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Those horror openings that immediately soured you on a film.
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00:00Now, the horror genre is one that so often sets its stall out from the get-go as it looks
00:04to
00:05grab the audience by the seat of their pants. But on the flip side of this, though, there are
00:08those horror efforts whose first minute or two have the unwanted result of turning their audience
00:13off. So let's take a look at them then, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:17and these are 10 Horror Movies That Lose You In The First 60 Seconds.
00:2110. Alien 3 Starting with the biggest movie on this list,
00:26one that took home nearly $160 million at the box office upon its 1992 release,
00:31Alien 3 had audiences gnawing at their fists thanks to its first few minutes.
00:35For all the promise of Alien's closing moments, while we were told that the survivors of that
00:40film were heading towards Earth, that all turned out to be utter bullshit. And not just did the
00:44ending of Aliens put Ripley, Hicks, Newton, Bishop on a course for Earth, but the early trailers for
00:49Alien 3 outright stated via voiceover that the action of this threequel was to take place
00:54on mankind's home planet. That Alien 3 didn't feature Earth whatsoever is a major bone of
00:59contention among franchise fans to this day, but that third feature's opening minutes are even
01:04more frustrating. With audiences emotionally attached to Hicks and Newt, Alien 3 did the
01:10unthinkable and killed them off, off-screen no less, in the first sequence. Explaining how the
01:15escape pod of Aliens crash-landed at the Fury 161 foundry, Hicks and Newt were lazily killed
01:21in said crash. Android Bishop just about survived that accident, and Ripley obviously made it through
01:26the crash in order to lead the narrative of Alien 3. But offing those two other hugely popular
01:32characters is arguably the biggest misdemeanor made by Alien 3.
01:369. Microwave Massacre
01:39Wayne Berwick's Microwave Massacre centres on a middle-aged construction worker who grows
01:44increasingly unhappy with the elaborate food his wife cooks for him. While his work pals turn up with
01:49bologna sandwiches for their lunch break, poor old Donald here is left baffled when he unpacks
01:53giant crabs and the like. For Donald's wife May, she's purchased an expensive microwave that she
01:58uses to make these dishes that are deemed high class. After numerous arguments, a sozzled-up Don
02:03ends up bludgeoning his wife to death one night, then starts to realise that the tastiest food on the
02:08planet is actually human flesh. From there, Vernon's character starts to murder people to feed his
02:13cravings. While one could ponder why Donald couldn't just make his own lunch if he was that
02:17unhappy, many modern audiences may not even get to that part of the plot, because the opening
02:22sequence of Microwave Massacre is a ridiculously misogynistic one. As the opening credits roll,
02:27the camera is zoomed in on the backside of the young lady as she walks down a street. From there,
02:32the camera changes to focus on the girl's breasts. Bafflingly, the woman then stops on the other side of
02:36the fence, next to Donald's construction site, where she proceeds to stick her bare boobs through a
02:41well-placed hole. This bizarre opening does nothing for the plot, and has clearly not aged
02:46well in the years since Microwave Massacre was released way back way in 1979.
02:518. Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2
02:55Yes, yes, Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 is famed for spawning the garbage day
03:00meme that does the rounds every few months on social medias, but the sequel hugely pissed off
03:05audiences when it was released in 1987. Now, if you'd not seen Silent Night Deadly Night,
03:10this follow-up may just about work as a standalone feature. For those that did see the original 1984
03:16picture, though, Part 2 was a proper head-scratching affair. And why was the 87 follow-up such a turn
03:21-off
03:21for the horror hounds? Well, that's because it becomes clear in the opening minutes that
03:26Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 is a retelling of the first film. And not just a case of fresh
03:31characters experiencing a similar fate to those in the original movie, but Part 2 literally spends a
03:36good 40 minutes or so replaying actual footage of Silent Night Deadly Night. Once you realise
03:41what's happening, Part 2 becomes unwatchable, at least for those 40-ish minutes. And the reason
03:47why Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 is framed in such a way is because the film features Ricky,
03:52the younger brother of the first movie's killer. Locked up in a mental asylum, he retells what
03:56happened to his brother before obviously ending the film by going on his own bloody rampage.
