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Greatest Scariest H |
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#14 In the opening of this classic 'boogeyman' film (one of the most profitable independent films ever), a 4 minute sequence, young 6 year-old Michael Myers (Will Sandin as boy) murdered his teenaged sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) (shot from his point of view) with a long butcher knife -- and then was unmasked on the front lawn wearing a clown-costume. In the wood-framed Myers house, he had voyeuristically watched from an outside porch window as Judith and her boyfriend Tommy (David Kyle) retreated to her upstairs bedroom to have sex. After the boyfriend left, the camera followed the mysterious figure to the back entrance and into the kitchen, where he took a large, menacing butcher knife from a drawer, proceeded through the house and then up the stairs. With a clown's Halloween mask (with a large, red, phallic-like nose) on his face, he entered his near-naked sister's bedroom to commit a hideous crime. Although she tried to defend herself, he furiously stabbed her to death in a brutal murder, and her bloodied body tumbled to the floor. The killer then descended the stairs and went out the front door. There, he was unmasked - revealed in a shocking revelation as six-year-old Michael Myers - the teenage girl's blank-faced, younger brother. Later in the film, decent teenaged student Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) sighted the unkillable maniacal Michael Myers (Tony Moran as adult), for an instant before he vanished. He had escaped from a sanitarium after attacking a nurse and returned to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, to stalk its residents. She also spotted Myers near a clothesline. Laurie's baby-sitting charge Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews) saw "the boogey man" staring at his house from across the street.
Stalked teenager Lynda (P. J. Soles), one of Laurie's girlfriends, amusingly thought a sheet-shrouded ghost figure was her boyfriend Bob (John Michael Graham) -- and not the madman -- who subsequently strangled her with a phone cord. Moments earlier, Bob met his fate in the kitchen where he was getting beer - when he opened the closet door, the masked Michael appeared (and stared at Bob quizzically for a moment as he tilted his head), held him high against the wall, and impaled him there with a large, shiny butcher knife. During an extended sequence, Michael Myers seemed to have cornered teenaged babysitter Laurie in the house and in a closet - her retaliation had failed to stop him. He sat straight up (in the background) after being stabbed in the eye with a coat hanger. He had appeared as a shadow next to her and tried to stab her. After he approached and assaulted her again, as he grabbed Laurie's neck and strangled her, she brushed the mask from Michael's face. Michael let go of her neck to put his mask back on to restore his masked facade.
In the final segment, shrink Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) made the horrifying discovery that the killer had vanished from the ground below - and hadn't succumbed after being stabbed three times, shot six times by Loomis and falling from a two-story balcony. Bloodied and in near-shock, Laurie quizzically stated: "[it]...was the boogey-man, followed by Loomis' priceless final line of dialogue:
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  The Murder of Judith   Young Killer Michael Myers   Stalked Teenager Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)  Stalking in House  Michael Unmasked for a Moment  Laurie: "[it]...was the boogey-man"  Dr. Sam Loomis: "As a matter of fact, it was...." |
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The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) #24 In director Curtis Hanson's unnerving dramatic thriller (with a screenplay by a female scripter Amanda Silver), Rebecca De Mornay portrayed an evil, deranged and vengeful nanny named Peyton Flanders - intent on seeking revenge against her dead obstetrician husband's patient Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra). It was a version of Fatal Attraction (1987) or Joseph Ruben's The Stepfather (1987) - against a young, busy mother. Peyton was the widow of gynecologist Dr. Victor Mott (John de Lancie) who killed himself after Claire brought charges of sexual harrassment. Newspaper headlines read: "Accused Gynecologist Found Dead in Home. Apparent Victim of Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound." Claire was encouraged to file a lawsuit by her husband Michael (Matt McCoy). As a result of the stress, Peyton bloodily miscarried from the shock of her husband's death and was forced to have a hysterectomy. Later, Peyton falsely claimed that her husband had been murdered ("They never caught who did it. But I firmly believe, what goes around comes around").
The issue in question was shown in an unnerving doctor's office scene. Pregnant Seattle housewife Claire Bartel was placed in stirrups by her new gynecologist, Dr. Victor Mott. He engaged in small talk ("The weather's been beautiful these days, hasn't it?...I love taking walks after the rainstorm") as he unprofessionally squeezed her breasts and lasciviously (and secretly) removed his latex glove on his right hand to insert a finger into her for a violating vaginal probe. Six months later, a disguised Peyton Flanders was hired as a nanny for the busy family. She schemed and threatened to wean the new baby Joey from the Bartel family's bond. She took advantage of the fact that Claire was preoccupied with her greenhouse, a symbol for the womb. In an offensive and highly disturbing scene, she approached the infant with a pillow (looking like her intent was to smother the child) but then breast-fed the infant. [She had been using a breast pump to keep her milk up since her miscarriage.] Later, Peyton attempted to take over Claire's life with her yuppie husband, their five year old daughter Emma (Madeline Zima), and the newborn baby Joey.
The unbalanced Peyton set up various scenarios to incriminate or kill others:
In the conclusion after Peyton knocked Michael out with a shovel and broke his legs, Claire was in a face-off in the house against Peyton. Peyton further incensed Claire (who was faking an asthma attack) when she admitted secretly breastfeeding Joey: "When your husband makes love to you, it's MY face he sees. When your baby's hungry, it's MY breast that feeds him." Together with Solomon's help, the two pushed Peyton out of the attic window, and she rolled down the steep roof and was lethally impaled on the house's white picket fence spikes below. It was a triumphant ending - and fitting end - to Peyton. |
 Miscarriage of Peyton Mott/Flanders      Breast-Feeding and Breast Pumping    
The Death of Peyton |
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Director Ridley Scott's was the third film in the series of adapted screenplays from Thomas Harris' best-selling books. The film was set 10 years after the events of the previous film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), although the novel's time frame was seven years later. In a dinner meal scene, FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) found Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) preparing a gourmet meal for a drugged and wheelchair-seated dinner guest. Duplicitous Justice Department official Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta) had arrived for the Fourth of July weekend at his home, where he was surprised to find the downstairs dining room table set for an elegant dinner. He was abruptly confronted by Lecter and drugged. In the dining room, Clarice (suffering from doses of morphine) found Lecter preparing a gourmet meal for a drugged and seated dinner guest - Krendler, wearing a backwards baseball cap bearing his initials. She was stunned when Lecter removed Krendler's cap, exposing a circular scar around the top of his head. Dr. Lecter then neatly sliced and removed the entire top of his skull to expose his brain's cerebral cortex. As he cut out part of the brain tissue in the pre-frontal lobe and sauteed it in a pan by the table, Lecter assured Clarice:
Krendler noted: "That smells great" and then ate a piece of his own brain when offered ("It is good"). Lecter taunted Clarice about whether she would sacrifice his freedom for her own return as a hero to her FBI job: "Those people you despise almost as much as they despise you." With blood running down his face, an almost comatose Krendler was wheeled into the kitchen as the meal ended. |
   
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Hard Candy (2005) #11 In this thought-provoking, exploitative female revenge thriller, the debut feature film of director David Slade (a music video director), seemingly-innocent, red-hooded 14 year old femme fatale Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) (screenname Thonggrrrrrl14) - had met 32 year old photographer Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson) (screenname Lensman319) in an Internet chat room. During their first face-to-face meeting at the Nighthawks coffee shop, the potential male predator bought her some chocolate cake (which he suggestively wiped from her lips). He also reassuringly told her: "You look older than you are and you, you certainly act older than you are." She went to the potential jail-bait predator's Hollywood Hills home with premeditated determination to seek revenge (in a tense and suspenseful cat-and-mouse interplay regarding the "predator" and the "prey"). As a character, she turned the tables on him, and was as reprehensible as her prey. Acting as a vigilante, she drugged his drink, tied him up (after he asked: "Is this some kind of teenage joke?", she responded: "Teenage? Yes. Joke? No"), and accused him of being a pedophile:
