Movies
The Top 13 Kills in Horror Movie History!
By popular demand, I bring you the most requested list since I started doing these things for BD almost a year ago. We all love a good creative kill, and these are–in my opinion–the best of the best. I include the “opinion” caveat as a preemptive response to the inevitable stream of “Hey dude, you forgot to include [BLANK]” comments that is sure to follow. So enjoy, discuss, debate, and don’t forget to visit The Vault of Horror for more of my opinionated commentary!
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Perhaps the greatest opening to an entirely unremarkable horror flick ever. A bunch of old-timey party-goers get abruptly vivisected by an improbably taut cable that comes loose aboard a luxury liner. There goes the conga-line.
If you’re a serial killer, and your prey is attempting to escape down a really long apartment building stairwell, you really can’t go wrong by dropping a running chainsaw down on them. You’re bound to hit something vital, just like Huey Lewis-lover Patrick Bateman does.
Despite its reputation for grimness, the original Saw really didn’t have a lot of graphic violence to speak of. The third flick in the series changed all that, heading decidedly into torture porn territory with that poor chap who gets the Stretch Armstrong treatment courtesy of a mechanized rack. Snap, crackle and pop ain’t just for breakfast anymore! (scene at the 3:30 mark)
When it comes to horror deaths, you have to love the good old exploding head. And the most memorable by far would have to be the classic scene from Cronenberg’s masterpiece, in which that cold-blooded bastard Michael Ironside causes some poor telepath’s cranium to go Hiroshima. This is why I felt no pity when Arnold ripped his arms off in Total Recall. “See you at the party, Richter!”
This is a tough one for any guy to watch, but you can’t say the scumbag didn’t deserve it. Our empowered protagonist hunts down the mastermind of her vicious group rape and slices off his twig and berries, allowing the newly gelded gentleman to bleed out slowly over the course of a few hours. That’s what you get for gangbanging Buster Keaton’s granddaughter.
Jason has racked up some pretty cool kills over his past 3 trillion movies, but this one is rivaled in coolness only by the liquid nitrogen scene in Jason X. Mr. Voorhees gives this poor horny ditz a wack against a tree like he’s dusting off an Oriental rug. Ouch! (scene at 1:20 mark)
Code blue quickly becomes code red in this mind-bending scene in which the doctor has his forearms bitten off when a giant gaping maw suddenly opens up in the chest cavity of his former colleague. I’ve heard of eyes in the back of your head, but never a mouth in the front of your torso.
It doesn’t get any more direct than a knife driven straight into an exposed heart. Let alone about 47 times. And then the nutjob hangs the broad too, for good measure. Talk about overkill…
To call Dr. Chanard’s methods unorthodox would be an understatement: In this scene, he hands a scalpel to a mental patient who’s convinced bugs are crawling all over him. The result? The desperate looney shreds himself as the doctor looks on. Come on now, doc, that’s just lazy!
As far as overprotective dads go, this guy takes the cake. When he finds young Bob smokin’ a jay with his precious little girl, he proceeds to perforate his cerebellum with a massive drill, in that slow and agonizing way only Fulci does. Actually, now that I’m the father of a girl, I can’t say I don’t kind of relate…
Before he was Capt. Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp was a bloody stain on the ceiling, courtesy of one Fred Krueger. This is possibly the most famous of all horror movie kills. Is there really that much blood in the human body? Do we really care?
Of all horror movie baddies, nobody had it coming to him as much as Capt. Rhodes. When a gaggle of hungry pus-bags descend on the megalomaniacal captain for a raucous feeding frenzy, you can’t help but let out a satisfied chuckle. On the menu this evening–fillet of douchebag.
And the number-one kill in horror movie history…
It’s back to Fulci for this nearly unwatchable ocular impalement scene. What can I say, the maestro just has a talent for realizing the most excruciatingly painful ways to die. And this one is a doozy–who among us isn’t squeamish when it comes to the eyes? And there’s just no let-up either–we watch in agonizingly slow detail as the wooden splinter passes through the eyeball and into the brain. No cutaway here, pansies!
For more news and opinions on the world of horror, including the story of a real-life Dexter copycat, a remembrance of Michael Crichton, and a look at the 50 greatest horror movies of all time, check out Brian’s daily blog, The Vault of Horror.
Editorials
Five Serial Killer Horror Movies to Watch Before ‘Longlegs’
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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