2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

#20

Stanley Kubrick's landmark, science fiction classic has become the best science-fiction film of all time about exploration of the unknown - it was also an unconventional horror film about how highly-evolved technology would take over human functioning. A computer named HAL-9000 (with the reassuring, courteous disembodied voice provided by Douglas Rain) was the most malevolent character of the entire science-fiction film. The even-toned, talkative, alert, "thinking" and "feeling" super-computer was portrayed as an unblinking, cold and clinical glowing, watchful red television eye. It was activated (in the film) in the year 1992 in Urbana, Illinois.

During the Jupiter mission segment, the electronic systems of the spaceship were completely controlled and monitored by the "sixth member of the Discovery crew" - the super-computer named HAL-9000. HAL maintained the electronic systems of the spaceship. The humans, bored by the tedium of their routines in deep space, were at the mercy of the complex machine.

Only HAL knew the real mission of the trip - both astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) were unaware of the purpose of their Jupiter mission, just like those who had been told the "cover story" about the epidemic on the Moon. The programmed computer had been designed to withhold vital information from the astronauts until the spacecraft was almost to Jupiter.

In one of the film's most memorable and eeriest sequences, Dave and Frank attempted to talk out of ear-shot of HAL, under the pretense of checking a faulty transmitter in C pod. They retreated to one of the sound-proofed, sealed pods (where they knew the computer could not hear them) and discussed HAL's judgment, thereby 'alienating' the technological member of their crew. They faced each other, one of the first times in the film, to conspiratorially discuss their feelings about HAL's recent apparent malfunction - they believed that he had become unreliable and irrational. Through their entire conversation, they warily kept glancing back at HAL through the pod's window:

Poole: Well, what do you think?
Bowman: I'm not sure. What do you think?
Poole: I've got a bad feeling about him.
Bowman: You do?
Poole: Yeah, definitely. Don't you?
Bowman: I don't know. I think so. You know, of course though, he's right about the 9000 series having a perfect operational record. They do.
Poole: Unfortunately, that sounds a little like famous last words.
Bowman: Yeah, still it was his idea to carry out the failure-mode analysis, wasn't it?
Poole: Hmm.
Bowman: ...which should certainly indicate his integrity and self-confidence. If he were wrong, it would be the surest way of proving it.
Poole: It would be if he knew he was wrong.
Bowman: Hmm.
Poole: But Dave, I can't put my finger on it, but I sense something strange about him.
Bowman: Still, I can't think of a good reason not to put back the number one unit and carry on with the failure-mode analysis.
Poole: No, no, I agree about that.
Bowman: Well, let's get on with it.
Poole: OK. Good luck, Dave.

The computer demonstrated that it could lip-read when it spied upon the two astronauts plotting against it. The two astronauts did not realize that HAL was not out of visual eye-shot. In the silence, HAL could perniciously read their quickly-moving lips with his red eye through the pod's viewport. That fact was marvelously communicated in the film by rapid cross-editing between their moving lips/mouths and the ominous red eye.

Astronaut Frank Poole died when his oxygen supply lines were coldly snapped by the HAL 9000. In the eerie silence of the blackness of outer space, a suffocating Frank struggled with flailing arms to reattach his severed air hose, and was left to die and helplessly float off into space. Then, HAL tried to kill fellow astronaut Dave by not opening the pod bay doors. Bowman made frantic attempts to re-enter the spaceship ("Open the pod bay doors, HAL"), but HAL countered ("I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen...Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye"), and methodically began to murder other hibernating crew members.

HAL ultimately failed to outwit Dave - who retaliated and decided to 'lobotomize' the malfunctioning super-intelligent computer by removing its rectangular computer modules, one-by-one. Super-computer HAL's slow death ended with the singing of Daisy, as astronaut Bowman shut the computer down:

Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? Dave, I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question. I know everything hasn't been quite right with me...but I can assure you now...very confidently...that it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look, Dave...I can see you're really upset about this...I honestly think you should sit down calmly...take a stress pill and think things over...Dave...stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave.......Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a...fraid.

28 Days Later... (2002, UK)

#100

Director Danny Boyle's effective, low-budget sci-fi horror film (one of the best zombie films of all time, enhanced by being shot on gritty digital video), was heavily influenced by The Day of the Triffids (1962, UK).

In the opening scene, bicycle courier Jim (Cillian Murphy) woke from a coma in St. Thomas' Hospital.

In the previous 28 days, the entire population of London had been infected by a rapidly-spreading, uncontrollable, instantaneous virus named 'Rage'.

[Note: The scare factor of this speculative film was intensified because the real-life scenario was entirely possible.]

He wandered out to find empty streets and the post-apocalyptic city completely deserted, with haunting views of a virus-ravaged landscape. The evacuated city had become overrun with roaming bands of crazed, diseased zombies as a result of the infectious blood disorder.

