We’ve covered this show before, mostly the pieces in our “Ten F*cked-Up Things That Happen On…” recurring feature. If you want to read them, check out the first one here from 2012. Then Season Five got so horrifying and shocking we made another list just for that season, which you can find here. Both cover a lot of ground, and we try to avoid spoilers in them, but if you plan to watch the show and haven’t yet, just read the original one in which we try not to name names… if you read any. There are others, mostly post-show interviews after really heavy episodes like this one–you can just type in Sons of Anarchy in the SEARCH box at the top of the page–but they are all spoiler-ridden, so proceed with caution. There are some very shocking reveals, and you don’t really want to spoil them for yourself, do you?
Now, if you DID watch “Suits of Woe,” we think you’ll agree with us: best Sons of Anarchy episode in a long, long time. Jax finally manned up and said every mistake he’d made was on him, Nero got a phone call with possibly the worst news he’s ever received, and two very macho, bad-ass career criminals who have murdered men in cold blood in the course of business (Jax must have a kill-count in the low three figures by this point in the series, and some of those people trusted him) broke down and wept, sobbing openly and loudly while hugging. Remember again, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED YET! Click “View Original” in the lower left to read the entire piece on EW.com.
It depicts a family about to be consumed by a horde of zombies.
The star of the photo is A. Michael Baldwin from the classic Horror movie Phantasm (1979).
The little girl is my niece Thea, who was also the baby in my photo SNAKE.
The mom was played by Erica Kauffman.
The other child victim was played by my daughter Sadie.
We built our set at the 3rd St. Asylum Haunted House in Bonner Springs, Kansas. My cousins Jerry and Steve Hoffine did all of the carpentry and construction.
Bill Rose and his girlfriend Michelle stayed up late one night to wallpaper my set for me.
Here you can see Steve and Bill measuring the shag carpet.
I filled the set with my gathered props. Jerry Hoffine and Mike Clouse destroyed the door by jumping on it.
So, probably not a big shocker what “Halloween Edition” means… these are all from horror movies that take place on Halloween, or in the days leading up to it, with at least the last act taking place on Halloween. You won’t see Michael Myers, but John Carpenter is in the mix here. Actually, once I started in with the screen caps I was having so much fun I had trouble stopping… Anyway, check this out. Look familiar?
Hey! No white shoes after Labor Day! BITE
I only own one of these movies, and I’m re-considering that right now. Second, I own the special edition of this flick and boy is it worth it:
Ginger is looking good …for now!
and finally… I think anyone who saw the movie will pick up on this one…
Hint: we’re in flashback/back-story mode.
OK, that’s it! Now I have to force myself to toss the rest of the grabs on my desktop. More Halloween goodness coming soon, so I better get to writing it. Plus, you guys remember there’s a prize for this, right?
No need to guess this, I just really liked it and wanted to put it in here!
Ten more days till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween (Silver Shamrock)! I actually saw Halloween 3 – Season of the Witch in the theater with my mom. I was young enough that my memory is kind of fuzzy, but I remember the evil mask scene and the ending pretty well. That jingle got stuck in my head for life! Anyway…
Okay, first of all, none of these are from Ju-On/The Grudge (I’ll have a new gallery forJu-on coming up soon, though – check out my last one if you’re in a Kayako-kinda mood). These are all J-Horror, but they’re not all from the same horror movie – just the same franchise. There’s three installments. All three of them have pretty goddamned scary scenes, but the first is still my favorite. Anyway, if you’re a fan of any of the installments, I think you’ll be able to figure it out –comment away! Those DVDs (all in great condition) are still waiting on a winner…
First up, here’s a scary-ass thing to see talking on the phone… especially if the other person blows you off!
You’ll REALLY recognize the franchise fast if you recognize this one. Also, if you saw it and don’t remember it …you must have missed this scene!
and finally…
You know, the picture quality is not one is kind of rinky-dink, so here’s a bonus photo (same franchise):
So! Put your guesses in the comments section – and by the way, a shitty US remake was made of the first installment of the series. They managed to somehow take a great set-up and just destroy it. Oh well, if they can fuck up a remake of Shutter, I guess it’s no big shocker.
