Nudity is often dismissed as superfluous or sexualized, but these nude scenes left their mark on movie history and culture as a whole.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Most Famous Adult Film Stars

Nude scenes can seem arbitrary and gratuitous, but some are markers of history that either moved cinema forward, shocked the world, or changed the culture. These are the 10 most iconic moments in movie nudity. A few caveats before the list: these films are natural nude scenes meaning they don’t include prosthetics or CGI (sorry, Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights). Here are the most important nude scenes in movie history and their impacts on culture as a whole.

WARNING: Videos in this list contain sensitive content. Images do not.

10 Hedy Lamarr in Ecstasy

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Leave it to Hedy Lamarr—one of the most fascinating people in global film history—to have a controversial nude scene in 1933. She runs naked through a field and also goes for a naked swim in this Czech film from director Gustav Machaty. The plot was liberating, too, as Hedy plays a woman whose husband is impotent. As a result, she decides to have an affair. She also had the first onscreen orgasm depicted in cinema! The film was a major success, slipping into the public before the strict Hays Code took effect. Hedy went on to become an inventor whose work in radio technology was used by Allies during World War II and is also the basis for Bluetooth technology. All of that from an actress who brazenly went nude!

9 Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High

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There is no denying the power of the teen sex comedy and its height in the 1980s. From Revenge of the Nerds to Porkys, there were countless films where teens and college students were getting naked and ogling each other all in the name of good fun. One film stands out above the rest and it’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Directed by Amy Heckerling, the movie gives a little more attention to its female characters than other movies in the genre (David Lynch was actually approached to direct, but thankfully the honor went to Amy). One of the most memorable scenes is a dream sequence in which one young man is in the bathroom dreaming about Phoebe Cates slowly emerging from a swimming pool and opening up her red bikini top to show her bare chest. Why is this important? It’s definitely one of the pornier nude scenes in movie history that managed to elevate the genre of the teen sex comedy. When people think of the genre and this movie, in particular, that scene comes to mind.

8 Eva Green, Louis Garrell, and Michael Pitt in The Dreamers

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Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers is an ode to bohemian youth in 1960s Europe as an American spends time in Paris in 1968. He meets a brother and sister duo whose parents are out of town, so the three stay at the family apartment and spend time exploring that very 60s notion of free love. Threesomes have been depicted on screen in all kinds of ways (Y Tu Mama Tambien is a great example), but The Dreamers introduced incest and political unrest. The sensuality in the movie is juxtaposed with the greater cultural strife felt in Paris in the late ’60s. It feels like the entire city—and the world—is about to explode, and in this scene, the three find their curiosities also explode as the damn bursts, and they engage in a menage a trois. The dreamers love to escape the greater political revolutions going on around them, either in the apartment without parents, at the movies, or with one another’s bodies. It’s a beautiful scene in a poetic film that shows how people actively ignore the struggles of the outside world.

7 Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan in 50 Shades of Gray

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The film 50 Shades of Gray may be easy to dismiss for its campy eroticism, but the truth is that these wildly successful books-turned-movies brought S&M and kink to mainstream Hollywood. A young woman meets a powerful man who introduces her to a world of BDSM. The indie film Secretary before it playfully explored some of these themes, but 50 Shades was such a monumental hit by comparison. BDSM in a loving relationship simply wasn’t exposed to the mainstream in such a financially successful way before this. Star Dakota Johnson has been quoted talking about her admiration of BDSM that she developed after filming the movie. There were sequels, of course, which turned kink into a franchise.

6 Kathleen Turner and William Hurt in Body Heat

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In classic film noir (such as The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, and Double Indemnity), sex was confined largely to innuendo and subtle wordplay. To some extent, that was a response to the conservative production codes of the era, but it also lent the films a kind of latent sexual tension: We couldn’t see the characters having sex, so we imagined them having sex for the whole film. But in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we got to see the sex. And in Body Heat, we got to see a lot of it, as William Hurt’s lawyer and Kathleen Turner’s alluring, married socialite found themselves having a torrid, fatal affair. Indeed, it’s hard to pick one particular sex scene among the many featured in this film, but we’ll go with the mostly clothed one in which Turner, playing vulnerable but never taking her eyes off him, strangely seduces Hurt into breaking into her own house. After 1981, whenever anyone referred to a “steamy legal thriller”—and, curiously, people often did—visions of Body Heat began to dance in everyone’s heads.

5 Chloe Sevigny and Vincent Gallo in The Brown Bunny

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There are rumors about several realistic sex scenes in film history that are unsimulated, like Gaspar Noe’s Love and 1979’s Caligula. Still, one such famous scene that’s long been believed to be real is from the 2003 Indie film The Brown Bunny. This isn’t the only “real” sex scene in movie history, but it is by far the most famous. Chloe Sevigny gives graphic oral sex to Vincent Gallo who directed this bleak film about a traveling man looking for meaning on his way to California. Chloe Sevigny has said she thought the film would barely be seen and was surprised that this art-house flick got so much attention. She says the scene didn’t hurt her career, only some of her personal relationships and that she and her mom don’t talk about the movie at all. That’s fair.

