YEAR 2003 directed by robert rodriguez
STARRING antonio banderas, salma hayek, johnny depp
Qs: 8. AR: SSSSSSSSSS
N 0:39:30. Sands finds what he was after – behind Belini’s eye-patch. Plucking the bag from his eyehole, he leaves the hollow to the sun before sending his body into the river. SR: SSSSS
N 0:59:00. In a seriously heartbreaking sequence, Marquez and his henchmen shoot up Carolina and El Mariachi. El falls upon her bullet-ridden body and weeps with deepness he can’t express any other way than to hunt down and execute her killers. SR: SSSSS
N 1:04:55. Several orderlies are blown away in cold, red blood. At 1:05:48, officer Jorge comes across the carnage in the hallway. SR: SSSSS
N 1:05:57. Barillo undergoes reconstructive surgery to change his face. Let’s say this – it doesn’t work. Officer Jorge comes across a bloody sheet on an operating table. Knowing who it is, or who it should be, he whips the sheet off the figure to reveal a defaced corpse – or, should I say de-faced? The sight of a man’s skinless skull is arresting, the idea unsettling. SR: SSSSS
N 1:11:33. Betrayed by Ajedrez, Sands’s eyes are drilled out of his head, his sockets bleeding down his face as he attempts to feel his way about town. Moments after coming across the gum-selling kid on the bike again, he plugs a man in his forehead, a bloody splat assuring the job was done. SR: SSSSS
N 1:26:03. During a blind shootout between Sands and two of Barillo’s men, one man is shot in the leg, a wound that explodes red, and then shot fatally in the chest. Sands is shot once in both legs, causing him to fall to his knees. I should add that at this point his glasses fall off and you can see his bloody eye sockets. He’s not done, however, and shoots the second man in the foot and then straight in the head. I accept a lot in these sorts of movies, but a man screaming after he’s been shot in the head stretches things too far J. SR: SSSSS
N 1:29:21. The showdown between El Mariachi and General Marquez goes off with a bang. With two spot-on shots, he explodes his kneecaps (there simply isn’t a word for the pain.) The smoking erstwhile joints fold backwards, strings of tissue and jagged points of bone jut from his legs. El steps close to the fallen Marquez, points the sawed-off weapon at his head, says in Spanish “in hell” and blows away everything from the eyebrows up. His soldiers later find him with a pool forming under his half-a-head. JFF: watch later for when Ajedrez bursts in to where the President should have been and sees the body of Gen. Marquez. Remember the knee thing (how can one forget?) His legs folded under him, but when she sees him, his legs are straight out. Did El reposition them before sneaking away for his own life? SR: SSSSS
N 1:31:15. Ajedrez comes across the fallen Sands. Mocking him, forcing him to stand on his injured legs, she asks him if he sees anything he likes. He has one last trick up his sleeve that if anyone can explain how he managed to pull off (where did he get it? How?), it will be amazing, but he uses this last subterfuge to put down the traitor. SR: SSSSS
N In addition to the 8 scenes described below, two guys on a guitar wagon being wiped out by a truck, much over-the-top stylized gunplay and hand-to-hand, men falling from roofs, a gasoline tanker going sky-high, a man being strangled with a wire, a scene at 0:59:44 that’s so deeply painful I can’t think about it, a large-scale attempted coup with much shooting and killing on the Day of the Dead, several men being set on fire and a number more noteworthy moments help score this film a 5 rating.
