Editorials
[Butcher Block] The True Gore Nightmare of ‘Nightmare’
Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
Also known as Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, this 1981 slasher earned the distinction of being one of 39 persecuted Video Nasties. It also marked the one and only Video Nasty where the distributor served time in prison for refusing to release to trim a single second of the gore and violence; 18 months for distributing obscene material. It’s a unique slasher that almost forgets to be a slasher until the final act, with most of the narrative following schizophrenic George as he escapes his physician and heads off to his childhood home. Playing out like a psychological mystery melodrama for the much of the runtime, the carnage is mostly minimal save for the fantastic opening and the epic grand finale, and it’s easy to see why the gore ruffled a few feathers at the British Board of Film Classification.
The notoriety involved with being a Video Nasty isn’t the only controversy that overshadowed Nightmare, however, but the confusion over the film’s special effects as well. Early prints of the film and marketing material credited special effects master Tom Savini as the film’s special effects director. Posters for Nightmare even referenced Savini’s work on Friday the 13th and Dawn of the Dead.
The issue, though, was that Savini vehemently denied working on the film beyond a consultant capacity. He also happened to be too busy working on Creepshow at the time to pick up any other film projects at the time. He sued, unhappy with the director, Romano Scavolini, for trying to cash in on his professional name. While Scavolini has long since maintained that Savini did most of the gore effects, and photographs place him on set, later cuts have excluded Savini’s name in the credits. While the truth of who exactly handled what on special effects remains murky, Savini’s influence on the film is notable. On the other hand, though, as over the top and gruesome as the finale gets, it doesn’t really look like Savini’s work.
Who did handle the gore and makeup effects, and corroborated Savini’s side of events, was artist Ed French (Sinister 2, The Midnight Meat Train). Prosthetics were handled by Les Larrain, and the film also marked the first credit for special effects artist Cleve Hall (Re-Animator, TerrorVision). In other words, the special effects were still in good hands regardless of the misuse of Savini’s name for the sake of publicity.
Whereas most movies that graced the persecuted Video Nasties list were far too tame and owed a lot to its marketing and cover boxes for earning its reputation, Nightmare is one that makes no question that it deserved its rank. The opening nightmare sequence only gives the barest glimpse of the utter bloodbath that reigns down at the end. Nightmare breaks the horror taboo of killing children, but it also takes it a step further by involving the goriest of familicides on celluloid. From a slasher standpoint, Scavolini takes his time to get the plot moving, but rewards views with a creepy stalker slasher final act and one insane ending. It’s a shame that it’s been overshadowed and underseen.
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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