You would think that an actor who rose to fame (and enjoyed all the riches) after a major hit television show or movie might remember everything about their experiences on set. But surprisingly, that’s not the case! Acting is a brutal job, with lots of auditions and rejections and plenty of downtime and self-doubt. But even when it’s good, it can be challenging, apparently. Because some actors don’t remember anything about the hit productions that they starred in years after the fact! We’re not talking about missing a detail here or there; we’re talking about every little thing!

If you don’t believe us, just read on. In this list, we’ll tell the tales of ten actors who enjoyed unimaginable success from amazing career-defining roles only to promptly forget everything about the experiences they’d had. They may have reached the heights of Hollywood’s competitive career ladder, but they’ve forgotten some of the things that got there in the first place. Oops?

Related: 10 Things Famous Filmmakers Regret About Their Classic Movies

10 Michael J. Fox

The early ’80s were a crazy time for everybody. The age of the yuppies had dawned on the world and given us a whole host of new things. Fast cars, the nascent computing industry, fast money, and the go-go style that would be en vogue for the next decade and then some. It also gave us the incredible rise of Michael J. Fox. The actor became a household name for two reasons in the 1980s: He starred in the popular sitcom Family Ties and moonlighted as the likable leading man in the Back to the Future trilogy. But oh, yeah, it’s actually that moonlighting which is the issue here!

Fox acted simultaneously in the sitcom and the movie series. He’d film the sitcom all day long, then head to a different studio and do the movie. And in between, he was barely sleeping at all! Because of that—and likely also at least in part because of the major health challenges he has faced related to Parkinson’s Disease, too—he doesn’t remember filming the movies at ALL! Yes, seriously!

“When I did the movie, I was doing Family Ties at the same time,” he remembered years later during an interview with Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. “So, I was doing Family Ties in the daytime and Back to the Future at night. So a lot of it is a blur to me. I mean, I saw the movie, and I was like, ‘Oh! That’s what we were doing?’”^[1]

9 Brie Larson

Brie Larson had to film a few very emotional scenes when she shot the movie Room. One scene, in particular, was extremely difficult to film: a shot in which her character is released from the custody of police officers and reunited with her son. To film that scene, Larson had to run away from actors playing cops as though she were in horrible fear. And the adrenaline that built up in her body to do that affected her body. Then, it was all made worse when she slipped and fell on ice during the struggle with those actors. The sum total of all that meant that Larson’s brain somehow blocked out that scene and much of her other work in the movie!

“I was in such an adrenaline rush,” Larson told the Denver Post about filming the scene and forgetting it afterward. “I was running through the snow in socks with just those track pants and a tank top and no bra. And I guess I was fighting [the police officers] off and hitting them, and then I slipped and fell on the ice, and then, when I went to dive into the police car. I guess I hit my head.” Scary!^[2]

8 Avan Jogia

Avan Jogia was one of many child stars who rose to fame on the Nickelodeon sitcom Victorious. He spent his teenage years working on set there alongside many other people who would go on to be big stars—including, most notably, Ariana Grande, Victoria Justice, and Elizabeth Gillies. But there was a dark undercurrent attached to Victorious during its television run. While the stars seemed innocent and wholesome on screen, they were actually partying extremely hard while away from the camera. And for Jogia, the partying affected his memory considerably.

Years after filming wrapped and the show faded off into the sunset, Jogia popped up on TikTok to recall just what it had been like. Commenting on a video on that popular social media app, he admitted that he did not remember filming one single episode. Not one! He was partying too hard at night to recall anything he’d done on the show over several seasons! “When you don’t remember the plotline to a SINGLE victorious episode,” Avan wrote on the social media site, “but you remember going out partying every night.” That’s when you know you’re partying hard… maybe a little too hard.^[3]

7 Colin Farrell

Colin Farrell struggled with drug addiction during much of the height of his Hollywood career, so he now can’t remember a lot of the projects he worked on at the time. While the actor was known on screen as being both an incredible hunk and a total badass, things were fast falling apart off-screen. Take the project Miami Vice, which he filmed right before he went to rehab to get clean from drugs. Because he was in such a low place at the time, he now can’t remember anything about that project. Not one scene, not one line of dialogue, not one set-up or shot—nothing.

“I couldn’t remember a single frame of doing it,” Farrell told the Irish Mirror years later about the memory loss he suffered from drug addiction while filming the movie. “I was at the premiere and didn’t know what was happening next. But it was strange because I was in it. The second [the film] was finished, I was put on a plane and sent to rehab as everyone else was going to the wrap party.”^[4]

6 John Boyega

John Boyega once blacked out during the filming of a scene in his anthology series Small Axe. But it wasn’t drug-induced or something like that—instead, he was so upset at the content of the scene and the difficult and emotional portrayal he had to give on camera that his mind somehow blocked it out. The scene came with John portraying a British police officer fighting to reform racism within the department in the 1980s. In the shot, John’s character discovers sickening graffiti messages and slurs painted on his police locker by other racist cops. The set-up and the content of the scene enraged him so much that he went into a fury.

“I don’t remember filming that scene,” Boyega later told the Radio Times. “I just remember fuming and being angry. I didn’t see the locker room or the locker door until those cameras were rolling. So that reaction was all natural to the character and the choices I thought he would make.” Jeez. That’s how you know it was a powerful scene—and a masterful acting job—about a very difficult subject.^[5]

5 Courteney Cox

Times were so hectic, and life was so busy during her run on Friends that Courteney Cox doesn’t remember filming most of the show. It was her highest-profile project by far, and it brought her an insane amount of wealth, stardom, and public adulation. But if you asked her about it now, her mind would draw a blank on nearly everything about that iconic ’90s sitcom and the role she played as Monica Geller!

Things got so hazy for Courteney during filming that she actually went back and re-watched the entire show during the pandemic to try to jog her memory. But it didn’t really work! “I don’t remember even being on the show,” she told Jimmy Kimmel after revealing her pandemic-related binge-watching move. “I have such a bad memory. I remember obviously loving everybody there and having fun, and I remember certain times in my life that I was there, but I don’t remember episodes.” Really?! We get that they all run together a bit after you do a few hundred of ’em, but damn!^[6]

4 Raven-Symoné

Raven-Symoné has spent her entire life on television. She grew up on The Cosby Show, and the whole world saw her go from a child to a teenager every week on that sitcom. She was beloved by pretty much all of America from the very start of that run. But the problem for her wasn’t the gig itself—it was that she totally failed to remember it afterward! During her teenage years, Raven-Symoné first started realizing just how much of filming the show she’d forgotten. Confused about why she couldn’t remember anything, she went to a therapist for help. Eventually, the expert figured out that Raven-Symoné had been dissociating during filming due to her training as an actor and her push to get through the job.

“I don’t remember a scene,” she told TV One years later about her memory lapses. “I don’t remember anything while it’s a rehearsal or a camera… I do not remember as soon as the cameras start. Something clicks off, and I do what I’m trained to do. When I turned 18, I knew something was going on, so I started going to therapy, and it’s disassociation. I just black out, I turn into who I’m supposed to be when the camera is on, and then, I come back to when normal life resumes.”^[7]

3 Matthew Perry

Before Matthew Perry tragically passed away, he admitted that persistent substance abuse and troubles with addiction had radically altered his memory. Among the first things to be wiped out of his brain were any memories he had of filming episodes of Friends during its run. Sadly, the man who brought joy to so many people across the world as Chandler Bing doesn’t remember a single thing about the sitcom—and that blank space carried out over multiple seasons.

While appearing on BBC’s Radio 2 in the UK for an interview, Perry was asked whether he has a favorite or least favorite episode of the hit series. He admitted that he couldn’t really answer that question because substance abuse problems had wiped entire seasons out of his mind, so he was drawing a permanent blank. “Oh, my goodness. I think the answer is I don’t remember three years of it, so none of those,” he told the interviewer. “I was a little out of it at the time—somewhere between Seasons 3 and 6.”^[8]

2 Frankie Muniz

Frankie Muniz spent five long years of his life—and of his impressionable childhood, no less—filming Malcolm in the Middle. But when it came time to recall those moments years later, his mind completely drew a blank. While appearing on Dancing with the Stars as an adult, Frankie revealed that he’s been dealing with memory loss for a long time. DWTS producers had been hoping that he would share memories of moments like when he attended the Emmys as a teenager. But he disappointed them when he told them that he couldn’t remember anything about events like that.

“They were going to ask me those questions, and I told them, ‘To be honest, I don’t remember going to the Emmys when I was nominated,’” he told EW about the unfortunate interaction. “I don’t have any stories or anything cool for the package. I don’t specifically remember being nominated, or what I felt, or what we did. My mom told me we went to the dentist that day.” Wow. As for the cause behind the lapse? Frankie isn’t exactly sure why it happened, but he thinks it’s due to suffering from several concussions during his life, as well as more than a dozen mini-strokes. Scary!^[9]

1 Rainn Wilson

Rainn Wilson starred in The Office as the unforgettable Dwight Schrute, but when it came time to recall those moments years later, well, they proved to be pretty forgettable indeed. The actor admitted during a podcast appearance recently that he remembers “so little” of working on the hit television show. Even when he watches back episodes to try to jog his memory, there are scenes that he can’t remember filming at all. The occasion was the “You Made It Weird” podcast with Pete Holmes, and Wilson revealed to him on it: “Do you know what happens to me when I watch The Office? I go, holy f**k, I’m 57, I’m almost 60. I don’t remember anything about shooting any of that.”

He wasn’t kidding about that, either. The television star continued: “There will be a scene where Dwight is pushing a shopping cart down the stairs and then falls out a window and Creed throws up and… it’s some big thing, and I’m just like, ‘We shot that? I have no memory of that.’ I don’t remember, like, what month it was, what year, what season is this? It’s crazy how little of 200 episodes over nine seasons that I actually remember.”^[10]

Long before M3GAN did her creepy little dance, Chucky unleashed a never-before-experienced fear of dolls. (Okay, M3GAN is not exactly a doll, but you get the idea.) Nearly twenty years before Netflix introduced the Scream TV series, the original Ghostface made us double-check that our doors were locked at night.

There is a reason why old-school horror movie villains are still so popular. The actors behind these monsters tapped into our most primal fears by fully embodying the role, scaring us half to death in the process. Think about how Scream turned an everyday cinema into a house of horrors or how Halloween made innocuous pumpkins seem the most sinister thing ever.

Freddy Krueger crawled into our nightmares, while Jason Voorhees traumatized us like no other movie character could. Except for Michael Myers, that is. Not to mention Leatherface and his ever-present chainsaw. But what are the stories behind these villains? What inspired the most terrifying, bloodthirsty fictional killers that, in turn, served as the spark behind today’s up-and-coming horror villains?

Related: 10 Horror Films Where You Never See the Villain

10 Samara Morgan

How long did it take you to stop looking at your TV askance after watching 2002’s The Ring? “First you watch it, then you die!” That sentence alone sent chills down the spines of thousands of eager horror movie fans. The Ring is one of the horror movie genre’s best classics and is based on a horror novel of the same name. The American version of the movie is a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ringu and claims to be based on true events. These events are said to have happened during the 16th century in Japan.

