A BLOODY BREAK WITH THE HISTORY OF BLOODY GORE AND A BLOODY BLAST AT YOUNG BLOODY FILMMAKERS AND THEIR BLOODY CGI! (CAUTION: THERE! WILL! BE! BLOOD!!!)







Where Was I?

As I've promised (several times), a review of the opus Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 is coming. It's not a blow-by-blow review (or else it would be a small book), but a critical view of what I thought was great, good, iffy, horrible, and downright stupid about the two movies. 

"NOW GO HOME TO YOUR MOTHER!"

I had to wait on the review for just a bit, because I found out that it was not presented as Quentin Tarantino wanted it to be (the censors got at it between the showing at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, and what audiences saw afterward in theaters). So that changed my perspective about certain things, but there were still plenty of points that I thought were just bloody awful so...

Speaking of blood.

Nightmare On Elm Street

While working on the damned thing, I got off on a tangent, as I always do. I wasn't feeling well (natch), the dictation software was giving me fits (either I had stopped speaking English or it decided that it preferred Klingon), and even the hubby was giving some unsolicited advice that, though usually welcome, at that moment just made me want to chuck the whole thing. Which is why you're not reading it yet.

Speaking of blood.


I actually MADE my hubby sit and watch the infamous nightclub katana sword fight scene from Kill Bill 1. There were so many of the different elements (good, bad, stupid, etc.) in just that one sequence I thought he'd enjoy it... nope. I did get the chance to show him that Quentin apparently thought that human blood in the body is kept at an extremely high pressure, like a fire hose, so something like losing an arm (or a head) can cause a spray equal to kids breaking open a fire hydrant on a hot day. But I digress about digressing.

Speaking of blood.

NOT from Kill Bill...

So I wondered - with this two-movie opus, did Tarantino break any records with the use of fake blood? I decided to look around. Now my "findings" are not all inclusive of course - you probably know of a particularly bloody film that seemed to uses gallons of the stuff - all those produced before CGI of course. AND there is great debate on the amounts used so this contest may be invalid altogether but that never stopped me before.

Speaking of blood.


How much do I hate CGI? Let's put it this way: After watching one heavily CGI'd zombie movie (no it was not World War Z) I read a comment by a parent who said, basically, "Finally! A zombie movie I can let my children watch that is not just blood and guts." And there's your answer.

Speaking of blood.

...except maybe this guy.

Waaay back in the old days (she said drawing up her shawl and knitting needles) people died usually without much fuss, maybe a blood spot on the clothes, and the requisite drip of blood from the corner of the mouth. Blood meant death, no matter how small the amount. Character has a bloody nose? Gonna die. Blood when they cough or sneeze? Gonna die. I'm surprised they didn't try to convince their audiences that women actually were gonna die a little each month (actually that's not far off from the truth)...

Speaking of blood.

Audiences changed - which meant that the horror genre (where most of the blood was spilled) had to change. They wanted more - and more realistic. Enter the great makeup and special effects geniuses that made horror just so, so awful (which means they made it lots of fun to watch): 


Rick Baker. In my opinion, he made the absolute best werewolf I have ever seen (and the scene of a man morphing to werewolf) in An American Werewolf In London (1981) - it has not been done better, even with all the so-called advances. And I loved the poor, ever decaying friend Jack. This is an early picture of Baker making the original 'Baby' from It's Alive. His credits are way too numerous to count, his talent huge, and his fans, lots and lots (sorry to be so technical).

Greg Nictero. He and his eeeevil minions did such a wonderful job on the Evil Dead series. He formed the K.N.B. EFX Group which has worked on hundreds of projects - and no CGI, so there! And you can't mention Nictero without...

Tom Savini. He is the epitome of special effects (and the sexiest man ever born). He is known as the Godfather of Gore, The Sultan Of Splatter, The Come To My Bedroom And I'll Show... whoops, sorry. Ignore that last one. Starting as a makeup artist (that sounds really tame - it's not) he eventually branched out to acting, directing, producing, even doing stunts. 