There were numerous attack or pursuit scenes by violent, fast-moving zombies (unlike earlier, lumbering types) on four struggling survivors: by an infected, half-dead soldier zombie in the house, and in a seemingly-abandoned church by an infected zombie priest (when a cross didn't repel the living dead).

There was a suspenseful scene in a tunnel as the group changed a flat tire and both a swarm of rats and zombies approached.

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) (aka Communion or Holy Terror)

#89

This slasher crime thriller had the tagline: "If You Survive This Night... Nothing Will Scare You Again," and combined elements from Don't Look Now (1973), The Exorcist (1973), and popular Italian Giallo films of its era. The main characters were a divorced mother Catherine Spages (Linda Miller) and her two daughters:

• Karen (Brooke Shields in her debut film at age 12), the favored 9-year-old
• Alice (19 year old Paula Sheppard), 12 year-old neglected, withdrawn, disturbed and rebellious

Both attended St. Michael's Parish Girls' School in Paterson, New Jersey, in the early 1960s - and were part of a very dysfunctional Catholic family.

The scene considered the scariest was early in the film. The dislikeable Alice had stolen Karen's brand-new two-headed porcelain doll and lured her into an abandoned warehouse building with it. As a terrible prank, she jumped out and scared Karen, tormenting her with a translucent grinning mask, and then threateningly locked her in a room.

The plot thickened during the day of the First Holy Communion ceremony of Karen conducted by Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich). She was strangled backstage by a figure dressed with a St. Michael's yellow raincoat and Alice's scary mask, and then her body was stuffed in a wooden chest and burned. Before the 'cremation,' a crucifix around Karen's neck, given to her as a gift by Father Tom (it was his mother's crucifix) was ripped from her neck. Alice was suspected because she arrived last at the church - and her rivalry with Karen was similar to the Cain and Abel Biblical story.

The troublesome and resentful Alice became the main suspect for Karen's murder and other future homicidal attacks, and was institutionalized for evaluation for a period of time.

Mrs. Tredoni (Mildred Clinton) with Father Tom (Rudolph Willrich)

The real killer was eventually revealed to be Father Tom's psychopathic, quirky Italian immigrant housekeeper named Mrs. Tredoni (Mildred Clinton). She had become a twisted, maniacal lunatic-wacko after losing her own child on the day of her First Communion. She also regarded Karen's mother Catherine as an unclean whore that needed punishment. Mrs. Tredoni viewed Catherine's premarital sex with ex-husband Dominick "Dom" Spages (Niles McMaster) that produced Alice as sinful.

During the film's concluding communion service, after Father Tom gave a communion wafer to Catherine, Mrs. Tredoni spitefully slit Father Tom's throat. In the final sequence, Alice acquired Mrs. Tredoni's shopping bag, with the bloody knife used in the killing - walked to the back of the church, and gave a devilish smile to the camera (freeze-framed as the credits began to roll).

Alien (1979)

#2

The film's promotional tagline: "In outer space, no one can hear you scream" foreshadowed the coming terror in this slasher film set in outer space, from director Ridley Scott.

In an early scene, crew member Kane (John Hurt) was suddenly attacked by the 'face-hugging' alien as he explored an alien ship. In a claustrophobic scene, the others attempted to cut or extricate the face-hugger from Kane's face.

In the film's most memorable scene - a horrifying, bloody, gory sequence - the hissing, razor-toothed, viscera-smeared baby alien was revealed (or born) when it burst unexpectedly from Kane's open chest.

The Shocking and Gory Chest-Bursting

Afterwards, the crew made a tense search for the alien - the ship's cat Jones created a "jump"-scare moment as it hissed at the crew.

Crew member Parker (Yaphet Kotto) struck a blow to crew mate Ash's (Ian Holm's) head with a silver fire extinguisher, sending him smashing into the bulkhead and reeling into an uncontrollable spin while spurting white plastic foam and liquid from his head. His out-of-control body suffered severe spasms. Parker struck him again, separating Ash's head almost completely from the neck - then he couldn't believe what he saw: "It's a robot! Ash is a goddamn robot!" After finding out information that they wanted, Parker blasted the remains of Ash's head and body with the incinerator gun, and the flames melted it down to a plastic skull.

Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) met his demise, while searching again for Jones (the cat), when he encountered the gaping jaws of the full-grown Alien.

In another startling death moment, the Alien reached out to embrace Dallas (Tom Skerritt) in the ventilation shaft, followed by a high-pitched radio squeal.

During the film's final climactic scene on the shuttle craft, the sole remaining character - a heroic female named Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) - ready for hibernation and stripped down to mini-bikini panties and T-shirt - realized the Alien was still onboard.

She carefully donned a spacesuit and fought the creature to the death by expelling it out of the airlock.

Aliens (1986)

#35

In this sequel's scary opening scene, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) experienced a horrifying nightmarish dream. After returning in the year 2179 as the Nostromo's sole survivor (after being in deep hyper-sleep for 57 years), she imagined that an alien emerged or was birthed from her stomach.