Well, it’s getting closer to Halloween, so I figured I’d toss in a bonus scary short film (since I can’t really say there are TWO “Scariest Short Horror Films of the Week”). This was in my private stash I save for future Scariest Shorts; I like to have a few lined up in advance for security, plus I set the bar kind of high and now it can take me sitting and sifting through a dozen of them until I find one that’s nightmare-worthy. Shit, I’d post one a day up until Halloween if I wasn’t worried about running out.
This bonus film is also from the old Daywalt Fear Factory, and it’s called Suicide Girl. No, not the trashy kind who looks like she fell down a flight of stairs carrying an open tackle box (sorry, not a fan), the kind who is just sad and had all she could take. It’s also always nice to see someone in one of those shorts get what he or she deserves… turn the lights off, the sound up, and check this out…
This is not only creepy and scary as hell, but could also work as a nice anti-bullying public service message! This was written and directed by Drew Daywalt. I need to start checking out his ongoing web series, Camera Obscura.
Is it possible to scare the living shit out of a viewer when the short is less than two minutes long, and the setting is bathed in warm, cheerful sunlight (accompanied by a sweet lullaby, no less)? Yes, it is. However, I’m trying to think of another horror short that accomplishes this and coming up empty. For that alone, this terrifying, rare gem deserves some sort of award.
This one was directed by Marichelle Daywalt. Short …but far from sweet. Listen to the lullaby lyrics right before it cuts out (someone had to point it out to me, I was too busy taking deep breaths to avoid a panic attack)!
The stand-outs so far (according to several sources) were Xavier Gens (who made the brutal Frontier/s and The Divide; his name always gets dropped, and rightly so, when people mention ‘New French Extremist Horror’) and his segment called “X to XXL”, where a woman, “takes the ultimate action to reduce her body size”.
“T is for Talk” (2011), directed and co-written by Peter Haynes, was a top vote-getter in the “26th Director” ABCs of Death contest. Of course, that was back when the voting window for the contest was still open, which I managed to totally miss, thus this series to share the best other shorts with a wider audience. I’m pretty sure you’ll see why; it packs a hell of a wallop into four minutes. This is definitely one of the most intense entries, and isn’t something you should watch if you’re NOT in the mood for something dark, nasty…and very original. Oh, and if you have a pounding headache, I recommend waiting until your head’s back to normal (you’ll see why pretty fast). Check out the very NSFW, intense “T is for Talk”, from New Zealand, below!
Damn! A prequel to that short could be interesting in the right hands. Anyway, that’s eighteen down, seven to go (I think. I’ll do the math later). You can go back and read the first three posts, each with five picks either embedded or linked–some were only on Vimeo or the official voting contest page via the ‘related’ links below, or you can watch the first five entries (plus the introduction) here, the second batch of entries here, and the third bunch of five entries—which has one of the sickest entries in the series– here. I also went and posted a link (I couldn’t embed it) to one that I meant to post, but missed, a couple of weeks ago back in September, which you can check out here. Enjoy, and expect the last eight entries by the time of the full-length movie’s release, which should give me plenty of time since the release date got bumped way the fuck back to January 31st for VOD, and motherfucking March for a limited theatrical run (sigh). I read three reviews from sources I trust, and they said it was kind of a mixed bag; some were more toilet humor/gross-out* than scary or gory (or worth four minutes of your time).
Anyway, now that reviews are coming in, the reviewers said there were some great segments that made The ABCs of Death worth sitting through. The stand-outs so far (according to several sources) were Xavier Gens (who made the brutal Frontier/s and The Divide; his name always gets dropped, and rightly so, when people mention ‘New French Extremist Horror’) and his segment called “X to XXL”, where a woman, “takes the ultimate action to reduce her body size”. My guess it she does a little whittling down at home, taking matters into her own hands by using a sharp blade.** Another standout is supposed to be “L is for Libido,” dealing with (I am not making this up) a psychotic masturbation contest (worse than a biscuit party, I assume) –gee, how could THAT go horribly wrong in an unrated horror movie?–that ‘ends with sick and deadly results.’ I’m not proud of admitting this, but …SOLD!