A girl named Okiku worked in the Himeij Castle in Japan and was pursued by a samurai, but kept refusing him. To manipulate the situation in his favor, the samurai hid a valuable plate that Okiku was meant to protect. When Okiku realized the plate was gone, she panicked because it meant she would be put to death.

The samurai again suggested that she should give in to his advances because he could save her. She refused, angering the samurai, so he suspended her over a deep well. When she said no again after the samurai asked her one last time to be with him, he struck Okiku with his sword, and she tumbled down the well to her death.

It wasn’t the end of Okiku, however. The samurai heard her counting the plates over and over again from the bottom of the well, never reaching number 10. The creepy thing is that there is a well called Okiku’s Well in Japan. The well has a cover over it to keep Okiku from crawling out.^[1]

9 Norman Bates

When Robert Bloch dreamed up the character of Norman Bates for his 1959 horror novel Psycho, he probably never imagined that his book would become so popular that its contents would be turned into several movies. Norman Bates also made a turn on TV in the series Bates Motel.

In Bloch’s subsequent novels, Bates is not the main villain. He is succeeded by more than one copycat killer who assumes Bates’s identity after his death. This is in contrast to the Universal Studios movie franchise. Psycho was adapted to film because of the shocking revelations surrounding murderer Ed Gein at the time. This led to a widespread assumption that Gein inspired the Norman Bates character.

However, Bloch revealed that it was not Gein so much as the horrific circumstances surrounding the killer’s case that inspired Normal Bates. He wanted to highlight that killers could hide their true nature even in small towns amid the most curious window-peeping neighbors.

It was only many years later, when the world was appalled at learning the full extent of Gein’s crimes, that Bloch realized how closely Bates resembled Gein in their heinous acts. And, of course, there are also the weird attachments both men had to their mothers.^[2]

8 Candyman

Horrifying legends that come to life are what make many old-school horrors so good. In the movie Candyman (1992), an unforgettable legend was “born” after a Black artist was summarily lynched when it was discovered he had an affair with a white woman. A student writes a thesis about urban legends and folklore in Chicago and happens upon the legend of the Candyman.

The legend turns into a nightmare when the Candyman’s name is said five times in front of a mirror, and he starts killing people with a rusty hook for a hand. Not to mention the ribcage and mouth full of bees. Tony Todd played the titular character so well that it is hard to picture him without the hook and the bees. And the movie took some of its inspiration from a blood-chilling real-life murder.

On April 22, 1987, Ruthie Mae McCoy called 911 in a panic. Ruthie suffered from mental illness and told the dispatcher, “They throwed the cabinet down.” This confused the dispatcher, but Ruthie was right. There were passages between the apartments in the building where Ruthie lived. These passages were meant to make maintenance work easier. But, it also made it a breeze for burglars to push bathroom cabinets out of the wall to enter an apartment.

A neighbor alerted the police after they heard gunshots coming from Ruthie’s apartment that night. However, the police did not break down the door when no one responded to their knocks and calls. They did not want to be sued for destruction of property. It took two days for Ruthie’s body to be discovered as a result. A building superintendent drilled the lock to her apartment open and found her face-down on the floor. She had been shot four times.

In the Candyman movie, the first victim is Ruthie Jean, who is murdered by someone who came through her bathroom mirror. Ruthie Jean’s neighbor is Ann Marie McCoy, who believed Ruthie was crazy. Ruthie died alone after calling the police for help. It is not quite clear how Ruthie McCoy’s murder became part of the movie. It is thought that the director may have heard about the crime after deciding to shoot Candyman in Chicago.

The movie was also based on a short story, “The Forbidden,” written by Clive Barker.^[3]

7 Leatherface

The earliest versions of Leatherface were a bit comical (at least they are now). The face-wearing killer holding the chainsaw over his head and running down the stairs is not nearly as scary as it was back in the day. (The new movies are still terrifying, though.)

Not surprisingly, some elements of the Leatherface character were inspired by Ed Gein. Director Tobe Hooper had heard stories about the Wisconsin murderer but claimed he did not know it was Gein until the 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released.

Gein’s fondness for wearing human skin as a mask greatly disturbed Hooper, so he decided to make it part of Leatherface’s character. Additional inspiration came from Hooper’s memory of a Halloween party where a friend arrived wearing a cadaver’s face. Hooper would later state that it was the most disturbing thing he had ever witnessed.

Hooper also used Baby Huey as inspiration for Leatherface’s bumbling walk and child-like behavior. As for the chainsaw, this came from a fleeting thought Hooper had about mowing down a large crowd in the hardware section of an exceptionally busy store.^[4]

6 Jason Voorhees

Jason Voorhees is that guy in a hockey mask who can knock someone’s head clean off their body with one punch. This is both hilarious and strangely terrifying. Friday the 13th is a true horror classic and a Halloween movie marathon favorite. The franchise has twelve films and an upcoming limited series called Crystal Lake, a prequel to the first movie released in 1980.

It is widely believed that a horrifying incident in Finland was the main inspiration behind the Friday the 13th movies. Although the production team denied that the movies or Voorhees are based on specific real-life events, the similarities between fiction and reality are too striking. You be the judge…

In 1960, four teenagers set off on a camping trip in Lake Bodom. The two boys and two girls set up their tents along the lake’s edge. A group of birdwatchers saw the tents collapse on June 5 and a blond man running in the opposite direction. They did not investigate, so it was only later that a carpenter discovered what had become a crime scene. Three of the teenagers had been stabbed to death, and the fourth was barely alive. Nils Gustafsson had suffered several stab wounds and fractures to his face.

He told the police that someone broke into the tents and attacked them. He also said that the man who attacked was dressed in all black and had bright red eyes. Gustafsson was initially considered a suspect but was cleared because the severity of his injuries matched the story he told the police. The Lake Bodom murders remain unsolved in 2024.

The Friday the 13th movies went on to potentially inspire serial killer Peter Moore to kill four male victims over three months back in 1995. Moore blamed the murders on a fictitious restaurant worker named Jason, who his lawyer and the prosecution had no doubt was supposed to be based on Jason Voorhees. Moore was a cinema owner in North Wales before he turned serial killer.^[5]

5 Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter is an even more terrifying horror movie character than Voorhees. The 1981 novel Red Dragon was adapted for the big screen and resulted in the widely praised The Silence of the Lambs, released in 1991.

Anthony Hopkins’s performance made the film, and his sociopathic demeanor throughout still manages to spook, even if you watch the movie for the tenth time. Many of Lecter’s characteristics are the result of the novel writer and movie director’s wild imagination. Just the name Hannibal (a play on cannibal) immediately evokes an image no one wants to picture. But, some of the inspiration for this diabolical character came from a horrifying real-life case.

Thomas Harris, the author of Red Dragon, worked as a journalist in the 1960s. He interviewed a convicted and imprisoned killer, Dykes Askew Simmons, in Mexico. It was at this prison that he met “Dr. Salazar.” At first, Harris thought Salazar was a prison doctor. Salazar asked Harris incredibly insightful questions, and Harris was struck by how poised the man was. However, when Harris later asked a prison warden about Salazar, he learned the horrible truth.

Salazar was actually an incarcerated former surgeon named Alfredo Balli Trevino!

Trevino came out as gay during a time when Mexico actively oppressed the gay community. He tried his best to fit into mainstream society, but this upset his lover to a great extent. Trevino ended up killing his lover over what was believed to be Trevino’s intention to marry a woman. Trevino sliced up the corpse into small pieces and stacked them into a box. Obviously, he did not get away with the crime. But, his sentence was commuted after he had served 20 years in prison, and he returned to his hometown of Monterrey.

Trevino went on to treat patients without worrying too much about payment until he died in 2008. It is believed that Trevino had also murdered several hitchhikers between 1950 and 1970, but this was never proven. Harris used Trevino’s mannerisms as inspiration for his Hannibal Lecter character. Both men were doctors at one point. Both had a deep insight into the criminal mind. Both were intellectually challenging to others. And both men easily conned others.

Trevino was also not Harris’s only inspiration. Other murderous individuals who helped bring Lecter to life include Albert Fish, Pietro Pacciani, and Robert John Maudsley.

Pacciani, who was known as the Monster of Florence, murdered several people in Florence in the 1970s. These murders directly inspired The Silence of the Lambs sequel Hannibal. Maudsley killed child molesters and continued his murder spree while in prison. He was finally confined to a bulletproof glass cell, which inspired Lecter’s cell in the film.^[6]

4 Pennywise

Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel IT sets quite the opening scene. You can picture six-year-old Georgie Denbrough in his yellow slicker and red galoshes running down Witcham Street, chasing the paper boat his older brother Bill made for him. In this tense opening scene, readers are introduced to what would become one of horror’s most terrifying villains: Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

King thought out most of Pennywise’s characteristics (no surprise there). But the evil clown character was also inspired by a bunch of real-life clowns. Many believe King’s idea for IT came from serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who used to dress up as a clown called Pogo. However, King named Bozo, Clarabelle (from Howdy Doody), and Ronald McDonald as his inspirations for writing his controversial novel. King had a run-in with the Ronald McDonald mascot on a plane back when travelers were still allowed to smoke onboard.

King asked the mascot where he came from, to which the clown replied, “From McDonald Land.” King naturally thought the clown was being sarcastic and asked him where he really came from. The clown then confirmed that there was such a place as McDonald Land in Chicago, and he was there for the opening of a new McDonalds restaurant.

King found this to be a surreal and unnerving moment, but it also gave him more ideas for the Pennywise character.^[7]

3 Ghostface

When Scream was released in 1996, it introduced a whole new meta approach to horror. The movie clearly made fun of horror movie tropes while still paying tribute to the classics that came before it. Kevin Williamson, of Dawson’s Creek fame, wrote the Scream screenplay after watching a TV special about Florida serial killer Danny Rolling. Rolling, or the Gainesville Ripper, murdered five students in four days in August 1990.

Gainesville was in a state of terror and remained so even after Rolling was caught. While Williamson watched the events unfold via reenactment on his TV screen, he noticed an open window in his house. He was immediately terrified as he realized how easy it would be for a killer to get into his house. This overwhelming fear inspired him to create Ghostface.

The similarities between the killer in Scream and Rolling are highlighted in the movie. In real life, Rolling insisted he never had a motive for killing the students. But there had to be some reason for his murder spree. In Scream, Billy Loomis is revealed as the killer behind the ghastly mask, and he tells Sidney that not every killer needs a motive. However, Loomis did have a motive in that Sidney’s mother had an affair with his father, resulting in his mother leaving.

Scream seemingly also inspired a so-called “thrill killing” in 2006. Sixteen-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart was murdered by two classmates, Torey Adamcik and Brian Draper. The boys stalked Stoddart and filmed her before stabbing her to death. They made a video in which they talked about how they would kill Cassie. The same video contained footage of the boys’ reaction after they killed her.

Draper and Adamcik apparently wanted to become notorious serial killers. They even had a death list of other people they wanted to murder. When they were caught, they mentioned Scream, as well as the Columbine High School shooters, as their inspiration for Cassie’s murder.^[8]

2 Michael Myers

Michael Myers is often described as pure evil. Considering that he was six years old when he killed his first victim (his sister), that description is apt. Throughout the film franchise, Myers continues to murder people left and right. And he does this without so much as a grunt.

