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Femme Fatale started with quite the bang...
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00:00Hollywood is known as many things, but above all, it's a luscious parade of riches.
00:05Excess to the extreme and embarrassingly flashy things moving at 24 frames a second.
00:10With this in mind, the following moments are where directors were clearly let loose to go mad,
00:15free to go as over the top as they wanted, almost certainly to the annoyance of the producers.
00:20I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 9 movie scenes that went completely over the top.
00:25Number 9, Mickey Rock explodes with a tiger, double team.
00:30The 90s was a vastly different time, one in which audiences could see a trailer for a buddy action film
00:35starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman and not think they had fallen into an alternate dimension.
00:41In 1997, it was just another in a long line of oddball pairings.
00:45Rodman at this point was at the height of his success as a player and a paparazzi show-off,
00:50a controversial figure even then.
00:52Then he got it in his head that he wanted to venture into the movie business,
00:56seeing as how well that turned out for Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal.
01:00So he took on the role of Yats, an arms dealer who pairs with Van Damme's CIA agent
01:04to take down a terrorist planning to sell plutonium to Iraq.
01:08Every line of the film feels as if it were from an action script template
01:12made on some screenwriting software somewhere.
01:16Complete with personal vendettas, you-know-him-better-than-anyone speeches,
01:19and the unlikely friendship that films between Van Damme and Mickey Rourke's character,
01:24it's all just played worse in this flick.
01:27That is, except for the aforementioned Rourke's character and his death.
01:31See, the actor was miles away from Sin City and credibility in general at this time,
01:36so he's settled for crap like this.
01:38As a result, the end of the film finds him standing on an active landmine in a Greek stadium,
01:43which explodes just as he's attacked by a marauding tiger.
01:48It's best not to question such a slice of cinematic heaven, so I'll just leave it there.
01:53Number 8, Finn Dives Into a Shark's Mouth, Sharknado.
01:57Sharknado jokes started going around the water cooler before even the movie premiered.
02:01But it did do something for the sci-fi network that no other show had done before.
02:06It actually got an audience.
02:08Many tuned in to vibe on the first entry So Bad It's Good Spirit,
02:12and for the most part, weren't disappointed.
02:14Though its diminished returns upon sequels do make audiences forget just how much goodwill
02:19the original earned, and there is still plenty to get a kick out of in Sharknado.
02:23But it's also a bit of a bore, with almost a half hour of character development that goes
02:29nowhere, and a lot of actors clearly there just to cash a paycheck.
02:33What makes it exceptional though is how much payoff there is there in the final act when
02:36that finally comes, from the insane junk science to the perfectly timed fall from helicopter
02:42to flying shark's mouth, but nothing stands out as much as the epic chainsaw finale.
02:48See, after all the Sharknados are extinguished, a falling shark heads towards our hero, who
02:52is literally called Finn by the way.
02:55Like, do you get it?
02:56Finn?
02:56Finn liking a shark, Finn?
02:58No one said this movie was subtle.
03:00Well, as the shark is falling, he's also running towards it, so he leaps towards it, trusted
03:05chainsaw in tow, only to be swallowed whole by a poorly rendered CGI grey-white.
03:11Seconds later though, he's cutting through its innards and rescuing himself.
03:15We've seen So Bad It's Good done wrong with snakes on a plane, and this was how it was
03:20meant to be.
03:21Number 7, Stop Motion Hamburgers Better Off Dead.
03:24Four years before John Kujak forever became everyone's favourite awkward crush in Say
03:28Anything, he was your average teen in standard 80s teen comedies, often as a second or third
03:34character.
03:35The exceptions, One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead, were both handled under the sage guidance
03:40of director savage Steve Holland, and you know he's reliable because he's willing to
03:45include his nickname right there in the credits.
03:48The latter of these, Better Off Dead, finds Kujak in a typical suburban teen environment, except,
03:53for when he's challenged to take part in a drag race.
03:57There's more lunacy, like the unfunny running joke of the newspaper boy who stalks Kujak
04:01relentlessly just for a bill of two dollars, but the moment you know studios became afraid
04:05of savage Steve and just handed him the camera, is the fast food stop motion dance sequence.
04:11At this point, Kujak's character begins to suffer from hallucinations after being dumped
04:15by his girlfriend, and while working he imagines himself as a Dr. Frankenstein figure, and
04:21the meat as a corpse.
04:23The burger, reanimated, finds a family of hamburgers, some with instruments, and hilarity ensued.
04:30Audiences only vaguely knew what to expect out of Blue Velvet at the time, as it was directed
04:34David Lynch's first trip into modern American suburbia after his work in arthouse projects
04:39like Razorhead, and, due to Mel Brooks' insistence, big budget Hollywood films like The Elephant
04:44Man in the background.
04:46This is the scene where Blue Velvet truly goes bonkers and ratchets the insanity up to the
04:51next level.
04:52Number 5, The Sex Scene Shootout, Shoot'em Up.
04:56The opening scene of Shoot'em Up finds Clive Owen chewing on a carrot as he witnesses a
05:00woman about to give birth fleeing from a hitman.
