YEAR 2003 directed by tobe hooper

STARRING angela bettis, brent roam, sara downing

Qs: 9.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N      0:06:48.  Silly me, I actually thought this girl was going to last some amount of time, but she doesn’t.  A guy in a ski mask chases her down, eventually slashing her throat open with the claw side of a hammer before beating her in the skull with the same at least fourteen times, some highlights being at the second strike when the weapon comes away with a chunk of bloody hair and at the third when the killer pries her skull open like pulling out a nail.  The rest of the sequence, the remaining eleven hits, splatter the window with her blood, the sound effect, cinematography and framing altogether like the shameless splatter flicks of the 70s and 80s.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:32:47.  After playing a shooting gallery game with Saffron (I kid you not), the killer shoots her directly in the throat with a large nail.  At 0:34:13, one can see her body above a doorway, tacked to the ceiling and safely out of sight.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:43:29.  The killer traps Julia, pins her to the floor and bores into the base of her skull with a half-inch spiral bit, spattering his mask with her blood, the same pouring from her mouth.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:10:08.  Nell, stumbling around somewhere in the building, comes upon the killer’s lair, complete with suspended body of Julia, cut clean in half down to the middle of her chest, both halves hanging apart like pages in a hardback book laid on a table.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:10:40.  Now, you really didn’t think it was going to be that easy for Ned to have been the toolbox killer did you?  The real killer corners Ned in his workroom and cuts off the top of his head, just below the eyes, with a circular saw, oddly corded.  I would think a tool killer would want to be more ably mobile, but I also guess that if you have equipment like he does, you don’t need subtlety.  The blood spatter is remarkable as he makes multiple passes through Ned’s head, the blade repeatedly jamming on his skull.  He then plucks the top of the head off by the hair and drops it.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:12:16.  Screaming for no apparent reason, the killer removes his mask.  Much of his face is missing, what is there looking like it was put together out of parts farmed from the morgue.  The skin around his jaws is completely absent, the permanently bared teeth the most notable feature of the ghoulish, mutilated figure of the mysterious killer.  Later we find the features merely exaggerations of an odd type of mask, though it is clear the creature’s jaws aren’t set right.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:15:14.  Luis, Byron and Steven figure a way into the killer’s lair, discovering there Julia’s body propped up in a chair, something sticking out of the top of her head, and, well, the top of Ned’s head.  There too they, like Nell did, come across Saffron’s divided body.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:16:16.  Slamming Luis on a table and pinching his head in a vise (I can almost feel his skull cracking, we can certainly hear it quite clearly), the killer makes sure the damage is irreversible by sprinkling pure lye directly on his face, dissolving the flesh away, leaving him with bloody goo glued to a skull where his looks used to be.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:17:58.  A real fan of using a different tool every time, the killer stabs Byron in the back with a pair of bolt cutters, twirling him around in some sick kind of dance before throwing him to the ground and clipping his spinal column with one move of the handles.  SR: SSSSS

N      The film earns an extra point based on the amazing profusion of corpses in the killer’s lair, something like 60 bodies at least, a few with the tools used to kill them still remaining in their bodies.  The legion of the dead inhabit varying states of decay, some fresh out of life and others almost mummified by the time they had spent piled on one another.

YEAR 1990 directed by paul verhoeven

STARRING arnold schwarzenegger, sharon stone, michael ironside

Qs: 13.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N      0:03:49.  Falling down a Martian hill and cracking the faceplate of his suit, the absolute lack of oxygen causes Quaid’s face to distend horribly, his eyes bugging out and his tongue swelling, making him look like a gruesome Halloween creature rather than a human being.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:22:33.  Quaid chops a man in the mouth and blood flies.  He later twists the arm of the same and blasts him through with his own gun.  He then turns the weapon on another poor soul who thought he could take him down.  A long shot twenty seconds later shows blood smear on the walls behind the chop victim and his last kill, pools forming under all.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:29:47.  JFF: this is one of the FX sequences that earned the film the Special Achievement Award by the Academy Awards® for visual effects.  Quaid rushes into one of the metal detector/X ray machines that reveal he has a weapon.  Several security officers gather around, attempting to contain him.  Contain Mr. Universe?  He simply blasts through the side and goes on his way.  Anatomically accurate, the green representations of human skeletons are haunting and well done.

