-of-dickish angel of death, recently fallen from God’s grace, begins a sarcastic reign of destruction on earth. Gabe intends to locate the most evil human in the world, and recruit him into a celestial cage match against God. An innocent little girl is later used for soul storage.
Moral: Fallen angels and charismatic Lucifers are way cooler than good guys.
“We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it’s common, it’s trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I’m setting the example.“-John Doe (Kevin Spacey)
Nihilist wackjob John Doe–in an attempt to partially cleanse the earth of sinners–gruesomely murders a half dozen innocents after deeming each of them guilty of violating one of the seven deadly sins. He caps his divinely inspired murder spree by decapitating a police detective’s pregnant wife.
Moral: If you’re using pine tree air fresheners to mask the stench of a decaying body, you’re not required to release them from the plastic an inch-at-a-time.
“Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse.“-Dr. Weir (Sam Neill)
After enduring a lengthy detour through the bowels of hell, an empty spaceship finds a dimensional gateway back to our solar system. Exploring the interior of the haunted vessel, a small crew led by Lawrence Fishburne is killed one-by-one by a unseen presence of unflinching evil. The final reel carnage is highlighted by disturbing visual depictions of hell itself, complete with barbed wire, metal hooks, and other unspeakable means of cruelty and suffering.
Moral: If Satan puts you in a trance and makes you wander out into space wearing only jeans and a flannel shirt, it’s in your best interest to snap out of it before the first air lock is secure.
“Guilt is like a bag of fuckin’ bricks. All ya gotta do is set it down.“-John Milton (a.k.a. Satan)
Young Southern lawyer Keanu Reeves is recruited by Satan (Al Pacino) to work at a prestigious law firm in the big city. Keanu embraces the task of aiding murderers and child molesters with such vigor, he neglects to notice when Satan rapes his wife behind his back. Later, Satan pushes his personal incest agenda by tempting Keanu into having a sweaty go at his own hot, topless sister.
Moral: If Satan says your wife is a “7“in bed, she probably is.
“Killing people is wrong, destroying demons is good. Don’t worry, God will send you your own list when you’re older.“-Dad Meiks
Doting father Bill Paxton schools his young-`uns on the proper way to abduct and murder those folks who have a demon inside of them, working from a secret master list delivered by an angel. To Paxton’s unbridled joy and paternal affection, one of his two sons embraces the murder routine, while the son who actually respects human life is treated like a complete pussy.
Moral: Your daddy ain’t never gonna love you if you cain’t kill folks like he says.
“You lock someone in a dark room. They begin to suffer. You feed that suffering, methodically, systematically, and coldly. And make it last.”
B.F.F.s Ana and Lucia stumble onto a cult of religious fanatics who believe that some women–if tortured severely enough–will experience pain of such depth and intensity that they literally see the face of God. The final “transcendence” is apparently more likely to occur if the woman is skinned alive and chained to a metal bar.
Moral: If you really want God to pay attention to your prayers, you’re gonna need a tater peeler, some rubbing alchohol, and a couple of Lortab.
THIRST arrives in theaters July 31 from Focus Features
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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