She asphyxiated him with plastic wrap. And then in the most squirm-inducing sequence, she threatened to castrate him (as "preventative maintenance") with a scalpel and anesthetic ice, as he both berated her and pleaded with his raging and sadistic captor to spare him ("Please untie me, let me go! Please don't cut me, please!"). She told him:
It was quite terrifying and difficult to watch, but it was only the first of the provocative, nail-biting film's major plot twists. Hayley faked Jeff's castration - although she went through all the motions to perform the castration (off-screen). When he realized he had been tricked, he went to attack her in the bathroom with a scapel, believing that she was showering. She incapacitated him with a stun gun from behind. When he regained consciousness, he found himself strung up in the kitchen (hung from a noose) with his hands bound. She bargained with him - if he killed himself by suicide, she would erase evidence of his involvement in the disappearance of another local girl named Donna Mauer. If he refused to admit his guilt, she would expose his crime - forcing him to be convicted to serve a prison term as a child molester. Eventually, they both ended up on the roof of his house, where she proposed her bargain to him a second time. She forced her repentant victim to confess to a murder that he may/may not have committed of a young model named Donna Mauer that he once photographed. It was revealed that Hayley had probably already kidnapped and tortured another pedophile named Aaron, Jeff's partner-in-crime during the murder of Donna. Hayley admitted:
When Jeff's ex-girlfriend Janelle Rogers (Jennifer Holmes/Odessa Rae) arrived at the house, Hayley and Jeff were on the roof, where she had strung a rope off the side. She again offered to clean up incriminating evidence of him as a sexual predator in his home (he would also avoid prosecution and clear his name with Janelle) if he jumped and committed suicide by hanging with a noose, but at the last second after he stepped off the roof and the rope went taut, she promised - with a caveat:
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 At the Coffee Shop    The Castration Scene   Tied Up and Hanging  Suicidal Step Off Roof  "I'll take care of it all - or not!" |
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The Haunting (1963, UK/US) #18 This classic and effective ghostly old mansion film from director/producer Robert Wise specialized in low-key suggestive horror, similar to Val Lewton's horror masterpieces and The Innocents (1961, UK). It was based upon Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House." [Note: A remake was also made, director Jan de Bont's The Haunting (1999), starring Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luke Wilson.] Later, Burnt Offerings (1976) was a similar film.
In the story, anthropologist and psychic investigator Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) was leading a research team investigating New England's infamous 90 year old Hill House ("It was an evil house from the beginning, a house that was born bad") with a history of violent 'accidents.' Over a weekend, his scientific experimental study was designed to stir up or "stimulate" any occult forces that resided there, and to discover the presence of the supernatural. The strange caretakers of the house, the Dudleys (Valentine Dyall and Rosalie Crutchley), were a couple who lived in town and would never spend the night at Hill House. The "carefully selected assistants" who were invited to stay overnight at Hill House as part of his study of the paranormal were:
[Grace Markway (Lois Maxwell), Markway's disbelieving and hard-headed wife, joined the group later.] Strange events and spooky nocturnal noises ensued (loud poundings, high-pitched laughter, bangings, opening and closing doors, cold spots and drafts, a 'breathing' doorway, sounds of glass breaking, etc.) during the film's frightening scenes of terror. Nell almost fell off the veranda early in the film and was saved by Dr. Markway, and she wrongly interpreted his attentiveness as romantic. During one especially eerie scene, the film's most memorable set-piece, Eleanor mistakenly believed she was holding the hand of roommate Theodora in the adjacent bed for comfort from mysterious and strange sounds surrounding their dark room (unintelligible mumblings of a man, and a little girl sobbing). She asked Theodora to stop squeezing her hand, and then realized their beds were separated and that Theo wasn't anywhere near her. She exclaimed: "God, oh God! Whose hand was I holding?"
It became clear that the unseen and invisible presence had squeezed her hand and wanted to claim Eleanor - that the 'haunting' horror had selected her and that she had finally found a "home." At times, however, she did suspect her own state of mind ("Maybe I am insane"). In the climactic scary ending, after Grace inexplicably disappeared while sleeping in the much-feared, most-haunted room - the dreaded nursery, Eleanor ascended the rickety spiral staircase in the library. Dr. Markway followed her up to its top platform to rescue her. When they both reached the platform at the top of the nearly-collapsed structure, Eleanor saw Grace's face peering down at her from a trap-door in the ceiling, and she fainted. Dr. Markway feared for Eleanor's safety and ordered her to leave Hill House immediately, although Eleanor was resistant. Feeling that the house wanted to possess her, was speaking to her, and that she belonged to it, Eleanor sped away in a car in the driveway toward the gate. Taking an erratic course as the car became possessed, she saw Grace racing across her path. Struggling with the steering wheel, Eleanor crashed her car into an old tree, and instantly died in exactly the same spot that the first Mrs. Crain did. Dr. Markway declared that Hill House was definitely haunted. Eleanor's soul was claimed and now condemned (or invited) to join the other ghostly forces roaming the dark corridors of Hill House. Her voice-over ended the film, similar to the film's prologue:
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 Hill House  Hill House's Winding, Spiral Staircase  (l to r): "Theo" and "Nell"  Eleanor Climbing Staircase  Grace's Sudden Appearance in Trap-Door  Eleanor's Jump-Scare Reaction to Grace's Face  Eleanor's Death: Crash into Tree |
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Hellraiser (1987) #19 Director Clive Barker's grisly sado-masochistic supernatural horror film (his directorial debut feature) was based upon his own novella "The Hellbound Heart." The film opened with a scary prologue - Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) purchased a magical French antique puzzle box (the Lamont Configuration) from a Moroccan vendor. Soon after, in the attic of his London home while surrounded by candles in the shape of a square, the sexually-perverted and depraved Frank attempted to solve the secret mystery of the box, hoping it would open him up to new carnal pleasures. When it did open with sparks of blue, it took him to a new dark and hellish alternate dimension inhabited by mutant humanoids, where he was impaled by hooks and chains in his flesh and face. His bloody remains were spread across the floor. After the box was restored to its original configuration, Frank's remnants (including his reassembled face) were taken and hidden away in the Cenobite realm. The story then told about another Cotton couple:
The two moved into the same old abandoned house in London. Larry had a nubile teenaged daughter named Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) who despised her stepmother and moved into her own apartment. Before long, Larry's blood was spilled in the attic when he cut his hand on a nail, summoning the bloody rebirth of Frank. The blood allowed Frank's hideous resurrection. He escaped to the attic (from the Cenobites' realm) and partially restored his body. Julia discovered the gooey remains of a re-animated, half-alive, half-composed 'skinless' Frank the Monster (Oliver Smith) thirsting for new blood to regenerate himself. Unfaithful to Larry, Julia agreed to help Frank harvest blood to fully reconstitute his entire body. Fresh victims were lured to the house by the seductive Julia. In a grisly scene, Julia assaulted her first amorous guest with a hammer. Eventually, Frank's suspicious teenaged niece Kirsty discovered what was happening and stopped one of the murders in progress. She grabbed the puzzle box from Frank and escaped, but required hospitalization when she became unconscious. In a memorable scene, she also twisted the box to solve the puzzle and summoned other-worldly Cenobite spirits. She was pursued down a long corridor by a two-headed creature back into her hospital room. The grotesque character of the Lead Cenobite (or Pinhead) (Doug Bradley) appeared - a demonic agent of evil and the leader of the horrible S&M creatures who worshipped pain. Pinhead told her:
As she pleaded: "It was a mistake," she was told threateningly:
However, knowing that Frank had escaped, Pinhead agreed to free Kirsty in exchange for leading them to Frank. When she returned to the house, she discovered that Frank had killed her father Larry, and was wearing his fleshly skin to impersonate him.
