Editorials
Special Feature: Most Memorable Moments 2010!
Even in the midst of a truly bad horror flick, every so often there are those moments that stick in your mind long after you’ve left the movie theater and gone on about your daily routine. Whatever your opinion on the crop of horror movies released over the past year, there were undeniably a few isolated moments or scenes that stood out above the rest, and B-D reporter Chris Eggertsen has compiled a month-to-month accounting of his most memorable from 2010. From the good to the bad to the downright ugly, the following bits were highlights in this year of fallen angels, human centipedes, animal/human hybrids, razor-toothed killer fish and…Miley Cyrus vehicles? See inside for the full list…and let us know what your own most memorable moments were in the comments!
Nevertheless, there were still several buzz-worthy moments/scenes in horror movies this year – some for the right reasons, some for the wrong, and others that simply made our jaws drop in “WTF?” disbelief (there are also a couple non-horror entries – terrifying in their own way – that made the cut for those months that were light on genre fare). Following are a few of the highlights, from month to month:
Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
Film: Legion
Moment: Sweet old woman turns demonic
In the absolutely terrible Legion, which squandered a decent cast and some very good cinematography by virtue of a horrible script and lame, generic characters, there was one terrific moment that pointed to the type of movie it could have been. When a seemingly amiable, harmless old grandma (Jeanette Miller) takes a seat at the roadside diner that serves as the film’s main setting, she begins engaging in pleasant conversation with pregnant waitress Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) that quickly turns sinister when she utters the darkly comic (given the source) line: “Your fuckin’ baby’s gonna burn.” What follows is a fun action sequence in which the smiling old woman transforms into a hideous demon and bites the neck of a diner patron, crawls across the ceiling, and takes a frying pan to the head before being gunned down by the hilariously clichéd ex-“gang banger” character played by Tyrese Gibson. The marketing team at the studio was wise to heavily feature this scene in the trailer, considering it was the only moment in the movie that effectively (and intentionally) integrated both the horror and comedy elements implicit in the film’s absurd premise.
Film: Frozen
Moment: Wolf attack
The best wolf attack in horror in the month of February should have been in Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman, but sadly that movie was mostly a bore that did almost nothing interesting in its updating of the 1941 classic. No, instead that honor goes to Frozen, the severely underrated (its admittedly far-fetched moments notwithstanding) Adam Green “trapped-on-a-ski-lift” flick that was so good that it’s hard to believe it was directed by the same guy who helmed the atrocious Hatchet II. This scene, in which Kevin Zegers’ character – legs broken after attempting an ill-advised jump off the lift – is set upon by a pack of hungry wolves, was, in a film filled with squirm-inducing, edge-of-your-seat moments, the squirmiest moment of all. The back-and-forth cutting between Zegers’ frantic wails of “Don’t you let her watch!” and the horrified reactions of Emma Bell and Shawn Ashmore’s characters as they hang helplessly 40 feet above was by far one of the most terrifying moments in movies this year.
Film: The Last Song
Moment: All of them
So there weren’t really any theatrical or DVD horror releases in March, but Miley Cyrus’ The Last Song comes close enough. Being stuck on a plane to Moscow in coach for 15 hours will make you do some crazy things, and one of the craziest acts I engaged in was actually settling in to check out what I thought would be a laugh-riot of unintentional comedy after running out of other flicks to watch on the in-flight system. Sadly, The Last Song was not funny at all, unintentionally or otherwise; in fact, watching the grating Cyrus (whose voice sounds like that of a 40-year-old woman who’s smoked two packs a day for the last 25 years) unbearably mugging and playing the clichéd “bad girl” for 45 minutes (I couldn’t make it through the entire movie) was by far one of the most horrifying experiences I had at the movies this year. While I didn’t actually watch it until sometime in September, I feel nothing but pity for the parents who were forced to sit through this travesty with their young Hannah Montana-loving children on its opening weekend in March.