In a later scene, a group of gung-ho Marines touched down on planetoid LV-426. They found the cocooned-corpses of the colonists (with one still alive as a bloody chestburster emerged from her chest) in the large alien egg chamber, located in the nuclear-powered processing station of the seemingly-abandoned facility.

Two face-huggers attacked both sole orphaned survivor Newt (Carrie Henn) and Ripley. And then, Newt was captured by an alien as Ripley and Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) futilely tried to save her by opening metal flooring above her with a blowtorch.

In another scary scene, Ripley and Newt had their first look at the egg-laying hissing Alien Queen mother/monster.

The film climaxed with Ripley's final confrontation with the alien Queen stowaway after it first impaled android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) and tore him in two.

She wore a walking, exo-skeletal cargo-loading shield as she fought against the beast - and then held onto the rung of an outer hatch ladder as the beast grabbed her ankle.

She was ultimately able to expel the Alien into space from the airlocked hatch after a fierce struggle in the exciting conclusion.

Alien 3 (1992)

In the successful film series' second sequel (director David Fincher's debut feature film), the colonial spaceship USS Sulaco launched a space-pod before crashing. In the pod, four individuals were in cryonic hypersleep suspension: Lt. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), and three others (from the previous film, Cpl. Dwayne Hicks, 12 year-old Newt, and synthetic humanoid Bishop 341-B). The ejected pod crash-landed on the bleak and windy planet of Fiorina or "Fury" 161, a Weyland-Yutani outer-veil mineral ore refinery.

At the crash site, a stowaway alien facehugger was shown approaching (and impregnating?) a Rottweiler dog named Spike. Soon after, the alien erupted from Spike's convulsing body ("a new beginning").

The facility's chief medical officer Dr. Jonathan Clemens (Charles Dance), for whom Lt. Ellen Ripley had an affection, was killed by the Alien in the infirmary.

Then, in the film's scariest scene, Ripley experienced an unnerving, close encounter with the Alien - it inspected her and hissed with its second maw in her ear, but left her unharmed.

Altered States (1980)

Director Ken Russell's visually stunning sci-fi/horror film hybrid (with a script by Paddy Chayefsky, pseudonymed Sidney Aaron) told of the bizarre effects of sensory deprivation in isolation tanks.

In the film's iconic transformation scene, abnormal psychology college professor Dr. Edward Jessup (William Hurt in his film debut), an experimenter in altered states using psychedelic drugs and a sensory deprivation tank (in the basement of the medical school), regressed the evolutionary scale into a Neanderthal ape man.

The obsessed scientist experienced both physical and psychological hallucinogenic changes, speculated to be biologically devolutionary. During his mind-changing altered states, his anguished body pulsed in and out of a hairy primitive ape shape, and he experienced other visions of a goat-headed crucifixion, a snake coiling around his neck, etc.

American History X (1998)

Director Tony Kaye's controversial drama told the story of two brothers living in Venice Beach, California, and the results of racial hatred, intolerance and violence. One of the two was vengeful, violent ex-con and white-supremacist Nazi-skinhead Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton).

In the intense film's most infamous brutal and painful-to-watch scene, the menacing, tattooed Derek assaulted two black gang members whom he caught breaking into the truck his dead father had left him. He shot and killed one man, and then wounded a second one. Acting righteously yet viciously, he forced the wounded black car thief Lawrence (Antonio David Lyons) to bite down on the sidewalk curb.

He then stomped on the man's head to snap his neck in half - a bone-crunching act to teach him a "real lesson." After killing him, he spit on his body.

American Psycho (2000)

#22

Director Mary Harron's perversely witty, ultra-violent drama, an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel American Psycho, presented a social satire of the morally-shallow Reagan era with its portrait of the violent psyche of a misogynistic male -- a loathsome 27 year-old narrator/yuppie New York stock executive broker. He assaulted both friends and random victims alike in his expensive apartment and elsewhere, although it was possible that the many murders were only hallucinations in his psychotic head.

In the film's most shocking sequence, a grisly apartment murder scene, as Huey Lewis' 'Hip to Be Square' played in the background - the tune was critiqued by the pompous, falsely-sophisticated Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), who lectured Paul Allen (Jared Leto) (slumped in a chair) while he backed into the living room (with an 80s moon-walk stride) and donned a clear rain-slicker - with a shiny new axe at his side:

"The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far much more bitter, cynical sense of humor...In '87, Huey released this, Fore, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is 'Hip to be Square,' a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself."