When the resurrected and regenerated Frank discovered that Kirsty had set him up and led the Cenobites to him, he exclaimed: "You set me up, you bitch!" He vengefully approached Kirsty to stab her, but then his hand was literally snared by a hook attached to a chain. Then, his entire body was literally stretched out and impaled, in a crucifixion pose, by a network of dozens of hooks and chains ripping into his flesh by the grim-faced Cenobites. Masochistically savoring the pain, Frank knew he was facing death and eternal damnation in an alternate universe. He looked lustfully at Kirsty one last time (licking his lips), said (infamously): "Jesus wept," giggled to himself, and then was pulled apart and torn to shreds. The Cenobites also tried to claim Kirsty and take her back to their realm, but the resourceful teen cleverly manipulated the box with black magic and held off the monstrous creatures. |
  Antique Puzzle Box   Frank's Transport and Mutilation in Another Dimension   Kirsty (Ashley Laurence)  Cenobite Creature 
Pinhead (Doug Bradley) |
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#2 The realistic, detached, low-budget cinema-verite documentary style filming of this disturbing story enhanced each brutal, sudden, gory and violent killing by serial killer Henry (Michael Rooker), accompanied by his roommate-prison buddy partner-in-crime Otis (Tom Towles). There were many sickening, brutally-violent killings (over a dozen) in this highly-controversial, low-budget and notorious 82 minute film. Serial killer Henry's random crime spree was loosely based on real-life murderer Henry Lee Lucas (who eventually died in prison in 2001). Henry's background partially accounted for his murderous streak - his abusive mother (who Henry claimed he had stabbed to death on his 14th birthday) was a "whore" who forced young Henry to wear a dress and watch her having sex with her many customers in their house. Interspersed in the film's action were still shots of Henry's trail of carnage in Illinois - there were five death poses of many of his murder victims (killed off-screen), sometimes with accompanying sounds of their screams or death struggle:
Henry repeatedly stabbed smart-alec TV salesman/fence (Ray Atherton) with a soldering iron and then smashed a cheap $50 B/W TV over his head, after which Otis plugged in the set to end his life by electrocution. The two stole a video-cam recorder and a high-priced TV set. And then, after Otis' frustrated statement, "I'd like to kill somebody," Henry randomly shot a 'Good Samaritan' (Rick Paul) in an overpass tunnel on the side of the downtown freeway, to make himself "feel better." The most upsetting and disturbing murder was the videotaped killing of a helpless family of three (a couple and their son) (Lisa Temple, Brian Graham, and Sean Ores) in their suburban home, videotaped for repeated viewings by both Henry and Otis as entertainment.
Eventually Otis was killed when Henry found him strangling and raping his own sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) - Henry's 'girlfriend.' Henry smashed a beer bottle into Otis' face, and Becky stabbed him in the eye with the sharp end of a hairbrush. Henry then murdered Otis (by stabbing), and cut off his head in the bathtub. Otis' body parts were dumped in the river and then Henry fled with Becky. On the move, the two spent the night in a motel. The very next morning, Henry left the motel by himself (had he killed Becky in the room and dismembered her body?) and deposited Becky's heavy blood-stained suitcase in a roadside ditch (was Becky inside?). |
 Henry (Michael Rooker)      Five Still Images of Death |
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The Hills Have Eyes (1977) #41 Writer/director Wes Craven's horror film was a cult classic in the genre - similar in theme to his own previous film The Last House on the Left (1972) and the subsequent The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Its tagline summarized its overall content of a family forced to kill to survive: "A nice American family. They didn't want to kill. But they didn't want to die." It told about a road trip by an American family that ended up horribly wrong when they came across terror in the desert. Although originally rated X, it was slightly edited for an R-rating release. Craven made a sequel called The Hills Have Eyes, Part II (1985), and another sequel was made by his writer/producer son Jonathan, titled The Hills Have Eyes III (1995). The original film was remade by director Alexandre Aja almost 30 years later as The Hills Have Eyes (2006). The unsuspecting Carter family, headed by a husband/wife celebrating their Silver Anniversary, was traveling in a station wagon (pulling a mobile home trailer) across the American Southwest on their way to California. The family characters consisted of:
In Nevada, they detoured - into Nellis Air Force Base's ' nuclear testing site (gunnery range) - to visit a silver mine that had been inherited. Fred's Oasis gas station owner Fred (John Steadman) predictably warned:
When their trailer's axle broke and they were considered trespassers off the main road, the wayward group found themselves attacked by another family - an inbred group of mutant, cannibalistic marauders living in the hills. The cave-dwelling family was composed of:
The horror of rape and death for the family began when Big Bob and son-in-law Doug set out on foot for help in different directions, and Beauty was gutted and disemboweled. When Big Bob returned and collapsed suffering from a bad heart, he was ambushed in the dark by Papa Jupiter, and a rat was stuffed in his mouth to quiet him. As a diversion, he was crucified on a Joshua Tree and set ablaze (Ethel hysterically exclaimed about the charred body: "That's not my Bob!"). Meanwhile, Pluto and Mars entered the camper - Pluto raped Brenda first as snaggle-toothed Mars paused to rip off the head of a caged parakeet and drink its blood. After Mars also assaulted Brenda, the two planned to abduct "fat and juicy" baby Katy for food. Returning to the camper, Lynne wrestled Mars to protect her baby, as Ethel was shot in the stomach. During the struggle, Lynne was also shot - she then stabbed Mars in the right thigh with a sharp pair of scissors, but was killed by a second shot. In the dark, Beast pushed Mercury off a cliff to his death.