YEAR 2002 directed by david fincher
STARRING jodie foster, kristen stewart, forest whitaker
Qs: 4. AR: SSSSSSSSSS
N 1:12:26. At the last stretch of desperation, Raoul comes up with a gig to force Meg to open the room, which of course is the very place they were headed at the onset. The plan was to beat the living daylights out of Meg’s husband, banking on the fact that she would come out to rescue him. Punching him, kicking him in the mouth and bashing him across upside the head with the floor light, Stephen is a mess. The abuse continues for over a minute. Later, when Meg comes upon his propped-up body, he attempts to move his arm. Here you can see his broken scapula moving. SR: SSSSS
N 1:08:55. The first step in getting yourself seriously hurt or killed is doing something stupid. Junior earns this distinction when he bails on the operation. As he turns to leave, Raoul fires a round through his head, dropping him immediately. Blood pours from the hole, but this doesn’t settle Raoul. He drags Junior to a different part of the room and fires another bullet into his brain. SR: SSSSS
N 1:18:46. The second step in getting yourself seriously hurt or killed is being the victim of a bad accident. Raoul earns this distinction when, after a tussle with Meg, he falls backwards into the panic room just as Burnham slams shut the heavy steel door. This would be nothing notable except that Raoul’s fingers just happened to be in a place along the door where they didn’t block the beam and thus didn’t stop the door from shutting. The crunch can almost be felt and there is much wild-eyed screaming and pleading to open the door from Raoul. Later, when the group got what they came for, he picks up his severed digits and pockets them. SR: SSSSS
N 1:44:50. Taking one last stand, Burnham risks forfeiting freedom to save Meg and her family. Coming up behind Raoul, who was busy preparing to beat Meg’s face in with a sledgehammer, Burnham picks up his gun, aims and fires, blowing out Raoul’s right eye in a red mist. SR: SSSSS
YEAR 2004 directed by jeff renfroe, marteinn thorsson
STARRING jeremy sisto, deborah kara unger, udo kier
Qs: 3. AR: SSSSSSSSSS
N 0:41:57. Simon’s neighbor, the one with the interactive game, is cut up quite badly and left on the floor of his living room to die while Simon was inextricably attached to the eyepiece. SR: SSSSS
N 1:05:31. After a feverish call from his manic landlord, Simon runs to his apartment where he discovers him sprawled on the floor, the top half of his head missing, a wider shot at 1:05:44. SR: SSSSS
N 1:28:58. The end of this bizarre feature leaves Simon dead on the floor, the top of his head removed like his neighbor, a twisted smile stuck on his face. SR: SSSSS
YEAR 2004 directed by mel gibson
STARRING jim caviezel, maia morgenstern, hristo jivkov
Qs: 10. AR: SSSSSSSSSS
N 0:12:40. An impetuous Peter lops off the ear of one of the guards come to detain Jesus. The mark is when the Savior looks at the absence of the ear shortly before he restores it. SR: SSSSS
N 0:37:26. Maggots writhe on the surface of a rotting donkey carcass. SR: SSSSS
N The outrageous pre-crucifixion punishment begins.
N 0:53:27. Two flagellants flanking Jesus and taking turns whipping him with supple reeds. The beatings both high and low go on for almost two minutes, reducing the Son of Man to a quivering human bruise. SR: SSSSS
N “THIS DEPICTION OF RIGOROUS BLOODLETTING” 0:56:47. The flogging with the reeds was hard enough to watch, but the beatings with the multi-hooked scourge are a real test. The instrument resembles a cat-o’-nine-tails and then some, sporting a deadly sharp tooth at the end of each tail. The two flagellants each take one of said device and whip them across Jesus’ skin, tearing the sensitive and already badly injured skin open in several parallel tracks which open wide and turn red immediately, like a swipe from Freddy Kreuger’s glove. Every flailing hits home with fearful accuracy and severely damaging ferocity. On the last strike, the hooks lodge in Jesus’ left side, requiring extra force to yank them out, in so doing ripping away noticeable pieces of skin and casting sprays of blood on the Roman soldiers inflicting the blows. The strikes continue relentlessly off-screen as the soldiers unconscionably persist in the gleeful destruction of the entirety of the flesh on the prisoner’s back, said flesh looking like it had been through a hay baler, almost every square inch torn open and pouring red, the crisscrossing of deep gashes forming a bloody grid from his shoulders to his waist. It simply continues onward with mind-numbing endurance, the level of brutality and inhuman savagery stunning. At 1:00:40 we get a wide shot of the pillar and the immediate vicinity, spattered red with Jesus’ blood for several feet around. One of Jesus’ hands is unshackled and he’s turned over on his phenomenally mutilated back. Does this mean it’s over? Not whatsoever. The determined slashing merely changes locations, shredding Jesus’ chest skin – once clean, once smooth. Let it be known that this scene, not even the crucifixion mind you, is every bit of everything you’ve heard. Also, by virtue of the fact that the preparation of the evident bulk of material for this site, it’s extremely clear that I’ve all but seen the lot of bloody violence, but this depiction of rigorous bloodletting is more sobering even for believers who can almost, given the sequence’s trying duration, put themselves in the position of a man who died for them. SR: ããããã
N 1:05:24. You know very much as well as I do it’s not even the half of it. A soldier places the familiar crown of thorns on Jesus’ head and uses the end of their rods to push the thorns in deeper, yet more scarlet flowing, as if excessive amounts hadn’t been spilled already. SR: SSSSS
N 1:36:40. A spike goes in Jesus’ left palm and into the cross wood. As the second is about to go in, a man steps in and claims to show them “how it’s done.” He wraps a cloth around Jesus’ arm and pulls it, drawing his palm toward a hole in the wood, tugging on the cloth until Jesus’ shoulder dislocates. As the second spike is pounded in, we can see the tip protruding through the other side, a slow trickle of blood turning into a full run. The spike is then pounded into his overlapped feet before the cross is flipped over, the spike tips pounded flat before it is inverted again. SR: SSSSS
N 1:46:10. A crow pecks at Gesmas’s eyes, shaking blood from the feathers on its head. SR: SSSSS
N 1:53:37. Soldiers break the other condemned men’s knees with heavy wooden clubs. SR: SSSSS
N 1:54:11. Cassius pierces Jesus’ side with a spear, blood and water raining out. SR: SSSSS
N 1:58:32. We can see through a hole in his right palm as He walked from His tomb. SR: SSSSS
N Rated 7 based on A: the dizzying cruelty inflicted on Jesus throughout as well as the almighty damage done to His body (2); B: the scene entitled “This Depiction of Rigorous Bloodletting” detailed above (2) and 3: the individually rated scenes (3).
