Editorials
Special Feature: Most Memorable Moments 2010!
Even in the midst of a truly bad horror flick, every so often there are those moments that stick in your mind long after you’ve left the movie theater and gone on about your daily routine. Whatever your opinion on the crop of horror movies released over the past year, there were undeniably a few isolated moments or scenes that stood out above the rest, and B-D reporter Chris Eggertsen has compiled a month-to-month accounting of his most memorable from 2010. From the good to the bad to the downright ugly, the following bits were highlights in this year of fallen angels, human centipedes, animal/human hybrids, razor-toothed killer fish and…Miley Cyrus vehicles? See inside for the full list…and let us know what your own most memorable moments were in the comments!
Nevertheless, there were still several buzz-worthy moments/scenes in horror movies this year – some for the right reasons, some for the wrong, and others that simply made our jaws drop in “WTF?” disbelief (there are also a couple non-horror entries – terrifying in their own way – that made the cut for those months that were light on genre fare). Following are a few of the highlights, from month to month:
Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
Film: Legion
Moment: Sweet old woman turns demonic
In the absolutely terrible Legion, which squandered a decent cast and some very good cinematography by virtue of a horrible script and lame, generic characters, there was one terrific moment that pointed to the type of movie it could have been. When a seemingly amiable, harmless old grandma (Jeanette Miller) takes a seat at the roadside diner that serves as the film’s main setting, she begins engaging in pleasant conversation with pregnant waitress Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) that quickly turns sinister when she utters the darkly comic (given the source) line: “Your fuckin’ baby’s gonna burn.” What follows is a fun action sequence in which the smiling old woman transforms into a hideous demon and bites the neck of a diner patron, crawls across the ceiling, and takes a frying pan to the head before being gunned down by the hilariously clichéd ex-“gang banger” character played by Tyrese Gibson. The marketing team at the studio was wise to heavily feature this scene in the trailer, considering it was the only moment in the movie that effectively (and intentionally) integrated both the horror and comedy elements implicit in the film’s absurd premise.
Film: Frozen
Moment: Wolf attack
The best wolf attack in horror in the month of February should have been in Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman, but sadly that movie was mostly a bore that did almost nothing interesting in its updating of the 1941 classic. No, instead that honor goes to Frozen, the severely underrated (its admittedly far-fetched moments notwithstanding) Adam Green “trapped-on-a-ski-lift” flick that was so good that it’s hard to believe it was directed by the same guy who helmed the atrocious Hatchet II. This scene, in which Kevin Zegers’ character – legs broken after attempting an ill-advised jump off the lift – is set upon by a pack of hungry wolves, was, in a film filled with squirm-inducing, edge-of-your-seat moments, the squirmiest moment of all. The back-and-forth cutting between Zegers’ frantic wails of “Don’t you let her watch!” and the horrified reactions of Emma Bell and Shawn Ashmore’s characters as they hang helplessly 40 feet above was by far one of the most terrifying moments in movies this year.
Film: The Last Song
Moment: All of them
So there weren’t really any theatrical or DVD horror releases in March, but Miley Cyrus’ The Last Song comes close enough. Being stuck on a plane to Moscow in coach for 15 hours will make you do some crazy things, and one of the craziest acts I engaged in was actually settling in to check out what I thought would be a laugh-riot of unintentional comedy after running out of other flicks to watch on the in-flight system. Sadly, The Last Song was not funny at all, unintentionally or otherwise; in fact, watching the grating Cyrus (whose voice sounds like that of a 40-year-old woman who’s smoked two packs a day for the last 25 years) unbearably mugging and playing the clichéd “bad girl” for 45 minutes (I couldn’t make it through the entire movie) was by far one of the most horrifying experiences I had at the movies this year. While I didn’t actually watch it until sometime in September, I feel nothing but pity for the parents who were forced to sit through this travesty with their young Hannah Montana-loving children on its opening weekend in March.
Film: The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
Moment: Katsuro shits in Lindsay’s mouth
This one kinda goes without saying, doesn’t it? Although you don’t actually see anything except the nausea-inducing expression on Lindsay’s face as she’s forced to swallow Katsuro’s excrement – preceded by the Japanese man’s proclamation of “shit, I have to shit!” – the implication alone is more than enough to make it the most memorable horror moment of April 2010 (if not the entire year). For those who were brave enough to watch it, The Human Centipede broke ground that no one frankly asked to be broken, and this scene presented the moment in which the horrifying concept of having a person’s mouth grafted onto another person’s anus reached its logical, puke-worthy nadir. Quite simply, it’s one of those images that, try as you might to purge it (no pun intended) from your mind, you simply cannot.
Film: Sex and the City 2
Moment: The trailer
Another month light on theatrical horror releases, May’s most memorable horror moment for me was watching the trailer for the latest cinematic travesty following Carrie and the gang and literally feeling as if I wanted to hit the nearest bathroom stall and puke my fucking guts out. See! The girls trotting out their tired, entitled asses again in even more heinously ugly couture fashions. Watch! Bat-shit crazy Liza Minnelli performing at a horrifically clichéd gay uber-wedding. Laugh! At the ladies riding on camels in the Arabian Desert. Behold! The girls trotting out their tired, entitled asses again in heinously ugly Middle Eastern-inspired couture fashions. Witness! “Cougar” Samantha drinking martinis poolside at their posh Abu Dhabi hotel and hitting on a guy 30 years her junior. It’s enough to make you lose faith in humanity, a concept more horrifying than anything else I can think of.