Right now, I really want to see what Banjong Pisathanakun (half the team from Shutter and Alone ) does with his four minutes …and with what letter of the alphabet and title. N is for Natre? S is for Siamese Twin?
Well, that’s seventeen down and eight to go! More to come, definitely before the holidays (and probably sooner).
*I wonder if any of them had to (or needed to for the purpose of rating them, no-one held a gun to my head making me watch all of them, it was just too late in my project to back-pedal by then) sit through “T is for Testosterone Replacement Therapy”, “T is for Tentacle Rape“, or “T is for Tampon”? Those weren’t anywhere near scary, they didn’t have a plot, two out of the three were so misogynistic I felt like punching whoever was responsible for them in the teeth, and they didn’t even try to be entertaining –on any level. I got the feeling they only made the films because they had some serious issues and/or really filthy sexual fetishes to work through. Through the years, I’ve picked up on the fact that self-indulgence usually doesn’t make for an end product entertaining for anyone but the artist. Consider yourself warned if you’re somehow still compelled to watch them …especially if you’re eating at the time.
**For a while now, I actually have been fleshing out (no pun intended, I should get of my tired ass and take a stab at grabbing the thesaurus before half my comments sound like The Cryptkeeper introducing a story, boils and ghouls ) an outline for a short horror story, where a woman with some serious issues hates her body –and doesn’t have the money to go pay for lipo or another medical procedure. At the end, she really goes over the edge and tries the do-it-yourself approach with craving knives and maybe a vacuüm cleaner or other suction device. The scariest part? I’m afraid if I Googled or otherwise researched this, there will turn out to be not one but a ton of cases of people who already tried to do it. Self-surgery, not writing a short story about it, I mean. There’s no way that’s going to end well…
The Masters of Horror series doesn’t get near the amount of recognition it deserves. And yes, the best episodes truly are the stuff of nightmares.
Now would be an appropriate time for me to repeat I do NOT own the copyrights for any of the images here, nor own them in any way–I put them here for entertainment purposes only!
Well, if you’re anywhere near as big a fan of the Mick Garris-produced Showtime series Masters of Horror, you’ll be in luck this week. Those shows (OK, most of them, they got pretty hit-or-miss in the final season) were very, very memorable. Just the opening credits (the frames above, and directly below) were a disturbing work of art. Actually, I’m not sure why I’m using the past tense …they still creep me out.
Yep, that’s someone burying an axe is someone else’s head.
So, if you can name these episodes, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll win a DVD. I’m working on a list of the top ten episodes of Masters of Horror, but I’m having serious trouble narrowing it down. Hell, I own more than ten of them. I might just have to spotlight the best ones and forget lists. By the way, I definitely count the unaired Takashi Miike-directed “Imprint” as an official episode. So much sick shit went down on the series that I still wonder if it was a publicity stunt Showtime pulled, or something.. I’ll have to look into that. There’s a torture scene in that episode that makes the notorious one towards the end of Miike’s Audition look tame. I still have to cover my eyes with my fingers for most of the “Imprint” scene, it’s that hard to watch.
But I digress. The photos below are all from different episodes… feel free to comment if you just want to know which episodes they are! The Masters of Horror series doesn’t get near the amount of recognition it deserves. And yes, the best episodes truly are the stuff of nightmares.
I believe the above frame took place during the opening credits of the episode…
And below, what the last thing you’d want to see written on a wall when you woke up at the bottom of a pit?
and finally, thanks to the genius of Greg Nicotero’s make-up and FX work… what a shot.
That’s it (for this game) until next week. Don’t forget, American Horror Story Season One comes out on DVD and Blu- ray Tuesday. Expect at least one piece on it this week!