After Ethel died, the next day she was strapped to a lawn chair away from the trailer and used by traumatized Brenda and Bobby as bait for Papa Jup who was returning to murder them. Doug attempted to head into the hills to rescue his kidnapped baby, and was aided by Ruby who ran off with the child. Beast chewed up Pluto's left achilles heel - and later the dog's jaws grabbed his throat and killed him. Using their own wits, the two teens caught Papa Jup's legs with a cable and dragged his body, set an explosive trap at the trailer for him, and then killed him (with Brenda using a handaxe and Bobby using a gun firing their last two remaining bullets). Up in the hills, Doug - in a frenzy - repeatedly stabbed Mars in the gut after Ruby had held a biting rattlesnake to his neck. The final scene ended in a blood-red freeze-frame of Doug above Mars after killing him. |
  Carter Family on Road Trip   Rape of Teenaged Brenda by Pluto   Crucifixion/Burning of Big Bob  Mars Beheading Parakeet  Threatened Baby Katy  Shootings  Stabbing Death of Mars  End Freeze-Frame of Doug After Killing Mars |
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#34 In this brutally violent and scary horror-thriller film, while driving from Chicago to San Diego to transport a rental car, Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) picked up a strange, violently terrorizing, psychopathic, handsome 'hitcher' named John Ryder (Rutger Hauer). As he opened the car door, he stated: "My mother told me to never do this" - the film was possibly a nightmarish vision of what could happen in the scenario of picking up a dangerous hitch-hiker. After a few stalking and murderous encounters with the relentless Ryder along the way, Jim entered the Longhorn Restaurant, a roadside diner/gas station before it was officially open, where the young, friendly blonde waitress Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh) served him a meal of fries and a cheeseburger. When he was astonished to find a severed finger in the fries - it was a tip-off that Ryder was in the vicinity. It caused him to gag and puke! In a tense cat-and-mouse game, Ryder continually framed Jim for the crime spree murders he had committed of various victims, including police officers. (In one scene, Ryder delivered a sadistic line while holding a knife to a victim's face: "Do you wanna know what happens to an eyeball when it gets punctured?'') Nash became a victim of serial killer Ryder when she was tied hand and foot by chains between the front end of a trailer-truck and a detached semi-trailer. During the horrific scene, she screamed out: "Please don't!" In the cab of the truck with his foot on the clutch, Ryder challenged everyone to shoot him (an officer had cautioned: "If we shoot him, his foot is gonna come off that clutch and that truck is gonna roll"). Jim tensely entered the cab, where Ryder suggested: "The gun is loaded. Go for it! Go ahead, pick it up." Ryder revved the engine and threatened to accelerate. As instructed, Jim picked up the gun and pointed it at Ryder, but couldn't squeeze the trigger (fearing that "she'll die"). Ryder was disgusted: "You useless waste," let up the clutch, and accelerated anyway. With a horrible tearing and stretching sound, Nash was pulled in two (the gore remained off-screen) when Ryder's foot came off the clutch and the truck accelerated. The last view was of her bound hands. |
 Severed Finger in French Fries   
 Waitress Nash Pulled Apart |
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Horror of Dracula (1958, UK) (aka Dracula) In talented director Terence Fisher's classic Technicolored Dracula horror film - the first of the UK's Hammer Studios' horror films about Dracula for the next two decades - a superb, Gothic, blood-drenched tale of the cat-and-mouse game between Count Dracula and his arch nemesis Dr. Van Helsing set in the late 1880s:
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  Dracula's Coffin-Vault  Harker Inspecting Fang Bite Marks on Neck From the Vampire Woman  Harker Staking the Vampire Woman  Harker's Fiancee Lucy Holmwood (Carol Marsh) - Lured Dracula to Her Side   Dracula's Blood-Sucking of Mina  Vampire Hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) |
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Hostel (2005) #1 Writer/director Eli Roth's grisly, bloody torture-gore horror film (dubbed "torture-porn") was reported to be "inspired by true events." It was mostly viewed by hardcore males. Horror films had become one of the most lucrative genre franchises, due to the fact that they could be cheaply made, and were capable of attracting large audiences. A recently-growing trend in horror films was to make variations of the sadistic, low-budget "trash" horror Z-films of the 1970's, many of which featured rape-revenge themes, as in Wes Craven's crude The Last House on the Left (1972), and Meir Zarchi's brutal Day of the Woman (1978) (aka I Spit on Your Grave). However, in this new century, film audiences' threshold for sadistic and excessive gore, body mutilation, torture, and sickening violence had already been numbed by years of 'slasher' films, and this new crop of low-budget "trash" horror scarefest films was often tolerated and embraced by horror fans. This new sub-genre of so-called "pseudo-snuff films" (dubbed "horror-porn," "torture-chic," "gore-nography," and "claustrophobic cruelty") was accused of being like a "sicko video game" - containing visceral violence and unheard-of human suffering - that severely tested the limits of R ratings. For example, Saw (2004), Hostel (2005), and Saw II (2005) did tremendous box-office business, compared to their budget costs. A so-called "torture-porn" trend was inaugurated by these films and others, including Wolf Creek (2005, Aust.), The Devil's Rejects (2005), and Turistas (2006). In the mainstream, too, a broader range of films appeared to be opting for more bloodletting and pain than ever before, such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) and the Bond film Casino Royale (2006). The disturbing trend was highlighted by Eli Roth’s film - soundly condemned for its visceral excesses, and the detailed torture, dismemberment and mutilation suffered by a group of hedonistic American backpackers in Eastern Europe. They were subjected to debased, medically-graphic, physical, sexual and mental torture.
The uncompromising film began with hedonistic, promiscuous promise for three backpacking college-aged students who ventured to a remote Slovakian city for good times, hedonistic sex and drugs:
The three were first in Amsterdam where they found sex in a brothel. They then ventured to a Slovakian city and its hostel in Prague known for debauchery. Almost immediately, they found relaxation and sex (filmed with gratuitous nudity) in a hostel and spa with two Eastern European beauties - the ultimate male fantasy of casual sex with two sexually aggressive girls:
Both aggressively mounted their dates and enticed them to trust them. The two amoral femme fatales would later entrap them. After the two Americans feared that Oli had met a grisly demise (decapitation), they discovered that they also had been drugged with a tranquilizer - and lured to become victims of wealthy, sadistic patrons who wished to torture unsuspecting tourists with their "darkest, sickest fantasies." A fiendish plot (named Elite Hunting Club) was uncovered in an abandoned, run-down factory warehouse where a sadistic Dutch businessman (Jan Vlasak), a German torturer named Johan (Petr Janiš), and another American client (Rick Hoffman) had paid large sums of money for the exciting opportunity to torture, dismember and/or kill foreigners who had been lured into the 'hostel' trap. Gruesome, dark and sick tortures and events included (some off-screen):
Paxton also shot a guard lured to his cell and then escaped inside the warehouse facility by hiding in a pile of bloody corpses moved from one area to another. He killed the blood-stained, hunchbacked crematorium attendant (Josef Bradna) in the butcher room (who was dismembering bodies, including Josh's) by knocking him on the head with a large hammer. He took an elevator to the upper level and then changed into regular business clothes in the dressing room, where he discovered the Elite Hunting Club's business card in a pocket. In a chilling moment, the back of the card displayed what the price was for torturing/killing each victim - a Russian, a European, and an American:
He fooled the American client who entered the dressing room into thinking he was someone like him - one of the torturing customers. The American explained how he was paying $50 grand for his next victim, and then bragged:
The man then asked for advice about how to treat his next torture victim - should it be instant death (by gunshot) or slow torture: "Can I ask you something personal? Do you mind? How'd you do it? I mean, did you do it real slow...or did you just get it over with right away?...What do you think I should do?" Paxton suggested that his next victim should be killed quickly: "Make it quick" - but his opinion was quickly ignored: ("Yeah, that's --- No, f--k that s--t. F--k this, too f--kin' American, dude. I'm going f--kin' old school"). The man's discarded gun was quickly absconded by Paxton. As Paxton was stealing a car outside, he heard screaming and discovered that the Japanese girl Kana (Jennifer Lim) was being badly mutilated - she suffered eye burning with an acetylene blow-torch by the American client, causing her eyeball to pop out and hang out of its socket. In one of the film's many awful sequences, after shooting the American, Paxton was mercifully forced to snip off Kana's dangling eyeball.
As they both escaped and fled in a stolen car, pursued by guards, Paxton ran over both Natalya and Svetlana during their flight - a very cathartic ending for the audience. Natalya was instantly killed, while Svetlana survived the first crash, only to be hit a second time (and pulverized) by a car pursuing Paxton.
