Name a fantastic scene in an otherwise mediocre horror film.
The movie was RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3, starring an acquaintance of mine who worked for us on .COM FOR MURDER – Melinda Clarke (the “hot mom” on TV’s The OC).
In ROTLD3 Melinda did a great job being the “zombified” love interest who empowers herself by piercings and cuttings – the ultimate makeover. Suddenly, she was slicing and piercing and inserting broken glass where it shouldn’t be inserted, becoming this ultimate zombie badass (and yes, sexy) chick. It kept me from turning off the television. It probably did the same for a lot of other guys and gals.
If that scene hadn’t occurred, that movie would have been lost to memory like so many other zombie movies. As it was, I remembered the scene enough to tease Melinda about it. I also teased her about KILLER TONGUE…
I can think of two off the top of my head:
DEEP RED – In a masterstroke of misdirection, a quiet scene of ratcheted tension and suspense comes to a head when a ventriloquist’s dummy bursts out of a closet. Not from the middle of the frame, where the camera is focused on, but from the side. What makes it even worse is that the fucker is laughing. (I know it’s sacrilege to some to even suggest Dario Argento is mediocre, but this movie is narratively challenged to the point where it qualifies as a semi-snoozer.)
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT – People claim this movie is boring – and for about half of it, they’re right – but I’d like to think it’s all part of a master plan so it smack you over the head with the final image in the basement of that damn old house in the middle of the forest. Never has standing in the corner been so terrifying. Even though I knew what was coming, having my worst fears confirmed was utterly chilling.
The one scene that comes immediately to mind is the opening sequence of the recent Dark Castle/Warner release of GHOST SHIP. That sequence was so great and amazing! All those people getting cut in half. It was shocking, gory and made me smile. It really started off the movie with a bang… too bad the rest of the film is such a whimper.
A pair leapt to mind, so I’m going to go with two, if that’s okay:
1) The suicide of the nanny at the beginning of The Omen. Oooh how I sighed when I saw countless articles refer to this summer’s Omen as “a remake of the ’70s horror classic”–there was very little “classic” about that turgidly staged Rosemary’s Baby/Exorcist knock-off–but that hideously monumental moment was a knockout. The nanny’s iconic positioning, her wide-eyed grin, her cheery “Look at me, Damien! It’s all for you!”, and the shocking suddenness of her demise added up to a scene far better than the movie it was stuck in.
2) The woman in room 217 from the TV mini-series version of The Shining. From start to finish this project felt like a Very Brady Shining– who wants to see a horror movie that reinforces the importance of family, for chrissakes? And Steve, my man, Kubrick never decided he could write novels better than you could, so how ’bout you extend him the reciprocal courtesy, m’kay? But when little bucktoothed Danny pulled back the curtain and saw that bright-eyed talking corpse looking back at him, my heart didn’t stop pounding until the next commercial break.
I thought this was going to be an easy question to answer but it ended up being far more difficult than I imagined. I was going to talk about a scene in I Know What You Did Last Summer but after re-examining the scene I realized that I couldn’t call the film mediocre.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a mediocre film. I enjoyed elements of it but compared to the original it really doesn’t stand up. The scene I’ve chosen to discuss is the opening sequence of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 which begins after the prologue and runs for approximately 9 minutes.
This scene focuses on two douchebags who are on their way to Dallas for the weekend. These guys totally epitomize 1980’s stereotypes of preppy jocks; from the Mercedes they are driving to their neatly coiffed hairstyles. These jerk offs call the local radio station and tie up the phone lines much to the chagrin of Stretch the DJ. They end up running a pickup off the road and head on down the highway. Day turns to night and Stretch wisely plays the Cramps and Oingo Boingo’s “No One Lives Forever.” Our two heroes have continued harassing Stretch and end up on a deserted bridge where they are confronted with the pickup they ran off the road. The driver wisely quips this classy line, “Back off pig fucker.”
The Mercedes moves forward and the chase is on. The pickup barrels across the bridge backwards when a shadowy figure in the pickup bed rises. The preps are disillusioned and the figure rises again, with a chainsaw in his hands. The Buzz is Back…and so is Leatherface. Stretch is still listening and ends up broadcasting the murder of these dicks on live radio.
Tom Savini does some great makeup work. Leatherface does a fantastic little dance with the corpse of the Hitchhiker from the first film. Tobe Hooper injects some humour into the scene and the actors pull it off. You don’t care about these guys and you’re glad to see Leatherface do his dirty work. Overall, this is a great scene because Leatherface is absolutely insane and it is a terrifying way to open the film. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 disappoints on some levels but the opening sequence is definitely worth a look for any horror fan.