4 Janet Leigh in Psycho

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Filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe has been quoted as saying, “There were movies before the shower scene and movies after the shower scene.” While it’s not the most explicitly nude scene on this list, it essentially did away with the censorship code that ruled Hollywood for nearly thirty years. Not only that, but it made people terrified to ever take a shower again. This scene is another one that is so iconic, some people might not even know what movie it is from. It’s been widely parodied, remade, and referenced ever since its debut in 1960 to horrified crowds around the country. Director Alfred Hitchcock fooled censors by using extreme closeups and revolutionary editing techniques for a total of 78 camera shots and 52 edits. Not only was Janet Leigh in her bra and underwear having a post-coital conversation with a man she was not married to, but this shower stabbing had censors in a tizzy. The most controversial scene shot? The shot of the toilet flushing at the end of the scene. That was actually Hollywood’s first toilet scene. As for the nudity, Janet wore moleskin on her nipples to hide her most sensitive areas and a body double, Olympic swimmer Marli Renfro, stood in for her for some shots. Between the two women, the most famous shower scene in history was made.

3 Michael Fassbender in Shame

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Full frontal male nude scenes are very disproportional to female full frontal scenes. Leave it to the film Shame about a man struggling with sex addiction to boldly show Michael Fassbender’s penis as he walks in and out of frame. The NC-17 film is filled with nude scenes and sex scenes devoid of love to show what this man’s shameless addiction feels like. As shocking as the movie is as a whole, it’s most memorable for Fassbender’s penis making its way on camera. It’s rare to see this much male nudity in a movie that isn’t being used for comedic effect, which has partially become what the drama is most famous for. In some ways, that’s a “shame” because the movie is very good, but on the other hand, the world got to see Michael Fassbender nude.

2 Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game

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Jaye Davidson’s role as Dil in The Crying Game is an example of a nude scene advancing the plot. This story about a man who goes searching for a deceased soldier’s lover and ends up also falling for her. The movie takes a shocking turn when it is revealed that Dil is a transgender woman (shocking for 1992, anyway). The reveal of Jaye Davidson’s body is one of the most shocking and well-done twists in history while also showing the layers and complexities of gender and sexuality. The movie as a whole is filled with more twists and turns.

1 Sharon Stone’s Leg Cross in Basic Instinct

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It’s actually pretty rare to see a flash of a woman’s downstairs on the big screen, which is why Sharon Stone’s crotch flash was so shocking. It’s the kind of scene people know about even if they’ve never seen the movie. Sharon is effortlessly cool, wearing a white minidress with her legs crossed as she smokes a cigarette during an interrogation. She keeps her cool and her steady gaze as she very deliberately uncrosses her legs, opens them slightly, and crosses them again. She’s not wearing underwear and she lets everyone in the room see it! The scene is not only shocking and sexy, but it shows Sharon’s character as in control. She commands attention, and she knows how to use what she’s got to gain more power. This is a leg cross that will never be forgotten.

About The Author: Stephanie Weber is a pop culture writer and comedian who has been published in Slate, The AV Club, Bustle, Refinery29, Reductress, and more. She is a staff writer for Mr. Skin.

For the sake of your reading pleasure I have tried to balance the scary (jump-worthy even) with the eerie (sinister and uncomfortable). A list like this can’t be ranked so you get it in the order of my preference. Use the comments at the bottom of the list to add your own favorite moments; who knows, maybe it will end up on a sequel list!

See Also: Top 10 Must-See Recent Genre-Defying Horrors

10 Mulholland Drive—Smile, Boomer . . .

Imagine the screen directions: “smile”. So innocuous. So simple. And yet . . . in an early scene of Mulholland Drive, David Lynch shows us that two boomers smiling can be one of the most unsettling things you’ll see all day—at least until they re-appear later in the film in an equally weird (but more disturbing) scene! I never really did understand the point of this scene (can someone let me in on the secret in the comments maybe?). Anyway—David Lynch is awesome and this is a must-see movie.

9 Signs—The Birthday Party

The Sixth Sense was a great film with some amazing acting from Toni Collette. Two years later he followed it with Signs staring the indomitable Mel Gibson and the brilliant Joaquin Phoenix. The scene here is one of the most paused in movie history: and not for no good reason. Joaquin’s reaction? Yup: that’s pretty much how the entire planet reacted upon seeing this scene. On Youtube with a pause button it loses some of its creepiness, but M. Night Shyamalan did a brilliant job of placing it where he did in the movie and the effect upon first seeing it definitely ranks it as a top 10 creepy moment.

8 Sixth Sense—Under The Bed Scene

Speaking of M. Night Shyamalan, did you soil yourself when you first saw this scene from the Sixth Sense? I sure as hell did. This film really is special: it takes a real-life horror concept (münchausen-by-proxy) and puts it into a classic ghost story with a heck of a twist. The director is great but he has never quite managed to attain the same level of awesome as he did with this movie. Embedding of clips from this movie seem to be disabled universally, so if you want to check out this jump scene, here you go.

7 Zodiac—The Posters

Zodiac is a brilliant movie that anyone who loves serial killer lore needs to see. If you haven’t already, watch it today (and skip the clip above until you have). In the creepy scene, the character played by Jake Gyllenhaal thinks he is onto a lead and has a movie poster that he thinks reveals the killer’s identity. He visits a man he thinks can help him find the man who drew the poster because the writing appears to be a match for the killer. Now watch the clip: you won’t be disappointed. This scene, and the few moments thereafter in the basement are some of the most intensely uncomfortable I have experienced watching a film. In my eyes, the director (David Fincher) can do no wrong.

6 The Blair Witch Project—Guy In Corner

It turns out the people behind Blair Witch only needed a handheld camera and a hell of a good propaganda campaign in which audiences were led to believe that the film was based on real footage to get one of the scariest movies ever: involving no horror movie trickery such as bursts of sound to scare you. The final climax of the film is simply the scene above. If you haven’t seen the movie in its entirety you may not appreciate this scene, as it really needs the full length of slowly building tension to truly creep you out.