The picture above is an early one of his work on the original Jason Voorhees for Friday The 13th. But back to special effects: Savini's 'process' is so revered, he runs the 'Tom Savini's Special Make-Up Effects Program' in Pennsylvania. His age may be greater than even mine (blush) but he is just one of those guys who'll be handsome when they're 1,000 years old - I'll wait.

Speaking of blood.


Dick Smith. This is getting too long (natch) but I'd be an idiot not to include at least Dick Smith, the reason why people cowered (or just plain vomited) during The Exorcist, watched a freaking HEAD explode in Scanners, and, despite all the titles Tom Savini has rightfully gathered for himself, it is Smith who is considered the Godfather Of Modern-Day Special Effects Makeup. His work didn't just include horror, but Taxi Driver, Little Big Man, The Godfather and countless others... the guy is just freaking sweet.

Speaking of blood.

See how easy it is to become distracted? I am typing this by hand 'cause I thought it'd be short - now I'll be moaning and wrapping my wrists, and gulping down the pain pills for the rest of the week.

Speaking of blood.

SO. Who is the champion of Most Fake Blood Used In A Single Movie? I was wondering if it was Kill Bill (considering the people with gallons of high pressure blood in 'em, and Uma slices up an awful lot) but I remembered a couple of earlier movies so I'm just doing A COUPLE of movies and how much fake blood was used. If my pick for 'Most Blood' is incorrect, please send a message - I am pleased to look things up and if I'm wrong, I have no problem with saying so. SO.

Speaking of blood.

The Shining (1980): I'm leaving Stephen King out of this one (Why not, Family Could Brick did... hmm? What was that? Oh, that's how my freaking dictation software kept insisting on spelling Stanley Kubrick, which is why I'm typing today.), which sucks 'cause it's King's story - please read the book, especially now that the book Dr. Sleep (the sequel) is out which, as far as I've gotten in it, is just soooo cool. But despite the movie's many flaws and conspiracy theories it had a doozy of a fake blood scene. A couple hundred gallons of the stuff sounds wild enough.

Speaking of blood.

But Family Could Brick insisted that the first two takes weren't 'real' enough and insisted on a third. So mop up the muck and try again, right? Nope. Each take took so long to set up that before Family Could Brick was satisfied, a WHOLE YEAR had gone by... and it was bloody but still extremely flawed. Check out the video of it - not only is the elevator... strange, but the mechanism that both propped open the door and made the blood shoot out from floor to ceiling quite clearly flops onto the floor. So much for dissin' old Stephen, huh Could Brick?

Speaking of blood.

In 1984's A Nightmare On Elm Street, a Wes Craven masterpiece and a starting point for several now-famous actors and actresses (the bedroom scene is shown above), the total amount of fake blood used for the movie (which was shot in 30 days) was over 500 gallons. According to sources that is. If you know of a different number, do tell.

Speaking of blood.


1992, a not-quite-world-famous-yet Peter Jackson made a little film in New Zealand (actually he made quite a few but I digress times infinity), called Braindead (Dead Alive for those lucky enough to see it in the States). It was dismissed as just a gross-out for the sake of being gross... until LOTR. THEN all of a sudden it became a 'cult classic'. Hmm. Being about nasty zombies from a bite spread by a Sumatran Rat-Monkey, the movie has since become discussed and debated (excuse me) to death.

Who the hell cares about if they used the same cemetery from The Frighteners (another Jackson film) or if the priest says 'ass' or 'arse'? I wanted to know how much fake blood was used. The amount passes up anything made up to then or since, even if I went with the low estimate of 5,000 gallons to the whopping post-production estimate of 20,000 gallons. That's... quite a mess. But fun. 

In one of the last scenes of DA, Lionel (our hero) uses a plain, one blade lawnmower as a zombie dismemberment machine. It is said that the lawnmower sprayed out five gallons of fake blood per second. Believe what you want, I'm just glad they kept the mess mostly to one room (okay, set).

Speaking of blood.

So Kill Bill (2003 and 2004), pales in comparison (pun intended) using only a couple hundred of gallons. Huh. So who's the winner? Depends on who you believe.

...umm, this is Ash in Evil Dead 2 by the way...

