Editorials
10 of the Best Post-Credits Scenes in Horror Movie History
The Marvel Cinematic Universe may have popularized the use of post-credits scenes, but they’ve been around for decades. One of the earliest appearances of the post-credit scene, also referred to as a stinger, is from Night of the Living Dead. Its use picked up speed in the ‘80s and continued to gain momentum until the unstoppable freight train of superhero movies employed them to tease future entries. In truth, the stinger serves many purposes; some filmmakers use it to set up sequels, others as a wry fourth wall wink to the viewer, a punchline to an inside joke, or as a means of wrapping up loose plot threads. No matter the intent behind it, the post-credit scene delivers one final treat to those that stayed in their seats while the end credits played.
In a genre where evil rarely dies, it’d no surprise that horror has always remained at the forefront when it comes to applying the post-credit stinger. Here are 10 of the all-time best.
SLiTHER
Pour one out for the sequel we never got, teased by this stinger. At the end of Slither, Grant is blown to smithereens, and the three survivors walk off into the sunrise. Earth is free from the immediate threat of the alien parasite, and cue the happily ever after for our plucky protagonists. A post-credit scene reveals that curiosity killed the cat, though. Literally. A cat wanders into the frame to inspect a pulsating glob of alien-Grant flesh. As it begins to lick the rattling mass, the screen cuts to black, and it howls. The implication is clear; the parasite just found a new host.
Sadako vs. Kayako
Freddy vs. Jason concluded with neither one truly winning or losing; Freddy’s severed head winks at the viewer. The battle between J-horror ghosts Sadako and Kayako took a very different approach. The third act confrontation between cursed spirits saw the two collide to create something deadlier. Called Sadakaya, this new spirit captured the best of both worlds, taking on Sadako’s appearance and Kayako’s infamous death rattle. Worse, the merging of the two might make them completely unstoppable. The abrupt ending left fates unknown, but the post-credit scene reveals that Sadako’s cursed tape now contains Sadakaya.
Paranormal Activity 4
No matter how you feel about this sequel, its post-credit scene makes for a fantastic example of how to tease the next entry. This quick 30-minute scene, through handheld POV, sees someone enter into a convenience store of sorts featuring shelves lined with occultist objects. Out of nowhere, a strange woman pops out and warns, in Spanish, that this is only the beginning. They flee quickly. This seemingly out of left field clip, having nothing whatsoever to do with the previous film, hinted at Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones in the most intriguing way.
Trick or Treat
A rock concert should always end with a good encore, and this heavy metal horror film honors that tradition with a humorous stinger. The movie about a teen obsessed with metal forced to thwart the demonic plans of his undead idol boasts a few cameos by notable rock gods, including Ozzy Osborne. Playing television evangelical Rev. Aaron Gilstrom, Osborne’s brief appearances are relegated to TV spots in which the Reverend goes on anti-metal, Satanic Panic style tirades apropos of the era. After the credits, he appears once more to proclaim about the film, “this could kick you off into becoming an absolute pervert!” It’s an early example of the meta wink to the audience.
Urban Legends: Final Cut
This sequel took the concept of its predecessor and placed in a different setting with a whole new set of unrelated characters. Film students at a prestigious film school find themselves getting offed in urban legend inspired ways. The killer isn’t out for revenge this time, but to claim a student’s feature as his own while hiding all traces of the truth through murder. Meaning that the villain in part two isn’t nearly as over the top unhinged as Rebecca Gayheart’s Brenda Bates was. Luckily, she makes an appearance in the stinger. Now a nurse in an asylum, she leans over a patient’s shoulder – Final Cut’s killer – and declares they have much in common… before wheeling him away.
Cult of Chucky
The post-credit scene of Curse of Chucky brought original protagonist Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) back into the fold. For much of its sequel, Cult of Chucky, Andy works to save Nica (Fiona Douriff) from Chucky and the asylum where she’s incarcerated. It doesn’t end on a positive note for our heroes, so this stinger works both as fan service and an offering of hope. Returning to the tortured Chucky head in Andy’s home, he looks on as a mysterious figure appears at the back door. It’s Kyle (Christine Elise), Andy’s foster sister from Child’s Play 2, promising the doll that the torture fun will continue.
Happy Death Day 2U
This hook technically comes mid-credits, not post, but it’s a substantial setup for a continuation for a third entry, so we’re counting it. With the time loops closed and the lives of the gang back to normal, this scene sees government officials arrive to bring the group into the DARPA lab, where the time device has been relocated. The agents view it as a powerful weapon, and they want Tree (Jessica Rothe) and friends to show them how to use it. When Tree says she knows the perfect test subject, the camera cuts to mean girl Danielle (Rachel Matthews), who sits up in bed screaming. It’s a robust scene that lays out the direction this ever-evolving series is headed; if and when greenlit, of course.
Constantine
Constantine (Keanu Reeves) considers himself a loner; his job ridding the world of demons is a dangerous one. Throughout the film, he’s hesitant to let his young driver Chas Kramer (Shia LeBeouf) tag along, no matter how eager the young protégé gets. Reluctantly, he allows Chas to accompany him to the hospital where the final confrontation occurs, and Chas tragically dies in his quest to help his mentor. This stinger sees Constantine paying respects to his ward’s grave, setting his lighter down as an offering before leaving. While his back is turned, his fallen ally lets him know that he’s doing just fine in the afterlife.
The Collector
This end-credit scene gives a brief glimpse of Arkin’s fate after the film’s ending, which sees the Collector seek vengeance upon Arkin by ambushing the ambulance and capturing him. It’s an eerie scene; the masked killer calmly watches home videos while sitting on a trunk, with a screaming Arkin locked inside. More than a brief hint that this battle is far from over, it’s an effectively moody moment that shows things are starting to get very personal between the Collector and Arkin.
House on Haunted Hill
Evelyn Price (Famke Janssen) and Steven H. Price (Geoffrey Rush) present one of horror’s most unhealthy marriages of all time. The deep-seated malice between them gave the ghosts of the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane a way to finish off the descendants of the sadistic staff once and for all. The evil Darkness consumed Evelyn and Steven in the climax of the film, but not even death can dissolve this toxic marriage. The post-credit scene reveals the Prices’ spirits are doomed to be tortured by Vannacutt’s patients for eternity; an appropriately dark ending for this deadly duo.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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