04:017. Three From Hell With Three From Hell, it's only fair to note
04:05how much of the film was changed due to the poor health of Sid Haig. Originally, the movie was
04:10marketed as Haig's Captain Spalding, Sherry Moon's zombie baby, and Bill Moseley's Otis B. Driftwood
04:15somehow surviving their apparent death at the close of the Devil's Reject, and the three embarking
04:21on another journey of chaos and carnage. So, when the opening of Three From Hell saw Spalding
04:26executed by lethal injection for his past crimes, it left audiences cold to realise that this beloved
04:31character was not actually going to be involved in said journey. Instead, the threequels shoehorned
04:36in an entirely random half-brother of Otis named Foxy Coltrane, who joined the surviving two fireflies
04:42on their murderous adventures. By having only a minute or two of Captain Spalding, Three From
04:47Hell immediately lost a lot of viewers, who realised that they weren't going to be getting the film that
04:51they thought they were going to be getting. As mentioned, so much of it was out of their control,
04:55with the actor's ill health restricting his movement by the time that shooting properly got
04:59underway. The actor would tragically pass away at the age of 80 on the 21st of September 2019,
05:05just five days after Three From Hell was released.
05:086. Hostel Part 2
05:10For those who watched the truly harrowing antics of Eli Roth's Hostel back in 2005,
05:15it was impossible not to become invested in Jay Hernandez's Paxton as he overcame the odds to
05:20escape the clutches of the nefarious elite hunting club. Having seen his best friend and several
05:25others tortured and killed, Paxton closes out Hostel by outwitting the elite crew hopping on a train
05:31out of Slovakia, and also managing to kill the unnamed Dutch businessman who offed his pal Josh.
05:36And when it was announced that Hostel Part 2 was on the way for 2007, the confirmation of
05:40Hernandez's inclusion in the sequel had many expecting Paxton would again find himself engulfed
05:45in an eerie web of the elite hunting club. While that did happen, it was a far shorter battle than
05:51anyone would imagine. Rather than spending a solid amount of Hostel Part 2's 94-minute runtime with
05:56Paxton trying to evade the club, the film instead opted to have his character hunted down in the
06:00opening minutes, where he's promptly decapitated. Hostel Part 2 and its trio of central protagonists,
06:06a group of three young American women, did manage to get most audiences back on side,
06:10but the immediate death of Paxton definitely lost a lot of the audience for a spell.
06:145. The Fly 2 David Cronenberg's The Fly is one of the most memorable
06:19horrors of the 1980s, with this 86 adaptation of the short story being particularly famed for
06:25its jaw-dropping practical special effects work. By the end of the film, Jeff Goldblum's Seth
06:29Brundle has become a deformed fly-human hybrid, who was mercifully put out of his misery by his
06:34pregnant girlfriend Veronica and a shotgun. When The Fly 2 rolled around three years later,
06:39those expecting to see Veronica taking centre stage as a mother raising her potentially
06:43fly-infused offspring were left rather disappointed. While Geena Davis, much like
06:48David Cronenberg and Jeff Goldblum, didn't return for the sequel, the Veronica character did.
06:52Unfortunately, the character, as played by Saffron Henderson, was killed in the opening
06:56moment as she gave birth to her and Seth's baby boy. And with that move, The Fly 2 pretty much
07:01severed all emotional connection to its predecessor, essentially opting to regurgitate the story of
07:06the first film, just with Eric Stoltz's Martin Brundle replacing his father Seth. But one fun
07:11slice of trivia for The Fly 2, though, is that Saffron Henderson also played rocker JJ, who was
07:15brutalised with her own Flying V guitar in the Cheesetastic Friday the 13th Part 8, Jason Takes
07:21Manhattan in the same year. 4. Sharknado 2, The Second One
07:26Sure, the first Sharknado was absolutely daft, consisting of an utterly bonkers premise that was
07:31designed to be so bad it's good. But by Sharknado 2, The Second One, the bloom was off the rose
07:37within
07:37the first few minutes of the picture. For the first movie, the sheer gimmickry of the concept
07:41was at least an intriguing one, in the sense that audiences were happy to be in on the joke
07:45and see where the insane notion of sharks in tornadoes would actually go. It was cute,
07:49it was ridiculous, it was on the nose, and it was a fun, silly, one-and-done affair.