Myers is the embodiment of a nightmare that you cannot escape. If he finds and stalks you at a gas station, chances are he’ll rip your teeth out. Or, if you get out of your car to confront him next to the road, he’ll probably stomp your head to a pulp. Sure, these are all movie scenes and not real life, but the Halloween movies still have the power to make you check behind you when you walk to the bathroom at night.

The Myers character was inspired by a very real and frightening event experienced by Halloween director John Carpenter when he was a student at Western Kentucky University.

Carpenter met a teenage patient during a visit to a psychiatric hospital. The boy’s unnerving “evil” stare greatly unsettled Carpenter, and he later used this experience to describe Michael Myers’s emotionless face when he was six. The character of Sam Loomis describes Myers’s eyes as the “devil’s eyes.” Yul Brynner of Westworld fame inspired grown-up Myers’s inhuman strength throughout the Halloween movies. And, of course, Myers’s infamous mask was modeled from a mask of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk.^[9]

1 Freddy Krueger

When you watch A Nightmare on Elm Street now, it is more of a comedy than a horror. Freddy Krueger’s exaggerated mannerisms and strangely long arms are not exactly scary in 2024. But, back in 1984, when Krueger’s scarred face popped up on the big screen, he scared the crap out of moviegoers.

Like the other movies on this list, A Nightmare on Elm Street was inspired by real-life events and experiences. Writer and director Wes Craven read about a family who had escaped the Killing Fields in Cambodia. The family made it to America, but before they could even sigh in proper relief, a young member of the family started having nightmares.

The young boy told his parents he was afraid to sleep because he believed the thing chasing him in his nightmares would get him. He tried to stay awake for several days at a time but inevitably fell asleep. That night, his parents heard screams emanating from their son’s bedroom. They rushed to him, but it was too late. Their son had died in the middle of his last nightmare.

This story formed the basis of Craven’s script, but he still needed to figure out his villain. Craven had several ideas for the villain, but one childhood memory ultimately brought Freddy to life. Craven remembered a man walking down the street past his house late one night. The man turned and looked at Craven, who was watching him with a disturbing expression on his face. The man also wore a fedora—another part of Craven’s childhood experiences that made it into the movie.^[10]

Horror movies are littered with brutal deaths, from slashers stabbing victims to zombies chowing down on the living. A fair number of these kills have reached iconic status, and the stories about the making of these famous scenes are often just as interesting as the onscreen deaths themselves. Here are 10 such stories—which, of course, often feature spoilers.

Related: Top 10 Horror Films That Disturbed the Crew

10 The Sleeping Bag Kill in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

There have been many iconic kills in the Friday the 13th franchise, but one of the top fan favorites occurs in Part VII: The New Blood (1988). A woman is camping with her boyfriend near Crystal Lake when Jason Voorhees drags her from the tent while she’s still in her sleeping bag and gives her one hard bash against a tree, killing her instantly.

The sleeping bag kill was initially supposed to involve multiple hits, but the scene had to be cut down for the film to achieve an R rating. Although not as gory as originally intended, Jason managing to kill the woman in just one whack feels brutal. Kane Hodder, who has played Jason many times, says that it’s one of his favorite kills “because you’re killing someone with something that is not a weapon. Anybody can kill with a weapon.”

The kill left such an impact that it even inspired a kill in Jason X (2001). The slasher is plunged into a holographic camp and comes across two girls who offer him alcohol, drugs, and sex. The film then cuts to the two girls in sleeping bags, with Jason using one to hit the other—and this time around, he takes multiple swings.^[1]

9 The Decapitation Scene in Hereditary

The horror in Hereditary (2018) kicks off when 13-year-old Charlie (Milly Shapiro) goes into anaphylactic shock. While driving her to the hospital, her older brother Peter (Alex Wolff) swerves to avoid roadkill, but at that moment, Charlie has her head out of the window to get some air, and she’s decapitated by a telephone pole.

Although the scene is a punch in the gut, Shapiro had a great time while filming it. She was safely tethered to the car and said that “randomly they would swerve and not tell me so I would be startled.” She described the experience as “kind of like a rollercoaster.” Shapiro was even thrilled about seeing the model of her decapitated head and wanted to take it home “to display it and scare people with it.”^[2]

8/span> The Plastic Bag Kill in Black Christmas

Clare (Lynne Griffin) is the first sorority girl to be picked off by Billy, the largely unseen slasher in Black Christmas (1974). After suffocating her with a plastic bag, he puts her body on a rocking chair in the attic. Not only is her corpse creepily shown multiple times throughout the film, but her plastic-wrapped head also appears on the film’s poster.

Although Griffin doesn’t have much screen time as Clare while alive, she had to film numerous shots while dead. Many actors would struggle to play dead with a plastic bag over their head, but it didn’t faze Griffin because, in her own words, she’s “a fairly good swimmer so I could hold my breath for a long time. And I could also keep my eyes open for a long time without blinking.” She said the only real issue was that “when I was breathing, it was making the bag fog up, so they decided to stick it to my face and poke holes up my nose.”^[3]

7 The Dive Out of the Window in The Exorcist

The Exorcist (1973) ends with Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) sacrificing himself by inviting the demon into his body and then jumping out of the window onto the many steps below the MacNeil’s house. In the film, the house is right next to the top of the steps, but it is further back in real life, so an extension had to be built.

Before stuntman Chuck Waters made the iconic leap, a layer of rubber was put on all of the stone steps to make it slightly less painful. Then it was time for Waters to jump—twice—a feat that was watched from the surrounding buildings by people willing to pay $5 to the Georgetown residents looking to profit from the filming. When Miller asked Waters how he pulled off such a dangerous stunt, he replied, “Complete and total non-resistance, my body becomes totally relaxed.”^[4]

6 The Ending of Night of the Living Dead

When penning Night of the Living Dead (1968), writers George A. Romero and John Russo figured the main character, Ben, would be played by a white actor. That changed when Duane Jones auditioned for the role, but Romero and Russo purposefully didn’t rewrite the script to reference his race. Despite that, Jones being Black changed how the ending of the film—which sees Ben killed by the men who are getting rid of the zombies—was perceived.

“The fact that these redneck posse guys shot him, that became racial, instead of just a mistaken identity, which is really what we intended,” Romero said. He had to fight to keep the dark ending, with Columbia Pictures wanting Ben to survive. Romero said, “None of us wanted to do that. We couldn’t imagine a happy ending.” Jones was in agreement, telling Romero that “the black community would rather see me dead than saved, after all that had gone on, in a corny and symbolically confusing way.”^[5]

5 The Opening Scene in Scream

Scream (1996) opens with Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) getting a phone call from a killer while she’s home alone. After terrorizing her with questions about horror movies and killing her boyfriend, Ghostface stabs Casey and strings her up from a tree. This scene was inspired by a real—although less bloody—event in screenwriter Kevin Williamson’s life.

“I was house-sitting for a friend of mine, and I walk into the family room, and I see that the window’s open,” Williamson explains. “So I go and I get a butcher knife and I start walking around the house and I call up my friend on the phone and I’m like, ‘okay, I think someone’s in the house.’” Williamson’s friend started doing the “ch ch ch, ah ah ah” sound effect from Friday the 13th, which led to the pair discussing horror movies. But unlike in the movie, thankfully, a killer wasn’t waiting to pounce.

Scream was originally supposed to star Barrymore as the main character, Sidney Prescott, but she requested the role of Casey because “my biggest pet peeve was that I always knew the main character was going to be slugging through at the end, but was going to creak by and make it.” To defy expectations, she took the role of Casey—making the audience initially think that she was the main character—”so we would establish this rule does not apply.”^[6]

4 The Highway Pile-Up in Final Destination 2

Final Destination 2 (2003) starts with a pile-up on a highway caused by the chains on a logging truck snapping, sending tree trunks crashing into the vehicles on the road behind it. As much of the crash as possible was done by a stunt team, with the whole scene taking 11 days to film. But one thing that wasn’t possible to do practically was the logs—and not because it would have been too dangerous!

Jason Crosby, who worked on the film’s CGI, says that the crew “discovered that real logs only bounced about an inch off the road when dropped from a logging truck.” So, to get the right amount of height from the bounce, the logs had to be added with CGI. Thankfully, that means that the chances of a log barreling straight through your windshield are incredibly low.^[7]

3 The First Kill in Jaws

Jaws (1975) starts with Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) being attacked by an unseen shark while swimming in the sea at night. To simulate the attack, stuntwoman-turned-actress Backlinie was tied to ropes, and then, as director Steven Spielberg explains, she was “tugged left and right by ten men on one rope and ten men on the other back to shore.” For the final pull underwater, Spielberg himself tugged on the rope because “he wanted it just a certain way.”

Backlinie had to go through another ordeal to complete the scene, though. Spielberg wanted her screams to sound like she was really drowning so, according to Richard Dreyfuss, who played oceanographer Matt Hooper. “He had her tilt her head back, and he poured water down her throat while she screamed, which is now known as waterboarding, so Steven is actually guilty of a war crime.”^[8]

2 The Shower Scene in Psycho

The scene in Psycho (1960) where Marion (Janet Leigh) is murdered in the shower is an absolute classic. When director Alfred Hitchcock was asked why he wanted to adapt Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel, he said, “I think the murder in the bathtub, coming out of the blue, that was about all.” The murder is actually more brutal in the novel, with Mary (as she’s called in the book) being decapitated.

The short scene took a week to film, which was an enormous one-third of the shooting schedule. Hitchcock wanted perfection and made Leigh film the shot of the camera zooming out from her eye 26 times. However, while editing, they noticed that Leigh took a breath in the only shot deemed usable, which is why there’s a brief cut to the showerhead.

Food also played a crucial part in the scene. A knife slicing through casaba melon and steak was used for the sound of the knife cutting Marion. Thanks to being filmed in black and white, the fake blood didn’t have to be red, so Hershey’s chocolate syrup was used. The shot where it looks like we see the knife pierce Marion was done by putting chocolate syrup on the tip of the knife, placing it against her stomach, and pulling away, with the shot then being reversed.^[9]

1 The Chestburster Scene in Alien

Director Ridley Scott knew that the element of surprise would be crucial for getting the actor’s best reactions to the chestburster in Alien (1979). “If an actor is just acting terrified, you can’t get the genuine look of raw, animal fear,” he said.

The cast knew that an alien creature would burst out of Kane’s (John Hurt) chest, but they didn’t know how it was going to look. Everyone but Hurt left the room, and he got into position under the table with his head sticking through a hole. His prosthetic chest was filled with cuts of meat, along with the alien on a hydraulic ram.

After a false start, Scott got the alien to punch through and the blood to spray just the way he wanted it. The actors were suitably shocked, with screenwriter Ronald Shusett recalling that “Veronica Cartwright—when the blood hit her, she passed out. I heard from Yaphet Kotto’s wife that after that scene, he went to his room and wouldn’t talk to anybody.”^[10]

[WARNING: This list contains disturbing audio and images.] Sound is both one of the most important and the least noticed parts of a movie. While it’s obviously true that there are entire teams dedicated to perfecting the sound in any professional film, their contributions aren’t as apparent as, say, a stunt artist’s.