There are sites that claim (and I'm not buying it 'cause I've seen both movies) that the reboot of Evil Dead (2013) kicks ass for the Lord on a much greater scale than Braindead, using 'over 50,000 gallons' of fake blood. Uh huh. But this same source also claimed that Braindead only used 1,000 gallons. Not. Even. Close.

Speaking of blood.


Am I being totally obsessive about my love of red, messy, squishy, pulpy gore in my movies? Lets have a couple of bad examples, shall we? There are no GOOD examples of CGI. First, in the reboot of Fright Night (2011), a woman who has 'turned' exploded in the sunlight right next to Charlie (the, uh, hero) and yet not a drop of blood, guts, skin, clothes, etc. hits him, the lawn, or anything else. WTH? Second, there's been a couple of zombie films (which I refuse to name) in which zombies are blown apart and... evaporate, because there is absolutely not a shred of evidence that they were even there in the first place.

Yup. Give me my pulp, my mess, my icky sticky red stuff. You want CGI? Play video games.


Note: Goddammit now my whole column is blown. I just read (and this is unconfirmed but knowing the Whedonverse it is conceivable) that they used an impossible 200,000 gallons of fake blood in their 2012 movie The Cabin In The Woods. Somebody please write me to tell me this is wrong... still, it was an awesome movie that I faithfully watch several times a month...

A STITCH IN TIME SAVES YOU... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT IT WILL COST YOU ABOUT 86 MINUTES...

Stitches (2012) UK/Ireland

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.

You all know what I hate worse than seeing a bad horror movie once, right? Seeing it twice, of course. BUT This movie had been described as a good horror/comedy movie, with each slaughter being inventive although I didn't see anything special. Okay guys, I'll take another look but I warn you, I'm still reeling from Hitler in a jar-o so I'm gonna be a bit picky. Get ready... But first, let's check the IMDb on Google shall we?

Huh. That movie sounds AWFULLY familiar... I'm thinking massively popular, there were three of them, its' star is still a total hottie... oh well. 

I wonder who the incredible idiot was who first thought that putting a man in horrid clothes with a ton of makeup on his face would be entertaining for little kids. Sit down Braveheart, I'm not talking about you. Although a painted Mel Gibson IS pretty freaking scary. Actually ANY sight of Mel Gibson is freaking scary. No, I'm talking about the ones with the real big red noses, the ones who get right in little kids' faces and FORCE them to laugh... or wet their pants, either one.



So. Richard Grimble (Ross Noble, a stand-up comedian in his first acting role - which he does surprisingly well) is a clown who goes by Stitches. He has an egg with his likeness because all clowns MUST have an egg in a jar-o (Oh God, flashbacks!) to keep in some mausoleum in one of those monk-chanting type ceremonies that this little boy can conveniently see from a telescope in his treehouse (apparently this town is so freaking small he can see EVERYTHING from it).


Here's your Hey-I-didn't-ask-why-are-you-telling-me lesson for today: The practice of painting each clown's face on an egg is REAL. I shite you not. This is thanks to a website The Straight Dope at  http://www.straightdope.com/ :

The tradition began in the U.K. around 1946 at what was then the International Circus Clowns Club but is now called Clowns International. A member named Stan Bult started recording clown images on chicken eggs with the insides blown out. Clown Bluey became chairman of Clowns International in 1984. This time a professional artist was used and the faces were painted on china-pot eggs instead of chicken eggs. Over the years, many of the lost older eggs have been reproduced, and new eggs are added frequently.

In the U.S. collection, the faces are eggs-pertly hand-painted on goose eggs (more durable than chicken eggs), and decorated with various materials (such as clay, wire, felt, tiny flowers, glitter, etc.) to obtain as accurate a representation of the clown face and costume as possible. The collection is meant to preserve the uniqueness of each clown's face makeup. Quoting from the Department of Clown Registry information sheet: "It is an unwritten law among clowns that one must never copy the face of another." 

Stitches isn't a great clown. He isn't even a really good one - he's shite (look it up). He shows up late for Tom's (the boy with the telescope) birthday party and tries his tricks but kids are really jaded and they mock him and mess with him instead. And since we know this is about a zombie clown who gets revenge on the ones who killed him, he gets his eye non-comically (which is hard for a clown) impaled on a large knife sticking up in an open dishwasher (because everybody leaves them open with sharp implements sticking up around small children).