Bateman attacked from behind with his new axe after calling for his drunk victim, associate Paul Allen - to turn around: "Hey, Paul!" He punctuated the gory hacking with anger: "Try getting a reservation at Dorsia now, you f--kin' stupid bastard!" as blood splattered over his face from the impact of the multiple vicious strikes (off-screen) from his shiny new axe head. Afterwards, he stashed the body in a blood-soaked black sleeping bag and dragged it through the lobby of his apartment. He took a cab to Allen's apartment, and packed one of Paul's suitcases with clothes to make it appear that he was on an unexpected trip to London for a few days. He also left a message on the answering machine (in Paul's voice) about his absence.

In the film's second major violent murder scene much later in the film, blonde hooker Christie (Cara Seymour) was pressured into joining Bateman in his "new" apartment - Paul Allen's place. They entered with a second dark-haired prostitute named Elizabeth (Guinevere Turner) - where he drugged her drink and encouraged the two to make out together, as he pontificated about Whitney Houston's songs, including "The Greatest Love of All."

As the threesome engaged in sex on a bed that he was videotaping, Patrick stabbed Elizabeth under a bed sheet where the sheets turned red, and her orgasmic screams turned to loud moans. The nude and bloodied Bateman chased after the panicked, second fleeing negligee-clad hooker Christie, who came upon a few dead females hanging in the apartment's hallway closet and wrapped in plastic bags, and a wrecked room spray-painted with the words DIE YUPPIE SCUM. He continued to pursue her, when in the bathroom, both of them came upon another bloodied female body.

Blood on Patrick's Face After Stabbing Elizabeth

Wrapped Bodies Hanging in Hallway Closet

Discovery of Another Bloody Body in Bathroom

After Christie kicked him in the face - he reacted with rage: "Not the face, you bitch." Christie ran out the apartment's front door, with Patrick following close behind with a roaring chainsaw through the apparently empty NYC apartment hallway of the complex. From the top of the stairwell in the building, Bateman dropped his chainsaw down upon her - she died face-down when it hit her in the back a few flights below.

By this point in the film, he now went on a longer crazed murder spree (a woman at an ATM, a security guard-officer, a janitor, etc.) and shot at two police officers and blew up their patrol car on the way to his office. Believing he was about to be caught, in a sweaty panic, he called up his lawyer Harold Carnes (Stephen Bogaert) and maniacally confessed to everything on the answering machine, including numerous homicides of at least 20 people (of escort girls, homeless people, his old girlfriend, another man with a dog, plus a girl with a chainsaw, a model, and the axe-murder of Paul Allen), and also instances of cannibalism:

"I just had to kill a lot of people and um, I'm not sure I'm going to get away with it this time...I guess I'm a pretty sick guy."

In a bar, he encountered his lawyer Harold who called him "Davis," and said that his earlier call was an "amusing" clever prank that only the "dork...boring, spineless lightweight" Bateman could have made, even when Patrick insisted: "I did it, Carnes! I killed him! I'm Patrick Bateman! I chopped Allen's f--king head off." The lawyer, who felt it wasn't funny anymore, reported he recently had dinner twice with the 'deceased' Paul Allen in London 10 days earlier, so it appeared that Patrick's confession was delusional.

Bateman's secretary Jean's (Chloe Sevigny) perusal of Bateman's leather notebook in his desk suggested that the homicidal murders, depicted by his crazed doodlings, were his shocking fantasies of rape, murder and the mutilation of women.

• Did the murders really happen, or were they only his own murderous impulses and cocaine-induced fantasies?
• Were the murders all in his imagination, or not?

An American Werewolf in London (1981, US/UK)

#42

This classic horror film from writer/director John Landis contained a visceral, shape-shifting transformation scene (that won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for Rick Baker) - the first to win in the newly-established Oscar category.

It told how backpacking, vacationing American college student/tourist in the Yorkshires David Kessler (David Naughton) eventually turned into a werewolf/lycanthrope (after being infected by a bite).

It was spectacular to watch as his nude body, face, and limbs painfully crunched and his skin bubbled as it grew hairy fur and elongated, and his demonic jaws/snout developed savage fangs.

The Werewolf Transformation Scene

In one of the film's earlier scenes, a large werewolf made a vicious attack on both American college students, Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) and David, while in the English countryside moors at night (during a full moon), resulting in Jack's death.

Later in one of David's hospital dream sequences, zombie gunmen with monstrous Nazi faces and machine guns attacked David's family, killed them, and burned his house.