Film: The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
Moment: Katsuro shits in Lindsay’s mouth
This one kinda goes without saying, doesn’t it? Although you don’t actually see anything except the nausea-inducing expression on Lindsay’s face as she’s forced to swallow Katsuro’s excrement – preceded by the Japanese man’s proclamation of “shit, I have to shit!” – the implication alone is more than enough to make it the most memorable horror moment of April 2010 (if not the entire year). For those who were brave enough to watch it, The Human Centipede broke ground that no one frankly asked to be broken, and this scene presented the moment in which the horrifying concept of having a person’s mouth grafted onto another person’s anus reached its logical, puke-worthy nadir. Quite simply, it’s one of those images that, try as you might to purge it (no pun intended) from your mind, you simply cannot.
Film: Sex and the City 2
Moment: The trailer
Another month light on theatrical horror releases, May’s most memorable horror moment for me was watching the trailer for the latest cinematic travesty following Carrie and the gang and literally feeling as if I wanted to hit the nearest bathroom stall and puke my fucking guts out. See! The girls trotting out their tired, entitled asses again in even more heinously ugly couture fashions. Watch! Bat-shit crazy Liza Minnelli performing at a horrifically clichéd gay uber-wedding. Laugh! At the ladies riding on camels in the Arabian Desert. Behold! The girls trotting out their tired, entitled asses again in heinously ugly Middle Eastern-inspired couture fashions. Witness! “Cougar” Samantha drinking martinis poolside at their posh Abu Dhabi hotel and hitting on a guy 30 years her junior. It’s enough to make you lose faith in humanity, a concept more horrifying than anything else I can think of.
Film: Splice
Moment: Sarah Polley is raped by half-human/half-animal hybrid Dren
While it’s admittedly a flawed piece of work, I actually enjoyed Splice for all the reasons that a good majority of people hated it. The fact is, the over-the-top moments in the film are the ones that, whether you loved or loathed them, are by far the most memorable in the movie. Indeed, there are several worthy bits here – the scene where Adrien Brody’s character has sex with Dren, for example, or the deliriously awesome scene when two earlier specimens massacre each other in front of an audience of dozens of stuffy, moneyed spectators. But it’s the moment near the end when Polley’s character Elsa is raped (and, we later find out, impregnated) by Dren – now transformed from female to male and created via a strain of Elsa’s own DNA (incest, anyone?) – that really makes one’s jaw drop to the floor.
Film: Predators
Moment: Unconscious skydiving
This summer’s Predators didn’t waste time in getting down to business, opening with a scene in which Adrien Brody’s character Royce awakes to find himself freefalling through space and attached to an unopened parachute, having to quickly engage it before hitting the jungle floor of the alien planet below. It was a kick-ass way to start the movie off, and it rarely let up from there (save for a prolonged “intermission” involving Laurence Fishburne’s character), making it one of the best action movies of the year – and one which Fox didn’t seem to care too much about, given how little marketing muscle they put behind it. This slam-bang curtain-raiser was a perfect, disorienting way to start the movie off, and a brilliant means of introducing the film’s central group of trained killers; for me, it stands out as one of the best opening scenes of any action movie in recent memory.
Film: Piranha 3D
Moment: Spring Break Massacre
There were few moments in horror 2010 as go-for-broke as the feeding frenzy that occurred at the center of killer-fish remake Piranha 3D, in which boatloads of college-aged Spring Break revelers are attacked and devoured by the titular (no pun intended) prehistoric creatures. The sequence was a boon for gore lovers everywhere -it certainly ranks way up on the list of most blood-drenched scenes in movie history – with a plethora of T&A, ravaged flesh, floating body parts, numerous disembowelments, bare-breasted bodies sliced in two by wayward metal cables, scalping by outboard motor, a regurgitated human penis, and – for haters – the bloody smashed head of Eli Roth. The film may have been uneven on the whole, but this particular sequence – deftly handled by kinetic director Alexandre Aja – made it all worth it.