5 Silence Of The Lambs—Night Vision

If you thought the few minutes in the basement in Zodiac were awesomely creepy: you’ll love this scene! Here we see FBI agent Starling at the home of the man we know to be the killer. He lives in a veritable horror museum and clearly doesn’t bother with the services of a cleaner. The house is a mess, it is dark, and Starling is way out of her league. And then begins a game of cat and mouse in the dark and only the killer can see. . . Look out for that hand! Silence Of The Lambs it a horror movie everyone has to see.

4 Alien—Chest Burst

I suspect this is the one that almost everyone reading will have seen. This scene of the alien bursting forth from a human chest horrified audiences when it was first released. It was totally new and unexpected. I recently re-watched the entire series of movies and even after all these years I had to watch this part with my eyes closed.

3 Carrie—Last Scene

OMFG—it doesn’t matter how many times I watch this movie, that last scene still gets me. Carrie is one of the truly great horror movies—and while it has a special place in my heart because it is the first horror I ever saw, it is genuinely well made and well acted. This scene I have chosen is really the one that most stylistically reflects the type of horrors we see today. Whilst most of Carrie was about her preternatural powers, this scene gives us a dose of the supernatural. Please don’t watch the new Carrie film from a few years ago: this oldie is the one to see.

2 The Conjuring—Closet Scene

If you’ve been reading all the comments on the lists recently you will have probably seen me mention this scene. I rarely see horror movies at the cinema but on this occasion I did. I was sitting in the crowded theater which, despite being full was sitting in total silence. The film got to the clip shown above. At just the moment you would expect, the loudest and highest pitched scream issued forth from deep within me and I physically lifted from my seat. I didn’t just scare the entire place: I scared myself. Thankfully screaming like a teenaged girl in a movie is not something I do frequently—particularly given that I am over six foot tall and have a fairly deep voice! Watch the scene . . . try not to scream!

1 Hereditary—THAT Scene

SPOILER ALERT: this scene above has spoilers for a particular scene in the film. If you haven’t seen the movie, the clip will spoil a big part of it. And whether or not you have seen it, it will spoil your life. This is only included on a list of oddly creepy scenes because it is entirely unique in the history of horror movies. But it is not just unnerving—it is outright horrifying, brutal, gruesome, violent, and disturbing. Do not watch this video. You’ll regret it. The guy driving has since stated that taking part in this film has given him post traumatic stress disorder.

When people think of the most iconic food scenes set in movies, that one in Pulp Fiction where Uma Thurman drinks the $5 shake is definitely at the top, but what are the most hilarious scenes featured in comedies? The ones mentioned here range from the incident in Some Like it Hot where Jack Lemmon, dressed as a woman falls out of bed after someone stuffs ice cubes down his back, to the one in Mrs. Doubtfire where Robin Williams, also dressed as a woman, sets his shirt alight while he’s leaning over the hob. Here are 10 of the funniest movie scenes that contain food and drink.

Top 10 Disgusting Foods Westerners Eat

10 Groundhog Day

This film was released in 1993. When Bill Murray finds out he’s living the same day of his life over and over again he realizes he can do whatever he wants without having to deal with the consequences. This includes shoving a whole slice of cake into his mouth in one go. A range of biscuits, ice-cream, donuts and milkshakes can also be seen around the table where he’s sitting and Andie McDowell doesn’t look very impressed. While he sits there with a cigarette in one hand and a whole pot of coffee in the other she asks him whether he worries about cholesterol or lung cancer. He simply replies:

“ I don’t worry about anything anymore.”

At the moment it might feel like we’re all living the same day over and over again but watching this film will cheer anyone up.

9 Pretty Woman

An up-to-date version of the classic film ‘My Fair Lady’. Instead of the ‘guttersnipe’ played by Audrey Hepburn who is shown selling flowers on the street, Julia Roberts plays a prostitute hired by Richard Gere as an escort, attending a range of business and social functions. While Audrey Hepburn learns to talk correctly by singing ‘The Rain in Spain’, in Pretty Woman Julia Roberts has to be taught how to use a wide range of knives and forks properly for a dinner party.

She becomes confused because her salad doesn’t arrive at the right time and she’s forgotten which fork to use. There’s also the point where the snail she’s trying to eat flies across the room with the waiter smiling and letting her know: “Happens all the time.”

8 Bridget Jones’s Diary

In this modern comedy version of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Renée Zellweger is a 32 year old woman who starts writing a diary to reflect her social life and two men she’s interested in, played by Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. In this scene she’s making a birthday dinner for friends with Colin Firth as her assistant.

After leaving the blender open and covering herself with the contents after they fly out, she wonders what to make instead and creates some blue soup, colored by the string she has left around a leek in there. This is the first time that Colin Firth makes a joke in the film, eating it and saying “this really is the most incredible shit”, while laughing.

7 Meet the Parents

With Ben Stiller playing a young nurse named ‘Gaylord Focker’, travelling out to meet his future father-in-law for the first time, this film really shows the full potential of Robert De Niro as a comedic actor. One of the funniest moments in the film is before dinner when De Niro reads a sad poem around the table about his dead mother. To try and cheer people up, Ben Stiller comes into the room with a bottle of champagne. When the cork flies out of the bottle, it hits a large urn holding the mother’s remains. If this wasn’t bad enough, the cat then walks over, sniffs the ashes and pees on them. Ben Stiller has already told the family about his experience in milking cats and saying ‘Oh you can milk anything with nipples’. Then there’s that funny line where Robert De Niro replies: “I have nipples. Could you milk me?”