07:54Alas, the Sharknado franchise was far from over, and the series currently sits at a head-scratching
07:59six entries. But while the initial 2013 feature was fine for what it was, the first minutes of the
08:04second one immediately make you realise the insanity has been turned up to 11, and not
08:09in an appealing way. Here, the opening of Sharknado 2 had a character called Finn landing a passenger
08:14airplane in the middle of an electrical Sharknado storm, while Tara Reid's April hangs out of the
08:20emergency exit in mid-air with one hand as her other hand shoots sharks out of the sky with a
08:25handgun.
08:26Okay then? 3. Urban Legends, Bloody Mary
08:311998's Urban Legend was a fun slasher featuring a parka-adorned killer offing college kids in ways
08:37that mirrored classic Urban Legends. Skipping ahead two years, Urban Legends' final cut followed a
08:42similar theme, only with the killer this time wearing a fencing mask rather than a jacket Liam
08:47Gallagher would have been proud of. That sequel offering had the post-credits stinger that the
08:51nurse looking after the now-locked-in-at-an-asylum Hart Bochner's Professor Solomon, the person behind
08:56the murders of the final cut, was in fact the believed-dead Brenda Bates, who was the sinister
09:01mastermind behind the events of the first film. The final line of Final Cut is Brenda muttering
09:06to Solomon how they have a lot in common, hinting at a team-up for the duo in any subsequent
09:11movie.
09:11For those hoping to see those two insane killers working together in a third picture,
09:15well those hopes were summarily dashed upon a first watch of 2005's Urban Legends Bloody Mary.
09:20In the opening minutes of that threequel, a 1969 set flashback shows a young Mary seemingly killed
09:26ahead of Homecoming. Skipping ahead to the present, the teens of the day are immediately shown trying
09:30to reach the spirit of Bloody Mary, which disappointed audiences in revealing this film
09:35to be an unrelated supernatural story rather than a direct continuation of the prior two Urban Legends
09:40offerings. 2. I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer
09:44Now granted, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer isn't exactly a classic of the genre,
09:49but there was once still a mild appetite for the promised third entry in the Last Summer
09:53franchise following that second film's release. While I Know What You Did Last Summer and I Still
09:58Know What You Did Last Summer were released in consecutive years, 1997 and 1998 respectively,
10:04it took until 2006 for a third movie to finally arrive. Not just that, but this third picture went
10:09straight to DVD and featured none of the characters of the prior two offerings, well bar a near-supernatural
10:15take on angry fisherman Ben Willis. It wasn't the wait for I'll Always Know,
10:19or even the decision to focus on new characters that served as an immediate turn-off for horror
10:23hounds. No, what puts you off the film after just a minute or two is just how outright annoying the
10:28protagonists of this film are. Upon being introduced to a group of your regular pretty young things at
10:32a fairground setting, it instantly hits home that these characters are absolute dickheads.
10:37Sure, you could stick around in the hopes that Ben Willis slices and dices these pricks,
10:41as he certainly does, but they are so unlikable key figures that the knee-jerk reaction is to just turn
10:47off the movie rather than witness their demise.
10:501. Halloween Resurrection
10:52In all honesty, a handful of Halloween movies are worthy of this list. The realisation that
10:57Halloween 3 does not feature Michael Myers, the start of Halloween 5 completely erasing Michael's
11:02death, seeing Jamie Lloyd recast and killed off in the curse of Michael Myers' opening,
11:06but it's actually Halloween Resurrection that gets the nod this time around. While horror fans didn't
11:11know it when we were watching Resurrection upon its 2002 theatrical release, star Jamie Lee Curtis
11:16had only agreed to appear in the movie if Laurie Strode was killed off in the opening moments,
11:20and thus that is exactly what happened. For long-standing fans of the series,
11:24they were expecting one more prolonged game of cat and mouse between Laurie and the ominous shape.
11:29Sure, even if Michael finally did get the better of his rival in this offering,
11:32that at least wouldn't be until some dramatic final battle, right? Nope. The death of Laurie in
11:37Resurrection's first sequence was admittedly at the time one of the greatest shocks of the genre,
11:41but that demise also immediately soured this 8th Halloween picture to many fans. And that's before
11:46we even get to the closing moments sequence of Buster Rhymes using his kung fu skills to beat
11:50the piss out of Michael. That was also a thing.
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