N      0:30:58.  During a firefight on the escalators, Quaid uses an unfortunate civilian (who was shot by the bad guys BTW) as a shield while he kills absolutely everybody after him with five and six shots to the chest.  The poor shield receives the most bullets, several dozen, turning his previously clean clothes into bloody messes.  A close-up of one of the dead bad guy follows, red all around.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:40:55.  In a physically uncomfortable scene, Quaid is instructed to insert a self-guiding device designed to seek out an implanted tracking unit in his skull.  It’s hard to watch as the device latches onto the unit, glowing red, and pulls it from his nose, the unit noticeably larger than the nostril it’s being asked to come back out of.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:43:00.  Seeing the men who are after him encroaching upon his hiding place and fast, Quaid embeds the tracking unit in a piece of who-knows-what and tosses it to the rats scurrying about.  The voracious rodents carry it about the factory, leading the bad guys to all kinds of wrong places.  When Richter discovers they’ve been on a wild rat chase the whole time, he aims his automatic and blows the rodent away in a shiny red splat that slowly slides down the computer screen.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:05:30.  Quaid blasts a hole in Dr. Edgemar’s head, splattering his brains behind him.  SR: SSSSS

N     1:13:12.  After an order to “kill them all” by Richter, many women are gunned down, one’s blood splattering a bank of monitors behind her.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:24:13.  A bloody sheet is spread out before Mr. Cohaagen who lifts it to reveal the dead George/Kuato underneath.  Thanks to Benny drilling him full of holes, the host George is dead and thanks to the direct shot to the head by Richter, so is Kuato, a hole in his skull marking the event to the satisfied confirmation of Mr. Cohaagen.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:30:00.  Quaid wrenches free one of the arm restraint mechanisms and jams a part into the neck of the accompanying technician, his severed carotid squirting blood everywhere.  Another man rushes him but gets bashed in the face by the heavy metal device.  Another man who pulled a metal rod of some unknown use receives the same up his nose, through his head and out his scalp in one swift shove by the enraged Quaid.  SR: SSSSS

N     1:34:40.  Quaid picks up a formidable piece of Martian mining equipment and drills into the cab of the giant machine the traitorous Benny has commandeered specifically for the purpose of killing him.  When the bit breaches the door, it grinds through Benny, leaving it dripping with his mutant blood when Quaid extracts the device from his body.  SR: SSSSS

N       1:37:35.  Quaid fakes out and then blows away many of Cohaagen’s men thanks to simple reduplicating holographic technology.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:39:39.  Richter follows Quaid onto an elevator.  After a short fight, Richter is thrown over the side, but manages to hang on.  Seeing Richter’s floor coming up, Quaid holds him halfway, slicing off both of his arms at once.  While Richter’s body falls the several stories to the hard Martian surface below, Quaid throws his severed arms down after him.  I heard a while ago, I forget from where, a certain feature about this scene.  When I went back to confirm it, I found it to be true.  Listen carefully after Quaid throws the arms down after Richter – you can hear the dull thud of the fake arms hitting the studio floor.  Sound guy must have been lax that day…  SR: SSSSS

N     1:42:50.  Cohaagen tumbles down the Martian surface and immediately goes into the horrific bodily reactions to the complete lack of oxygen and stunning heat of the Martian surface experience back at 0:03:49 by Quaid.  His eyes bug and finally pop out while his entire face swells grossly, vessels of all kinds popping along the way.  Quaid and Malina have unfortunately followed him out and suffer the same effects of bugging eyes and swelling internal organs.  SR: SSSSS

N      There are only two such scenes in Total Recall 2: Machine Dreams: 0:07:02 when David’s partner Nicky is blasted through the chest with a laser weapon and at 1:10:45 when David’s new partner Farve grabs two live power cables and fuses them to short the system, simultaneously setting his hands on fire.  He calmly puts the flames out and peels the charred and smoking flesh gloves from his hands, revealing new, untouched flesh.  It’s only now that he reveals he’s an android (not like you couldn’t have picked such up from his nonexistent emotionality and admirable precision.)

YEAR 1990 directed by ron underwood

STARRING kevin bacon, fred ward, michael gross

Qs: 8.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N      0:16:17.  Val and Earl burn rubber screeching their truck to a stop alongside Fred’s farm.  One of the graboids earlier attacked and devoured most of his herd of sheep leaving behind little but a flea-infested pen of chewed-up remains.  A special surprise waits even after that.  J  SR: SSSSS