Imprint (Masters of Horror) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
…That I posted the scary-ass theatrical trailer for last week. After I watched the Mama short below (in the middle of the night, only one awake in the house, you know, the stupid viewing method I keep swearing I’m going to stop doing) I had a nightmare. A very specific nightmare; the kind you know a certain something horror-related that you watched before bed-time inspired.
So what WAS I thinking when I watched it after dark, alone in the house? It was probably related to the fact that I’d just spent a boring half an hour searching for scary-ass shorts to share it with you fellow horror fans, watching a few horror shorts claiming to be SUPER!! SCARY!!! that weren’t too scary, original, or even that gracefully put-together. As I discovered with the Scariest Short of the Week (Bedfellows) that I posted two weeks ago, just because a short is less than four minutes long doesn’t mean it can’t be well-made, tightly edited, and scare the living shit out of you. Longer ones (in the eight-to-ten-minute range) could also be sleep-with-the-lights on scary (or TRY to sleep with the lights on scary, yet you still end up wide-awake) as well; intense, perfectly paced, and a little too memorable than you’d like to experience right before bedtime – see my post on Cleansed, the scariest short of LAST week.
yes, go Go GO GO!
Well, not the case last night. So anyway, I was just about to say the hell with it and watch the end of 2007’s The Orphanage* (review coming – it was even more haunting than I expected, ALSO a Del Toro-presented production by the way, and I can’t recommend it enough) when I remembered something. Hey, wasn’t that upcoming, ultra-creepy Mama movie that I posted the ‘Spooky-ass Trailer’ for recently actually based on a short film by the same director? Well, might as well see if… oh, hey, here it was! Popped up right away in the search! I’d just watched several horror shorts claiming to be SUPER!SCARY! that just ended up being, well …stupid. How could this be too freaky to watch before bedtime?
Watch it below to judge for yourself. If you’re feeling brave, turn all the lights off and the sound up like I did! Hey, it’s less than four minutes long, right?
Fuck! (I think that was also my one-word You Tube comment I posted after I caught my breath). Yes, indeed, definitely the inspiration for the upcoming movie presented by Guillermo Del Toro, and directed and written by…
*It’s possible the first half of The Orphanage also contributed to my nightmare, and it was the combination of the two, but I hadn’t even got to the really wrenching moments and reveals by time I turned off the TV and conked out last night. Pretty sure it was the short.
This Spring, I happened across an article– wish I could remember where, possibly Vulture— titled, “Ten F*cked-up Things That Happen in The Hunger Games“. That’s actually a good idea, I thought (after I purchased a used copy of the book online immediately after I finished reading the piece). I’ll point out some really disturbing things that have happened on TV dramas that are in no way labelled horror, but probably pretty horrible as described to anyone reading (even if they watch the show). I had one written for “Ten Fucked-up Things That Happen on Nip/Tuck” (that one was pretty easy) and before that, “Ten Fucked-up things That Happen on Spartacus“.
The latter is on hold –but only temporarily–because I can’t find the goddamned document on my hard drive, even though I made a back-up copy, and the Nip/Tuck list I plan to save until closer to the American Horror Story: Asylum premiere date, since Ryan Murphy created both of them. I’m definitely working for one on The Shield, then there’s HBO’s The Wire and Oz. Also Boardwalk Empire and definitely Deadwood. But since Kurt Sutter‘s biker outlaw crime drama Sons of Anarchy has its fifth season premiere this Tuesday the 11th (on FX, the only basic cable network that’d let Sons of Anarchy, The Shield, and Nip/Tuck get away with some real jaw-droppers), I figured there was no time like the present.
Yup, Stephen King himself (a big fan of the show) got a cameo as a ‘Cleaner’ (you know, the kind who gets rid of an inconvenient body that needs to vanish 100% –that guy.). He was a real scream. Even Gemma and Tig thought he was kind of creepy. Scroll down a little for an update.
