- 8 months ago
We all need to be talking about these horror movie moments.
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00:00If those who don't watch many horror movies might dismiss the genre as nothing but vapid
00:04bloodshed and lowest common denominator thrills, we as horror fans of course know that's just not
00:08the case. Great horror films are smartly constructed, thoughtfully written and potentially
00:12packed to the gills with fascinating and important details on par with any other film genre, but even
00:18in our age of seemingly endless reams of movie trivia, sometimes the coolest details can get
00:22lost in the shuffle and fall through the cracks, enough that the vast majority of moviegoers aren't
00:27even aware of them. And so what better time to shine a light on some smart and telling horror
00:30movie facts that deserve to be more widely known? From dead giveaways of a certain masked killer's
00:35identity you probably didn't catch, to insanely dark jokes nobody's talking about, and other sneaky
00:40yet important details scattered around, the world of horror fandom desperately needs to get talking
00:45about all those golden nuggets of info. And if you did notice any of these details for yourself,
00:49and better yet have posted about them online, then good on ya! I'm Sean Verrick for WhatCultureHorror
00:54and here are 10 important horror movie details that are almost never mentioned.
00:58Number 10, the Casey doll in Stu's attic, Scream. There are few things horror movie fans love more
01:04than going back through a slasher movie and seeking out clues which point to the identity of the killer
01:09or killers, and the original Scream has one hell of a doozy that's rarely brought up by even the
01:14franchise's ultra-passionate fanbase. In the third act, when Sidney flees from Ghostface by running into
01:19the attic of Stu's house, for a brief moment it's possible to see an incredibly telling effigy hanging
01:24up. Just in front of and above Sid, a crude doll bearing an unmistakable resemblance to the film's
01:29first victim, Casey Becker, can be seen hanging in a manner similar to how Ghostface left her corpse
01:34hanging from a tree. Given that this is Stu's house, it's basically an early spoiler that Stu is
01:39the killer, or rather one of the killers, and yet the detail passes by so quickly that it's incredibly
01:44tough to spot, especially in the attic's low-key lighting. Number 9, Pork Ain't Pork, Dog Soldiers.
01:50Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers is a wild enough ride that you can't really be blamed for failing to
01:55clock the casual accidental cannibalism which takes place midway through the movie. When the soldiers
02:00enter the cottage, some of them start feasting on a stew left in the house, which one of the
02:03group describes as tasting like pork. In that moment, one might take it as face value, but
02:08considering that later in the movie we see corpses stored in the cottage's cellar, a cellar belonging to
02:12a werewolf family no less, we're left to deduce that the like pork was, well, human meat. After all,
02:18human meat is commonly referred to as long pork, so the comparison surely wasn't an accident on
02:23Marshall's part. Knowing that the soldiers were unknowingly chowing down on human flesh just makes
02:27the film even more twistedly revolting than it already is. Number 8, Father Karras' sacrifice is
02:33foreshadowed The Exorcist. Now, to be completely fair to everyone, you'd need to have working knowledge
02:38of a century-old novelty song to have a hope of hell in catching this, but it's still pretty surprising how
02:43little it's discussed among fans of The Exorcist. We all know that Father Karras sacrifices himself
02:48at the end of the film, allowing himself to be possessed by the demon in order to free Regan,
02:52and then throwing himself out of the window and tumbling down the outside stairs to his death.
02:56Well, this was actually foreshadowed much earlier in the film when Father Dyer is playing a song on
03:01the piano, Ben Ryan's 1926 tune Down on 33rd and 3rd. This particular song was likely chosen for one
03:07specific reason, there's a lyric which foreshadows Karras' death. The lyric reads,
03:11three flights of stairs is a hell of a fall. Given that William Fried can suffuse The Exorcist
03:16with subliminal messages, this is an especially eerie discovery that Karras' future demise was
03:21slightly hinted at much earlier in the film. Number 7, Bloodworth has seen it before Final
03:26Destination 5. There's something that really only clicks into place on a second viewing of Final
03:31Destination 5. The first time you watch it, it doesn't seem remotely odd that the series' mainstay
03:36coroner, William Bloodworth, tells the film's death-cheating characters that he's seen such a
03:41phenomenon before, because of course he has. But this becomes a far more interesting talking
03:45point at the film's end, when the fifth movie is revealed to be a stealth prequel which segues
03:50into the beginning of the original Final Destination. And so, within that context,
03:54Bloodworth makes it clear that he's been on the periphery of another group of people who found
03:58themselves targeted by Death after narrowly avoiding their original demise prior to the known
04:03events of the series. It's of course not terribly surprising that Death has been pulling this gambit
04:07since before the year 2000, but that it again happened within the vicinity of Bloodworth is
04:11certainly interesting. Hell, some fans have even speculated that Bloodworth himself was caught in
04:15one of Death's prior cycles, hence how he knows how the game is played, and that the intended victims
04:20can stave off death by killing someone else, in turn stealing their lifespan. Could this have happened
04:25to Bloodworth in the past? Either way, it's fun to think about. Number 6, Claire's Body is Never Found,
04:30Black Christmas 1974. It's no secret that 1974's original Black Christmas has a deeply chilling ending,
04:36where protagonist Jess beats her own boyfriend Peter to death, mistaking him for the killer.