David Zuzelo - Tomb It May Concern
My pick…The TrainSmashedFace of THE CHURCH.
Michele Soavi’s flick The Church is one of those films I’ve always wanted to like more. It has a good score, and a few nice touches, but it underwhelms me in that it so obviously wants to be a higher brow version of Demons and fails. Hell, it should be swatted for trying to plop artsy (and Boris Vallejo rips) on top of Italian Gore. BUT, it does have one of the all out best moments of the late cycle Italian Horror Film before it collapsed and became TV film-centric. As the hapless victims trapped inside The Church find their ways out, a couple decides to go digging through the bottom of one access tunnel. The girl is hung through the hole to take a look around and find that hoped for freedom. A light appears…two lights appear…and PLAP…her head turns into what appears to be a heavily frosted slab of face cake hitting a windshield as a frakkin’ TRAIN crushes her. Logic defying? Sure…but it makes me want to go back and watch the entire film again just to get to this sequence. Truly a fantastic moment in a film that meanders and wanders around-triumphing in a scene that rips the “stylish atmosphere” down and pounds the viewers eyesockets in the tradition of Fulci and yes…Lamberto Bava. Worth your DVD dollars for this alone.
I gave this a lot of thought over the past few days, and I decided to go with the movie “Asylum of Terror”, and the scene where the killer kills one of the two annoying kids in the movie. Before I saw this movie, the only time I could remember seeing a kid get killed in a horror movie was in Mimic. The movie in question was a super low budget one, with bad acting, bad sound, just all around bad, and the two little boys in the movie were extremely annoying. However, the movie somewhat redeemed itself by having one of the boys get tossed off of a staircase and onto what I think was a piece of rebar. Although one of the major sources of the movie’s downfall was removed, it still didn’t save it completely.
In Rachel’s Attic (which was good, but you know… a bit on the mediocre side in many respects) there’s a scene where a Dominatrix puts her submissive in a closet. His safe word is “orange crush”. Now the movie rolls on and the Dominatrix is killed and long after we’ve forgotten about him, the guy in the closet is suddenly heard screaming “ORANGE FUCKING CRUSH!” It’s so utterly ludicrous and disturbing on so many levels at the same time that it’s become somewhat of a catchphrase around my house. Good stuff!
Squrim (1976)
Jeff Lieberman’s run-of-the-mill killer worm flick has two brilliant moments that make it more memorable than it probably deserves to be. The first comes when buck-toothed cretin Roger (played by Tony Dow, better known as Wally on Leave it to Beaver) is out fishing and a couple of creepy nightcrawlers unexpectedly launch themselves at his face and burrow under his skin, sending him running away screaming in pain (and giving you in faint feelings of nausea). But don’t worry about ol’ Rog–he returns in time for the mind-blowing finale, in which a cabin is jammed so full with millions of icky, sticky worms that it’s literally bursting apart–an absolutely unforgettable image.
The Gate II is not the huge disgrace that sequels like C.H.U.D. II - Bud the Chud and Troll 2 were, but it is still a drag. Tibor Takács still makes movie, but no one really pays any attention to them. I, Madman (1989) played in theaters and was a pretty well received supernatural slasher.
The Gate II is not the huge disgrace that sequels like C.H.U.D. II - Bud the Chud and Troll 2 were, but it is still a drag. Tibor Takács still makes movie, but no one really pays any attention to them. I, Madman (1989) played in theaters and was a pretty well received supernatural slasher.
The breast/lawnmower blades scene in Leprechaun 2.
Steven - The Horror Blog
Gravedigger looks great on paper. Ethan, a young man whose father is killed by a pack of assassins, seeks out and trains with an old kung-fu master in order to exact his vengeance. The twist is that the old master is an undertaker, and he teaches Ethan a brand of gravedigger kung-fu utilizing zombies as sparring partners.
In reality, Gravedigger is a grind. The characters’ fighting styles are weak, the dubbing is little more than mumbling, the pacing veers from horror to entirely inappropriate Benny Hill-style comedy, the music is a mix between 80’s synth-pop and filty polka, and the visual editing is so bad that there were times when characters were cut out of the scene and all you could see was a bowl of rice while the two hurl inaudible threats at one another from off-screen. Gravedigger’s greatest crime is that, despite everything I just said, it’s still not deliriously bad enough to be entertaining.