N      0:17:53.  A road worker jabs into the asphalt with his jackhammer.  On the fourth plunge, the tool stabs into something underground, oily red blood oozing up through the cracks in the street.  The man then gets caught up in his equipment, the second buried by a rockslide.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:19:40.  In a feverish bid to get to the nearby (38 miles away) town of Bixby and alert the authorities to the unusual disappearances of livestock and the apparent murder of a certain Fred, Val and Earl come to a rock slide that has blocked the road, Carmine somewhere underneath it.  When they get out to investigate, Val sees a helmet on the ground close by the rocks, bloody chunks of brains left inside, flies buzzing about.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:33:35.  Barely outrunning a graboid, Val and Earl leap for the other side of a drainage ditch, turning quickly when the creature slams into the rebar-reinforced concrete.  Teaming up with Rhonda, they pry the creature free from the tangled mess of the wall.  When the body bursts out, Rhonda shrieks and we get a thorough look-over of the body.  Its hard head, shaped to protect it from subterranean impediments, is cracked all over like an egg, the worm “tongues” hanging limp from the mouth and large stretchy slime trails of guts and blood ooze from it, the squishing SFX adding to the nausea factor of the destroyed graboid.  This scene, for its vile imagery, is edited from TV broadcasts.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:53:28.  I hope you didn’t get too attached to Walter.  Thanks to an ear-splitting squealing from a machine in his store, a graboid comes a running, seeking food.  It finds it in our favorite storekeeper, latching onto his back with two of its worm-tongues, eventually swallowing him.  SR: SSSSS

N     0:58:47.  Courtesy of the distinctly noisy shell polisher Heather was using, a graboid pays them an unexpected and unwanted visit through the cinderblock walls of their basement.  Fighting back with everything they have (which is almost everything out there), they tear the graboid up many times over.  During the exhaustive firestorm from the Gummers:

N       A tentacle catches Burt around his ankle and starts to drag him into it.  Heather has different ideas and, through a series of four direct hits from a pump-action, blasts the tentacle in half, the severed remnant pulling quickly back into the mouth.

N       The graboid is then treated to several rounds of automatic fire inside and out.  Burt then switches to a large pump-action and proceeds to shoot it directly in the mouth while Heather worked away on it with a pair of handguns.

N       While Burt breaks free and starts to load his elephant gun, Heather fires a flare-gun into the beast’s maw, the searing cartridge causing the already multiply-inflicted creature more pain.

N       As the creature writhes and moans, Burt gives it both barrels of the elephant gun, blasting chunks of flesh through the air.  As blood pours, the creature eventually lays down and dies.  The violence and savagery of the attack and the final blood make the rating.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:17:48.  While Val and Earl fire away for their lives, Burt has a very bright idea.  In one of the best moments in the film, Burt offers to satiate its appetite with a memorable line (“Hungry?  Eat this!”) before he throws the lit, homemade pipe bomb over the side.  The device doesn’t kill (the beast didn’t eat it), but the sonic horror it unleashes drives the beast away, buying them valuable time.

N      1:23:45.  Helplessly stranded on the impenetrable rocks, Earl gets a sharp idea.  Tying one of the bombs to a length of rope and casting it like lassoing a steer, the group rejoices when the target sucks it down.  The explosive goes off, taking the graboid up with it.  While they cheer, dozens of pieces of the creature rain down from above, splattering the rocks and several of our oppressed heroes.  When the smoke clears, the damage left behind is a smoldering, sloppy pile of guts that looks like someone blew up a 100lb pumpkin.  SR: SSSSS

N     1:28:10.  The last graboid, fooled into flying out of a cliff face by Val, crashes to a violent death on a rock pile below.  It explodes, bursting open all along its length, blood pouring out by the gallons from the tattered and torn body.  SR: SSSSS

YEAR 1996 directed by s. s. wilson

STARRING fred ward, christopher gartin, michael gross

Qs: 8.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N       0:23:50.  Taking down their first kill of the day, the remnants of the exploded graboid rain down on the men’s truck.  Later kills work the same way, two of them going off in a liquid surge like a gory geyser of graboid guts.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:50:00.  The first sign that something new was wrong was when a graboid didn’t lash out at Earl and Grady.  The second sign was when horrible noises started emanating from it, like it was suffering or dying.  When Earl and Grady arrive to check it out, they see that the entire body of the graboid has been blown all open, giant tatters of bloody flesh and tissue hanging from everywhere and the characteristic viscous red-orange goop dripping from and all over everything.  The shredded insides of the creature resemble a war zone where nothing was left in its wake but thick strings of slime, gobs of destroyed organs and many other greasy examples of graboid anatomy.  SR: SSSSS

N       0:54:10.  Buoyant that they found Pedro, seeing his hands clinging to the back of the cab of his truck, Grady and Earl almost go in their pants when they see that the hands are just that, ragged stumps bearing evidence that Pedro was not only gone but that his death wasn’t pleasant.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:01:23.  Julio, ignorant of the creature danger, gets his right leg bitten in half, the ragged pant leg and pouring blood signs of his impending end.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:03:13.  A shrieker stands on top of Grady and Earl’s hot-wired car, fresh off of eating the engine out of it.  Putting him down in a messy splat, Earl isn’t happy that the creature made a meal out of their last known mode of transportation and therefore hopes of escape.  SR: SSSSS