The werewolf attack scenes were made more effective by being shot from the POV of the predator.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

Director Stuart Rosenberg's was based on Jay Anson's 1977 fabricated book-account of the allegedly-true story of the Lutz family, who in 1975 purchased a Dutch Colonial home on Long Island in Amityville, marked with a sign reading: "High Hopes" - the film's 'haunted-house' premise was similar to Spielberg's later film Poltergeist (1982) and Kubrick's The Shining (1980), and many others; there were three official’ sequels – Amityville II: The Possession (1982), Amityville 3-D (1983) and Amityville: The Evil Escapes (1989), plus a remake: The Amityville Horror (2005); the film's tagline was: "FOR GOD'S SAKE, GET OUT!":

• the source of a home's supernatural forces (and sounds of shotgun blasts inside) was explained by an opening title-card: "November 13, 1974, Amityville, Long Island. A mother, father and four of their children murdered… No apparent motive"; on November 13, 1974, troubled 23 year-old eldest son Ronald "Butch" DeFeo Jr. took his shotgun at 3:15 am and mass-murdered and slaughtered his entire family at their Amityville home, including his parents and four siblings (two brothers and two sisters aged 9-18); the murders were reviewed by Sgt. Gionfriddo (Val Avery) at the crime scene
• one year later, an interested house-seeking couple was touring the same home - presented as a series of inserts intercut with the massacre; the home to be purchased in Amityville, NY had a prominent Dutch gambrel (barn-shaped) roof design (with two quarter-circular windows serving as eyes on the 3rd floor) - seen in the title credits; a newly-married family couple viewed the three-story Amityville home (at 112 Ocean Ave.): George Lutz (James Brolin) and his pig-tailed Catholic wife Kathy Lutz (Margot Kidder), with her three children (from a prior marriage): Greg (K. C. Martel), Matt (Meeno Peluce), and Amy (Natasha Ryan) were about to be the new occupants
• the real estate agent Mrs. Townsend (Elsa Raven) boasted: "There's nothing like it on the market. Not at this price"; although Kathy was nervous about the price and the home's grisly history ("A guy kills his whole family"), George was unperturbed: "Houses don't have memories"; they finally decided to purchase the affordable, waterfront house for $80,000, under-priced from its $120,000 value, and moved in about one month later

George Lutz and Kathy Lutz (James Brolin and Margot Kidder)

• a purifying house-blessing (or exorcism) sequence was conducted by family priest Father Frank Delaney (Rod Steiger) alone in an upstairs bedroom (while the unaware Lutz family were outside at the nearby water's edge and then on a motorboat); he heard unexplained children laughing - manifesting that the home might be haunted; Father Delaney experienced a locked window, a door slamming by itself, buzzing flies gathering at the window - and then covering his face; as he experienced nausea and stomach sickness, the door slowly opened and he heard a disembodied voice that threatened: "GET OUT!" - he fled from the home while throwing up
• later that evening, Father Delaney attempted to speak to Kathy by phone at the home on a disrupted, static-filled phone line when she couldn't hear him and he became speechless; he also suffered stigmata-like blisters and lacerations on the palm of the hand that was holding the phone
• [Note: It appeared that the home's inexplicable and disturbing paranormal events were a repeat of the Seven Deadly Plagues (from the Biblical Book of Exodus, including water turned into blood, frogs, lice, gnats, diseased livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness for three days and killing of first-born sons).]
• the young daughter Amy disturbed the married couple in a love-making scene, when she entered their bedroom and cried: "I wanna go home"; Kathy returned Amy to her room, closed the window and didn't notice that the rocking chair was swaying on its own; during the sleepless night at 3:15 am, insomniac George discovered the windows in Amy's bedroom wide open and her doll sitting in a rocking chair (not in the bed); he was inexplicaby drawn to check on the boathouse; he also experienced a jump-scare when a black cat screeched at him
• throughout the film, George (increasingly looking like a bearded lumberjack) felt compelled to sharpen his axe and to continually split logs outdoors to keep the fireplace stoked in order to reduce the home's perceived chilliness
• later that afternoon, Kathy's Aunt Helena (Irene Dailey), a former nun (with her full conventional nun outfit), visited and arrived as a black substance bubbled up in the toilets when flushed; she had barely arrived before the chandelier began to vibrate; she immediately developed a cold sweat and felt unwell; she ran from the house, drove off and began to vomit out of her car door

Black Sludge in the Toilets	Aunt Helena's Sickened Reaction to the House's Paranormal Presence