YEAR 1989 directed by mary lambert
STARRING fred gwynne, denise crosby, brad greenquist
Qs: 7. AR: SSSSSSSSSS
N 0:17:23. It’s hardly even Doc’s first day in town and horrified townsfolk carry a hit-and-run victim on a blanket into his office. His head has been badly split open and many of the carriers have red on their clothing, much having soaked into the sheet. The prognosis is self-evident. SR: SSSSS
N 0:38:30. Doc’s taking a bath and his reanimated cat throws a chewed-up and bleeding rat into his freshly run water. SR: SSSSS
N 0:41:40. Who is the priest? Do you know this man?
N 0:45:08. Sister Zelda looks the best part of a human skeleton, almost every bone accentuated through her shrunken skin. Se7en anyone?
N 0:49:38. I’m a horror fan and I’ve seen a lot, but this sequence hurt. Gage toddles on out into the road while Doc isn’t looking. One of the infamous orinco trucks breezes through and runs him down. Thoughtfully shot so nothing is seen, the episode of a child being run down by a truck is enough to resonate for quite a while. SR: SSSSS
N 0:57:45. The first reanimated corpse, Timmy, scrabbles around in the dirt like a dog, burying what looks like the leg of somebody. He later wipes the blood from the leg on his face. As the sequence continues, the townsfolk set fire to his and his father’s house in a mob-mentality effort of ridding themselves of the living dead. Timmy’s not exactly against it, dragging his father down and holding him there until the fire consumes them, repeatedly saying he hates living. SR: SSSSS
N 1:08:39. Doc disinters Gage and holds him close, eventually carrying him home to rebury him past the Pet Sematary. Now, I’m not a parent and I know that until I am I can’t properly sympathize with the due devotion to children, but what Doc does is going too far, crossing the border of obsession.
N 1:20:45. This is PS’s most violent scene. The reanimated Gage goes first for the scalpel in his father’s bag and starts taking care of business. Jud gets a bad feeling and heads next-door, armed with his switchblade. Gage gets him first when Church captures his attention, taking him by surprise just long enough for Gage, under the bed, to slash his right ankle open and cut the Achilles’ tendon in half. It doesn’t nearly stop there. He slashes Jud across the mouth and rips his throat out with his teeth. Later, at 1:32:56 when Doc finds him, there was evidently more that happened since we last saw him: during the attack, there was simply the slit mouth and a patch of skin torn off the throat, but upon Doc’s discovery, all the flesh from the lower jaw is gone. The lip is history as is the chin and the teeth are plainly out in the open. SR: SSSSS
N 1:33:40. Gage attacks Doc, stabbing him multiple times with the scalpel he already killed Jud and his own mother with. SR: SSSSS
N 1:38:38. Doc didn’t learn his lesson. Church, Gage and he still buried his wife…there. She strolls in and he, with blind love, runs into her arms. Her face is destroyed, her left eye gone and pus of some ugly kind running down her face from the hole. SR: SSSSS
YEAR 1992 directed by mary lambert
STARRING edward furlong, anthony edwards, clancy brown
Qs: 10. AR: SSSSSSSSSS
N 0:41:09. Dr. Matthews peels away the red-soaked bandages covering the gaping, gory gunshot wound in Zowie’s side. SR: SSSSS
N 0:48:18. Zowie jumps Gus and tears a chunk of his throat out, a gratuitous shot of the wound following. SR: SSSSS
N 0:56:43. Rudman cuts around an animal’s skull to remove the top piece of bone, blood and pus seeping out. SR: SSSSS
N 0:57:29. Remember that litter of free kittens Dr. Matthews was giving out? We knew there would be a problem…the wire from Zowie’s cage door is all torn up like something burst out of it and I’ll leave it at this: there’s nothing left of the kittens but furry gore. SR: SSSSS
N 1:01:30. It’s a truly sick scene at Gus’s place; remember the rabbits in the hutch? One by one Gus has strung them up and pulled their hides over their heads. We’re shown the procedure with the next one: hold it lovingly, crack its neck, slit its skin open and pulls the bloody fur down like taking off a sweater. SR: SSSSS