9/24/12 Update: I’ve been asked for the 411 on King’s guest appearance. His character is named Bachmann (raise your hand if you can guess what his character’s first name is …yeah, I know). He was in the episode “Caregiver” (one of those patented Sutter episode titles that becomes sickly ironic after you watch the episode and get the double meaning), from Season 3, episode 3. Every review and plenty of fan comments I read just destroyed his cameo– most bitched that it was self-indulgent and unnecessary. Aw, lighten up, critics. Didn’t have a problem with it, myself–it was brief, he only had a few lines, and was appropriately quiet, professional, and sociopathic. I’ve seen way stupider things on SOA, and King’s guest appearance wouldn’t even make my top twenty list of complaints. Here’s the link I finally scraped up for you to watch his brief scenes …enjoy!
This was another list where I didn’t exactly have to dig deep to remember horrifying, revolting, and/or shocking things that happened …so far. I tried to not get too graphic, but you’ve been warned: Kurt Sutter is a talented guy, but I learned from watching The Shield that he can come up with some INCREDIBLY fucked-up material. He wrote or co-wrote lots of the really dark, twisted Shield episodes. So here’s Ten Fucked Up Things That Happen on Sons of Anarchy, in no order of importance. I had to leave a few out because they were exceptionally nasty. I’m not going near some of the things that happen in/around the porn studio the SOA buy into as ‘legit’ income, club members in jail, or the club member named “Happy”, who is a little too happy to help when someone unfortunate enough to be on the club’s bad side needs torturing because they won’t give up intel. That character makes Tig seem like warm, fuzzy boyfriend material.
Ten Fucked-up Things That Happen on Sons of Anarchy
1. An Irish biker gives a man who betrayed him a “Glasgow Smile” as retribution (if you don’t know what a Glasgow Smile is, look it up, I’m not describing it here), then uses the same curvy blades to kill him.*
2. The mayor has a major land deal destroyed when, during official proceedings to finalize it, a cop walks in and reveals the silent partner supplying all the funds was the #1 maker of adult toys in Japan (and dumps a large grocery bag full of them on the table as visual aids) which include “real dolls” (look that one up too) …of what he calls (and displays a real doll of) “Sum Yung Boy” for, as he puts it, “the discerning pedophile”. End of that land deal, since this appeared to be a wholesome Town Hall meeting.
Clay: What kinda nasty shit did your mother do to you? Tig: (honestly confused) What do you mean?
3. A woman and a man have passionate make-up sex …maybe two yards away from the bloody body of an ATF agent they just shot to death less than five minutes ago (in self-defense, to be fair, long story). They pan from the intense sex, to the lover’s hastily-discarded clothing on the bedroom floor …over to the dead-as-a-doornail ATF agent, blood spreading from an already-large pool under his head.
4. A compulsive masturbator (Chuckie) who gets caught stealing from the Asian mob has all his fingers (except for one index finger, so he can ‘still use an adding machine’) and thumbs cut off as payback (Hey, don’t look at me, I’s just documenting this!) **
5. A woman holds a loaded gun to an infant’s head in front of a room full of midwives and nuns (only as a negotiating tactic …I hope).
6. A powerful local businessman’s 13-year-old daughter is raped (offscreen) by a carnival clown (Episode Title: “Funhouse”)…
7. …and after the bike club catches him and fucks him up, they cut his nuts off (the clown’s, not the father’s), let him bleed out, and later stuffs his junk in a mailing envelope, mailing them to the politician’s home address to remind him he ‘owes them one’.
8. An ex-member of the bike club shows up back in town, but was supposed to have had the giant SOA back tattoo all the club members get when they formally are voted in either REMOVED, or at least keep his shirt on and not flash it around (which he does, at a high-profile charity event in town). Surprise surprise, that doesn’t go so fucking well, and they chain him up in their auto-body repair shop and give him the choice of having it removed by knife or blowtorch. He picks blowtorch, and afterwards the club dumps him out of the back of their van in front of the ER (and none too gently).