Film: Splice
Moment: Sarah Polley is raped by half-human/half-animal hybrid Dren
While it’s admittedly a flawed piece of work, I actually enjoyed Splice for all the reasons that a good majority of people hated it. The fact is, the over-the-top moments in the film are the ones that, whether you loved or loathed them, are by far the most memorable in the movie. Indeed, there are several worthy bits here – the scene where Adrien Brody’s character has sex with Dren, for example, or the deliriously awesome scene when two earlier specimens massacre each other in front of an audience of dozens of stuffy, moneyed spectators. But it’s the moment near the end when Polley’s character Elsa is raped (and, we later find out, impregnated) by Dren – now transformed from female to male and created via a strain of Elsa’s own DNA (incest, anyone?) – that really makes one’s jaw drop to the floor.
Film: Predators
Moment: Unconscious skydiving
This summer’s Predators didn’t waste time in getting down to business, opening with a scene in which Adrien Brody’s character Royce awakes to find himself freefalling through space and attached to an unopened parachute, having to quickly engage it before hitting the jungle floor of the alien planet below. It was a kick-ass way to start the movie off, and it rarely let up from there (save for a prolonged “intermission” involving Laurence Fishburne’s character), making it one of the best action movies of the year – and one which Fox didn’t seem to care too much about, given how little marketing muscle they put behind it. This slam-bang curtain-raiser was a perfect, disorienting way to start the movie off, and a brilliant means of introducing the film’s central group of trained killers; for me, it stands out as one of the best opening scenes of any action movie in recent memory.
Film: Piranha 3D
Moment: Spring Break Massacre
There were few moments in horror 2010 as go-for-broke as the feeding frenzy that occurred at the center of killer-fish remake Piranha 3D, in which boatloads of college-aged Spring Break revelers are attacked and devoured by the titular (no pun intended) prehistoric creatures. The sequence was a boon for gore lovers everywhere -it certainly ranks way up on the list of most blood-drenched scenes in movie history – with a plethora of T&A, ravaged flesh, floating body parts, numerous disembowelments, bare-breasted bodies sliced in two by wayward metal cables, scalping by outboard motor, a regurgitated human penis, and – for haters – the bloody smashed head of Eli Roth. The film may have been uneven on the whole, but this particular sequence – deftly handled by kinetic director Alexandre Aja – made it all worth it.
Film: Resident Evil: Afterlife
Moment: Claire and Alice battle the Executioner
While Afterlife was just as silly as the other three installments in the franchise, the 3D (it was shot with the Fusion Camera System, the same one used for James Cameron’s Avatar) was insanely impressive and helped to salvage the boneheaded script and often subpar acting. The part where Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Claire (Ali Larter) face off with the axe-wielding Executioner was the action sequence that most stands out to me, in that it was one of the best uses of 3D I’ve ever seen. Yes, there is the expected gimmicky moment when the axe flies right at the audience, but the scene goes further than that; shot in slo-mo and taking place inside some sort of communal shower, this sequence utilizes the power of 3D extremely well, with every piece of shattered tile, every drop of showering water, every chunk of exploded flesh registering with crystal clarity that makes the 3D landscape come off like a fully-realized world. While it would’ve been great to have utilized the stunning technology in service of a better movie, it’s still a great example of what 3D should look like in the 21st century (i.e. no more post-conversion!).
Film: I Spit On Your Grave
Moment: Shotgun up the ass
Let’s get one thing straight: as a movie, I Spit on Your Grave was pretty terrible. Jennifer (played by the subpar Sarah Butler) goes from hapless victim to cold-blooded, sadistic killer in one of the most unconvincing transformations in movie history, and the offending group of rednecks is about as generic as they come. But one thing I can say about it was that it was never boring, mostly due to some horrifically effective rape scenes in the first half and some pretty awesome and creative “revenge kills” in the second. While the “lye bathtub” and “fish guts” murders were damn impressive, screenwriters Stuart Morse and director Steven R. Monroe saved the best for last, with the most cold-hearted member of the group of rapists getting a shotgun blast up the ass and out through his gaping pie-hole (giving a whole new meaning to the term “ass-to-mouth”). Best of all, they actually showed the grisly end result – a truly impressive bit of practical effects work that capped off an otherwise underwhelming flick.
Film: Skyline
Moment: Poolside slo-mo
In one of the best moments of unintentional comedy in 2010, the Strause Brothers made the rather ill-advised decision to render the breakneck escape of several characters – fleeing the clutches of a gigantic alien invader – in not-so-glorious slow motion. I can’t quite put my finger on why it was so funny; maybe it was the unfortunate wardrobe choice foisted on actress Brittany Daniel (black athletic pants and running shoes, off the shoulder purple top), maybe it was the incongruously sunny setting (the patio of a posh L.A. residential tower), maybe it was merely a case of awkward timing. Whatever it was, the entire audience at the screening I attended (myself included) burst out into peals of spontaneous laughter when this bit played. Sure, the goofiest moment in one of the year’s goofiest movies was memorable for all the wrong reasons, but memorable it was nonetheless.
Clip:
Film: Black Swan
Moment: Surprise! Mom’s in your room
It’s hard to choose a most memorable moment from Darren Aronofsky’s outrageous masterpiece – filled as it is with expertly filmed dance sequences and the vivid hallucinations of Natalie Portman’s character Nina Sayers – but at the end of the day it has to be the scene in which Nina begins engaging in some serious masturbatory action only to look over in the midst of it to discover that her unhinged mother (Barbara Hershey, super creepy) had been asleep in a chair a few feet away all along. The completely left-field moment is played totally over-the-top, accompanied as it is by a jagged blast of music and rapid close-up, and it was met with a huge reaction from the audience I saw it with. Engaging in a little self-gratification with your parents in the room is every red-blooded human being’s worst nightmare, and Aronofsky effectively played the moment with a burst of bombastic, deliciously unexpected comedy.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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