N 1:10:37. Gus plays with Clyde like Clyde played with (Eddie), except Gus uses a motorcycle and revs it inches from his face. Things are fine, so to speak, until his scarf gets wrapped up in things and creates a nasty scene involving much blood spun around the wheel and no doubt a broken neck and much riven flesh. SR: SSSSS
N 1:25:36. Gus is in Dr. Matthews’ house “building a doggie door” while the bloody remains of Zowie (who had to be shot again) sit close by. Shortly after their brief confrontation, Gus picks up a power drill and buries the bit in Dr. Matthews’ already injured shoulder where Zowie bit into him. Finally, randomly putting a bullet in the six-shooter’s chamber, Dr. Matthews’ scores after three empty clicks and blasts Gus’s dead brains out. SR: SSSSS
N 1:30:05. Apparently, when Renee came back and discovered Marjorie wanted to look like her, as the accusation went, she carved out the flesh from around her left eye, leaving the shard of mirror in the bloody site for Dr. Matthews to find. SR: SSSSS
N 1:31:40. Clyde isn’t dead and gone…just dead. He appears back at Jeff’s wielding one of the horror genre’s favorite weapons: the axe. His face looks like plastic where the shredded skin glossed over with congealed blood and whatnot while he was in his brief state of death. Failing to axe him, he pulls a Zowie and chomps into his shoulder. Jeff retaliates and gouges one of Clyde’s eyes out, pus looking stuff oozing. In a wicked death, Jeff shoves the sparking electrical cord into Clyde’s mouth, lighting him up like a Christmas display until his head explodes and he dies…again. SR: SSSSS
N 1:34:09. Renee’s second death could have been gorier for my tastes, but as it was we’ve seen this type of send-off and may be jaded by how later productions bloodied up the melting-like-the-Wicked-Witch-of-the-West deal, but no matter how one slices it, or liquefies it, it’s still really gross. A line like a fault in the earth’s crust develops down the side of her face and starts pouring flesh while her hands begin to lose composure. As Jeff pulls a Jack Torrance and starts to chop his way out of the locked attic, Renee continues to drip all over the place, howling in an unearthly voice that she doesn’t want to be alone, which she will be because all the resurrected thus far have met their second ends and she’s the only walking reanimated corpse. Anyhow, her left hands starts to turn to goo as the flames rise around her before her entire rotting body goes up. A dripping skull a la Cube Zero hangs on ‘til the end at which point it too is burnt to a crisp. SR: SSSSS
YEAR 1979 directed by don coscarelli
STARRING michael baldwin, reggie bannister, angus scrimm
Qs: 2. AR: SSSSSSSSSS
N 0:38:39. One of the first Qs I came across in my film travels was in this unusual cult hit from producer/writer/photographer/editor/director Don Coscarelli. Lurking around a marble mausoleum called Morningside, the protagonist Mike is seized by an unidentified and short-lived character. The most famous element from this bizarre series, effectively the mascot for them, is the sleek, mirror-finish silver spheres that fly around the halls of Morningside. Their job is security detail, their method of exacting punishment memorable. Ejecting two sharp blades from approximately inch-high slits, they jam into the victim’s forehead. Before they can pull it out, a quarter-inch drill bit protrudes from the center and proceeds to tap their forehead like a keg of beer, spouting a thick, steady stream of blood in a low arc at least four feet out until the victim is drained. SR: SSSSS
N 0:40:14. When the Tall Man chases after Mike, he attempts to reach for him before Mike slams the door on his fingers and cuts them off with a knife he was carrying. Yellow (yes, yellow) blood sprays from the stubs. SR: SSSSS
(Original and uncut work-print version)
YEAR 1988 directed by don coscarelli
STARRING james LEgros, reggie bannister, angus scrimm
Qs: 7. AR: SSSSSSSSSS
N 0:23:53. Thinking he’s found in real life the girl of his dreams (literally), Mike recoils when he sees squirming under the sheet she’s wrapped in. Pulling it off quickly, he sees it’s some grotesque, twisted apparition breaking out of her back. Reggie doesn’t question things and proceeds to set her and much of the place on fire before leaving. SR:
