Editorials
[It Came From the ‘80s] The Demonic Nightmares of ‘The Unholy’
With horror industry heavy hitters already in place from the 1970s, the 1980s built upon that with the rise of brilliant minds in makeup and effects artists, as well as advances in technology. Artists like Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr., Tom Savini, Stan Winston, and countless other artists that delivered groundbreaking, mind-blowing practical effects that ushered in the pre-CGI Golden Age of Cinema. Which meant a glorious glut of creatures in horror. More than just a technical marvel, the creatures on display in ‘80s horror meant tangible texture that still holds up decades later. Grotesque slimy skin to brutal transformation sequences, there wasn’t anything the artists couldn’t create. It Came From the ‘80s is a series that will pay homage to the monstrous, deadly, and often slimy creatures that made the ‘80s such a fantastic decade in horror.
On paper, this underseen ‘80s horror film has a great setup. A Catholic priest is put in charge of a church when the people in charge previously die off in mysterious ways. As the police investigate the mysterious deaths, the priest is tempted by a beautiful young woman, and the body count rises thanks to a lurking demon. The demon, often taking the shape of a scantily clad red headed woman, targets those in the act of sinning. A religious horror movie that avoids the possession tropes in favor of a demonic creature feature should be more exciting than The Unholy really is. But it has a great cast, led by Ben Cross as Father Michael, and an epic special effect driven finale that almost successfully erases a dull, dragging middle. That finale is the best part, but it bears little resemblance to the film’s original ending that was cut and reshot for theatrical release.
A special effects heavy film, especially the climactic battle of good versus evil, meant makeup designer Isabel Harkins needed someone a little savvier with the effects. She pulled in Jerry Macaluso, who she had previously worked with, to handle the makeup effects design and creation. Macaluso, however, was only 18 at the time, still living at home and finishing high school. He had no experience with the type of effects this project demanded. It didn’t help that he wasn’t given much direction or supervision, other than the instruction to make the demon in the finale as epic and huge as the Xenomorph Queen from Aliens. Production on The Unholy ultimately meant being tossed into the deep end of special makeup effects for teen Macaluso and his small crew.
Macaluso learned the hard way, often after a lot of trial and error, the tricks and tools of the trade. Creating a 10-foot demonic creature meant building a massive fiberglass mold, which he and his team built in a soundstage. The fumes from the fiberglass resulted in a lot of complaints. Even worse, though, was that he very nearly caused the actor playing the monstrous demon to suffer chemical burns. Not knowing any better, he put a tube in the actor’s mouth (so he could breathe) and locked him inside the fiberglass mold with only trash bags as a buffer between him and the hot foam that was poured into the mold to create the rubber suit. Macaluso’s thought process was that this method would ensure the suit fit the actor well, but he didn’t realize how toxic the chemicals actually were. Luckily, the actor wasn’t injured.
By the end of five months of labor and nearly $300,000 spent on materials, special effects director John Dykstra (Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) wasn’t exactly pleased with Macaluso’s results. Neither was the test audience. There were many issues that the test screening revealed, and one was the finale. Bob Keen, hot off Hellraiser at the time, was brought in as special visual effects director for the reshoots. With him came new crew members, and the entire film’s visual effects were reworked completely. Because of this, John Dykstra asked to have his name removed from the film. As for Macaluso, he never knew he’d been replaced or that there were even reshoots until he saw the theatrical release. Only a single frame of his work can be seen in the final cut, in which his original demon design lunges at the camera.
The theatrical cut of The Unholy is fun, creature heavy, and did have better creature designs. Macaluso took on too big of a responsibility for his youthful inexperience, but the reality is that The Unholy is so dull of a movie that the entire weight of it unfairly sits on the shoulders of the special effects. It’s the special effects and over the top climactic battle set in a church that makes this worth watching, which means Macaluso was almost set up to fail from the beginning. In the end, The Unholy fits the adage that truth is stranger than fiction.
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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