6 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

There are so many funny food moments in this film from 1971, like the part where ‘Augustus Gloop’ falls into a river of chocolate, gets pulled into a pipe and then stuck. There’s also the funny scene where the young girl ‘Violet Beauregarde’ grabs a piece of chewing gum from Willy Wonka who warns her not to eat it. After enjoying the three course dinner taste that comes off it, she then starts to balloon and her face turns blue, with Willy Wonka sighing and saying “It happens every time they all become blueberries.” Some of his other funny, memorable quotes include:

“If the good lord had intended us to walk he wouldn’t have invented roller skates.” “Hurry please. We have so much time and so little to see. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.”

The second version made in 2005 and starring Johnny Depp has some funny moments but no one can outshine Gene Wilder as the original Willy Wonka.

10 Crazy Times People Used Food As A Weapon

5 Mrs. Doubtfire

In this film, Robin Williams is hilarious, playing a divorced man who turns himself into a female nanny so he can keep seeing his children. There is a funny scene where Robin Williams is learning how to cook for himself but trying to do this while he’s dressed up as a woman. Forgetting about the fake breasts he’s put on, they’re set on fire as he leans over the hob. Two saucepan lids seem to be the best way to put the fire out. There’s also the scene where he throws his face into a cream pie to hide his identity, pretending it’s a face mask.

Reviews may have been mixed when it came out in 1993 but since then Mrs. Doubtfire has been voted by the American Film Institute as one of the top 100 comedies of all time.

4 Some Like it Hot

First released in 1959 and often named one of the greatest films of all time, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon’s characters are still hilarious, working as musicians and then dressing themselves up as women after witnessing a massacre. They both have their eyes on Marilyn Monroe and in this scene she’s having drinks with Lemmon’s female character in the sleeping berth of a train. As the other women decide to join in, food and drink is passed around, with some being put into hot water bottles. Then someone throws ice-cubes down Lemmon’s back. Accidentally pulling the emergency break the women are all thrown out of the sleeping birth and onto the floor of the train.

This film may be over 60 years old but the last line has been voted one of the best in movie history, where Lemmon admits to a man he’s seeing that he’s not really a woman. The man simply shrugs and says: “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

3 The Breakfast Club

The whole of this high school comedy from 1985 is set in one place, the school library where five students are serving out their detention. When it comes to lunchtime they’ve all got very different tastes . While Molly Ringwald takes out chopsticks to eat her sushi one of the boys says, “you won’t accept a guy’s tongue in your mouth but you’re gonna eat that?”

The school wrestler, played by Emilio Estevez, pulls out six big bags of food to eat. Everyone’s eyes then turn to the girl at the end of the room who throws the meat from her sandwich into the air where it hits a modern work of art. Then she opens the coke can before leaning over and licking the fizz off her desk.

2 Julie and Julia

Made in 2009, in this film Meryl Streep plays a chef taking lessons in Paris who is the only woman in her class. Wanting to impress the teacher and meet the same standards as the men she needs to practice quite a lot and is absolutely delighted with herself when she flips an omelette for the first time. Learning to cut onions quickly and carefully Meryl Streep is still practicing when her husband comes home one night and is not even able to come through the front door because his eyes are watering so much. Asking him if he is hungry, he quickly says “No” before storming out with his hands over his eyes.

1 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

This 1984 sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark is set in India in 1935 where Indiana Jones is asked to find a mystical stone. This disturbing but humorous banquet scene is set in a palace where he’s staying as a guest with two others. Some of the delicacies include a snake which is sliced open to reveal lots of live ones and seems popular among the guests. The soup might appear normal at first but once the steam has cleared away, the eyeballs can be seen floating on top.

Luckily for the actors, these pieces weren’t real. What were made to look like chilled monkey brains were actually made of custard with raspberry sauce. The beetles were not real but made of plastic with custard that slid out when someone bit into it.

10 Bizarre Origin Stories About Your Favorite Foods

It probably won’t come as a surprise that script writers, directors, producers and even actors take some creative liberties recreating real life scenarios in the name of art (or rather, entertainment).

On this list Tony and Jonna Mendez, former CIA agents and Chiefs of Disguise, Jack Barsky, former KGB Agent turned American Intelligence, Peter Earnest, the founding executive director of the International Spy Museum and 35 year CIA veteran and William Colby, former Director of Central Intelligence, review some popular movie scenes that are more art than accurate.

10 Nazi Spies and Their Espionage Plots In America

10 Quick change

In this scene from Mission Impossible III, unlikely hero, Ethan Hawkes, uses the quick change methodology to disguise his identity. And he does it well, seamlessly transitioning into a cassock and posing as a priest.

According to Jonna Mendez, however, disguising an agent as a religious figure, media or peace corps is off limits. These vulnerable vocations need to be protected from the scrutiny they might be subjected to if they were suspected of harboring agents.

Believe it or not, one of the movie quick changes Jonna approves of happens in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when April goes from librarian-type to naughty school girl while moving through a crowd; the bigger the crowd the more forgiving they are and the easier it is to change your appearance with small tweaks and layering.^[1]

9 Gadgets

If there’s one thing we all look forward to when a James Bond film is released it’s to see the crazy and clever gadgets Q has dreamed up in his workshop. The clip above shows the “gadget room” in the movie Kingsman and according to Dr Vince Houghton, most of them are either fictional or behind the times.

During his career as an intelligence officer, Jack Barsky mostly made use of everyday ordinary items. He recalls passing messages in film cannisters and finding a passport and money hidden in a rusty oil can.