Stitches dies after spurting a couple of gallons of fake blood all over the damn place. I am not exaggerating. Through the WHOLE MOVIE it tries to tell you that most of the body's blood supply is in the head. Duh. Nice effect of a knife through a split eye though. After a clown funeral (which Tom watches with that magic telescope - MAN that town is SMALL!) everyone pretty much forgets Stitches, who lies, nicely preserved in his grave. 'Cause his egg is still intact. Does that even make a lick of sense? No? Well, I must have the right movie then.

Because the movie says so, time fast forwards to Tom turning 17. He wants just a small party with his best buds - you know, the fellow clown-killers? But they have other ideas - and a huge party containing more people than are probably in the whole bloody town are going to show up - including a girl Tom liked as a kid when he watched her... say it with me... SAAAAAAY IT.... THROUGH HIS TELESCOPE.



Now I'm going to stop for just a moment... HEY GET BACK HERE YOU COWARD!!!!  A moment with something I noticed and thought it was a nice nod to Wes Craven. Either that or they couldn't think of something original so hey, copy copy copy away, right? Since Tom was traumatized by the clown incident, he is now on medication. That medicine is called Hypnocil. That sounded verrrry familiar so I looked it up and yup, it is what the kids in Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors AND Freddy vs. Jason were dosed with so that they wouldn't dream. Cute. Fake, but cute.

Bobo... umm, I mean Baggy Britches... dammit I mean Bozo... <grits teeth> I. Mean. Stitches. Stitches the clown comes back to life because, uh, because the movie says so. That's their story and they're sticking to it. With one eye stitched up (GET IT????) he decides to join the party. He still has his red clown nose which is good 'cause he now only has a hole where his nose used to be... sometimes. Most of the time it is VERY obvious that his nose is intact. Duh.

Totally random, just thought this was a cool shot...

Now I was going to make my usual sarcastic remarks and ream this film out for its stupidity but soooo many horror sources say these killings were soooo inventive that instead I'll go through the characters then and now because each killing is supposed to be inventive and ironic. Names are not necessary 'cause who cares, right? We just want blood and gore. This movie tries to rival Dead Alive (Braindead) in amount of blood and guts, but also in trying to make the gore funny.

Kill #1: Male bully - at the party he made fun at the clown when he tried to perform a trick. First he gets his ear ripped off. When he swings (with his right arm), he misses and turns around for another swipe (with his left arm, duh). Stitches pulls the arm out of the socket and... very bloody, very gory - or is it? 

Stop the frame when the socket is shown. The top is clearly a half circle of plastic that is either stapled or stitched (no pun intended) to the shirt and there is definitely some sort of pin holding the gore to the plastic (that's the wrong kind of gore for a shoulder socket anyway) so a B- effect goes down to a C-. 

Good effort, sloppy effects. Stitches messes with him some more before kicking off his head. The head flies off and lands in a pond, eyes wide open. 'Kay. But when the head resurfaces, the eyes are shut. Sigh.



Kill #2: Homosexual friend - at the party he flung a scoop of ice cream at Stitches. He loves to eat. He shuts himself in the pantry and eats can after can of strawberries in light syrup. Urp. Stitches opens up his skull with the can opener and scoops perfect little balls of brains into a bowl. Too bad they show one of the balls bounce when it hits the bowl. Rubber brains? Sure, why not. Oh and as the kid dies, for whatever reason these 21st century kids suddenly listen to and sing along to Cutting Crew's I Just Died In Your Arms. That was popular in the 80's guys. Sheesh.



Kill #3: Female bully - she flipped him off at the party. She's the only one who puts up a fight and impales his neck with a shoe heel. He pulls it out and she attempts to get away. He throws his umbrella and it impales itself through her skull, pinning her eye on the end and shoving it into the camera. If this had been 3D this would have been a perfect shot for it.



But. The eye is perfect and blue. No ganglia, no gore. The pupil constricts. Uh, no. Fail on that one. But wait - now she falls backwards, shoving the rest of the umbrella through her eye socket and tons more blood shoots out. Huh, no eyelashes. Weird. Also when the camera pans out, no blood except for a bit on her face. Huh. The perfect eye pops off the end of the umbrella and she swallows it. The dead can swallow? Huh. That part was the hubby's favorite movie trick of the week. The umbrella opens and she is saturated with black... guck. Black? Really? Did they run out of red already? Huh.