See Also: Top 10 Incredible Sounds

We’re not really talking about the background score, either. Some of the most iconic soundtracks of Hollywood aren’t songs at all, but seemingly unimportant sounds like the toilet flush and running water in the basins in bathroom scenes to make them more realistic. Here are ten of the most iconic . . . and, in some cases, disturbing.

10Infrasound And Impending Doom

[WARNING: The youtube video linked here includes subaudible sounds that can cause listeners to suffer extreme discomfort. Please listen with caution.] Gaspar Noé’s 2002 thriller Irreversible evokes some particularly strong feelings. Of course, there’s the very graphic rape scene in the beginning of the movie which we’d highly caution against watching (for those of you who subscribe to such concepts, consider this your “trigger warning”). The rest of the movie is no High School Musical, either, and it’s understandable that it would leave some people with a bad taste in their mouths.

But the horrific scenes of violence are not the only disturbing quality of this film. Many people watching reported feeling an uneasy sense of dread, especially in the more hectic, earlier parts of the film. While many just brushed it off as the filmmaker’s genius, he later admitted to using infrasound to cause the effect in the first 30 minutes of the film.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, infrasound (or subaudible sound) is sound just below our normal hearing range. It doesn’t have to be completely below the threshold, either. Just start approaching the lower end and you’ll begin to “feel” what we’re talking about.

Because people can’t hear the sound but can physically sense it, infrasound ends up causing unexplained feelings of intense dread. It has been effectively – even if sparingly—used in Hollywood ever since they figured out how to reproduce it, as it is highly effective at creating that sense of creeping terror many horror movies leave you with. Interestingly the sound is also associated with many large-scale natural disasters, which suggests that our reaction to it is part of our inbuilt self-defense mechanism.^[1]

9That Time Hollywood Made Us All Listen To Animal Sex

Contrary to popular belief, Jeff Goldblum was not the highlight of the Jurassic Park franchise. It is also remembered for some of the best depictions of dinosaurs on the big screen. For an animal we have never seen in the flesh and only know about from scattered remains of bones around the world, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were quite believable and multi-dimensional. So how did they know what the dinosaurs sounded like?

Simply put, they didn’t. We usually don’t associate ancient animals with any sound, but we do it with dinosaurs because of Jurassic Park, as they created these sounds out of thin air and were basically the first to do so effectively. For anyone who has wondered how they were made, they’re taken from many animals in various stages of having sex. The velociraptor is voiced by mating tortoises, and the T-rex is dolphins in heat. I wonder how many parents would have made their kids stay home from the cinema if they knew they were about to listen to two hours and seven minutes of animals doing the dirty.^[2]

8 Time Dilation In Inception

Inception is one of the few movies that uses sound design as a central part of its storytelling. Hanz Zimmer’s score is hands down one of his best works to date, and much like other aspects of the movie.

One song that keeps showing up throughout the movie—Edith Piaf’s ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’—is more than just an artistic use of the classic song. As some fans found out, the length of the song—2:28 minutes—may have directly influenced the length of the movie . . . 2:28 hours.

More eagle-eyed and hardcore fans, however, had their ears on even more mind-blowing references in the background score, because the famous French song is referred to in other secret places too. As you can see in the clip above, the music in the dream sequences is stretched out and heavy in bass. The time signature of the music in the dreams actually perfectly corresponds with the song, only stretched out according to the time dilation you’re supposed to experience in the dreams, and tweaked to make it sound better.^[3]

7 Star Trek’s Warp Drive

Star Trek will always be remembered for its innovative use of everyday sounds. This makes sense as they had to come up with a lot of new sounds owing to the vast scope of their futuristic setting at a time that no one had really gone there before. The most distinctive and innovative creation of a sound in the series is probably the warp drive.

While it’s easy to imagine the warp sound from movies in 2020, it wasn’t back then. The sound designer, Doug Grindstaff, wanted to make an authentic effect that would serve as a blueprint for all warp drive sounds in the future, and he was successful to a large extent, too.

For the sound, he went back to his college and borrowed a test oscillator from the physics lab. The resulting warp-drive sound effect will now forever be in the human consciousness. The sounds in Star Trek – along with a few other pioneering movies – defined the genre for decades to come. What a legacy!^[4]

6 The Lightsaber

Star Wars is another classic franchise that came up with quite a few unique ways to convey its sound, especially its brilliant and iconic score. Its biggest breakthroughs in sound design, though – much like most of the other entries on this list – lie in sounds that we don’t even notice.

Take the lightsaber. While most people these days would think that it was generated by some kind of a computer, we forget that technology wasn’t as advanced as it is today. The sound was – like a lot of iconic sounds in Hollywood – made by something found in the junk. More specifically, it was made by the hum of an idle film projector combined with the static buzz of a television.

For another classic sound from the series, the iconic ‘pew pew’ sound of the blaster gun was made by a guy smacking a thick wire with a hammer. I want his job!^[5]

5 Psycho Stabbing

When it comes to psychological horror that gets under your skin while not being overtly visible, Alfred Hitchcock set the benchmark. His movies are some of the most iconic psychological thrillers of all times, and for good reason, too. His use of innovative camera techniques and sound design became the standard for many notable works of the genre since then. Psycho is, no doubt, the most iconic of these. It was made using tools and techniques that were clever as well as genre-defining.

One notable scene is when he murders his hotel guest in the shower—the scene most of us imagine when we think of the movie. The sound design of the sequence was central to its successful execution (so to speak), and it didn’t disappoint. Particularly unique in its time was that it was completely free of any music, heightening the tension of the scene.

Many innovative techniques were used to come up with the sparse sounds that made it to the final edit. The sickening sound of the stabs, for example, was made by stabbing casaba melons. Now that I’ve told you that, watch the clip above and you’ll recognize the sound immediately for what it really is.^[6]

4 The Ringwraiths Of The Lord Of The Rings

The Lord of the Rings was the beginning of a new era of fantasy cinema, and—much like its source material – played a pivotal role in defining that genre as we know it today. Of course, much like all aspects of the movie, the sound was brilliantly done, with quite a few cool little secrets involved.

The sound of the Ringwraiths, for one, was made by rubbing plastic cups together. Suddenly they don’t seem so terrifying, right? Another iconic sound from the movie, Balrog’s weird crackling growls, was recorded from the sound of rocks grinding on the floor. It’s probably best that we stop there or you’ll never be able to enjoy the film series in the same way again.^[7]

3 The Mysterious Punching Sounds In Raging Bull

The sound of the punch is one of the most iconic and recognizable sounds in Hollywood, as well as one of the most unnoticed (at least when it’s done well). Whenever we hear it in a movie, we tend to not even register it.

As it turns out, we actually owe a lot of those sounds to Raging Bull, which was the first movie to really play with the acoustics of a bar fight. The movie uses many different types of sounds according to the mood of the different fights in the movie, giving them a dimension most of us wouldn’t even have explicitly noticed. It remains one of both Martin Scorsese and and sound editor Frank Warner’s best works. To this day they have never revealed how any of those sounds were made. This secret, alas, is one that remains a mystery for now. But next time you notice an amazing punch sound in a film or TV show, you know you have Raging Bull to thank.^[8]

2 The Wilhelm Scream

Sound design is a vital part of any movie, with some sounds becoming so associated with a movie that they effect how we remember these works of fiction forever. Some sounds, however, transcend genres. The Wilhelm Scream is by far the most popular and used voice sample in movies, and you just need to hear it to instantly recognize why. So watch the video above for a rather hilarious, albeit horribly low-quality, series of clips showing the sound featured in different films.

As the name suggests, it’s the sound of a human scream. It was first heard in a movie made in 1951, though it wasn’t until it was picked up by Warner Brothers and used in the 1953 film ‘The Charge at Feather River’ that it really gained popularity. Since then, the iconic Wilhelm Scream has been used to simulate the sound of people falling or getting shot in hundreds of movies.

If you’ve seen any popular movie of the last five decades – like Star Wars, Avengers, Avatar, The Hunger Games, or Indiana Jones – you already know what this sounds like . . . you just may not realize it.^[9]

1 The Art Of Foley Effects

In case you didn’t notice, most of the sound effects we have spoken about aren’t over-the-top musical numbers that require creative genius to produce. They are everyday sounds that make moments in movies seem so realistic we don’t even notice. It’s due to these techniques that film making in Hollywood reached such a peak that it was possible to enter a movie theater and get lost in a fantasy world for two hours. Of course nowadays its our livings rooms we get lost in thanks to the likes of ThePirateBayAppleTV and Disney+.

If there’s one person we owe all of that too, it’s Jack Foley, the sound effects engineer who pioneered the technique of taking common objects and using them to re-create the sounds of humans and their interactions with the physical world. This art (and it really is an art—see the video above for proof) is named after him, and it’s one of those jobs that you won’t notice if it’s done well.^[10]

A lot of hard work goes into making a movie, especially when there is hype and anticipation surrounding its release. Long hours and tough conditions often lead to off-screen moments that are in such contrast to the on-camera scenes that they become iconic. On this list are just a few examples of behind-the-scenes moments that are still awesome after all these years.

10 Pictures That Almost Got Their Photographers Killed

10 Cameron in the water

Titanic made a huge splash in 1997, becoming the highest grossing movie in history at that time. The movie features a host of memorable and quotable scenes, including Rose wanting to jump off the ship, Jack shouting that he is the king of the world, the car scene, the band playing in the midst of chaos and the woman who tells her children a bedtime story, knowing they are all going to die.

However, most fans’ favorite scene comes at the end when Rose and Jack are in the water and Jack is unable to clamber onto the floating door. Instead he dies from hypothermia in the icy Atlantic Ocean and sinks down beneath the surface. One of the most iconic ‘on set’ photos shows Cameron getting into the water with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio during the filming of this scene, highlighting his commitment to getting the job done.

9 Tobe Hooper at work

Poltergeist (1982) was directed by Tobe Hooper and written by Steven Spielberg. The film became a massive commercial success, amassing over 120 million at the box office. The movie also gained the reputation of being cursed after a series of cast deaths.

Poltergeist features a lot of unforgettable scenes such as the ‘spirits in the TV’ and skeletons in the swimming pool. The photo below depicts Tobe Hooper directing another awesome scene: Robbie is yanked through his bedroom window by an ‘evil, possessed tree.’

8 Happy twins

The Shining introduced the world to perhaps the creepiest twins ever when it was released in 1980. Even though there are only glimpses of them throughout the film, it was enough to give audiences nightmares for life. It is therefore good to see that the twins, played by Lisa and Louise Burns, were just regular little girls in real life. Check out this picture of them posing for the camera, smiling and clearly having a grand old time, even if they were still decked out in their creepy twinsies outfits.

7 Masterpiece in the making

Jaws, released in 1975, was a massive hit in theatres worldwide. It grossed over 470 million from a budget of just 9 million and is a classic thriller that people enjoy to this day. As one can imagine, there are tons of behind-the-scenes photos that were taken during filming, but the ones featuring the giant mechanical shark named Bruce are truly iconic. The picture below features Bruce in all his glory during outdoor filming. Not sure what Joe’s doing. Flossing, maybe?

6 Bullet-time

Before there was John Wick there was Neo. The Matrix is a mind-bending sci-fi action film that people either love to love or love to hate. The movie features mind-blowing bullet-time moves, the choice between the red or blue pill, and the Oracle. The image below shows Keanu Reeves in his Neo get-up, ready to make some magic in front of a green screen.

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5 Getting in on the action

A lot of scenes in Saving Private Ryan received high praise for their graphic depiction of the horror soldiers had to face during World War II. Not to mention the heartbreaking scene where a mother learns that three of her four sons had died during battle. In this image, Steven Spielberg is having a chat to Tom Hanks about the details of the scene they’re shooting.

4 You’ll think a man can fly

In 1951 Lippert Pictures released Superman and the Mole Men, the first Superman feature film. However, whenever anyone talks about Superman, it is impossible not to think of the man who really made the role iconic: Christopher Reeve. Superman: The Movie was released in 1978 and the tagline “You’ll think a man can fly” added to the excitement and anticipation surrounding its release. The movie cost 55 million to make and grossed over 300 million, earning praise and three Academy Awards Nominations.

This picture shows Reeve on set during filming, flanked by Colin Chilvers who was the Director of Special Effects.

3 Have the lambs stopped screaming?

Sir Anthony Hopkins might be famous these days for playing the role of Odin, but in 1991 he brought life to one of the most unnerving characters of all time: Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The Silence of the Lambs had a modest budget of 19 million but grossed over 270 million worldwide, becoming the fifth-highest grossing movie that year. It also earned 5 Academy awards.

Naturally, there were several behind-the-scenes photos taken during filming, but the eeriest of all has to be Hopkins trying to eat a french fry through his toothy mask.

2 Welcome to Jurassic Park

The simple line ‘Welcome to Jurassic Park, still has the ability to send shivers of excitement down one’s spine. Jurassic Park was a super blockbuster in 1993, grossing over 1 billion worldwide. The huge T-Rex stole the show on screen and off. In this image, a stage-hand is preparing the gigantic dino for filming. The animatronic T-Rex was used for the pivotal car scene, while a CGI version was used for other scenes where full-length shots were required.

1 The Empire Strikes Back

The highly recognizable, crawling opening credits of the Star Wars films are almost as iconic as the movies themselves. The crawl is used to give details on the backstory and context of the film. A wall of text against a starry backdrop, this simple ‘scene’ has been replicated by TV shows including The Big Bang Theory and Glee (which references the Star Wars Holiday Special.)

This surprisingly low-tech, behind-the-scenes image reveals how the opening crawl for The Empire Strikes Back was filmed. The Star Wars crawls were inspired by similar ones used for Flash Gordon and the 1940s Buck Rogers film serials.

10 Stories Behind Astounding Space Pictures Of Earth

Ah, Los Angeles! Home to Hollywood, once the mecca of all things movie-related. One of the most cinematic cities on the planet, L.A. has inspired great filmmakers across the globe for decades. From the dreamy Sunset Boulevard to the mysterious Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles has provided the perfect backdrop to some of the most iconic films in history. Today, the sun may be setting on Hollywood, but that doesn’t meant there aren’t still flashes of brilliance to be seen. Read our spoiler-free list with pleasure!

Top 10 Dark Secrets That Expose The Truth About Hollywood

10 Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood (2019)

Writer and director, Quentin Tarantino, provides an original take on the altercation involving Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, and members of the infamous Manson Family.

The film follows famous Hollywood actor, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and his longtime best friend and stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Multiple storylines intersect in this modern fairy tale that pays tribute to the classic age of Hollywood, and nothing screams Tarantino like the epic climax of the film that will leave the viewer speechless.

The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody applauds Tarantino’s take on this important era. “The movie draws a very clear line regarding the end of that classic age: it’s set in 1969, at a time when the studios were in financial crisis owing to their trouble keeping up with the changing times, and its plot involves the event that’s widely cited as the end of an era, the Manson Family killings of Sharon Tate and four others at the house she shared with her husband, Roman Polanski.”^[1]

9 Nightcrawler (2014)

Dan Gilroy’s neo-noir thriller, Nightcrawler, stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Louis Bloom, a narcissistic sociopath and loner who works as a stringer, recording violent events that take place late at night in Los Angeles. Louis sells these videos to news channels that pay top dollar for the most gruesome, graphic footage. Void of any ethics and morals, Louis will stop at nothing when he becomes obsessed with obtaining the “money shot.” Gilroy snagged an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.^[2]

8 The Neon Demon (2016)

Another film from Nicolas Winding Refn, this 2016 psychological horror follows Jesse (Elle Fanning), a beautiful 16-year-old girl who moves to Los Angeles to pursue a modeling career. Jesse is quickly seen as the “next big thing” and proceeds to take the fashion world by storm. This positions her as a target for fellow members of the cutthroat industry who despise Jesse’s natural beauty and seek to destroy her at all costs. What happens next isn’t pretty.

Refn, who stated that he visualized the film as an “adult fairy tale,” shot The Neon Demon in L.A. because it’s the only city to which his wife was willing to accompany him “if we had to travel out of Copenhagen.”^[3]

7 Lost Highway (1997)

Two stories intertwine in this 1997 neo-noir film from David Lynch. Fred (Bill Pullman) is a jazz musician living in Los Angeles. He receives an ominous message over his home intercom one day saying, “Dick Laurant is dead.” The next day, Fred’s wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette), finds a VHS tape on their porch. Fred and Renee play the tape to find that it is a video recording of their house. Over the next few days, they receive more tapes. Eventually, the footage is inside the house of the couple in bed.

The police arrive but are no help. To distract themselves, Fred and Renee attend a party being thrown by Renee’s friend, Andy, with whom Fred believes she is having an affair. Another tape arrives the following day, but Renee is nowhere to be found, so Fred watches it alone. To his horror, the tape shows Fred standing over Renee’s dead body.

Fred is sentenced to death for his wife’s murder. While on death row, he vanishes from his cell and is replaced by a young auto mechanic named Pete (Balthazar Getty) who falls in love with a mysterious woman named Alice also played by Patricia Arquette.

In her New York Times piece Eerie Visions With a Mood of Menace, film critic Janet Maslin writes, “[Lost Highway] constructs an intricate puzzle out of dream logic, lurid eroticism, violence, shifting identities, and fierce intimations of doom.”^[4]

6 Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Sunset Boulevard, the classic 1950 film noir from director Billy Wilder, does not disappoint. An aging silent film star, the iconic Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), hires a young screenwriter, Joe Gillis (William Holden), to write the screenplay for what she believes will be her cinematic comeback. Desperate for money and a place to stay, Joe takes the job and moves in with Norma at her Hollywood mansion. He underestimates, however, the fragile mental state and instability of the has-been actress who spirals into madness in a desperate attempt to grasp at any final straws that will allow her to remain relevant.

Film critics agree that the film brilliantly illustrates the truth behind the glimmer of Hollywood:

“Sunset Boulevard isn’t only Billy Wilder at his finest, but the film is easily the best film ever made about Hollywood in cinematic history.” Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies

“Sunset Boulevard, the blackest of Hollywood’s self-portraits, is an old dark house of a ghost story inhabited by the living shadows of its discarded stars.” Sean Axmaker, Seanax.com

“Rarely is fiction shot through so glitteringly with real life.” Marc Lee, Daily Telegraph

“One of Wilder’s finest, and certainly the blackest, of all Hollywood’s scab-scratching accounts of itself.” Geoff Andrew, Time Out

“Still the best Hollywood movie ever made about Hollywood.” Andrew Sarris, Observer^[5]

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5 La La Land (2016)

Somewhat overshadowed by the infamous mishap that occurred at the 2017 Academy Awards when it was mistakenly awarded the Oscar for Best Picture instead of Moonlight, La La Land still remains one of the most highly regarded movie musicals of the 21st century. Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, this romantic comedy features a jazz musician (Ryan Gosling) and an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) who fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles, known for making or breaking artists.

While it didn’t win the Best Picture Oscar, La La Land received a record-breaking number of awards and nominations. The film won all seven of its Golden Globes nominations, five British Academy Film Awards (including Best Film), and six of its fourteen Academy Awards nominations (including Best Director for Chazelle and Best Actress for Stone.)^[6]

4 Under The Silver Lake (2018)

Under The Silver Lake is a lot of things. It’s hard to pinpoint just one genre. This 2018 neo-noir, black comedy, conspiracy, mystery/crime thriller was written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, following hot on the heels of his film It Follows, one of the best horror movie in decades. It stars Andrew Garfield as Sam, an unemployed, disenchanted young man living in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Sam spends his days smoking cigarettes, reading underground comic books, and spying on neighbors while they swim in the pool.

Sam finally introduces himself to one of his swimming neighbors, Sarah (Riley Keough), who invites him inside. The two hit it off and make plans to see each other again. But when Sam shows up to her apartment the next day, he finds that she has vanished. This sends him on a journey through the City of Angels, as he starts to put pieces together and discovers that all of this may have to do with the latest comic he has been reading, Under The Silver Lake.

In his review for Variety, Owen Gleiberman writes of the film’s “Old Los Angeles” view of the world, going back to masters of noir fiction Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, “to Chinatown and Altman’s The Long Goodbye, to Mulholland Drive and Kiss Me Deadly and Inherent Vice.”^[7]

3 Drive (2011)

Drive is one of writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn’s most acclaimed films. Based on the 2005 James Sallis novel, this neo-noir action drama from 2011 is set in Los Angeles. It follows an unnamed Hollywood stuntman (Ryan Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver for criminals. After getting close with his neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and her son, the driver agrees to take part in a heist organized by the neighbor’s husband, who has just been released from jail.

The job goes horribly wrong, however, and the driver must risk his life to protect his neighbors. Rotten Tomatoes gives this R-rated flick a 92%, but buckle up: the violence is graphic!^[8]

2 Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Tom Ford has more than a brilliant fashion sense up his luxury-brand sleeve. In 2016, seven years after the designer made his brilliant directorial debut with A Single Man, Ford electrified audiences with neo-noir psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals.

Nocturnal Animals centers around Susan (Amy Adams), a successful Los Angeles art gallery owner who receives a manuscript written by her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal), whom she has not seen in years. The film then diverges into three parts, flashbacks of the past involving Susan’s relationship with her ex-husband; the present, which is Susan’s life now with her current husband; and the dark, twisted world of the story her ex-husband wrote that forces Susan to examine how it parallels her own life and past.

At Roger.Ebert.com, critic Glenn Kenny praises a sequence “that’s one of the most discomfortingly suspenseful in a Hollywood film since, maybe, Blue Velvet.” Adams and Gyllenhaal are outstanding, as usual, but Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson will blow your socks off.^[9]

1 Mulholland Drive (2001)

David Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece, Mulholland Drive, is considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all time. In 2016, a BBC poll of film critics worldwide named it the best film of the new millennium. In this surreal neo-noir mystery, we are introduced to a brunette amnesiac (Laura Harring) who takes refuge at an apartment on Sunset Boulevard after stumbling down from a car accident that occured on Mulholland Drive.