Film: Resident Evil: Afterlife
Moment: Claire and Alice battle the Executioner
While Afterlife was just as silly as the other three installments in the franchise, the 3D (it was shot with the Fusion Camera System, the same one used for James Cameron’s Avatar) was insanely impressive and helped to salvage the boneheaded script and often subpar acting. The part where Alice (Milla Jovovich) and Claire (Ali Larter) face off with the axe-wielding Executioner was the action sequence that most stands out to me, in that it was one of the best uses of 3D I’ve ever seen. Yes, there is the expected gimmicky moment when the axe flies right at the audience, but the scene goes further than that; shot in slo-mo and taking place inside some sort of communal shower, this sequence utilizes the power of 3D extremely well, with every piece of shattered tile, every drop of showering water, every chunk of exploded flesh registering with crystal clarity that makes the 3D landscape come off like a fully-realized world. While it would’ve been great to have utilized the stunning technology in service of a better movie, it’s still a great example of what 3D should look like in the 21st century (i.e. no more post-conversion!).
Film: I Spit On Your Grave
Moment: Shotgun up the ass
Let’s get one thing straight: as a movie, I Spit on Your Grave was pretty terrible. Jennifer (played by the subpar Sarah Butler) goes from hapless victim to cold-blooded, sadistic killer in one of the most unconvincing transformations in movie history, and the offending group of rednecks is about as generic as they come. But one thing I can say about it was that it was never boring, mostly due to some horrifically effective rape scenes in the first half and some pretty awesome and creative “revenge kills” in the second. While the “lye bathtub” and “fish guts” murders were damn impressive, screenwriters Stuart Morse and director Steven R. Monroe saved the best for last, with the most cold-hearted member of the group of rapists getting a shotgun blast up the ass and out through his gaping pie-hole (giving a whole new meaning to the term “ass-to-mouth”). Best of all, they actually showed the grisly end result – a truly impressive bit of practical effects work that capped off an otherwise underwhelming flick.
Film: Skyline
Moment: Poolside slo-mo
In one of the best moments of unintentional comedy in 2010, the Strause Brothers made the rather ill-advised decision to render the breakneck escape of several characters – fleeing the clutches of a gigantic alien invader – in not-so-glorious slow motion. I can’t quite put my finger on why it was so funny; maybe it was the unfortunate wardrobe choice foisted on actress Brittany Daniel (black athletic pants and running shoes, off the shoulder purple top), maybe it was the incongruously sunny setting (the patio of a posh L.A. residential tower), maybe it was merely a case of awkward timing. Whatever it was, the entire audience at the screening I attended (myself included) burst out into peals of spontaneous laughter when this bit played. Sure, the goofiest moment in one of the year’s goofiest movies was memorable for all the wrong reasons, but memorable it was nonetheless.
Clip:
Film: Black Swan
Moment: Surprise! Mom’s in your room
It’s hard to choose a most memorable moment from Darren Aronofsky’s outrageous masterpiece – filled as it is with expertly filmed dance sequences and the vivid hallucinations of Natalie Portman’s character Nina Sayers – but at the end of the day it has to be the scene in which Nina begins engaging in some serious masturbatory action only to look over in the midst of it to discover that her unhinged mother (Barbara Hershey, super creepy) had been asleep in a chair a few feet away all along. The completely left-field moment is played totally over-the-top, accompanied as it is by a jagged blast of music and rapid close-up, and it was met with a huge reaction from the audience I saw it with. Engaging in a little self-gratification with your parents in the room is every red-blooded human being’s worst nightmare, and Aronofsky effectively played the moment with a burst of bombastic, deliciously unexpected comedy.
Soon after the New Hollywood generation took over the entertainment industry, they started having children. And more than any filmmakers that came before—they were terrified. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), Eraserhead (1977), The Brood (1979), The Shining (1980), Possession (1981), and many others all deal, at least in part, with the fears of becoming or being a parent. What if my child turns out to be a monster? is corrupted by some evil force? or turns out to be the fucking Antichrist? What if I screw them up somehow, or can’t help them, or even go insane and try to kill them? Horror has always been at its best when exploring relatable fears through extreme circumstances. A prime example of this is Larry Cohen’s 1974 monster-baby movie It’s Alive, which explores the not only the rollercoaster of emotions that any parent experiences when confronted with the difficulties of raising a child, but long-standing questions of who or what is at fault when something goes horribly wrong.