Should we even talk about the fact that the model they used when shoving the umbrella through had no eyelashes, or that the 'patch' job they did to make it look real was so bad that it looked like a teenager had fun with Photoshop? No? Enough? Okay, let's go on...

Kill #4: At the party this boy wanted a dinosaur shaped balloon animal. When Stitches made a dog, he popped it. Stitches now slashes the boy's stomach open, does a little taffy pull (lots of blood and gore) and slices himself a section of intestine (now clean and pink). He makes a balloon animal out of it. The boy, guts hanging at his feet, tries to run away.



Stitches isn't done with him yet. He takes his balloon pump, shoves it into the boy's skull and pumps. The boy protests and yells as his head looks like... you guys are probably too young to remember Big Trouble In Little China, huh? 'Cause boom goes the dynamite and his head blows - twice. Guess they wanted to get their money's worth. Sparks are visible from the charges they set to get such a big spray - all blood, no skull, brain or other icky stuff.

With three survivors, Tom realizes that the only way to splat this clown good once and for all is to smash Stitches' egg. 'Kay. They make their way through the cemetery and Tom goes into the mausoleum and finds... hundreds of glass cases with eggs in them. This was actually a pretty elaborate set, and since the egg was on the top shelf and Tom knocks the whole thing over but nothing breaks, each case must have been plexiglass or something.

But inevitably, the egg is smashed and so then is Stitches in a scene that somehow was grosser than all the blood, gore, and body parts in the rest of the movie. Finally his yolky body is spread all over and we fade out to...

Tom is moving - down the street. Wow. His now-girlfriend Kate gives him a bigger telescope so he won't miss her bedroom which we assume not only can see the entire town, but can also see around corners, buildings, and whatever else is in the way of her bedroom window.

Meanwhile the high poobah of clowns is busy with brush and glue carefully putting Stitches' egg back together. Well, they couldn't afford all the King's horses and all the King's men... ahem. Sorry about that. We're done here.

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A GORY ZOMBIE MOVIE THAT'S REALLY REALLY FUNNY AND REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY GORY - REALLY

Braindead aka Dead Alive (1992) New Zealand

Long before I started this blog I watched a strange but hilarious movie on IFC called Braindead. It was so obviously fake and funny that the guts, body parts and blood (which was the color of pink yogurt with a bit of raspberries) that it just made me laugh my, umm, guts out. Later, when on one of the many TWD sites, someone asked me if I'd heard of Dead Alive. Nope. Of course I had no idea they'd changed the title for America for whatever reason they feel the need to screw with what doesn't need fixed. But when it was described to me, I had that sense of deja vu and thought wow, I KNOW I've seen something like that.

Of course I had. And, of course, I could never find it again, until recently I watched it online (thank you movie streaming services). And I still laughed. Now this is MY kind of humor, it may not be yours so be warned - this movie was once called the goriest movie ever made. Of course that was 1992 so it may have been topped since then. BUT THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO CGI HERE! IT'S FANTASTIC! A flop when it first appeared, it quickly became a cult classic when its Director, Peter Jackson, did a little trilogy called Lord Of The Rings.

The movie, set in 1957 for some reason, begins its fun with the capture and smuggling into New Zealand a Sumatran Rat-Monkey, supposedly a hybrid between a large rat and a tree monkey. It's fierce and it's pissed, and during the explorer's escape from the natives, it reaches through the cage and bites him on the arm. His guides, seeing the bite, know instantly what that means - out comes the machete. Off goes his arm. Then they see a scratch on his other upper arm - off it goes at the shoulder. Then they see the scratch on his forehead... But money making people doing what they do, the remaining thieves take the monkey to the plane and off it goes to a zoo in New Zealand.