There, she meets the blond and wholesome Betty (Naomi Watts), who is staying at the apartment (her aunt’s) and seeking fame as an actress. The amnesiac introduces herself as Rita but doesn’t actually remember who she is. Together, the two women try to piece together the mystery of her identity and what happened that night. The plot is otherwise impossible to summarize, as narrative twists leave it open to interpretation as to what is a dream and what is reality.

“Like a lot of critics who adore the movie, none of us got it the first time,” said Los Angeles Times film critic Justin Chang. “Any person who says they did is lying.” Of the film’s timeless quality, Chang says, “It very lovingly recreates the grand old Hollywood of yesteryear and yet it’s a movie about the evils underlying the industry and particularly what it does to actresses and to women who dream of working in the business. It’s about the allure and also the toxic underbelly of the dream factory.”^[10]

See Also: Top 10 Ways Hollywood Ruined Your Favorite TV Shows

On 25 March 1983, Michael Jackson was performing his new song ‘Billie Jean’ for the TV programme Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. Gliding across the stage, he performed his legendary moonwalk to the delight of the live audience. Two months later the rest of the country got to see the special moment when the TV special was broadcast.

What would today’s music be without the influences of boundary-pushing music artists throughout history? Those of us who grew up during the 70s, 80s and even 90s, cannot imagine a world in which there is no David Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner or Elvis Presley music.

On this list are just some of the world’s biggest stars and their iconic moments that will live on in the years to come.

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10 The greatest cultural force in the 20th century

Elvis Presley set hearts aflutter worldwide with his golden voice and sexy moves. Even towards the end of his short life, he still had the ability to draw vast crowds at concerts and mesmerize them with his performances. Composer and conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, called Presley “… the greatest cultural force in the 20th century.” He went on to say that Presley “introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything – music, language, clothes, it’s a whole new social revolution – the 60s come from it.”

This photograph shows Elvis Presley on stage at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in 1956. The crowd went wild then and continued to go wild at his future concerts and shows.

9 Moves like Jagger

Tina Turner has taken credit for teaching Mick Jagger his infamous dance moves, even though Jagger has never publicly confirmed this and instead credited his own mother with teaching him how to dance. The frontman of The Rolling Stones also credited some of his early moves to James Brown. Jagger strived to be like Brown because they “were both in tune to the rhythms of their music.”

The Rolling Stones was (and still is) a defining force in hard rock and were named second greatest band of all time by Billboard magazine in 2019.

In this photo Jagger is striking one of his signature poses during a Rolling Stones concert at Wembley Empire Pool in 1973. He is wearing one of his most iconic on-stage outfits consisting of a velvet unitard and a tailcoat.

8 The Queen of Soul

Throughout her illustrious career, Aretha Franklin, rubbed shoulders with a host of other stars including Oprah Winfrey, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, The Rolling Stones, and the list goes on. She was a civil rights activist and donated money for civil rights protests and performed at protests.

Aretha has sold more than 75 million records worldwide and received a multitude of honors, including 18 Grammy awards. She had 20 number one hits on the R&B charts and became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1964 Aretha was crowned ‘Queen of Soul by Pervis Spann, a WVON disc jockey, who placed a crown on her head during a performance at Chicago’s Regal Theatre.

She spoke of this moment in her book ‘Aretha: From These Roots’ saying: “… The only queens I had known of were Dinah Washington and Elizabeth I and II. To be considered worthy of the same title held by Dinah was an honor of the highest order… It was the last thing I expected when he walked out with that crown and actually put it on my head.”

7 The hillbilly Shakespeare

Rufus Payne, an African American blues musician gave Hank Williams guitar lessons and had a huge impact on what Williams’ musical style would become. Williams recorded 35 singles of which 11 ranked number one of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart. He is regarded as one of the most influential singer/songwriters in history and was given the nickname ‘hillbilly Shakespeare’ in honor of his unique and lingering lyrics.

This iconic photograph depicts Williams’ debut at the Grand Ole Opry on 11 June 1949. After his performance he was encored 6 times and the audience had to be beseeched to stop to allow the rest of the show to continue.

Unfortunately, Hank Williams didn’t have a happy ending and he died at the age of 29 on New Years’ Day 1953 after a long struggle with alcohol abuse and addiction to prescription drugs.

His musical legacy, however, lives on.

6 Eurovision heroes

ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974, ensuring Sweden’s first win in the competition and the rest, as they say, is history.

Between 1974 and 1983, the pop supergroup topped charts around the world with songs including Waterloo, Dancing Queen and Mamma Mia. Waterloo is the song that won them the Eurovision crown, while Dancing Queen became the group’s only American number one single.

ABBA’s final performance happened in 1982 and they reunited in 2016.

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5 A song of protest

Like Hank Williams, Jimi Hendrix had a short but extremely influential career. He had only a 4-year run but is still considered one of the best electric guitarists in the history of rock music as put eloquently by The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who described him as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music.”

On 18 August 1969, Hendrix performed The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock and his performance would later be called the most electrifying moment of the festival.

Wearing bell-bottom jeans, a white shirt and a red headband, Hendrix unleashed his Fender Stratocaster in what could be interpreted as a protest against the government during a time of war in Vietnam.

4 Reginald Kenneth Dwight

Growing up in a house where his father wasn’t at all interested in building a relationship with him, Reginald Kenneth Dwight focused on his junior scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music which he was awarded at the age of eleven. However, he left the Academy before taking the final exams. After his parents’ divorce, his mother married again and in their new home, Dwight wrote several songs that would launch his fantastic career. Dwight legally changed his name to Elton Hercules John on 7 January 1972. He made elaborate costumes a part of his shows and bold eyeglasses became one of his signature fashion pieces. Known for playing the piano, John sometimes also played the guitar as is evident in this rare snap of him doing just that.

Elton John went on to win five Grammy Awards, Five Brit Awards, Two Oscars and two Golden Globes among others and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998. One of his most famous songs, Candle In The Wind, was adapted in 1997 for Princess Diana’s funeral and sold more than 33 million copies worldwide.

3 Funny Girl

With more than 150 million records sold worldwide, Barbra Streisand is one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. And she is not only a singer, but also an actress and filmmaker. She has won several awards, including 2 Oscars, 10 Grammys and 5 Emmy Awards and became the first woman to write, produce, direct and star in a major film when Yentl was released in 1983. (Link 8)

She won her first Oscar in 1969 for Best Actress in the critically acclaimed Funny Girl, alongside Katherine Hepburn who won Best Actress for The Lion In Winter. Their tie for Best Actress Oscar is one of only 6 ties at the Academy Awards throughout its history.

Barbra picked the less conservative of two outfits for the awards ceremony: a pantsuit sporting plastic sequins and a white collar and cuffs. What she didn’t realize beforehand however, was that when bright stage lights fell over the outfit, it would become practically see-through.

She said afterwards: “I had no idea that when the lights hit the outfit, it would become transparent!”

Barbra won her second Oscar in 1977 for Best Song in A Star Is Born.

2 What a comeback

Almost unknown in 1981, Prince was slated to be the opening act for the Rolling Stones. He appeared on stage wearing thigh-high boots, a trenchcoat and bikini briefs. The Stones fans were exceptionally intolerant and started hurling insults, homophobic slurs and even food and drinks. Prince left the stage in tears after 15 minutes.

Fortunately, the star didn’t let this terrible experience dissuade him from pursuing his music career. By the end of the 80s he was one of the most successful artists of that decade and today he is celebrated as one of the best music artists of all time.

By 1991 there was no trace of the humiliation that caused him to flee the stage 10 years earlier. All there was were screaming fans who couldn’t get enough of the star. AT the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, Prince was performing Gett Off when he turned around and revealed that his butt was covered only by illusion netting.

The incident became known as Prince’s defining VMA moment, even though some fans argued that what the audience saw was flesh-colored fabric and not Prince’s actual behind.

1 Freddie stole the show

In 1984 Bob Geldof and Midge Ure wrote “Do They Know It’s Christmas” after Geldof travelled to Ethiopia and witnessed the ongoing horrors of a famine that had killed thousands of Ethiopians. The proceeds of the song totalled $44 million. However, Geldof wanted to do more, so he came up with the Live Aid benefit concert which was held in 1985. The concert line-up consisted of more than 75 acts including Bryan Adams, Neil Young, David Bowie, Madonna, Sting, Phil Collins, and Santana.

The performances happened at Wembley Stadium in London and at Philadelphia’s JFK stadium and $127 million was raised for famine relief in Africa.

The most memorable moment from the concert, however, was the 20-minute performance by Queen. Freddie Mercury held the audiences’ attention as he and the band powered through “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions.” Queen’s popularity was declining at that point, but with that rocking performance the world was reminded just how unique a talent Mercury was..

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Since the early days of blues and jazz, guitar solos have been used to showcase the talents of musicians and to add an extra dynamic to the music. Since the advent of rock ‘n roll in the ‘50s and the explosion of heavy metal a few decades later, solos have become almost mandatory in any guitar-driven song, and when done right, they can elevate a recording from good to great.

There are so many great guitar solos that even a list of 100 or more would have some notable omissions. And, of course, judging and ranking them is a matter of taste and personal preference, which is to say it’s entirely subjective. The point of this list, then, is simply to highlight 10 of the more noteworthy guitar solos in history – those that are still relevant today and went on to have a profound impact on their respective genres, and music in general.

Top 10 Performances In Rock Music History

10Cult of Personality – Living Color, 1988 (Vernon Reid)

Living Color’s most recognizable song kicks off with Vernon Reid’s distinctive guitar riff, and throughout Cult of Personality, one gets the feeling that he’s holding back, just waiting to unleash the fretboard mayhem in an audible onslaught. When the solo before the final verse comes around, he does just that and it’s dizzying to behold.

Reid brings his jazz background to bear in a blistering solo that’s at times chaotic, verging on bizarre but works excellently because it remains anchored in the G major pentatonic scale and begins and ends within the bounds of the overall musical arc of the rest of the song. The jaw-dropping work between is that of a musical master as Reid explores the length of the fretboard with frantic finesse. It’s a testament to his skill that the performance is by and large improvisational and, as such, no two live versions of the solo are ever quite the same.^[1]

9 Free Bird – Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1973 (Allen Collins and Gary Rossington)

The outro guitar work on Free Bird, off Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut album in ’73, is a classic example of how a solo can elevate a song, as Collins and Rossington’s signature performance raises the whole thing to a new level of rock brilliance. Unsurprisingly, it’s recognized just behind Sweet Home Alabama as the band’s best song and it became something of a tradition for them to finish their live performances with Free Bird.

At just over 9 minutes long, the tune was initially considered too long for radio play and Skynyrd was discouraged from including it on the album. Fortunately, common sense (and good taste) prevailed. The duel solo came out of a jam session, with the initial lyrical inclusions added almost as an afterthought, and it shows as the track comes into its own when the uptempo, epic guitar solo takes center stage around the 4-minute mark and doesn’t surrender it till the end. While the album version concludes with a fade-out some 5 minutes later, live performances of the song could stretch as long as a quarter of an hour.^[2]

8 La Villa Strangiato – Rush, 1981 (Alex Lifeson)

Canadian progressive rock outfit, Rush, are known for their lengthy, dynamic compositions and La Villa Strangiato is perhaps the finest example of this. The epic instrumental track is divided into 12 distinct segments and tells a complete story, despite the absence of lyrics. The tale is conveyed solely through the combined genius of Neil Pert on drums, Geddy Lee on bass, and the remarkable Alex Lifeson on lead guitar.