Cohen begins making his underlying points early in the film as Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) discusses the state of the world with a group of expectant fathers in a hospital waiting room. They discuss the “overabundance of lead” in foods and the environment, smog, and pesticides that only serve to produce roaches that are “bigger, stronger, and harder to kill.” Frank comments that this is “quite a world to bring a kid into.” This has long been a discussion point among people when trying to decide whether to have kids or not. I’ve had many conversations with friends who have said they feel it’s irresponsible to bring children into such a violent, broken, and dangerous world, and I certainly don’t begrudge them this. My wife and I did decide to have children but that doesn’t mean that it’s been easy.
Immediately following this scene comes It’s Alive’s most famous sequence in which Frank’s wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) is the only person left alive in her delivery room, the doctors clawed and bitten to death by her mutant baby, which has escaped. “What does my baby look like!? What’s wrong with my baby!?” she screams as nurses wheel her frantically into a recovery room. The evening that had begun with such joy and excitement at the birth of their second child turned into a nightmare. This is tough for me to write, but on some level, I can relate to this whiplash of emotion. When my second child was born, they came about five weeks early. I’ll use the pronouns “they/them” for privacy reasons when referring to my kids. Our oldest was still very young and went to stay with my parents and we sped off to the hospital where my wife was taken into an operating room for an emergency c-section. I was able to carry our newborn into the NICU (natal intensive care unit) where I was assured that this was routine for all premature births. The nurses assured me there was nothing to worry about and the baby looked big and healthy. I headed to where my wife was taken to recover to grab a few winks assuming that everything was fine. Well, when I awoke, I headed back over to the NICU to find that my child was not where I left them. The nurse found me and told me that the baby’s lungs were underdeveloped, and they had to put them in a special room connected to oxygen tubes and wires to monitor their vitals.
It’s difficult to express the fear that overwhelmed me in those moments. Everything turned out okay, but it took a while and I’m convinced to this day that their anxiety struggles spring from these first weeks of life. As our children grew, we learned that two of the three were on the spectrum and that anxiety, depression, ADHD, and OCD were also playing a part in their lives. Parents, at least speaking for myself, can’t help but blame themselves for the struggles their children face. The “if only” questions creep in and easily overcome the voices that assure us that it really has nothing to do with us. In the film, Lenore says, “maybe it’s all the pills I’ve been taking that brought this on.” Frank muses aloud about how he used to think that Frankenstein was the monster, but when he got older realized he was the one that made the monster. The aptly named Frank is wondering if his baby’s mutation is his fault, if he created the monster that is terrorizing Los Angeles. I have made plenty of “if only” statements about myself over the years. “If only I hadn’t had to work so much, if only I had been around more when they were little.” Mothers may ask themselves, “did I have a drink, too much coffee, or a cigarette before I knew I was pregnant? Was I too stressed out during the pregnancy?” In other words, most parents can’t help but wonder if it’s all their fault.
At one point in the film, Frank goes to the elementary school where his baby has been sighted and is escorted through the halls by police. He overhears someone comment about “screwed up genes,” which brings about age-old questions of nature vs. nurture. Despite the voices around him from doctors and detectives that say, “we know this isn’t your fault,” Frank can’t help but think it is, and that the people who try to tell him it isn’t really think it’s his fault too. There is no doubt that there is a hereditary element to the kinds of mental illness struggles that my children and I deal with. But, and it’s a bit but, good parenting goes a long way in helping children deal with these struggles. Kids need to know they’re not alone, a good parent can provide that, perhaps especially parents that can relate to the same kinds of struggles. The question of nature vs. nurture will likely never be entirely answered but I think there’s more than a good chance that “both/and” is the case. Around the midpoint of the film, Frank agrees to disown the child and sign it over for medical experimentation if caught or killed. Lenore and the older son Chris (Daniel Holzman) seek to nurture and teach the baby, feeling that it is not a monster, but a member of the family.