N     1:11:12.  The graboid shows Grady, Earl, Burt and Kate how they reproduce in a very gross sequence.  After Grady feeds it a piece of who knows what, it starts to make sounds and act as if it’s going to be sick.  Essentially, it is, throwing up not vomit but a gooey lump of some strange kind.  As the thin membrane that surrounds it parts and falls away, a new, baby shrieker is born.  SR: SSSSS

N     1:16:38.  One of the shriekers lands on the opposite end of Bert’s 50-caliber B.M.G (Big Mother-Loving Gun?)  When the round hits him, his body blows up in a gooey soup of organs and various fluids.  Before the shot, look at the realistic rattle and eventual breakage of the nearby window because of the shock wave.  SR: SSSSS

N     1:19:50.  Trapped by several shriekers outside, Kate breaks a beer bottle and jams the jagged end into one of the beast’s tongues, blood pouring out.  It’s amusing how the badly hurt creature topples over backwards and then tries to shriek, but finds it can’t.  SR: SSSSS

YEAR 2001 directed by brent maddock

STARRING michael gross, shawn christian, susuan chuang

Qs: 3.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N      0:44:20.  After a graboid swallows Burt, he radios to Desert Jack above ground and instructs him to drive into his compound, surrounded at the base with a concrete barrier.  When the worm smashes into it as one of its fellow man-eaters did in the original, Jack charges up a chainsaw and cuts along the dead worm’s length, spirals of red-orange blood flying everywhere making quite a mess while he works to dig out Burt from the belly of the beast.  He does, and our favorite trigger-happy hero emerges, covered in graboid slime as if he were born from it.  SR: SSSSS

N     1:05:10.  Burt knocks down from a fence the felled member of the newest incarnation of graboid.  Several loops of intestines hang over it, remaining behind after the body falls to the ground.  After a short look-see inside the creature, the familiar blood and a new white substance leak out.  The white substance catches on fire and clues them in to how these new things work.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:27:00.  After being blown up by one of the group’s flaming arrows, gooey pieces of the creature splatter against the mobile home they were hiding in.  SR: SSSSS

YEAR 2003 directed by s. s. wilson

STARRING michael gross, sara botsford, brent roam

Qs: 5.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N      0:18:38.  The men enter the mine, led by Hiram, and the first thing they come across are a man’s leg and foot bones, partially buried.  The next skeletal sight is a rib cage, again partially buried.  This so far is tame, but a gross moment is to follow.  Juan sees that the rib cage’s ex-owner was wearing his hat.  Picking it up, he turns it over to reveal a flap of skin that Juan starts to peel away, but when gore stretches between it and the hat, he disgustedly drops it and resumes the exploration.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:49:20.  In a scene copied directly from the first thirteen years ago that even concerns another “Old Fred,” Juan overturns his hat in a fake-out – there’s no screaming head underneath.  A breeze shortly thereafter, however, blows back a cloth from the wreck of his wagon to reveal his head and nothing more, face trapped in his final scream.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:24:00.  Hiram finally gets a shot off right from his two-inch bore punt gun and blasts a giant hole in the side of the beast, its graboid goo sent flying.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:26:19.  With Juan in trouble atop a telegraph pole, Tecopa has a brilliant thought.  He takes the handle off of one end of a crosscut saw, inserts it down the hole he intended for Nevada’s flag (when they got one) and bangs on it repeatedly.  The vibrations tempt the graboid who flies to the call and crashes edgewise into the saw’s giant teeth.  Gallons of its orange blood soak through the dirt, accumulating on the surface, indicating the graboid cut itself in half on the blade.  SR: SSSSS

N      1:32:26.  The final fight begins when Lu Wan puts the barrel of her Derringer in the mouth of one of the tongues and blows it away.  She and Fu Yien on the wagon are perfect distractions for the graboid while Hiram and Pyong work out a plan.  Jamming a pair of ice tongs into its tail end, they secure the other end of the large belt loop around a wheel on their traction engine.  As the machine chugs along, it roots up the graboid right out of the ground and drags it across the earth at such high speeds that when it slams into the front, it blasts open as if fed a pipe bomb.  The requisite chunks of graboid gore rain down everywhere and on everyone, its slimy pieces stinking to high heaven.  SR: SSSSS

YEAR 2002 directed by danny boyle

STARRING cillian murphy, alex palmer, bindu de stoppani

Qs: 6.  AR: SSSSSSSSSS

N      0:04:40.  After one of the animal liberationists is attacked and bitten by a Rage-infected monkey, she coughs up an ounce of blood and spits into the face of one of her fellow supporters.  SR: SSSSS

N      0:28:31.  A tag-team infected attack on Jim forces Mark and Selena to stab them repeatedly with machetes, something which creates quite a mess.