However, it wasn't over yet. At a train station, Kana jumped in front of a train to commit suicide (spraying her blood onto two bystanders), after realizing how disfigured her face was in a reflection. In the film's satisfying ending, Paxton sought murderous revenge in a Vienna train station's restroom stall upon the sadistic Dutch businessman who had killed Josh. He first tossed an Elite Hunting Club card under the bathroom stall, and then used a small knife to sever two fingers. Finally, he dunked the man's head into the toilet after slitting the man's throat. |
 Josh & Paxton (l to r)  Suspicious Dutch Businessman (Jan Vlasak)    Natalya & Svetlana (l to r): Sexy Femmes Fatales      Josh's Torture, Including Drilling and Tendon Slashing  Later, Josh Dissected by Wanna-Be Surgeon  Paxton Terrorized by a Chainsaw  Paxton's Two Severed Fingers  Paxton's Torturer Shot in Head  The Butcher in the Crematorium Dismembering Dead Bodies  Kana's Disfigured Face in Reflection - Causing Her to Commit Suicide    Paxton's Revenge in Toilet Stall Upon Dutch Businessman |
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Hostel Part II (2007) #9 In this equally grisly and disturbing 'slasher film' sequel by writer/director Eli Roth, another example of "violence" or "torture porn," the tables were turned -- the victims were now three American college-aged females who were betrayed by another Slovakian - a beautiful and statuesque nude model named Axelle (Vera Jordanova). In the film's prologue, surviving Paxton (Jay Hernandez) from the first film was suffering nightmares. His girlfriend Stephanie (Jordan Ladd) downplayed his paranoid behavior as hallucinatory until she found him cleanly decapitated by a chain-saw and seated at their breakfast table (with a cat licking on the bloody headless stump). The three new victims of the Elite Hunting Club in Slovakia were art students. The trio were led by Axelle to a hostel and spa in Eastern Europe. Unbeknownst to them, their passport photos were uploaded to an auction site where their lives were bid upon:
In one awful scene, a torturer known as the Italian Cannibal (notorious Italian director Ruggero Deodato of Cannibal Holocaust (1980)) elegantly dined on the thigh meat of an unfortunate, strapped down male victim before him. The most controversial and disturbing scene was the unsettling and lingering death of the socially-awkward and uptight character of Eastern European vacationer Lorna. After she became drunk and was kidnapped, she became the victim of a member of the sick and sadistic wealthy elite who paid to experience the torture and suffering of others.
Lorna was stripped and hung by chains upside-down by her ankles, while the female client (Monika Malacova) entered (behind her) and removed her black robe to reveal her nakedness, and reclined below her in an ornately-decorated tub surrounded by candles. Lorna was first terrorized when the bather took a large hand-held scythe by her side and stroked the bare skin of the torture victim, and then cut off her mouth gag. Swinging above her, Lorna begged for her life. She was repeatedly sliced (and had her throat slit) by the sick female client below her who slashed away with a large scythe and ecstatically bathed naked in the blood as it dripped down upon her, in the style of Elizabeth Bathory in the large bath, who believed that she would retain her youthful image by bathing in the blood. In the heavily-guarded torture factory, Whitney was tied up in a chair and taunted by rich, arrogant and sadistic businessman Todd (Richard Burgi) wielding a chain saw who was there for recreational slaughter. He accidentally sliced into her scalp and realized the true horror of what he was doing. As he fled without killing her (against the rules of his contract), he was attacked and mauled by guard dogs and eaten alive in an elevator. Todd's wimpy American pal named Stuart (Roger Bart) was in a cell with Beth, and initially thought about letting her go. When he snapped, he became sadistic and deranged, directing his anger toward her and believing she was his wife. Noting Todd's bloody remains, he blamed her for Todd's death, but she tricked him into releasing her. Beth reversed things and chained Stuart to the chair, and bargained with Sasha, the owner of the factory, to exchange some of her fortune for her freedom. Her offer was accepted, but she first had to become a client and kill Stuart - she sliced off his genitals with a large pair of shears. She grabbed the castrated parts and tossed them to guard dogs to eat, as the screaming Stuart was left to bleed to death. Beth had become an official member of the Elite Hunting group, and was tattooed in the middle of her back. She sought vengeance against Axelle by having her beheaded - a gang of kids kicked her head around like a soccer ball as the film ended. |
 Decapitated Paxton, With Cat Licking Head Stump  Axelle (Vera Jordanova)  Dining on Thigh Meat  Todd Mauled by Dogs  The Nose-Biting Scene    Castration of Stuart by Beth  Axelle Beheaded |
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House of 1000 Corpses (2003) Director Rob Zombie's debut film was the first in a so-called "Firefly Trilogy," including the sequel The Devil's Rejects (2005) and 3 From Hell (2019). Its themes were similar to previous cult horror films of the 70s including The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). The garish and campy film's tagline boasted: "THE MOST SHOCKING TALE OF CARNAGE EVER SEEN." The low-budget ($7 million), hard-core exploitational film was often accused of being a derivative rip-off of the 1974 classic 'chain-saw massacre' film, in its tale of backwoods brutality, gore, vulgarities and violence. The Firefly family tortured and mutilated a group of teenagers who were traveling across the country and had fatefully stopped at an unusual and offbeat roadside venue. [Trivia note: The character names of Captain Spaulding, Otis Driftwood, and Rufus Firefly were derived from Groucho Marx's character names.] Originally before its theatrical release, Zombie's film was threatened with an NC-17 rating for its grisly violence and brutality, including controversial scenes of masturbation and necrophilia - with a skeleton - (toned down for release).