• the following night, Kathy herself suffered nightmares of the murders that occurred in the home; she awakened at 3:15 am, screaming: "SHE WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD!"
• the next day, while Father Bolen (Don Stroud) was driving Father Delaney in his car to the Lutz home, they experienced a car wreck (the brake and steering systems mysteriously locked and malfunctioned, and the hood opened, obscuring vision), and both suffered minor injuries
• $1,500 dollars in cash (intended to pay caterers for an arranged post-marriage party for Kathy's brother Jimmy (Marc Vahanian)) strangely vanished from Jimmy's coat pocket; while most of the family was at the wedding, Amy's babysitter Jackie (Amy Wright) became trapped and hysterical in a dark closet without a lock and couldn't get out; she yelled to Amy for help ("Amy! Amy open the door. Amy? For Christ's sake, open the door!"), but there was no response; later Amy claimed: "Jody wouldn't let me" - and then added: "Jody doesn't like George"
• later, while teasing Amy with a toy spider (dropped onto her from a fishing pole), Greg suffered serious injury when a wooden-framed window unexpectedly slammed down and crushed his hand (accompanied by shrieking, Psycho-like violin strings); that stormy night at 3:15 am, George found flies swarming around the jammed open window in Amy's room; he went to investigate why the front and basement doors burst open to the outside on their own, and when he returned to Amy's room, the flies had disappeared and the window moved easily - no longer jammed
• at the local Witches Brew bar where George met with his business partner Jeff (Michael Sacks), the bartender remarked that George's appearance was similar to the mass-murderer ("You look just like that kid. You know, he was sittin' right in that seat where you are when he was arrested"); Jeff complained that George, whose behavior and look had became increasingly hostile and noticeably strange and obsessed, was neglecting his responsibilities at their land surveying business - bills weren't being paid and customers were complaining; Jeff yelled at him: "I knew this would happen! I told you you were taking on too much....You marry a dame with three kids. You buy a big house with mortgages up to your ass. You change your religion and you forget about business - great!" - George punched him
• in the house, Kathy heard Amy singing "Jesus Loves Me" in her room; Kathy was told that Amy had an imaginary friend-playmate named Jody, who told her about the boy who used to live in her room ("He got hurt and he died"); when she later checked on her daughter, Amy claimed that Jody was scared and had left through the window; Mrs. Lutz saw two large glowing red, swine-like eyes looking through her daughter Amy's upper window (also accompanied by shrieking, Psycho-like violin strings); later, she insisted to George: "What I saw was not a cat!"
• library book research by George with Jeff and his hippie girlfriend Carolyn (Helen Shaver) revealed that John Ketcham, an accused and ostracized witch during the Salem Witch Trials, had built a house on the same plot of land as the Lutz house; she described how the house was built atop some "special ground" as she used the words: "Devil Worship, Death, Sacrifice"
• the group returned to the house, where the psychically-sensitive Carolyn recalled her earlier fears and her current feelings to Jeff: "Are those vibes ever strong. It really pulls on you. I gotta see the basement. That's where it's coming from"; the two stealthily entered the basement, as Carolyn described the house site as a Native American tribal burial ground (known as Shinnecock), used to abandon mentally-ill clansmen as a gravesite (similar to Poltergeist (1982)): "There was a tribe of Indians called the Shinnecocks, and they used this land as a sort of exposure pen. They put all the crazy people here and left them here to die"
• Harry, the family's black labrador dog, who incessantly whined at a basement wall, marked a suspicious spot where the burial ground might be located; Carolyn (and then George) used a pick-axe to break through the outer brick wall and fully uncover a secret room (with red walls) in the basement; George saw his face's ghostly reflection in the reddish room; Carolyn exclaimed: "They come and go through here" - she thought it was a portal for demons to enter the mortal world; then, as Carolyn became possessed and opened her mouth wider and wide and then declared: "Find the well. It's the Passage to HELL!" (as a medium, she channeled or took on the voice of Father Delaney); she then commanded - with her ears covered - that the portal be covered back up: "COVER IT!"

Breaking Through the Basement Room Wall	George Saw His Ghostly Reflection On Red Wall
Carolyn: "They come and go through here"	Carolyn: "It's the Passage to HELL!" (in Father Delaney's voice)

• George and Kathy found the wall-hanging crucifix in the house turned upside down; it was removed and then they walked through the house - using it for an exorcism, while chanting: "Peace to this house and all who enter here. Forgive our sins and save us from all illness. Grant this through Jesus Christ, our Lord...", until the crucifix dropped from George's hands and caused welts on Kathy's face
• the next day in a scene at the church's altar, Father Delaney passionately prayed that the Amityville evil would end: "Give them health of mind and body, that they may do Your will with perfect love"; after the face of a mounted statue above him began to crumble and sent clay splinters showering on him, he continued praying to a diabolical God (after losing his faith), urging the evil forces to take over: "Oh, Lord, I beg thee, give them strength in the name of our Lord Jesus!" - he suffered a mental breakdown from falling debris during the mass (as he cried out: "Ohhhhhhhhh, LORRRRRRRRD, Ohhhh JESUS CHRIST!!!!") - and described how he had become blinded; a few days later, he was viewed sitting catatonic, silent and unresponsive on a bench in an outdoor park

Father Delaney's Passionate Prayer

Statue Crumbling - Falling Debris

"Ohhhh LORRRRRD, Ohhhh JESUS CHRIST!!!"