Following his first, flamenco-style riff-laden solo, Lifeson kicks things up a gear with a spectacular second piece of guitar wizardry, featuring an impressive array of slides, bends, and stops, in the track’s musical climax. Most notably, the guitarist employs dramatic pauses alongside flashes of blistering speed to enhance the musical effect, and it works spectacularly. No wonder many consider Alex Lifeson to be not just a musical pioneer, but one of the most underrated guitarists in history.^[3]

7 Voodoo Child (Slight Return) – Jimi Hendrix, 1968

Jimi Hendrix’s name has become synonymous with psychedelic rock and guitar mastery that no one since has been able to replicate. He was nothing short of a genius with instrument in hand, and his catalog of work is packed full of examples, from the instantly recognizable riff of Purple Haze to his reworking of All Along the Watchtower in a way that makes his version overshadow the original classic. But it was on Voodoo Child (Slight Return) that Jimi did possibly his most impressive work.

The track’s signature riff forms the basis from which the impressive opening solo blazes out in all its glory and anyone, regardless of musical taste, can instantly recognize this as something special. Hendrix’s liberal use of the wah-wah pedal and the unique feedback screech of his guitar provide another layer of depth to a solo that can be best described as audacious. In something of a travesty, Jimi saw only one of his singles chart at number one, and no prizes for guessing which tune it was. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was the last song he ever performed live, just days before his untimely death in 1970.^[4]

6 Mr. Crowley – Ozzy Osbourne, 1980 (Randy Rhodes)

Better known these days as a reality TV star, it’s easy to forget that Ozzy Osbourne was a damn fine musician in his heyday, something he proved first with Black Sabbath and then again when he struck out on his own. His debut solo album, The Blizzard of Oz, in 1980 is regarded as a metal masterpiece and Ozzy has a certain Randy Rhodes to thank for that.

Formerly of Quiet Riot, Rhodes on lead guitar formed the backbone of the musical medley that would launch Ozzy to solo stardom. On Crazy Train, he produced one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in existence, but his performance on Mr. Crowley is perhaps his greatest feat. The slow tempo, heavy verse riff gives way to a lightning display as Rhodes whips his way through some classic metal shredding in the first solo, only to follow it up with similar in the outro. He is regularly featured on various rankings of the greatest guitarists of all time, even though he passed away in a freak plane crash while the band was on tour in 1982 at the age of just 25.^[5]

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5 Crossroads – Cream, 1966 (Eric Clapton)

No discussion of legendary guitarists is complete without mentioning Eric Clapton, old ‘Slowhand’ himself. There’s nothing slow about his remarkable solo on Crossroads, however, Cream’s 1966 rework of Robert Johnson’s blues classic from the ‘’30s.

The song is based on the standard blues chord progression, but EC makes it his own with his typical guitar flourishes and two mindblowing solos where he lays bare his talent for all to see, pulling out all the stops and producing the kind of guitar wizardry that he’s become typically known for. While his ability here is undeniable, according to Clapton himself, most of his solo work on Crossroads is on the incorrect beat. “No wonder people think it’s so good – because it’s f***ing wrong!” he’s since laughingly admitted.^[6]

4 Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd, 1980 (David Gilmour)

On Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd takes the listener on a fascinating musical journey. Lead guitarist David Gilmour describes the song as a battle between dark and light, something mirrored in the contrast between his verse vocals and Roger Water’s departure in the chorus, as well as in the depiction of past versus present in the lyrics. In fact, the pair had many a disagreement in the recording of the track, and the uneasy compromise that is the finished product is a uniquely brilliant progressive rock song, rounded off expertly with Gilmour’s outstanding solo at the end.

The solo brings Comfortably Numb to an emotive climax and goosebumps ensue as Gilmour marries the conflicting styles of the verses and chorus in a breathtaking display of stops, bends, and explosive flourishes. Guitar solos were all the rage at the time the song was released, so the fact that Gilmour’s work is still relevant and recognized as a defining piece of guitar genius speaks to the undeniable brilliance as a musician, something he proved time and again with Pink Floyd, but never more clearly than on Comfortably Numb.^[7]

3 Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin, 1971 (Jimmy Page)

One of the greatest rock songs of all time, Stairway to Heaven has an interesting history. The song never saw release as a single so only officially featured on the UK singles chart for the first time in 2007, when Led Zeppelin’s entire body of past work was made available for free download. The track is the most played in radio history, smashing previous misgivings that only short, catchy tunes were suitable for broadcast, and enjoyed its share of controversy along the way, from the obligatory, almost laughable, satanic connections, to the infamous plagiarism trial in 2016. But, all that aside, we find towards the end of this classic song one of the greatest guitar solos in existence.

The gentle, melodic opening with flute and guitar accompanying Robert Plant’s soothing vocals feels more like a folk song than classic rock. It builds from there, though, with the drums kicking in after a few minutes as Plant’s urgency increases until it all comes together in Jimmy Page’s epic solo. The crashing drumbeat and the vocal crescendo that follows the solo combine with Page’s fretboard prowess to create what must be the most memorable few minutes in the history of recorded rock music.^[8]

2 Eruption – Eddie Van Halen, 1978

Eddie Van Halen’s death in 2020 marked the sad passing of one of the greatest musicians ever to wield an ax. With enough practice, any competent guitarist can pull off a good solo, but what set EVH apart was his musical innovation that forever changed the art of guitar playing. He regularly reworked his equipment to achieve new and interesting sounds, and he’s credited with the invention of finger tapping – the technique of rapidly ‘tapping’ the strings rather than plucking or strumming them, to achieve a unique musical effect. The best example of this in action is Eruption.

Coming in at less than two minutes long, the instrumental track (featuring Eddie, his guitar, and nothing else) began as a warmup intro for “You Really Got Me” and was never intended to be a song on its own. It has since become the pinnacle of guitar soloing. Eddie’s lightning-fast fretwork along the full length of the neck, a trance-like melodic flow, finger tapping, and the distinctive overdrive amplifier growl all combine to leave the listener in a state of awe. It’s not hard to understand why Eruption is considered the holy grail of guitar mastery and the crowning moment of a career packed full of them. Rest in peace Eddie Van Halen.^[9]

1 Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth) – Metallica, 1983 (Cliff Burton)

When considering iconic solos, one tends to think only of lead guitar – it’s flashy, impressive, and often overshadows the musical foundation laid down by the bass. Often, but not always. There have been some extremely talented bass players over the years, and possibly the greatest bass solo ever recorded is Cliff Burton’s in Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth).

The track appeared on “Kill ‘em All” and that the fledgling young metal group decided to include a bass solo on their debut album shows just what a profound influence Cliff Burton had on the band before his death in 1986. He can be heard saying, “Bass solo, take one” at the start before launching into his iconic performance. While technically a Metallica song, this one is all Cliff, with Lars Ulrich adding in some drumming accompaniment around the halfway mark.

Anyone who’s ever played bass will know that making the thick, four-stringed instrument sound like it’s nimble six-stringed counterpart isn’t easy. Making it sound better is damn near impossible. Yet Burton does just that on Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth), recorded before he’d even reached his 21st birthday. As successful as Metallica has gone on to be, one can’t help but wonder how much better they’d have been had Cliff lived longer. While the other three members have remained constant over the years, they’ve gone through a number of bass players, proving just what an unfillable void Cliff Burton left with his passing.^[10]

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About The Author: I’m 32 years old and I live in South Africa. I work full time in logistics and I’m a freelance writer in my (limited) spare time. I have various projects in the works, including a potential novel, and I regularly participate in the Reedsy Prompts short story contest, where a growing collection of my work is available for reading. I have been a shortlisted finalist there twice so far.

Iconic villains aren’t just bad men/women, they are in the position of elevating the movie to an extent that sometimes ever heroes can’t. One of the main draws of a villain is that they are relatable, in a twisted insane way they do make sense. In this list we have rounded up ten such badass movie villains we need to know about. Check them out:

Top 10 Iconic Badass Movie Villains Ever

10. Antony Chigurh

Film: No Country for Old Men (2007)
Played by: Javier Bardem

There is nothing more dangerous than a man who believes. Except maybe a man who believes that he can kill whenever he wants. Anthony Chigurh is a contract killer who smiles while he delivers the killer blow.

He really enjoys his job which is why it’s so much fun to watch him do what he does. He’s creative with his choice of weapons ranging from pistols to cattle bullet prods for silent kills but his favorite weapon is a shotgun with a silencer on it.

9. The Tire

Film: Rubber (2010)
Played by: The Tire

In this indie film developed for just over $500,000, a rubber tire gains psychic powers and picks itself up to find out what life is all about. It starts off its existence by rolling around the dessert around blowing animals and people to bits it falls in love with a woman.

It goes on to track her down and ends up blowing her head off; a metaphor on how we as people ultimately destroy everything that we love.

8. Krug

Film: The Last House on the Left (2009)
Played by: Garret Dillahunt

Krug one of the most badass movie villains and was on his way to prison when his crew busted him out by intercepting the transport. The underlined just how cruel they are by torturing the transport officers before taking off to enjoy their lives on the run. They took refuge in a motel where an unfortunate pair of girls crossed their path.

Krug decided to have some with them so he dragged them into woods and raped them. As if raping them wasn’t bad enough, he find shelter from a storm under the roof of the parents of one of the women that he raped, killed and left for dead in a shallow river.

7. The Joker

Film: The Dark Knight (2008)
Played by: Heath Ledger

Ledger’s death was a loss to everyone who loves movies. There isn’t a doubt that the Joker is one of the most badass movie villains ever. This was the last movie featuring Heath Ledger to hit the big screen before he died and it was arguably his best performance ever. The Dark Knight is the follow-up film to a rather moderate Batman Begins and nobody even talks about Christian Bale’s performance. The Joker stole the show.

His madness and simple love for chaos is what made this movie great. He’s been referred to as psychopathic, mass murdering and all kinds of crazy. You can’t help but wonder if Arkham Asylum is equipped enough to hold him.

6. Voldemort

Film: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Played by: Frank Dillane

This guy is so evil that the entire world is afraid to say his name. 15 years after he was supposed to have been killed they still only refer to him as ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’. The say a man is the average of those that he keeps around him what does it say about man who keeps a massive snake as a pet? Voldemort is ranked at number six position in the list of top ten badass movie villains ever.

5. Bellatrix Lestrange

Film: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Played by: Helena Bonham Carter

Crazy women like Bellatrix Lestrange are the perfect blend of unpredictable and sexy. Everything about her from her wild and curly hair to that non-pulsed look in her eyes just screams at you to walk away but you can’t. You want to see whether you can’t talk her into some alone time which will almost definitely end in her cursing your manhood off.