05:03Cartoonishly, he dispatches the thug by stabbing him in the face with the vegetable, which is
05:07intentionally goofy, and the carrot was an intentional reference to Bugs Bunny.
05:12As you can probably tell from this scene, if nothing else, Shoot'em Up is a bloody,
05:16gory, fast-paced video game slash cartoon in live action, with every actor chewing the
05:21scenery, particularly villain, Paul Giamatti.
05:24But the kicker comes about halfway through the never-ending shootout, with Owen and Damsel
05:28in Distress Monica Bellucci having sex as killers burst through the door.
05:33The thing is, Owen's character doesn't stop shooting, or screwing, throughout this
05:37whole scene.
05:38It's so over-the-top goofy that it was actually just flat-out ripped off in the trying-too-hard
05:44Nick Cage romp, Drive Angry.
05:46Number 4, Death is a Pre-Teen Murderer.
05:49Final Destination 2.
05:51Final Destination was a perfectly decent little horror movie with a small cast and a premise
05:55tailor-made for a standalone X-Files episode.
05:58In fact, screenwriter Geoffrey Reddick first pitched it as such, but the studio adopted his
06:03idea and then franchised it.
06:05The second film, L.A.
06:09Ellis, upped the ante on gore and spectacle and even broke a rule or two along the way.
06:14Most notably, offing a child in an explosion of blood early on in the film, just to let
06:19audiences know that it wasn't screwing around.
06:21Now, future films in the series, apart from this one, always trying to end the film, and
06:26this one, always trying to outdo the blood and viscera on screen, but this was the rare
06:31moment where a mainstream horror felt properly shocking.
06:35Number 3, Give Me the Elephant, Darkman.
06:38Oddly, the most comic book-like director Sam Raimi ever got was with a film that had no
06:42comic book source material.
06:44Frustrated with his inability to secure the rights to the shadow, in 1940s radio character
06:49voiced by Orson Welles, Raimi and his brothers set out to create their own comic hero origin
06:54story. And everything that you'd later see in his Spider-Man movies is actually kind
06:59of present in Darkman. I mean, the scene in which Spidey beats the mugger who killed his
07:03Uncle Ben is pretty much shot for shot the scene in which Liam Neeson's Peyton Westlake
07:08is beaten by the mafia here. After this scene, once Westlake is burned beyond recognition and
07:13impervious to pain, he goes on a revenge spree, imitating his killers with artificial skin and
07:19turning them against one another. As you might have guessed from this director, there are plenty
07:22of zany moments along the way, most of them dealing with Westlake's homicidal glee, but
07:27the best is when he actually tries to be normal. After perfecting his skin for up to 99 minutes
07:32in the sunlight before it melts, he starts courting his former fiancée, eventually taking
07:37her to the amusement park. Here he falls into the weirdest fight ever, but Raimi shoots the
07:43entire event with all the flair and energy of a panel from Tales of the Crypt or something,
07:48much in the way that Creepshow did a decade previous. Number 2, The Opening Scene, Femme
07:54Fatale. Femme Fatale is probably the most misunderstood film in Brian De Palma's filmography, and while
08:00some see it as a sleazy Cinemax director slumming it, others praise it as one of his very best.
08:05One thing is certain though, it's not what it appears on the tin. It plays to all the director's
08:10greatest strengths and interests, you know, complex plotting, voyeurism, and an excellent climax,
08:16and constantly has the right audience second-guessing everything. As you might guess, to give away
08:20too much is to spoil the film, but just know that it begins with two women making out during
08:25a heist at the Cannes Film Festival.
08:28In this scene, everything is in place for the heist to go off. Every player has their
08:32role. There's the lead, who seduces the model wearing the diamond-crested clothing meant
08:37to be thieved, there's the scuba diver with the blowtorch, the guy in the van, etc, etc.
08:43But very quickly, the film betrays convention when none of the characters actually do their
08:47job, and instead are screwed over by the lead. Now it may not always make literal sense, which
08:52is why it ends up on this list, but it does always make cinematic sense, even when it's
08:57subtly screwing with its audience.
09:00Number 1, Rambo, Conan, and Gandhi, UHF.
09:04Nothing serves as convincing evidence that everyone was doing cocaine in the 1980s than Weird Al
09:09Yankovic's feature film UHF. At least Weird Al here had the coherency to write a script
09:14that did make sense while still including side clips that would work equally well in
09:19an era-appropriate Saturday Night Live skit. And it was the producers, presumably also out
09:24of their minds, that gave him the green light for this movie.
09:27Now a cult classic, Yankovic's work has time to indulge his every whim, from conning the
09:32librarian to an ultraviolet gandhi who orders steak medium rare before gunning down his opponents.
09:39And to its credit, pretty much every clip tops the one preceding it, allowing a bit of flow
09:43to what could have been just a disjointed crazy mess. Still, it's hard to believe that this
09:49got made.
09:50So, that's our list, I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below, what
09:53do you think about these surprising scenes, and are there any interesting ones?
10:00Subscribe and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
10:05Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
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