04:42The cops then show up and put her to bed, all while the killer, Billy, remains undetected inside
04:47the house. Even though we catch a glimpse of poor Claire's corpse rotting away in the attic in the
04:51film's final seconds, it's easy to gloss over the wider tragedy of this, that despite the police
04:55arriving on the scene, they failed to find Claire's remains. Given that Claire's father, Mr. Harrison,
05:00spends most of the movie searching for her, then faints at the end when she still isn't recovered,
05:04it's absolutely horrifying that he's left to live on with the brutal uncertainty of his daughter's
05:08fate, and given that a Black Christmas sequel was never produced, fans themselves were left
05:12to speculate on whether or not those incompetent ass cops ever ventured up into the attic.
05:17Number 5, How Jeff Avoids Infection, Cabin Fever
05:20Cabin Fever is another horror movie on this list that's so damn wild you can't really be blamed for
05:25spacing on some of the nitty gritty details. Case in point, it's not exactly a secret that Jeff manages to
05:30be the only main character to avoid becoming infected by going out into the woods, there's
05:34a little more to it than that. Earlier in the film he makes a bet with Bert to drink nothing but beer
05:38for the entirety of the trip, a fact which serves him well considering that the fatal infection is
05:43spreading through the surrounding water supply. While drinking nothing but beer on a weekend away
05:47usually wouldn't be recommended, in Jeff's case it was accidentally the smartest thing he could have
05:51done, ensuring he made it to the end of the film uninfected. It's just a shame that the local cops didn't
05:55realize this and instead immediately shot him to death on sight. Whoops!
05:58Number 4, Foreshadowing the Sword, Gremlins
06:01Who amongst us doesn't love a good old instance of Chekhov's gun? If an element or object is
06:05introduced in a story, it will exist for a reason by the time the story is over,
06:09and Gremlins boasts a brilliant example of one even if it's not talked about nearly enough.
06:13Throughout the film there's a running gag where these strange decorative swords hanging up where
06:17the Pelzer household keep falling down. On an initial viewing we might assume this to be a mistake
06:22which was kept in the film but as we all know that's not really the case. Later in the movie when
06:27Billy's mother Lynn is being strangled by one of the gremlins, Billy rushes to her aid by,
06:31you guessed it, taking one of the swords off the wall and killing the gremlin. Though it's in no way
06:35vital for the movie to draw our attention to the swords prior to Billy using one of them,
06:39it's a great piece of sly visual storytelling which makes their use here feel totally organic.
06:43Set up and pay off folks!
06:45Number 3, The Mysterious Fate of Anna, Predator
06:48Though much has been written in novelizations and video games about the aftermath of Predator,
06:52it almost entirely focuses on the subsequent fate of protagonist Dutch. Yet Predator of course has a
06:57second survivor, Anna, a gorilla rebel who gets to the chopper as Dutch so memorably instructs
07:02and flies to safety with him in the final scene. While fans have talked much about Dutch's post
07:07Predator fate, curious few have ever spared a thought for Anna. Though eagle-eyed viewers might
07:11spot a snippet of her debriefing video in Predator 2 playing on a TV screen in Peter Key's mobile
07:16headquarters, beyond that we're left to freely speculate. Perhaps Anna was granted asylum by the US
07:20government for detailing her encounter with the Predator, or if you want to be a little more
07:23cynical about it, it's entirely possible that the government washed their hands with her following
07:27the debrief, and given that she's a communist gorilla and all, they might have done so with
07:31extreme prejudice, if you catch our drift. It's nice to think that Anna is living out the rest of
07:36her days trauma-free, but it's probably not very likely. Either way, she's basically faded into the
07:41furniture of the franchise, which is a fate she categorically doesn't deserve.
07:45Number 2, Patrick Bateman works out to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, American Psycho.
07:50Though it's basically impossible to misinterpret American Psycho as anything but a ferocious satire
07:55of masculinity and the tireless excess of the 1980s, in case you weren't quite clued in,
07:59there is a darkly hilarious visual gag hidden in plain sight. When we see a literally card-carrying
08:05psychopath, Patrick Bateman, working out in his apartment, he does ab crunches while watching the
08:09Texas Chainsaw Massacre of all things. It should be incredibly obvious given that the shot holds for
08:14a solid 10 seconds, and yet we're all perhaps so entranced by Christian Bale's chiseled form that
08:19we don't even notice Gunnar Hansen swinging his chainsaw around or Marilyn Burns screaming her
08:24lungs out. It's all the more apt considering that, later in the movie, Bateman of course kills sex
08:29worker Christie by dropping a chainsaw on her from his apartment stairwell.
08:33Number 1, The Killers Are Listening To Music, Your Next.
08:36Your Next is a film that continually subverts expectations, but one of its most chilling and low-key
08:41surprising moments is something that doesn't get discussed nearly enough. After the killer known
08:45as Fox Mask slits Paul's throat, Felix, who hired him and the other killers, chews Fox Mask out for
08:51performing the execution in front of him, and at this moment we see a brief shot of Fox Mask taking
08:56out an earbud to listen to Felix, making the rather eerie suggestion that Fox Mask is just casually
09:01skulking around the house and killing people while listening to music. It adds a whole other level of
09:06callousness and unnerving nonchalance to the murders that, at least to Fox Mask, it wasn't a big deal
09:11at all, and yet, amid the film's many gnarly twists and turns, this sinister nugget of character shading
09:17is often lost.
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