After being rejected by two major studios, Universal and MGM, the film was finally released and distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment (already a notorious studio for releasing Lolita (1997), Dogma (1999), American Psycho (2000), Bully (2001) and Irreversible (2002)). Before the title credits, the colorful film opened with excerpts from a B/W horror TV show - a Halloween movie-marathon hosted by Dr. Wolfenstein. One of its advertisements was for a carnival freak-show or fun-house museum (of Monsters and Madmen) in a remote area of Texas, run by Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), a crazed-looking clown. It was October 30, 1977, Halloween-time. The hybrid road-side attraction consisted of a gas station, a museum of curiosities, collectibles, strange memorabilia and other oddities, a haunted house ride-attraction, and a restaurant with fried chicken wings, as memorably described by Spaulding:
Two mask-wearing criminals, Killer Karl and Richard Wick (Chad Bannon and David Reynolds), suddenly robbed the store at gunpoint, with Killer Karl exclaiming: "I don't like chicken and I hate clowns." A local customer in the store named Stucky (Michael J. Pollard) recognized the second thief as local hardware store worker Richard Wick, a simpleton. Suddenly, a third man, Spaulding's overalls-wearing, deformed assistant Ravelli (Irwin Keyes) with a large clown helmet on his head, burst through the front door with a mallet - used to injure and incapacitate Killer Karl. Wick wildly fired his gun and hit a local customer named Stucky (Michael J. Pollard). Spaulding retaliated by shooting Wick in the head. He then approached the wounded Killer Karl on the floor and executed him (firing into the camera) - with an obscenity: "But MOST of all... F--k YOU!" Then, he complained: "Goddamn, motherf--ker got blood all over my best clown suit." The title credits then began to play over a montage of mostly strange and old video footage of surgical operations and Halloween-related images. Four teens were on a cross-country road trip enroute to Denise's home in Ruggsville, Texas. Almost out of gas, they stopped at Spaulding's Museum and gas pump. It was perfect for them, due to the group's interest in writing a guidebook about strange tourist attractions:
Just after mopping up bloodstains on the floor, Spaulding convinced the arriving group to take the famous "Murder Ride" (featuring monster props and serial killers, such as Albert Fish, Lizzie Borden, and Ed Gein), introduced as a "world of darkness, a world where life and death are meaningless and pain is God." They also listened to Spaulding's spiel about local legendary figure (and serial killer) S. Quentin Quale, also known as Doctor Satan (Walter Phelan) - a notoriously-deranged master surgeon at the nearby Willows County Mental Hospital ("Weeping Willows") who abused his patients with primitive brain surgeries. In the midst of an oncoming storm, the group decided to visit the tree where the man was hanged by a murderous, vigilante lynch mob. Spaulding described how "no trace of Dr. Satan has ever been discovered." While Denise called her father about their trip's progress, a 7 o'clock TV report in his home announced recent disappearances of five local cheerleaders: "Investigators still have no leads to the strange disappearance of the five cheerleaders from Ruggsville High School...last seen four days ago leaving a football game." On the way to the hanging tree in Deadwood, the group picked up a pretty, free-spirited, friendly but eccentric hitchhiker named Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), aka Vera-Ellen Firefly. [Note: In a later film, she was identified as Captain Spaulding's daughter.] There was an unexplained intercut sequence of a crazed, long stringy -haired man - Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley), Baby's adopted brother, preaching to a group of gagged and bound teen girls - presumably the missing cheerleaders in a TV (and additional radio) report:
After a mysterious blown tire (from a shotgun blast - from Rufus!) and assistance from Baby's half-brother Rufus (who also drove a tow truck), the group ended up at the Firefly family's deserted farmhouse, decorated at the front door with mangled, decapitated and armless baby dolls, and scarecrows in the front yard. Baby's murderous and sadistic clan family consisted of:
The family forced the uneasy and bewildered group to share a meal with some of the family members and then to wear Halloween masks.
Mama Firefly told a gruesome tale about her mentally-psychotic, ex-husband Earl who had tried to immolate Tiny and burn down the Firefly home: ("One day he just up and went devil on us all...He tried to burn down the house. He said it was possessed by the spirits. And Tiny was sleepin' in the basement where the fire started. But I don't think Earl ever meant to harm us. Tiny was badly burnt, his ears were destroyed and most of his skin....My baby boy gets shy around new people, but he'll warm up to you, especially the girls. He's a real lady-killer"). After the meal, the demented family put on a burlesque-vaudeville styled stage show for the guests ("It's SHOWTIME!") - viewed often in split-screen - the highlight was Baby's song "I Wanna Be Loved By You." Baby's attempt to sexually flirt with Mary's boyfriend Bill by sitting on his lap during her performance caused Mary to lose her temper and confront her ("...get the f--k off him, you stupid f--king whore!"). Baby counter-attacked her with a pocket-knife and threatened: "I'll f--kin' cut your tits off and shove them down your throat." Fortunately, Rufus announced that their car was repaired and the foursome was asked to leave. As they made their getaway, two figures disguised as scarecrows (Otis and Tiny) attacked them in the driveway at the closed gate. In the backseat, Denise and Mary helplessly watched their boyfriends being violently beaten. Although they locked themselves in their car, Tiny smashed through the side car window, and Otis broke through the front windshield. The two dragged the women inside - all four were taken hostage. The next day, the four teens were brutally abused (one was murdered):
Meanwhile, the case of the four missing teens had been reported by Denise's worried ex-cop father Don Willis (Harrison Young) in Ruggsville, to two officers, Lt. George Wydell (Tom Towles) and Deputy Steve Naish (Walton Goggins). During their investigation, they soon found the abandoned, destroyed car with naked and dead cheerleader Karen Murphy in the trunk. Lt. Wydell interrogated Mama Firefly in the house to distract her, while Willis and Naish investigated outside (and discovered more corpses of dead cheerleaders in the Firefly barn). More murders would then occur:
The three surviving teens, Jerry, Mary and Denise, were dressed in bunny rabbit outfits, and were about to be placed in a coffin and lowered into an abandoned well. Seeing an opportunity to escape, Mary took flight as Otis commanded her to "RUN, RABBIT, RUN!" She fled into a graveyard-cemetery where hundreds of Firefly victims (marked by crosses) had been buried over the years. She was chased by Baby and repeatedly and bloodily stabbed in the chest. Baby laughed hysterically and then licked the blood off her knife. The Firefly family conducted a ritualistic burning of all the new corpses at the gravesite. After descending into an underground series of caverns and catacombs (of rotting bodies), Jerry and Denise's coffin was ripped open by crazed and insane-looking, freakish mental patients. Jerry was dragged off to an operating room, where Denise witnessed Doctor Satan (a demonic cyborg) performing a vivisection open-brain operation on him - he died on the operating table. Doctor Satan's mutated, masked assistant entered - the monstrous figure was revealed to be Mother Firefly's ex-husband Earl (The Professor).
Denise escaped from pursuit by Earl (with a large axe) to the surface (while Earl was crushed by a falling support beam and rock in the tunnel), where she was offered a ride by Captain Spaulding, who happened to be driving by in a pink Cadillac convertible. She sat back and fell asleep in the passenger seat and wasn't aware that Otis was in the back-seat. He raised his knife to stab her.
The film abruptly cut to Denise who had been returned to the underground lab and strapped onto Doctor Satan's operating table for further torture. She awakened with Dr. Satan above her, and The Professor in the room - she screamed! Had the Professor survived, and/or was Denise hallucinating?