Pens are a popular spy movie gadget and although, in real life, they aren’t necessarily used as weapons, Jonna Mendez does remember instances where a pen was used to secrete a camera and even an L-pill (lethal pill used by agents who are captured and choose to commit suicide rather than be subjected to torture). And yes, sadly, L-pills are entirely real and have been used in several instances.^[2]

8 What not to wear

When you think of the Matrix costumes, most likely you think leather and PVC. Who could forget Neo’s full-length leather jacket or Trinity’s PVC catsuit?

What do our real-life spies think of their outfits, though?

“I’ve never met a KGB officer in a leather jacket,” Jack Barsky, former KGB. “The whole point of being a spy is that you don’t want to look like one.”

To William Colby, former Director of Central Intelligence or America’s top spy, a real spy has to be ”a gray man who has a hard time catching the eye of a waiter in a restaurant.”

And Jonna Mendez agrees. When reviewing a clip from Avengers 1998 in which Uma Thurman sports yet another PVC catsuit, Jonna asks why they are so popular in movies… And then answers her own question with “because women look so good in them. At least Hollywood women do.” Most real agents, men and women, she continues, would not be caught dead in them.^[3]

7 Masks

The Mission Impossible franchise is well-known for its mind blowing masks – which, according to our experts, are a result of CGI and clever camera angles rather than latex. Because although real life masks can change a lot about a person’s face including gender and ethnicity, not even the Chief of Disguise at the CIA can guarantee animation. Masks are also additive; this means you can, for example, add bulk to a small nose, but you can’t hide a big nose with a small one.

During his tenure at the CIA, Tony Mendez made masks and disguises to allow CIA officers to slip past the watchful eyes of the KGB, meet foreign agents and collect secrets cached in dead drops without being detected by counterspies. He even helped a black CIA officer meet an Asian diplomat in a city under martial law and Soviet surveillance. He asked a Hollywood makeup artist he knew to send him some masks and transformed the case officer and the envoy into Caucasian gentlemen. They met undeterred by roadblocks and checkpoints.^[4]

6 Self-defense

When reviewing this clip from Iron Man 2, Jack Barsky remarks that although he was greatly impressed with the acting, the Black Widow’s self-defense techniques were considerably more aggressive than anything he was ever trained in. Which says a lot considering he used to work for the KGB!

Jack continues by explaining that although agents are trained in self-defense in case they find themselves in a dark alley confronted by an unsavory character who wishes to harm them (which seems likely due to the nature of the job), most agents are not as proficient in hand to hand combat as Hollywood would have you believe. Their purpose, after all, is to fly under the radar and gather intelligence rather than drawing attention to themselves by starting a fist fight.^[5]

Top 10 Famous Spies

5 Cultural customs

In this scene from Inglourious Basterds, the British soldier gives himself away by counting incorrectly on his hand. Europeans start with the thumb. Within a split second the German soldier realizes the man is European.

Jonna Mendez remarks that it is incumbent on the spy to learn not only the language but also the customs, mannerisms and procedures of the country/area within which they operate. “And sometimes,” she says, “once you’ve outed yourself there is no way out and you have to live with the consequences.”^[6]

4 Crowds

Following on from the example above, blending into the crowd is the safest way for a spy to “disappear”. But even doing little things differently to those around you can help those on the lookout spot you. During this scene from Casino Royale, the man in the crowd is called out for having his hand to his ear, touching his earpiece.

Jonna Mendez’ team at the CIA came up with a no hands/body harness-type system to prevent exactly this. She also made it her life’s work to understand how fashion influences people’s conclusion about those around them in order to help her colleagues and other agents “blend in”.

Uniforms are also often used to help agents blend in, and although the CIA doesn’t have stores of uniforms, they can arrange pretty much anything.^[7]

3 Documents

We all know this scene from Bourne Identity or any other spy movie – identity documents stored in a safe place just waiting for the right person to find and use them.

In reality, though, these kinds of documents are far too valuable to leave lying around just “in case” someone needs them. According to our experts, aliases are specifically created for specific agents and are very closely controlled by intelligence agencies. Putting together alternate identities is painstaking and meticulous.

Together with identity documents and passports, agents are also provided with pocket litter—those little pieces of paper, pictures and random stuffs we all collect in our purses or billfolds. They work hand in hand with the all-important cover story, which is also the next entry.^[8]

2 Cover story

“Spies are people too,” says Jack Barsky. To help them do their jobs, they need believable back stories. Something they can identify with and talk about spontaneously and believably, either as an individual or as a group.

Argo is the real-life story of how Tony Mendez helped to create the escape plan, the false identities and the brilliant disguises that let six Americans escape revolutionary Tehran, where they had been held hostage, in 1980.

The movie, starring Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez, won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2013 and both Tony and Jonna Mendez were heavily involved in the making of it. The cover story, a Hollywood location scouting team, had to be something that Tony and his team could easily talk about.^[9]

1 Sexpionage

The movie Red Sparrow is based upon the book of the same name by Jason Matthews, a former CIA operative, and explores the idea of the seduction methodology which is mostly associated with Germans (males called Romeos) and Russians (females called Swallows).

All of our experts agree that the art of seduction does play a role in espionage today and that it’s not that far-fetched to think the Americans use it too.

“I think sexpionage, that’s reality. I’d be surprised if there are any major intelligence services that aren’t in some way recruiting women to do dirty work,” says Jack Barsky.

But, unlike the one in the movie, it’s highly unlikely the CIA has a school of seduction.