Then we meet mama's boy Lionel. He's a shy and whipped man but one day at the market he meets Paquita. She is determined to date him as it was predicted in the cards. He takes her on a date to the zoo - not knowing his mother (Elizabeth Moody, whose last role was in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as the character Lobelia Sackville-Baggins) secretly has followed him. Hiding in the bushes by the monkey cages she, of course, gets bitten by the nasty rat-monkey and subsequently takes great pleasure in squashing his head (a good stop motion movie nasty you probably miss in this age of CGI) under her heel.

Lionel abandons Paquita to care for his mum at home. The bite festers quickly and by morning she's pretty ug... well, actually she was ugly to begin with, now she's just worse. He wants her to stay in bed but they have company. Funny stuff as she tries to look 'presentable' and he ends up using glue to try to put her peeling face skin back in place. Ick. But funny.

The table scene is probably the most famous and infamous of the whole movie. We have Lionel and his mum with a visiting couple eating a regular meal - with mum using somewhat less than civil table manners. The man is oblivious, the look on his wife's face - perfect. When the custard is served... uh, I think I'll stop there. Not because it wasn't one of the grossest/funniest scenes of zombie movies ever filmed, but because if you're eating or have eaten recently you might experience some, uh, discomfort.

He calls the nurse but she tells him that his mother is dead. His mother revives - even nastier than before and kills the nurse. But people think she's dead so he gets a large supplies of an anesthetic and tries to keep her undead corpse down - looking even worse after the embalming - to get through the funeral and subsequent burial. He doesn't really succeed and already she's been killing people. 

He tries to dig her up but is attacked by a stereotypical 50's street gang (lots of hair grease and leather) and would have been in pieces if the local priest wasn't well versed in kung fu (he kicks butt for the Lord) until his mother bursts from the grave and kills all of them. Somehow Lionel (he must be a lot stronger than he looks) gets them back to his house and keeps them in the basement under sedation.

But there's always a fly in the guts and blood - in the form of his mother's brother, Uncle Les. He discovers what he thinks is Lionel's penchant for mass murder and uses it to blackmail him to give up the house and inheritance. Uncle Les invites a houseful of people to party (and this is a big house) and the massive bloodshed is about to begin.

Lionel, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, had meant to shoot the bodies full of poison to end the madness - instead he uses some kind of - growth agent. All the bodies he buries in the basement shoot out of there (including a baby born to two particularly randy zombies) and the smorgasbord begins.

How to describe this? What made this so funny to me the first (and second) time was that somewhere in this gelatinous gooey practically knee deep scene in a set that must have taken months to clean afterward, they somehow must have run out of red dye, or jello, or whatever the hell they were making the mess out of and things got decidedly pinkish. The more blood and guts gushing all over everything, the pinker it got.


So we get some endless kung fu fighting - err, I mean zombie fighting as eventually everyone except Lionel, Paquita and Uncle Les become zombies. The zombie baby gets quite a bit of air time (that's kind of a pun, it gets kicked around a lot and seems to be able to jump great heights) and the melee' continues.


Speaking of Lionel's mother - remember the growth agent? Well apparently his mother got the mega dose (or because she is patient zero) because she has become this twelve foot high gross looking - thing that bursts from the earth just as Uncle Les has shut himself in the basement. Again, this is not CGI'd so the mechanics of this thing was pretty impressive. She grabs Les and literally pulls his head and spine out of his body - he is now a zombie that can't go anywhere.


Lionel makes it outside where he gets his trusty lawn mower (we're talking ultra cheap with one dull whirring blade) and proceeds to make limbs, torsos and heads spread their now even more pinkish gore all over the foyer of the house (where most of the gore is contained - still must have been a hell of a cleanup though) as that miracle blade went through skin, muscle, bone, even skulls. 


But even if the blade is a miracle, it still only has a limited gas supply and runs out, leaving Lionel to make a hasty exit. Lionel makes it up to the attic. There he finds that his mother had been lying to him all his life - he had thought his father drowned to save him - what really happened is his father had been caught with a girlfriend in the bathtub, both murdered by his mother and the girlfriend's body put in the attic. Lionel is a mama's boy no more.


So after some more wince-worthy slime and guts, a final showdown between Lionel and his mum and their escape, the house catches fire, the mother falls into it and Lionel and Paquita walk away as firetrucks arrive - happy and free. And slimy. Very, very slimy.