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 Master Clown Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig)  Store Robbery by (l to r) Richard Wick and Killer Karl  Ravelli (Irwin Keyes)  Spaulding's Introduction of the "Murder Ride" Members of Demented Firefly Family:  Baby Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie)  Gloria "Mama" or Mother Firefly (Karen Black)  Tiny (Matthew McGrory)  Grampa Hugo Firefly (Dennis Fimple)   Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley)  Baby's Stage Show Performance   The Confrontation Between Mary and Flirtatious Baby  The Aborted Getaway in a Car   Bill's Lethal Fate - Served as "Fishboy" by Otis   Denise's Fate - Abused by Tiny, Taken Captive by Otis  Jerry's Fate - Partially Scalped After Failing Baby's Guessing Game  Body of Dead Cheerleader in Abandoned Car Trunk    More Dead and Tortured Cheerleaders in the Firefly Barn  Otis Wearing Willis' Facial and Body Skin   Mary's Fate - Dressed In Bunny Rabbit Costume - "RUN, RABBIT, RUN" - Bloodily Stabbed to Death by Baby  Denise Pursued by The Professor Underground Before Escaping |
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House of Wax (1953) - in 3-D #57 Andre de Toth's horror film from Warner Bros. had the extra added attraction of being filmed in 3-D - and it was highly successful. It was a more expensive remake of their earlier Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), with Vincent Price establishing himself forever after as the quintessential horror villain. In turn-of-the-century New York, wax museum curator and sculptor Prof. Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price) was distressed when his business partner Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts) threatened to burn his masterworks creations - for the $25,000 insurance money. Jarrod was thought to have perished in the flames - he was seen dodging the fiery debris amidst melting figures in the film's exciting opening sequence. Soon after, a shadowy black-cloaked figure roamed at night, at the same time as Burke's murder and the theft of bodies from the morgue, with the help of deaf-mute henchman/sculptor Igor (Charles Bronson, credited as Charles Buchinsky), and assistant Leon (Young). Suddenly - and miraculously, a new wheelchair-bound (although he could walk) 'reincarnated' Henry Jarrod (with ruined hands) reappeared and opened a new wax emporium. It showcased a "Chamber of Horrors" - commemorating famous and fresh "crimes of violence" through wax figures (to give the people what they wanted: "sensation, horror, shock"). The film's poster tagline gave away the plot:
The improved museum recreated violent crimes, created by a scarred, mad and psychotic Jarrod. The vengeful Jarrod (in the disguise of the cloaked, face-disfigured killer and later wearing a facial mask to hide his melted face) had been committing the many murders; he then stole their corpses from the New York City Morgue and coated them with molten wax to produce very life-like statues for his waxworks exhibits: ("Each subject must be taken from life"). The film's plot twist was that Jarrod's extremely life-like wax exhibits were the bodies of his own murdered victims, who had been dipped in a large vat of wax. In the film's climactic highpoint, art student Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) suspected that one of the figures (Joan of Arc) resembled recently-murdered close friend/roommate Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones) - and Burke's girlfriend. She suspected that Cathy's body had been used as a "model" for the figure of Joan of Arc; Sue was amazed by the likeness: "Why should it be so much like Cathy?" - Sue then made the shocking discovery that her friend Cathy's corpse had been dipped in wax to create a Joan of Arc wax figure: ("It is Cathy. It's Cathy's body under the wax! I knew it! I knew it all the time!"). When she confronted Jarrod, he admitted his hideous plan -- Sue was to be his next "leading lady" for immortality - Marie Antoinette: "Everything I ever loved has been taken away from me. Not you, my Marie Antoinette, for I will give you eternal life" When she beat against Jarrod's face, his wax visage broke off and fell away. She scarily revealed his grotesque features beneath.
In the finale, set in the museum's cellar laboratory, Sue was strapped and naked under a boiling vat of wax as he prepared her to be his next exhibit victim as Marie Antoinette: "This is where I recreated my Joan of Arc. It's an interesting process. If you have patience with me, my dear, I'll show you how it's done...That look of horror spoils your lovely face. What if it should show, even through the wax?...The end will come quickly, my love. There's a pain beyond pain, an agony so intense, it shocks the mind into instant oblivion. We'll find immortality together, for they'll remember me through you." She was saved from a predictable fate when police broke into the museum and surrounded Jarrod. Jarrod wound up falling into his own burning cauldron of tallow (at over 450 degrees F.) - his apt and richly-deserved fate. |
 Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)  Wax Museum Fire  The Wax Museum's Burning and 'Death' of Prof. Jarrod  Cloaked Murderer  Sue: "It's Cathy's body under the wax!"  Sue - Jarrod's New "Marie Antoinette" 
Jarrod's Death in His Own Cauldron of Wax |
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House on Haunted Hill (1959) #37 The original horror film with this title was director/producer William Castle's campy and gimmicky House on Haunted Hill (1959) - forty years before its glossy and elaborate remake (see below). Filled with B-movie shocks and plot twists, the setup was the hosting of a mysterious overnight party for five guests by:
Any one who survived the 12-hour night in the locked house (after midnight) would receive $10,000. Loren had rented the house from drunken wastrel Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.), one of the guests and the mansion's owner, who believed that there had been seven inexplicable, brutal murders in the reputedly-haunted house - including beheadings and amputations. In fact, the house did seem spooked, with a falling chandelier, bleeding ceilings, moving walls and secret passageways, a severed head in a suitcase, and 'ghosts.' The early suicide (by hanging) of Annabelle in the stairwell was faked. She was actually allied with invited guest, psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal) - the two lovers were both scheming to kill Loren for his fortune. The vengeful Loren had other plans - he faked that he was shot dead in the wine cellar by young Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), one of the guests who was driven to hysteria. Trent went to the cellar to dump Frederick's body into an acid vat hidden beneath a large trap-door in the floor. During a 'lights-out' struggle between the two, it sounded like Loren's body was dumped into the vat.
Shortly later, Annabelle arrived to search for Trent. From a side room, Loren scared the wits out of her with an "Emergo" skeleton (she believed it was her vengeful husband Loren's skeleton) that emerged dancing from the vat. The conniving wife was pursued and taunted by the skeleton, using Loren's voice: "At last, you've got it all. Everything I have, even my life. But you're not going to live to enjoy it. Come with me, murderess. Come with me." She screamed as the skeleton touched her shoulder, backed up in fright, and tumbled into the vat behind her. Loren emerged from the shadows, manipulating the puppet-like skeleton on wires and strings. He offered silky-voiced eulogies for the two deceased:
Loren admitted to his guests that the two had died trying to kill him: "I'm ready for justice to decide whether I'm innocent or guilty." In the final line of dialogue, haunted house owner Watson Pritchard warned that the ghosts of the doomed house were now unleashed:
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    "Emergo" Skeleton Scene: Loren's Scare Tactic Against his Unfaithful Wife Annabelle 
Final Words Offered by Haunted House Owner Watson Pritchard |
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House on Haunted Hill (1999) The elaborate horror remake of the 1959 Castle movie (see above) by William Malone, was also followed by a sequel, Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007) in unrated and R-rated versions, featuring an unrelated search for the Baphomet idol - the cause/source of evil. The 1999 remake opened in a hellish sanatorium - the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane in Los Angeles. Shown in flashback on October 11, 1931, an evil mass-murdering doctor, Dr. Richard Benjamin Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs), was surgically cutting into an operating room patient without anesthesia - a scene that would be replayed later. In one of the gory shots, a group of rebellious disturbed patients stabbed one of the orderly-office clerks through the neck with three freshly-sharpened pencils. Vannacutt was interrupted by the riot, orchestrated by the asylum's mental patients - creating a "Hospital of Horror" and "Sanitarium of Slaughter" when everyone died in the resulting inferno (charred remains were shown) within the locked facility. It was now the "House on Haunted Hill." Years later, plans were underway to celebrate a Halloween birthday-party for:
Guests for the party would be invited to spend the night in the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, with a reward of $1 million for surviving the night. The offer was made by Evelyn's husband:
In the film's first sequence, Evelyn was bathing in her sudsy tub. She watched jerky, TV newsreel footage (on the program "Terrifying But True!!") showing the asylum's lethal past as a torture institution for the criminally insane. The program's narrator (Peter Graves) intoned:
The names of the five party guests, strangers to each other yet all invited to Evelyn's birthday at the sealed-up haunted house (for "Terror, Humiliation, Perhaps Murder"), were switched twice. Price had shredded Evelyn's list and substituted his own guest list - although his list, in his absence, was also mysteriously deleted from his laptop (by evil spirits or ghosts of the house?). The final guest list included only one person on Evelyn's original list - Dr. Blackburn:
Shortly after the guests arrived and the party started, the facility went into lockdown for a period of twelve hours. Lots of nightmarish images popped up in the film. During a sequence for a search to find the security system controls to unlock the house gates and/or to escape, a group of guests went down a series of frightening corridors. Sara and others found display cases of mummified remains of experimented-upon patients. In its creepiest moment, she reached her arms into a large round vat of gooey blood to rescue a possessed Eddie who had jumped in. Then she found him suddenly approaching her from behind, and asking: "What the hell are you doing?" as a mysterious force tried to drag her in. Meanwhile, Steven came across his employee Carl Schechter (Max Perlich) at security controls and monitors who had been paid to scare the guests with various traps. After unexpected happenings, he was discovered with his entire face missing - only a big bloody hole was visible. Shortly afterwards, when Steven became threatening to everyone, he was protectively sealed in a gigantic, revolving kinescope (a sensory overload isolation chamber), called a "saturation chamber." He donned a pair of goggles as he began to hallucinate. He experienced unsettling, weird psychotic images of a vest-wearing, maniacally-laughing man bouncing a red ball. A nude woman hanging from straps appeared to be tortured, and a man had his face in a vice-like mask. Price's visions were accompanied by his experience of drowning in a sealed vault of water with a nude underwater female spewing blood from her mouth before her head turned into a grotesque shape. His head became the red bouncing ball in the hands of his deadly wife.