At least, that’s what Jonna Mendez says…^[10]

10 Rogue Spies In History

When watching or re-watching a horror movie or scary series, most fans can’t wait to get to the creepy stuff, after wading through the talking and other mundane activities that push the story along. This includes Regan’s famous head spin in The Exorcist and Annie literally cutting her own head off with a piano wire in Hereditary. And who could forget Leatherface’s skin mask scene? Creepy is what horrors are about after all, and while some horror movies and series are definitely better than others, most of them have that one chill-inducing scene that hardcore fans can’t wait to watch over and over again. Spoilers ahead.

Warning: Some of these clips are not suitable for sensitive viewers.

Top 10 Creepy Scenes In Movies

10 mother! – Baby scene

First off, mother! is not a movie for everyone. Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence star in this insane film as a married couple whose lives are upended by the arrival of several uninvited guests at their home. While the house is systematically destroyed, viewers are shown a beating heart inside the wall (which seems to indicate that the house is alive). As the film progresses, there are several shocking scenes, including some kind of bloody organ inside the toilet, extreme sibling rivalry and a woman shooting people point blank.

The most unsettling scene however is the one after Lawrence’s character gives birth and her husband basically lets the newborn crowd surf through the throng of weird looters in their house. Lawrence tries her best to get her baby back but to no avail. The climax of this scene is nauseating and extremely shocking.

9 Lovecraft Country – Ghost with baby head

From one shocking baby scene to another: Lovecraft Country is not short on scares and has several terrifying scenes. This horror drama series is a continuation of the novel by the same name and does for horror what Riverdale is desperately trying to do for dark teen drama. Lovecraft Country is named after horror writer H.P. Lovecraft and breathes fresh life into old horror tropes.

There are some truly weird scenes and monsters in this series, but the one that will haunt your nightmares is the adult ghost sporting a baby’s head. This freaky-looking ghost is part of an exorcism scene and chases off some home invaders who probably will never break into a house again as long as they live after seeing it. The creator of the series, Misha Green, revealed that the inspiration for the ghost came from the infamous Tuskegee experiments.

Be warned, the end of this clip contains a very graphic and gruesome scene.

8 The Orphanage – Tomás

The Orphanage is a Spanish horror movie that centers around the inhabitants of an abandoned orphanage; both alive and dead. This film is a rare entity that builds suspense and fear without overreliance on cheap jump scares. At the end, viewers are left to wonder about what they’ve actually seen and whether the ghosts are actual ghosts or illusions. One of the spookiest scenes is also one of the simplest: it features a child in a sack-cloth mask who likes staring and locking people in rooms. See it for yourself here:

7 Channel Zero – Tooth Child

Channel Zero aired briefly on Syfy in 2016 and 2017 before being renewed for 2 more seasons. The show was finally cancelled in January 2019. This horror anthology series is based on creepypastas made extremely popular by the internet, including Candle Cove, No-End House, Slender Man, The Dream Door, and a whole lot more.

Candle Cove is one of the series’ most popular episodes and tells the story of a cursed children show that haunts a small town. Throughout the episode a chilling atmosphere reigns and the monster viewers are introduced to, is bound to hover in one’s mind for a while. The Tooth Child is unlike any other horror series monster, made completely from hundreds of teeth and has no discernible facial features other than a small gap for a mouth and two hollows for eyes. In this scene the toothy one puts a living person’s fingers in his ‘mouth’.

You will never think of the toothfairy the same way again.

6 Paranormal Activity 2 – Exploding kitchen

Toby is the main creepy thing in Paranormal Activity and is instrumental in quite a few unsettling scenes. He sets a Ouija pointer on fire while the house is empty, creeps toward characters while they are sleeping, kills a man by bending him over backwards, makes the Xbox Kinect something people will be reluctant to use after watching the movie, and even bites people.

Toby seems most active in the kitchen for some reason. It is here that a sheet, seemingly with someone underneath it, falls into a puddle on the floor as the camera pans from side to side. It is also in the kitchen, in the second movie, that all the cabinet doors suddenly fly open at the same time, scaring one of the characters half to death.

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5 The Haunting of Hill House – Horror in the dumbwaiter

In 2019, Netflix introduced one of the best horror series to grace screens in a long time. Viewers binge-watched all 10 episodes, and excitedly posted their ‘reviews’ on social media. Most were impressed and many were freaked out by the horde of ghosts, the most infamous being the Bent Neck Lady who was introduced in the first episode during a truly terrifying scene.

As the episodes progress, the ghosts become apparent as they crawl out of their hiding places, horrifying the living. One of the creepiest scenes happen in a dumbwaiter, with a messed-up looking ghost crawling towards the exit. The scene relies on atmosphere and choppy light to get the job done and the result is goosebump inducing.

4 The Conjuring 2 – The nun comes to life

In The Conjuring 2, there are a lot of hints as to the presence of the ugly nun, Valak. There are also a whole lot more jump scares than in the first movie, some successful, some hokey. Demonologist Lorraine Warren encounters a little ghost boy, a whole ghost family and of course, the aforementioned Valak in a scary sequence.

The nun’s scenes are the scariest in this particular film and freaked many moviegoers out solidly the first time they watched it. The part with Valak coming to life from the painting is very well done and still holds up against newer horror movies. Warren is wandering around when she spies a covered mirror (after running into the little ghost boy and family). Uncovering the mirror, looking over her shoulder and back at the mirror sees Valak materialize behind her. What ensues is the stuff of nightmares.

3 The Haunting of Bly Manor – Boy with no face

The follow up to Hill House is arguably less scary than its predecessor but it is the hallmark of fantastic storytelling (the accents aside). Sure, it starts off slow with just a couple of scary moments, but there are some frightening scenes including a silent man with shining glasses haunting an au pair, wheezing ghosts in period clothing and a lady in the lake that grabs whoever crosses her well-worn path.