The only memorable thing about Gravedigger is the part of the training sequence where Ethan is forced to run across hills and splash through rivers with a coffin full of rocks on his back. Like an Asian mash-up of Rocky and Django, this was the only moment in the entire movie where what was shown onscreen fufilled the promise of the film’s concept. I will carry that image of a man learning kung-fu by carrying a coffin on his back within my heart for all my days.
My thanks to all the contributors. If you enjoyed their replies, please make sure to check out their blogs for more.
And if you’d like to join in the discussion, feel free to comment below.
June 30th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Wow. That was a great first week of the Horror Roundtable. I was thinking about the scene in The Omen when the nanny hangs herself. I’m glad to see Sean included it here.
July 1st, 2006 at 1:08 am
This was a lot of fun, thanks for the opportunity. I’m looking gorward to doing more events like this in the future. Creative and sound idea, Steven. Thank you for taking initiative and making it happen!
July 1st, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Great posts from everyone, though a few I could not read cause I had not seen the movies yet and want to reserve judgement.
I almost wrote about ROTLD 3 myself, a movie with some great gore FX, but plot and dialogue that makes me want to smash my skull against the wall.
-warren
July 2nd, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Thanks again to everyone who contributed. I was surprised by the turnout.
I found the question to be difficult to answer myself, and I was the one who suggested it.
I was a little taken aback by some of the choices, which makes me think that I’m not nearly as critical as I should be.
My answer wasn’t my first choice, but I had a friend who was planning on posting about a movie in the same series, and I didn’t want to cockblock him.
July 3rd, 2006 at 8:17 am
That was a great kickoff, Steve and co.!! I’m really sorry I didn’t get in on it. Partly, I just got busy all of a sudden, and partly, I did find the question difficult. The way my mind works, a great scene or two can lift a movie out of “mediocre” category, and I tend not to like anything at all in movies I consider mediocre. Well, I’ll be sure not to miss the next one!!
July 3rd, 2006 at 10:59 am
I had exactly the same problem, Curt. I was left with a list of about a dozen movies which I thought were mediocre until I remembered the scene or scenes that I liked, got all nostalgic, and couldn’t bring myself to drag them through the mud.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Finally got around to reading everyopne’s answers. Good start! I hope this coming week’s roundtable will be just as insightful. Thanks for letting me participate.
July 3rd, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Wow…great responses everyone! This question was a tough one, which is why I didn’t participate this time ’round.
Looking forward to the next round table, though…
July 4th, 2006 at 11:55 pm
Exposed early to the Elm Street films, I quickly grew numb to the over-the-top cheesiness of them all. The jokes were lame. The kids were just retarded…but hey, the boobs weren’t bad, right?
However, Nightmare on Elm Street V: The Dream Child bore the distinction of containing I consider to be the two best kills of the series. I know I’ll get flack for this because of the cool kills in the original, but hey, it’s my opinion.
First up: Dan the boyfriend goes for a ride. Okay, this dream sequence starts out way lame…but the motorcycle merging together and looking like some techno-Ghost Rider. Holy crap. I don’t know about you, but the fusing of machine and man scares the hell out of me. This could be due to seeing what happened to that chick at the end of Superman III that went all cyborg and scarred me for life at the tender age of six. Anyway, the FX on this looked great and though not all of it made it into the R-rated version, it still was enough to freak me enough think of it just now and shiver a bit. Damn!
Second: Mark the Comic Book Freak vs. SuperFreddy. Yeah, the film’s realization iof SuperFreddy didn’t make use of the awesome unlimited potential, but it was sufficient enough to make a great kill. The color running out of the comic paper version of Mark was an inspired albeit a bit corny touch. Maybe it was my teenage fascination with comics that made this so memorable.
Yeah, so other than that, this movie was pretty crap. That Hispanic chick was way better in Summer School…all the way.
July 5th, 2006 at 9:49 am
I agree, this was a very difficult question. Hell, I like Squirm, but looking over my horror DVDs it was the only one that really jumped out at me as having individual parts (segments?) that were more interesting than the whole.
Plus, I’m ashamed that Warren picked the Canadian film The Gate II when it didn’t even occur to me.
July 11th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
I’m also a little bewildered that you couldn’t choose a Canadian film, Paul. You’ve let the children down.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:49 am
[…] The question, this week, was: Name a fantastic scene in an otherwise mediocre horror film. […]