But she’s hot so it might just be worth it. She’s always been sadistic but she probably wasn’t always crazy. Her time spent in Azkaban prison after torturing the Longbottoms into insanity is what sent her over the edge.

4. Chucky

Film: Child’s Play (1988)
Voice of: Brad Dourif

Chucky, one of the most badass movie villains, is a doll with murderous intent. He started off as a serial killer whose spirit was transferred into a child’s doll thanks to a voodoo spell that he cast after he was mortally injured by a cop. Not even death could keep this evil from carrying on his gruesome work.

Of all the places to wind up, the cursed doll was placed in the hands of a 6 year child. He seemed to enjoy becoming a doll because he got the freedom to bludgeon or hammer whoever he wants then go back to playing the inanimate doll. Anybody who suspects that the sweet doll might be up to no good was called mad. Chucky just loved the irony.

3. Jigsaw

Film: Saw (2004)
Played by: Tobin Bell

John Kramer is a man with nothing to lose. He was given a death sentence and decided to use what little time that he had left making those that have the gift of life but don’t know how to use it give some serious thought to whether they want to live or not. Any madman can go on a killing spree but the truly scary ones are the ones who do it creatively.

Jigsaw never actually killed anyone. He just put them in situations where if they didn’t do something painful like jumping into a pit full of needles or cutting into their own eyeballs with a scalpel they’ll be killed by one of his deadly traps. The scene that kicked Jigsaw into the movie-villain hall of fame was the one where he made a guy cut off his own leg with a rusty saw or risk being tombed in an underground bathroom forever.

2. Freddy Kreuger

Film: Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Played by: Robert Englund

Freddy Kreuger was a serial killer who died but felt that his work on Earth was not done yet. He was among the most badass movie villains we’ve ever seen. He stayed on as a demon who kills by waiting for his victims to fall asleep then he hunts them down in their nightmares and slashes them down, killing in them real life as well.

Whilst in the dream world he is invulnerable to any physical harm so the only way to defeat him is to find him in the real world and kill him. But even in the real world he is to be a force to be reckoned with.

1. Darth Vader

Film: Star Wars (1977)
Played by: David Prowse
Voice of: James Earl Jones

This is probably the most well-known story of good-boy-gone-bad. In the Star Wars universe he started off training with the Jedi Knights and was touted as the one to save the universe from the Sith Lords. However he was seduced by the Dark Side and after his mentor left him for dead in a lava pit, he pulled himself out, donned the black robe, helmet and respirator and went on to become the fiercest foe that the Jedi Knights ever faced.

We instantly recognize famous landmarks—the Great Pyramids, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Golden Gate Bridge, and other architectural and engineering marvels. They are images that come with easy familiarity. But imagine an alternate reality where the names are attached to structures that are bafflingly strange and unrecognizable. Well, let’s take a tour of such an alternate reality and look at ten well-known landmarks and structures that could have turned out quite differently.

Related: 10 Amazing Ancient Buildings Still In Use Today

10 The White House

Washington, D.C., was a city in its infancy when George Washington launched a competition for the design of the future mansion of the U.S. President in 1792. It drew in many proposals, from professional architects and amateurs alike, with styles ranging from pre-Revolutionary War Georgian to Neoclassical. Ultimately, it was Irish-born architect James Hoban’s design, based on the Leinster House in Dublin, that was chosen.

However, in our alternate universe, let us pretend that the entry chosen was the one conceived by none other than the future third president, Thomas Jefferson, who was a fan of classical European architecture. It might have been an unfortunate clerical error that credited the anonymously submitted design to one Abraham Faws.

Jefferson’s vision for the executive mansion included a columned porch and a dome, which is a prominent feature of classical architecture. Though Jefferson’s entry didn’t quite make it, he would go on to add his own touches to the White House once he moved in: colonnades, a carriage path, and a stable.^[1]

9 The Arc de Triomphe

In our alternate universe, Paris might probably be renowned for a gargantuan elephant. And it would have been called L’elephant Triomphal.

The present monument, a landmark on the Parisian landscape, was inspired by the Arch of Titus in Rome and was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte after his great victory in Austerlitz in 1805. However, 45 years earlier, an architect named Charles Ribart proposed a wackier monument on the same site on the Champs Elysees.

Ribart designed a giant elephant, hollow inside with chambers that could be accessed by a spiral staircase ascending from the entrance. The ornate, three-story beast would be large enough to hold banquets and balls. Outside, there would be a garden watered via a drainage system hidden in the elephant’s trunk.

French officials were not impressed nor amused, however, and rejected Ribart’s insane design.^[2]

8 Chicago Tribune Tower

The ambitious and powerful newspaper magnate Robert McCormick wanted “the most beautiful office building in the world” to be the headquarters of his influential Chicago Tribune. To this end, he started a design competition in 1923 that would fulfill his dream. In response, 260 architects from 23 countries flooded the jury with a vast range of choices.

The winning entry, by John Howells and Raymond Hood, resulted in the Gothic skyscraper that now stands on Michigan Avenue. While the building has since earned the praise of critics, in the beginning, it was scorned by no less than the godfather of Chicago architecture himself, Louis Sullivan, who said it “evolved from dying ideas.”

In fact, many preferred the second-place design of Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen over the winner. A late entry, Saarinen’s concept of a modern, minimalist tapering tower tipped the jury into a frenzy of indecision. Though it ultimately narrowly lost out to Howells and Hood, it was hailed as the herald of a new era in American architecture, one that boldly freed itself from the past. Today, buildings like Cleveland’s Key Tower and Charlotte’s Bank of America Corporate Center use elements of what might have been the Tribune Tower.^[3]

7 Sydney Opera House

If there is anything that defines Sydney, it has to be the concrete shells of the Sydney Opera House, standing like billowing sails over Sydney Harbor. Jorn Utzon’s masterpiece was chosen out of the 200-plus entries in the competition for the building’s design. But had the second-place entry been selected, Sydney might have had a landmark that was a cross between a submarine and a seashell.

The design was conceived by seven architects called the Philadelphia Collaborative Group. Like Utzon, they took inspiration from the nearby sea to create a nautilus-like spiral structure that was praised for being “robust” and “well-suited” to the seaside location. The brutalist design also featured full-height windows and a roof of folded concrete sheathed in copper. The latest techniques in concrete technology would have been used to turn the concept into reality.^[4]

6 Statue of Liberty

Had Frederic Bartholdi’s original plan carried through, the Statue of Liberty would have been a veiled Muslim woman guarding the Suez Canal rather than the Roman goddess Libertas watching over New York Harbor.

Recent research has uncovered the sculptor’s original vision for the statue, an Egyptian peasant woman (fellaha) holding a torch aloft to represent Egypt’s social and industrial progress marked by the opening of the canal. It would be 86 feet (26 meters) tall on a pedestal that was 48 feet (14.5 meters) high. “Egypt Bringing Light to Asia” would also function as a lighthouse.

Egyptian officials, still reeling from the expenses incurred by the canal, didn’t warm up to Bartholdi’s idea. The rest is history: Bartholdi exchanged the Egyptian fellaha for a European woman and sent her to New York City, where she stands to this day—”Liberty Enlightening the World.”^[5]

5 Eiffel Tower

Quick myth-busting fact: Gustav Eiffel did not design the Eiffel Tower. Rather, he headed a construction company specializing in steel structures, which employed two brilliant engineers: Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin. It was Koechlin who drew up the initial plans for the curving tower that would grace the Paris Exposition of 1889 and, together with Nouguier, presented the draft to Eiffel for approval. The company’s architect, Stephen Sauvestre, further refined the plans, adding decorative touches of his own—glass rooms, arches, and stone pedestals.

One of Sauvestre’s additions, conceived when the structure was already up and proving to be a big draw, was two smaller towers on both sides of the main structure, making a segmented triad rather than the single, sweeping tower we are familiar with. The added infrastructure was meant to facilitate the movement of visitors up, down, and around the tower in response to the long queues of people waiting to ascend.

Whether these additions would have enhanced the beauty of the Eiffel Tower or made it a steel monstrosity is an open question. What do you think?^[6]

4 Lincoln Memorial

A pyramid in Washington, D.C.? The Washington Monument was modeled after an Egyptian obelisk, so why not? Ancient Egypt would have been amply represented in the nation’s capital had John Russel Pope’s design for the proposed Lincoln Memorial been accepted in 1912. Aside from an Egyptian-style pyramid, Pope also submitted a ziggurat based on Mesopotamian antecedents

Pope, the leading American neoclassical architect, was eager to be awarded the task of designing the memorial to the 16th President. However, the Lincoln Memorial Commission was advised by the Commission of Fine Arts to choose architect Henry Bacon instead. Pope was backed by a member of the Memorial Commission, Joseph Cannon. Thus both men submitted their designs, and eventually, Bacon’s Greco-Roman edifice carried the jury.

Though Pope’s designs were consigned to the archives, they nevertheless still stir the interest and imagination of those who ponder what might have been.^[7]

3 Washington Monument

Plans to commemorate the first president began as far back as Washington’s lifetime, but it was not until 1836 that the Washington Monument Society awarded architect Robert Mills the honor of designing the memorial. Mills’s vision featured not only the now-iconic obelisk but also a colonnade and equestrian statue.

Unfortunately, construction was stopped in 1856 when anti-Catholics protested against the use of stone donated by Pope Pius IX. The unfinished monument sat idle for twenty years when Congress approved funds to resume work. But Mill’s original design was drastically pruned, eliminating the statue and the rotunda around the base altogether. Only the central obelisk remained intact.

Thus, what we see now must look bare and naked had Mills been alive to see it.^[8]

2 Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge is the quintessential symbol of London, even being mistakenly called London Bridge by some ( the real London Bridge is, in fact, upstream of it). It was Sir Horace Jones’s answer to the challenge of spanning the Thames for foot and vehicular traffic without disrupting boats navigating the river. The double-leaf drawbridge completed in 1894 has since attracted millions of visitors the world over with its unique Victorian Gothic towers.

But a simple drawbridge was not the only solution offered. One intriguing and futuristic design was submitted by F.J. Palmer. The plan called for the roadway at both ends of the bridge to loop. While one side of the loop slides open to let a passing boat through, the other side stays closed to accommodate wheeled transport. Once the boat has entered the loop, the road behind it is closed, and the one in front of the ship opens to let it out. It was all pretty complicated but allowed both road and river traffic to move uninterrupted.

No one was sure if the plan would work, though, and it was ultimately abandoned.^[9]

1 Reichstag

When Germany was unified and the Second Reich was proclaimed in 1871, a sudden flood of new lawmakers necessitated a larger building to hold the assembly. A design competition for a new Reichstag was announced in November of that year, and one of the entrants was British architect Sir Gilbert Scott. Though Scott would eventually miss out on the first prize, his submission was highly regarded by the German jury and was awarded second place.

Dominating Scott’s hybrid Gothic creation was a central dome or cupola 75 feet (23 meters) in diameter, with similar construction to the dome of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. Wings extending in four directions radiated from the dome. Obviously, Scott had a fondness for domes and insisted that the Reichstag should have one regardless of architectural style to lend it proper dignity.

Despite not winning, Scott had beaten most of the resident German architects and was justifiably proud of his achievement.^[10]