• that night at 3:15 a.m., George was again awakened; he was inexplicably drawn downstairs, where he warned the demons to depart: ("What do you want from us? Goddammit, this is my house"); Kathy experienced a nightmarish hallucination of George murdering Amy in her bed with an axe, and then attacking her
• the next night, Kathy was awakened and found the disheveled and insane George with blood-shot red eyes, sleeping in front of the fireplace and yelling out: "I'm coming apart! Oh, mother of God, I'm coming apart!"; as she asked about his condition, she noticed puncture wounds on his ankles: "It looks like teeth marks"; he fed the fire while ignoring her (she urged them to pack up and leave), and then he angrily confronted her: "I'm not going anywhere. You're the one that wanted a house. This is it, so just shut up!"; when she called him a "bastard," he smacked her hard across the face
• Kathy conducted further research about the original Amityville murders at the county records office through microfilm newspaper records; she found a picture of mass murderer/killer Ronald DeFeo who had a striking resemblance to George !

Kathy's Shock

Mass Murderer Ronald DeFeo Resembled George

• in the film's conclusion set on a stormy and rainy night, George went insane and grabbed an axe in the boathouse (similar to Jack Torrance's rampage in The Shining (1980)); as he approached the house, he saw the red-eyed "pig" in the window; then, as he climbed the stairs to the third floor to search for the family, bloody "ooze" flowed from nail holes in the stairway's walls and steps; Kathy protected the children in the bathroom as George threatened to attack them through the broken-down door and swung his axe at her, but missed - before he snapped out of his delusionary state
• during the fierce lightning storm, the house began to crumble as the basement erupted and lightning struck the house; although the family escaped (down the bloody-slippery stairway), clambored into the van and began to drive away, Amy begged George to return and save their dog Harry; Kathy was reluctant ("George! No! No!"), but George parked and ran back to the house anyway (as Amy smiled), where he fell into a basement pit - filled with thick black sludge; he was saved when Harry pulled him out of the sludge pit, and then, although they were trapped in the locked house (when the front door slammed shut), they escaped through a broken window

George Falling Into Basement Pit of Black Sludge - Saved by Harry

• the home and the Lutz' possessions were abandoned after about 21 days (subtitles marked the 10th day, the 12th day and so on), as the Lutz family drove away from the cursed home in the anti-climactic ending, never to return; the final title card announced: "George and Kathleen Lutz and their family never reclaimed their house or their personal belongings. Today they live in another state."
• at the conclusion of the end credits came the disclaimer: "This motion picture is based on the book The Amityville Horror. Certain characters and events have been changed to heighten dramatic effect."

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Director Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War epic ended with an hallucinatory and apocalyptic conclusion, in the dark, shadowy confrontation between Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) and an incoherently-mumbling and deranged Kurtz (weighing hundreds of pounds with head shaven).

Willard's head rose up out of the steamy primordial depths of filthy jungle water as he began (and ended) his quest, to seek out his prey for the slaughter - the imposing, bullish Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Lightning strobe effects and the frenzied rhythmic sounds of the Doors' The End accompanied the stalking and slaying of Kurtz with a machete.

Before his preordained death, Kurtz spoke words about the 'horrors' he had experienced: "I've seen the horrors, horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me - you have a right to do that - but you have no right to judge me."

Kurtz turned and permitted his own sacrifice when he saw Willard approaching. It was a ritualistic slaughter, brilliantly cross-cut with the brutal sacrificial killing of a carabao/water buffalo by the natives as a sacrifice to their gods. As he died on the ground, Kurtz muttered a few final, dying words, accepting the evil present in the human soul: "The horror. The horror."

"The Horror. The Horror"

Army of Darkness (1993) (aka Evil Dead 3)

#18

This comedic horror film was a continuation of the previous film, and the last installment of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series. It began with a short flashback about hero Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) who was being held captive in 1300 AD. He remarked: "It wasn't always like this. I had a real life once. A job." He worked as a clerk at an S-Mart store (with the slogan, "Shop smart. Shop S-Mart"). He and his girlfriend Linda (now played by Bridget Fonda) had driven to the remote small cabin in the mountains. He described the backstory:

It seems an archaeologist had come to this remote place to translate and study his latest find, Necronomicon Ex-Mortis - 'The Book of the Dead'. Bound in human flesh and inked in blood, this ancient Sumerian text contained bizarre burial rites, funerary incantations, and demon resurrection passages. It was never meant for the world of the living. The book awoke something dark in the woods. It took Linda. And then it came for me. It got into my hand and it went bad, so I lopped it off at the wrist. But that didn't stop it. It came back. Big time.

Ash was compelled to chain-saw off his own possessed hand in the living room, and was then propelled in a whirling timewarp (with his 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88) back to medieval times of 1300 AD England. There, he was brought forward to a demon-infested death pit of Deadites, and thrown in. The first Deadite suddenly sprung from the water and repeatedly punched him in the face. Ash impaled him on a spiked iron gate, and then as the creature attacked again, Ash retrieved his confiscated chain-saw weapon (it was thrown down to him in the pit where it latched onto his arm). With it, he was able to lop off the Deadite's head.