Adorable 8-year-old Flora has a massive doll house that adds to the eeriness of the overall story, but things get truly weird after she sees a little boy playing with the doll house. One time she follows him and approaches him only to discover that he has no face. The story behind the faceless ghosts is eventually revealed but nothing is creepier than Flora ‘giving the boy a story’ and putting a new face on him. Which just so happens to be the face of a nightmarish-looking doll.

2 The Visit – Crawling grandma

Comedy horrors can have scary scenes too as proven in The Visit by M. Night Shyamalan. Two siblings go to their grandparents for a week, to meet them for the first time and spend some time with them. Once there, things get weird when their grandparents start acting strange. There is gross projectile vomiting, requests for one of the siblings to climb into an oven and a dirty diaper smeared over the face of the other sibling.

Things are kicked up a notch in the scary department when it is revealed that the two old people are not the siblings’ true grandparents but insane imposters. Comedy flies out the window for a few moments when the old woman follows her ‘grandchildren’ around in a cramped crawl space beneath the house. The scene features her gallop-crawling towards them and makes for some anxiety-inducing viewing.

1 American Horror Story – School shooting

One of the best words to describe the American Horror Story series is ‘bonkers.’ The various seasons have given us a whole new meaning of the words “white wedding”, corpses turned into life-sized toys, a lizard girl, Mr Guinea Pig, exorcisms, and the controversial Addiction Demon.

Even more controversial than this demon, however, was the ‘Piggy Piggy’ episode that aired during season 1 in 2011. The inspiration for the episode is believed to have been taken from the real-life tragedy at Columbine and came a mere year before the Sandy Hook massacre. Controversy aside, some fans agree that the depiction of the school shooting in the episode is one of the truest depictions on TV. It also features a plot twist, in that the gunman is a character well known by fans.

15 students lose their lives in one of the most chilling scenes on TV.

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We’ve all been there. Sitting in a dark cinema, chomping down on popcorn, holding our breath, waiting to see who the giant shark is going to attack next…

Da dum, da dum, da dum …

But how realistic are these portrayals of shark attacks really? How much of what we see is fact and how much is fiction? On this list are 10 movies with shark attack scenes reviewed by shark scientists:

Melissa Cristina Marquez – marine biologist, shark scientist, science communicator, tv presenter and author. She received her BS in Marine Ecology and Conservation from New College of Florida, where her senior thesis focused on Sex Specific Differences in Habitat use and Migratory behavior shown in great white sharks in South Africa. She then went on to receive her MA in Marine Biology and PHD in Environment and Agriculture.

Apryl Boyle – speaker and educator on shark advocacy and marine/environmental sciences. As a trusted marine and shark researcher, she is regularly called upon to give press interviews. With Masters in Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Pharmacology and Biochemistry, she is one smart lady!

10 Facts That Will Change How You View Sharks

10 Jaws (1975)

“I looooove the iconic Jaws music. The build-up of the music amazing. You’re just sitting there waiting, when’s it going to happen, when’s it going to happen …. Aaaawww, there’s the big boy!” enthuses Marquez.

The first thing she points out in the shark attack scene above is Bruce’s perfect counter camouflage, referring to the coloring of Great White sharks: darker on top and lighter on the bottom. Looking at a shark from above, the darker color blends in with the dark water, while looking at the shark from below looks like sunlight trickling down. This camouflage is perfect for the shark’s stealth approach when it comes to hunting.

While sharks sometimes do ram cages, especially if the bait is pulled too close to the cage, Marquez insists they hardly do it intentionally. Sharks cannot swim backwards so once they are in motion and confronted by a cage, they often don’t have any other option. While she is not all that impressed by the animatronics used to create Bruce, Marquez does agree that the cage is spot on. Even now in 2020, the structure of these cages has not changed much.

Interestingly, Peter Benchley apparently regrets writing Jaws and spent many years working in shark conservation to right the wrong.

9 Baywatch (1989)

“They definitely had a lot of fun filming this! The entire thing is a homage to Jaws,” comments Boyle.
“I can’t imagine a life guard getting into the water when the boat is right there and can get to them so much faster,” she continues.

First responders are trained not to endanger themselves in the process of saving someone else. It’s hard to imagine any situation where the life guard would jump into the water and try to drag someone away from a shark, rather than getting into the boat and safely steering away from it.
“This movie is a giant love letter to Jaws. Over-the-top absurd, probably a really fun shoot to do,” she concludes.

8 Deep Blue Sea (1999)

“If anything is going to be unrealistic about this movie, it’s going to be the scientific results coming out that quickly,” says Marquez.

But while they may not be as fancy, high-tech and under water as depicted in the movie, there are quite a few shark labs around the world. They are mostly used for medical research (blood, hemoglobin and skin tissues are harvested to study the shark’s immune system for example) and bio inspiration (using what scientists find in nature in other parts of life such as wet suits and plane wings). But as this list is about shark attacks, let’s get back to the blood and guts.

In the clip above, one of the scientists loses his arm when the shark jumps up at him from within the tank. Although appreciative of the realistic-looking shark prop used to film the movie, Marquez points out the that the shark would need a lot more space to propel itself out of the water like that. In such a tight enclosure, it’s very unlikely that it would be able to build up enough thrust.

7 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003)

“You probably have a better chance of contracting an infection than you have of attracting a shark,” remarks Marquez, referring to Lara cutting herself in order to lure a shark with the scent of her blood in the water.

Also, sharks don’t make noises. Except for Dog Sharks that make a barking sound when taken out of the water. “That sounded more cat-like than shark-like,” Marquez laughs.