[One of the film's major twists was that the invitees, selected by the house's vengeful spirits, specifically included five descendants-relatives of members of Vannacutt's original 1931 staff who hadn't perished in the early 1930s fire - they included everyone "responsible" for the fiery conflagration:
The film ended with the realization that the angry, "pissed" house itself was an evil entity, represented by a spidery, undulating, shape-shifting black "Darkness." It was released when Steven and Evelyn were scuffling with each other in a monumental final struggle in the basement. Steven threw Evelyn through a decaying door where they both were confronted by the "Darkness." It quickly assimilated, corroded and consumed Evelyn, and then attacked the surviving members in the house, as Price screamed: "The house is alive." Soon after, Price also met his demise. Only two eventually escaped, Sara Wolfe and Eddie Baker - they were the only ones not related to people that died in the building years ago. The threatening "Darkness" released Eddie when he claimed: "I had nothing to do with this! I was adopted!" The two survivors found an envelope labeled: "For those who survive the night" - enclosed were five cashier's checks for $1 million each, made out to "CASH," and signed by Steven Price. In the final post-credits epilogue (filmed in jerky black and white), Evelyn was shown being tortured alongside Steven by the dead asylum patients on "the other side." |
  Flashback Opening: 1931 in Psychiatric Institute  Mummified Remains  Sara Wolfe  Carl Schechter - Without a Face  Steven Price in Revolving "Saturation Chamber"  Evelyn Stockard Price  Steven Price  The Shape-Shifting "Black" Darkness  The $1 Million Checks  The Two Survivors: Sara and Eddie   Post-Credits Torture of Evelyn and Stephen |
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The Howling (1981) #81 The Howling (1981) was director Joe Dante's retooling of the werewolf horror films of the classic era. In tribute, several of the characters were named after famous werewolf horror film movie directors: George Waggner (The Wolf Man (1941)), (Roy) William Neill (Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943)), Terence Fisher (The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)), and Freddie Francis (Legend of the Werewolf (1975)). In one of its opening startling scenes set in an adult video store's seedy porno viewing room, Los Angeles TV news-anchor Karen White (Dee Wallace-Stone) was part of a police trap to catch serial killer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). She was forced to watch a video of a young woman/hooker (Sarina C. Grant) being raped by Eddie Quist - with lycanthropic overtones. When police arrived to save her, Eddie was shot and apparently killed. Suffering from shock, nightmares, sexual dysfunction and amnesia, she was prescribed recovery time with her husband Bill Neill (Christopher Stone) at a secluded Big Sur country "Colony" retreat locale, where unbeknownst to her, bizarre, ravenous, sex-crazed werewolves were located. [She was unaware that her prescribing New Age therapist/doctor at the time was Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee), a werewolf.] Bill was seduced by Eddie's sultry nymphomaniac sister Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks), acting like a "bitch in heat." By a campfire, they were transformed through shapeshifting into howling werewolves during sex. Karen's friend Terry Fisher (Belinda Balaski) was searching for information in Marsha's cabin at the retreat center. Suddenly, she was attacked by a giant werewolf, and escaped by cutting off the monstrous creature's claw with a hand axe - she watched in horror as the wolf hand became human. Also, during the so-called "File Cabinet" scene in the retreat's office, as she later was rifling through file folders, suddenly a giant hairy claw reached calmly in to help her. She was attacked by the anthropomorphic, 7 foot tall werewolf (a regenerated Eddie Quist) and slapped backwards. Her screams (with the phone dangling) were heard by her boyfriend Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan). She was murdered when held up by the beast and her neck snapped when bitten. Her bloodied body was left on the floor.
During a memorable werewolf transformation scene with ground-breaking special effects, Karen White watched helplessly as Eddie in real-time turned into a werewolf in front of her. He taunted her:
The changes were accompanied by crackling noises, while the snout and jaw structures elongated and changed, cheeks, forehead and neck undulated and bubbled (air bladders under facial latex skin), talon-like nails/claws extended from fingers, teeth grew into feral fangs, and hairy fur and pointy devilish ears grew out. (All were pneumatic transformations without CGI effects.) She threw acid into the face of the beast and evaded the monstrous creature. The film ended with Karen escaping with Chris after he had shot Eddie with silver bullets - and after locking the wolf creatures in a barn and setting it on fire. They were surrounded by a pack of werewolves in a hijacked police vehicle, and Karen was bitten in the neck by her own werewolf husband. She pulled a shotgun's trigger on her husband (who reverted back to his human flesh when dead), and then told Chris: "We have to warn people, Chris. We have to make them believe." To convince viewers of the threat, shown on-camera in a pre-arranged, televised appearance, Karen began with the statement: "A secret society exists, and is living among all of us. They are neither people nor animals, but something in-between." Then came her own werewolf transformation scene. One of the viewers, a young girl soon exclaimed: "The newslady's turned into a werewolf!" The episode left viewers to wonder whether it was real or just spectacular special effects ("The things they do with special effects these days").
Karen was shot and killed in the studio by Chris with a silver bullet during the news broadcast. In the final scene set in a bar where patrons were watching the show, at the end of the bar, Marsha (who had escaped alive from the Colony) ordered a rare hamburger. |
     Eddie's Transformation   Karen's Deadly Bite in the Neck |
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The Hurt Locker (2009) In this Best Picture winner, there was a tense series of war scenes/set-pieces (filmed by Best Director-winning Kathryn Bigelow) which told about an elite group of three bomb-squad specialists or EOD bomb defusers (Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal Squad) in Bravo Company. They were cognizant of a 39-day countdown until their home-leave deployment-rotation. The film opened with the death of team leader SSG Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce) in a bulky Kevlar suit after a failed defusement of a dangerous IED (improvised explosive devices) bomb with a robotic device. The action took place in the rubble and garbage-strewn streets of Bagdad in 2004 Iraq when they were threatened with sniper fire and the bomb was set off by a cellphone from a marketplace butcher shop. Thompson's replacement ("a redneck piece of trailer trash") was newcomer and risk-taker Army Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner). In one scary and harrowing scene after another, James displayed bravado, recklessness and fearlessness:
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 Defusing Bombs  Drawing Pistol on Cab Driver  Seven Attached Bombs  Daring Sgt. William James 
Arabic Man's Explosive Vest |
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(alphabetical by film title, illustrated) Intro | #s-A | B | C-1 | C-2 | D-1 | D-2 | E | F | G | H I-J | K-L | M | N-O | P | Q-R | S-1 | S-2 | S-3 | T | U-Z |