It’s Alive takes these ideas to an even greater degree in the fact that the Davis Baby really is a monster, a mutant with claws and fangs that murders and eats people. The late ’60s and early ’70s also saw the rise in mass murderers and serial killers which heightened the nature vs. nurture debate. Obviously, these people were not literal monsters but human beings that came from human parents, but something had gone horribly wrong. Often the upbringing of these killers clearly led in part to their antisocial behavior, but this isn’t always the case. It’s Alive asks “what if a ‘monster’ comes from a good home?” In this case is it society, environmental factors, or is it the lead, smog, and pesticides? It is almost impossible to know, but the ending of the film underscores an uncomfortable truth—even monsters have parents.
As the film enters its third act, Frank joins the hunt for his child through the Los Angeles sewers and into the L.A. River. He is armed with a rifle and ready to kill on sight, having divorced himself from any relationship to the child. Then Frank finds his baby crying in the sewers and his fatherly instincts take over. With tears in his eyes, he speaks words of comfort and wraps his son in his coat. He holds him close, pats and rocks him, and whispers that everything is going to be okay. People often wonder how the parents of those who perform heinous acts can sit in court, shed tears, and defend them. I think it’s a complex issue. I’m sure that these parents know that their child has done something evil, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still their baby. Your child is a piece of yourself formed into a whole new human being. Disowning them would be like cutting off a limb, no matter what they may have done. It doesn’t erase an evil act, far from it, but I can understand the pain of a parent in that situation. I think It’s Alive does an exceptional job placing its audience in that situation.
Despite the serious issues and ideas being examined in the film, It’s Alive is far from a dour affair. At heart, it is still a monster movie and filled with a sense of fun and a great deal of pitch-black humor. In one of its more memorable moments, a milkman is sucked into the rear compartment of his truck as red blood mingles with the white milk from smashed bottles leaking out the back of the truck and streaming down the street. Just after Frank agrees to join the hunt for his baby, the film cuts to the back of an ice cream truck with the words “STOP CHILDREN” emblazoned on it. It’s a movie filled with great kills, a mutant baby—created by make-up effects master Rick Baker early in his career, and plenty of action—and all in a PG rated movie! I’m telling you, the ’70s were wild. It just also happens to have some thoughtful ideas behind it as well.
Which was Larry Cohen’s specialty. Cohen made all kinds of movies, but his most enduring have been his horror films and all of them tackle the social issues and fears of the time they were made. God Told Me To (1976), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), and The Stuff (1985) are all great examples of his socially aware, low-budget, exploitation filmmaking with a brain and It’s Alive certainly fits right in with that group. Cohen would go on to write and direct two sequels, It Lives Again (aka It’s Alive 2) in 1978 and It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive in 1987 and is credited as a co-writer on the 2008 remake. All these films explore the ideas of parental responsibility in light of the various concerns of the times they were made including abortion rights and AIDS.
Fifty years after It’s Alive was initially released, it has only become more relevant in the ensuing years. Fears surrounding parenthood have been with us since the beginning of time but as the years pass the reasons for these fears only seem to become more and more profound. In today’s world the conversation of the fathers in the waiting room could be expanded to hormones and genetic modifications in food, terrorism, climate change, school and other mass shootings, and other threats that were unknown or at least less of a concern fifty years ago. Perhaps the fearmongering conspiracy theories about chemtrails and vaccines would be mentioned as well, though in a more satirical fashion, as fears some expectant parents encounter while endlessly doomscrolling Facebook or Twitter. Speaking for myself, despite the struggles, the fears, and the sadness that sometimes comes with having children, it’s been worth it. The joys ultimately outweigh all of that, but I understand the terror too. Becoming a parent is no easy choice, nor should it be. But as I look back, I can say that I’m glad we made the choice we did.
I wonder if Frank and Lenore can say the same thing.
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