And for the last two slots on the list, here’s a two-parter:
9. In an episode titled, “Family Recipe,” a rival drug cartel (after performing a drive-by shooting with automatic weapons at SAMCRO headquarters) drops off a duffel bag before they split. When it’s unzipped, it reveals FOUR fly-blown severed heads, including the leader of a Latin gang. As everyone scrambles to get rid of the evidence…
10. …A couple local cops show up unexpectedly. Thinking fast, Chuckie (see Fucked-Up Thing #4) stows the last severed head in a biiiiiiiig pot of spicy chili cooking on the stove for a fundraiser that night! Take a wild guess on what the two cops are hungry for a bowl of once they smell it cooking, and where the chili in the bowls comes from?
Here’s some bonus dialogue that came in episode two, after the 90-minute pilot episode aired, and keep in mind this was the ‘cold open’, before the credits:
After a mother and her underage, teenage daughter’s corpses had to be disposed of in the pilot episode (I don’t remember the exact details, and the club didn’t intentionally kill them, but the guys found the bodies and they were in grisly condition: “They died hidin’ from that fire, man.”):
Tig Trager: I, uh, gotta tell you something, man, it could be bad.
Clay Morrow: It already is.
Tig Trager: Those two dead Mexicans in the warehouse hole… I was hittin’ them.
Clay Morrow: Oh Jesus Christ. Both of them?
Tig : Oh yeah, yeah. Kind of a taco two-fer thing.
Then THIS dialogue transpired:
Clay: Tell me one of them doesn’t have a belly full of Tig juice.
Tig: Yeah, they both do.
Clay: Jesus Christ. We’re in trouble, shithead, you are in the DNA database… so what, you think you’re just gonna stroll outta there with two dead Mexi whores draped over your shoulders?
Tig: (very calm and casual) I’ll gut them dead bitches, then I’ll flush their bellies with bleach, no DNA.
Causing Clay, arguable the most evil male lead currently on the show, to pause, appalled, then ask him with disgust:
Clay: What kinda nasty shit did your mother do to you?
Tig: (honestly confused) What do you mean?
I remember my jaw just dropping in shock at the time; what he was saying was horrible, but the casual, ‘just another day at the office’ tone he said it in was much worse. Then another surprise when Tig said a prayer respectfully when the bodies of the Mexican woman and her daughter were “cremated” unofficially later by the club. During seasons three and four, Tig’s words and actions showed that he wasn’t a total sociopath and that he was capable of love for his two teenage daughters. What cinched it for me was that it was revealed he still carried a photo in his wallet with “My girl, Missy” hand-written carefully on the back. When he turned the photo side up, it was revealed that Missy was a pet dog he lost under some tragic circumstances and missed every day. The latter reveal shocked me even more than the lines above; now that is some great writing and acting.
Awwww! And such charming things happen every week in the quaint little town of Charming, California!
I almost saved a slot from an as-yet unknown hideous event that happens to a club member during the Tuesday season five premiere, one that TV Line’s Michael Ausillo called “ghastly”. However, I want to post this before the S5 premiere. I have some guesses, but I’m not going to speculate at this point —you’ve read enough fucked-up things that happen on Sons of Anarchy for one day!
Finally, here’s a montage of some dirty dirty sex ‘love scenes’ and filthy dialogue from Seasons 1-3. that I’m going to go out on a limb here and say is probably NSFW. If you haven’t watched the show before, this will give you an idea of just how wholesome Kurt Sutter can be. Enjoy!
*Trivia: Tommy Flanagan, the amazing Scottish-born actor who plays the character, has scars on his face due to being given an actual Glasgow smile (see Wikipedia) after he was jumped by a couple of thugs in Scotland while just minding his own business, and at the time had been training to be an actor. The fact that his face was scarred was even more upsetting to him as he thought that now would never be able to get an acting job. To the contrary, his friends supported him during his recovery and the casting calls and roles finally became steady.
**A season or two later, Gemma breaks down and finally gets Chuckie some prosthetics (“I bought him fingers. Those freaky little nubs were freaking me out.”)
HORROR BOOM 