Horror Roundtable - Week Seven
Name your favourite horror movie weapon.
I would have to say “Freddie’s glove of knives” is the top weapon of choice. Not out of the effectiveness of the weapon per se, or its range, but from the visceral emotions the glove conjures up in its victims (and the audience).
It’s very effective when it screeches along the iron bars, or when it leaves neat rows of slashes across a victim’s stomach. People see, hear and feel that - and they can immediately relate.
Sean T. Collins - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat
I was gonna say Ash’s chainsaw-hand from Evil Dead 2–I’m not as much of a Raimi/Campbell fan as some people, but when he first fires up that bad boy and says “groovy,” kiddo, he ain’t kiddin’–but then I realized: Can anything beat the meathook from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? And then I realized: Yes–the Box from Hellraiser.
Favorite Horror Movie Weapon?
That would have to be the flying silver sphere in the PHANTASM series.
Who wouldn’t want to unleash one of those things on someone they hate… and watch their brains and blood shoot six feet in the air!?
Mark - Exclamation Mark’s Vintage Sci-Fi/Horror Review
I may be stretching the weapons criteria a bit here, but two images popped into my head immediately. First, Peter Cushing using the shadow of a windmill to create an impromptu image of a cross as a weapon against the vampire, Baron Meinster, in Brides of Dracula.
Next, the two men using that ridiculously giant syringe in an attempt to bring down the giant in The Amazing Colossal Man.
I thought about this good and hard while on my way to work. I was a-blur with visions of chainsaws, sharpened poles jammed through rib cages, shovels, sledge hammers, clawed hands, machetes and lawnmowers. The list is endless. There are so many creative ways you can maim, murder or disembowel another human, so how then could I chose from amongst them?
I then remembered a show I had been watching on armour, in particular bullet proof vests, how it can stop just about anything with the exception of this weapon. What really astounded me about the whole show is that there is 1 weapon above all others which has stood the test of time, and has been one of the greatest weapons we have ever developed. I chose the knife!
I have to go with the deadly meat grinder from Ted V. Mikels The Corpse Grinders. Okay, so it looks like a cheap wooden box with a conveyor belt on one side and a ground-beef spewing faucet on the other, but it’s really the perfect murder machine: as in the film, you can simply pack the chewed-up remains of your enemies into tins of Lotus Cat Food–no muss, no fuss, and no pesky clues lying around for spoil-sport do-gooders. And who couldn’t use a little extra cash from crooked pet stores?
David Zuzelo - Tomb It May Concern
Without a doubt I’d love to add a few extra sets of BALLS to my evil horde of killing weapons. Phantasm may have been a great film, but the evil Spheres of Death went a long way in the film being so popular. Next time my neighbors decide to practice the drums under my window for 7 or 8 hours I’d love to send a screeching horde of silver n’ gold spheres down the corridor to beat and chop some manners into them!
I’m particularly fond of the recent death-by-wire (or laser) trend that slices people into nice, big chunks, as evidenced in CUBE, FINAL DESTINATION 2, RESIDENT EVIL and GHOST SHIP. For no other reason than the effect is cool and I never tire of watching people fall apart in symmetry.
Favourite horror movie weapon? Easy. Screwdriver to the ear from Dawn of the Dead. It’s so simple and so effective. Pay attention to Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever for his homage to this wondeful weapon of doom.
Curt - The Groovy Age of Horror
Whether in the hands of the Devil or an angry mob of villagers, there’s
something beautifully primal about the pitchfork.
My favourite for it always making me laugh is probably the lawnmower, both in Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (aka. Braindead), which everyone knows, but also in Frank Henenlotter’s Frankenhooker, a much less popular and well-known movie that also features “supercrack”, a special, extra strength crack that makes crackwhores literally explode in fountains of gore and body parts, after an initial high that includes sexual excitement and an urge to strip topless and dance around to horrible, horrible 80s music. I’m not sure that counts as a weapon, but it still makes me laugh.
On the more serious side, I’ve always loved a particular scene from Argento’s Suspiria. Wandering around the attic of a German ballet school, trying to escape a murderer, a girl jumps through a small window into a room, since the room has an open door through which she believes she can make her escape. What she’s not suspecting is that the room is filled to about hip height with barbed wire, as attic rooms in German ballet schools often are, for very obvious and logical reasons. The movie is full of original deaths and murder weapons, such as occult murder by demonically possessed seeing eye dog, but the barbed wire is probably the high point.
Okay: I know this may be a terribly run-of-the-mill answer, but really, the greatest horror film weapon has to be Freddy Krueger’s legendary be-knifed glove. Really—in all the annals of horror, no other killer’s weapon of destruction has become ingrained into pop culture status the way that his glove has. Near perfect in it’s design, not only as a murder weapon, but as a fear-inducing tool as well—who doesn’t get shivers when they hear that ear-bleeding sound of metal scraping against metal. And when you’re a kid, probably around 7 or 8, and after just seeing Nightmare on Elm St., who hasn’t taped kitchen knives to your fingers, much to the chagrin of your parents? It’s the perfect weapon of evil.
As a bonus, since you mentioned “death traps”, I’d also like to add that Saw 2’s syringe pit made me feel ill and unease in way no other film has in a long time. Just thinking about it now makes my skin tingle.
A general rule of thumb for me is the more ludicrous the weapon, the better- especially if it’s not MEANT to be ludicrous.
One that fills me with glee just to think on it is the football-with-a-sword-attached from the early 80s slasher Graduation Day. That football thrown in a perfect spiral with a big sword poking out was the highlight of that movie.
The same “two great tastes” principal applies to the trombone-with-a-knife-attached in The Town that Dreaded Sundown. The killer in that flick toot-stabbed his way into my heart.
Jason Voorhees made his way onto my list when he punched that guy’s head clean off in Friday the 13th Part VIII and bashed the sleeping bag into the tree in Part VII. He doesn’t need a knife…Jason can get the job done with his fist or a tree. That’s badass.
I like “laser as weapon”- straight from the Silver Shamrock mask to your mouth!- in Halloween III.
And of course, the shish-ka-bob to the mouth in Happy Birthday to Me.
A little ingenuity from these psychos, that’s all I ask for!
I love power drills. Yes, Driller Killer is a favorite of mine. Also, I do like the drill scene in The Gates of Hell, where I believe it is Giovanni Lombardo Radice who gets it from a table-mounted drill press. Even the Slumber Party Massacre series has it’s all right drill moments. The guitar-drill might be a little stupid, but I sure dug it when I was a little younger.
Honorable mention goes to the big industrial circular saw in Jess Franco’s Bloody Moon.
My personal favorite horror weapon is the four barrel shotgun used in the Phantasm series. I always liked the look of it, and how Reggie usually used it to take out several of the demonic dwarves in one shot.
Thanks to all the many participants in this week’s Roundtable. You’re all sick. You may have noticed a few new names in there. Please take a browse around and check out their sites.
August 12th, 2006 at 7:08 am
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August 14th, 2006 at 10:45 am
My vote for all time best horror weapon would have to be Reggie Bannister’s four-barreled shotgun. Sure it’s ridiculously a overkill, but damn it looks cool.