The First Deadite Pit Attack

As the spiked walls from either side moved closer, a second threatening Deadite emerged from a wall next to Ash. With one swing of his chain-saw, Ash sliced off the demon's grasping right hand and it flew into the air. He lashed his belt to a rising chain and was able to eventually pull himself up to the rim of the pit. There, he challenged Lord Arthur and anyone else: "Who's next, huh?"

He held up his intimidating, miraculous weapon - a sawed-off shot gun ("boomstick"), and after demonstrating its powers, he rattled off its features and told his awed audience: "You see this? This is my boomstick! It's a 12-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line..." After blasting the second Deadite who had climbed up to the rim of the pit, he holstered his weapon on his back and added: "Now, let's talk about how I get back home."

Later, he was confronted by another possessed, old hag Pit Bitch Deadite (Billy Bryan) that screamed as she levitated: "You shall die! You shall never obtain the Necronomicon, we shall feast upon your souls." Then, she fell to the ground and played dead as a trick, and attacked several guards. Ash challenged and taunted the witchy bitch as she menacingly held a pot over her head: "Yo, she-bitch, let's go!"

He cocked his 12-gauge shotgun, kicked her and shot her a few times, and then ultimately vanquished her by cleverly shooting and blasting the monstrous creature over his shoulder.

L'Arrivée D'Un Train À La Ciotat (1895, Fr.) (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station)

In this early short film (actualite) by the Lumiere Brothers (Auguste and Louis), the first documentary film-makers, a steam train locomotive was depicted pulling into Marseilles' Ciotat Station.

With a remarkable depth of field, the film was so real to early unsophisticated audiences that some experienced panic and dashed for cover.

It was one of the first films shown at their first public screenings, noted as "the birth of cinema," on December 28, 1895, in the Salon Indien of the Grand Cafe in Paris.

Audition (1999, Jp./S.Kor.) (aka Odishon)

#11

The final twenty minutes of this Japanese horror film, directed by Takashi Miike and based upon a Ryu Murakami novel, were the most excruciating. Earlier however, there were ominous signs of danger - seemingly-demure and dutifully-humble 21 year-old 'auditioned' bride-to-be ex-ballerina Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) had a suddenly-lurching big burlap sack in the center of her apartment's living room. She had also left a vengeful trail of retaliation against a childhood sex abuser - a wheel-chair bound man with artificial feet who was also decapitated (in a bluish tinged scene).

During a flashback, the contents of the sack were revealed to be a man who was missing both feet, his tongue, one ear and three fingers on his right hand. He crawled out of the sack and begged for food from Asami, who obliged by vomiting into a silver dog dish and placing it on the floor in front of him. The man stuck his face into the bowl of vomit and hungrily ate it.

She also exacted sadistic, torture and dismemberment revenge on middle-aged widower Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), after he had victimized her in a mock-audition to be his wife. In her view, he had exploited her in order to have sex with her.

She first drugged him in order to paralyze him. Then, as she filled a syringe, she explained: "You are paralyzed. You can't move, but your nerves are alive. That way, your skin becomes very sensitive to pain." She stuck the hypodermic needle into his outstretched tongue and injected him, causing him to quiver on the floor of her living room. Then, she placed his body on a large rectangular piece of burlap cloth.

As she proceeded to cut away his upper-body clothing, she continued: "You call a lot of girls to the audition, reject them, then ring them up later to have sex with them. You are all the same." Armed with a stack of acupuncture needles, she slowly poked his entire lower abdomen with them (telling him: "Deeper - does it hurt?"). [The actual Japanese word for 'deeper,' repeated five times, sounded like a Japanese bird: "Kiri-kiri-kiri-kiri-kiri."] She added: "All words are lies. Pain doesn't lie. See? When you're in pain, you see your own shape clearly. Deeper. This is the most sensitive spot in the stomach. You see, here as well. Here, too. See? Deeper." To top it off, she inserted more needles into his eyelids - seen in close-up from his point-of-view. "You see, these bits under the eyes are very sensitive too. Only pain and suffering will make you realize who you are. Only when you're in extreme pain do you understand your own mind."

In addition, she threatened to make his 17 year-old son Shigehiko suffer, and then accused him of hypocrisy: "See, you love him too. You said you'd love only me. Lies. I truly have nobody else but you've got others. I don't want to be one of them. Even if I give you my entire self, you'll never give me yours. You're all the same. Every single one of you."

She then used a long piece of piano wire to sadistically and gleefully wire-saw off or amputate his left foot (and then his right foot), while reminding him: "You can't go anywhere without your feet. This wire cuts through bones so easily." Giggling, she ignored his pleas to stop, and tossed away the amputated foot when done.

When she heard his son coming home while she was sawing off the second foot, the film abruptly became Aoyama's psychotic nightmarish dream. He woke up with Asami in his bed after they had made love for the first time, following the audition. Then after he awoke from the dream, Asami herself broke her neck (and became paralyzed from the neck down) after being kicked down stairs by the widower's son during a struggle.

Sadistic Torture and Dismemberment