Punching the shark could actually be a great way to deter them, but if you’ve ever tried punching something or someone under water, you will know from experience that being under water causes some drag. It probably also isn’t that wise to punch it on the nose either. It just increases your chances of ending up with your arm down its throat. Should you ever need to punch a shark, Marquez suggests aiming for an eye, or even better, the gills. Much like sucker punching someone in the lungs, this will take the shark’s breath away and encourage it to leave you alone.

“Just as well she’s wearing gloves,” Marquez wraps up. Sharkskin is very similar to sand paper and rubbing up against it would definitely leave Lara suffering from shark burn.

6 Finding Nemo (2003)

“Fish are friends, not food… I can’t tell you how many kids have said that to me,” says Boyle.

By showing a slightly softer, more “humanized” version of sharks, Boyle believes that Finding Nemo has given many kids a less scary introduction to these predators. She feels that this has gone a long way toward encouraging modern day conservational efforts.

And sharks do indeed have fish friends. Specifically, Pilot and Remora fish have very symbiotic relationships with sharks. But as far as the trickle of blood sending Bruce (another nod to Jaws, perhaps?) into a feeding frenzy, Boyle once again points out that this simply is not realistic. While it’s true that sharks can indeed pick up a few drops of blood in an Olympic-size swimming pool, most sharks are picky eaters. “Imagine how easy my research would be if this were true!” she concludes.

Top 10 Incredible Sharks

5 Open Water (2003)

“I am literally getting chills.”

According to Boyle, Open Water is the scariest shark movie out there. It is based on the true story of two divers getting left behind on a dive and speculates on what they must have gone through as they were never found. “Being left behind is literally the worst thing that could happen to any diver. That is the most frightening part of this movie,” Boyle says.

The second scariest, she continues, is the fact that the little shark bite is actually very realistic and highly feasible. Boyle herself has witnessed sharks taking a nibble of something and, realizing that it’s not their food, swimming away.

“This is totally realistic and very, very frightening.”

4 Couples Retreat (2009)

“Why are people always surprised that there are sharks in the ocean? … You’re throwing dead animals into the ocean. What did you think was going to happen?” muses Marquez.

Chumming, the use of fish blood and guts to attract sharks, is often employed by scientists in order to study these mysterious creatures. It should never be used for recreational purposes though, because, guess what, you’re probably going to get bitten by a shark.

While Marquez questions Marcel’s identification of the sharks as Lemon Sharks, she does agree with his advice. Keep calm. Don’t panic. Slowly swim away from the chum.

3 The Shallows (2016)

“The shark depicted in this movie is supposed to be a Great White shark. They are very picky eaters. I have witnessed myself some of them taking a bite of something and spitting it out,” remarks Boyle. “And so, the notion that it would fight so hard for a morsel that is not their usual calorie-dense food, is rather far-fetched.”

For sharks in the wild, survival is all about eating calorie-dense food such as seals and sea lions. These animals, unlike humans, have blubber that is far more calorie-dense than human fat. The energy expended in this scene by the shark jumping out of the water, out on the rocks and hurting itself, is just not worth the pay-off it would get from eating poor, slender Blake.

2 The Meg (2018)

“Megalodon is a very, very, very extinct shark …” laughs Marquez.

This giant shark that a lot of people have likened to a Great White, has not been in our oceans for many years. Understandably, though, there is still a giant fascination with this creature. “I promise you though, there is no shark big enough to get such a massive anchor stuck to itself and pull such a big boat with that many people,” Marquez says.

Referring to the utter chaos and panic that ensues in the beach attack scene above, Marquez shares some safety tips should you ever find yourself in shark-infested waters:

1. Always swim with a buddy who can help keep an eye out for sharks.
2. Also make sure you don’t draw more attention to yourself by splashing in the water like a wounded animal.
3. And remember, it’s not the shark you see that’s the problem. It’s the one you don’t see!

The biggest shark recorded in modern history is the whale shark. They tend to grow to a length of about 40 feet, or 12 meters. But even these bad boys are unlikely to approach that many people. Most shark species are quite shy and tend to conserve their energy for prey with more blubber.

1 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)

“While there are some freshwater shark species, they definitely don’t look like this,” says Marquez, referring to the cut and paste, Frankenstein-zombie-looking creature in the clip above. It doesn’t look like any shark species she knows. It also seems to be blind which she has not encountered often. At least it has 5 gill slits which, according to Marquez, is anatomically correct.

Even though it may seem unrealistic that there would be so many sharks in a cave, who knows? A couple of years ago a shark was discovered in an erupted volcano so it could be possible. In the movie the sharks are shown circling the trapped divers in the cave, just like sharks in real life would do. They do this to check out potential prey, sizing it up and deciding whether it’s a meal or not. But as these sharks are blind, what the heck are they doing?

Top 10 Fascinating Facts And Stories About Sharks

Quentin Tarantino started getting serious about writing and directing screenplays in his mid-twenties. At the time, he was working at a video rental store in Manhattan Beach, California, cutting his teeth on an amateur production called My Best Friend’s Birthday. The project was made on a shoe-string budget, using a basic 16mm camera and a cast of rookies from his acting classes.

Since that time, Tarantino has gone from strength to strength. His filmography adds its own blood-soaked spin to a number of tried and tested genres, from the Spaghetti Western-inspired Django Unchained to the Samurai swordsmanship of Kill Bill. Today, each of Tarantino’s films nets hundreds of millions at the box office and the director has become a cultural phenomenon in his own right.

Seeing as Tarantino has previously talked about retiring after his tenth film, threatening instead to focus on writing novels and theater productions, now is perhaps a good time to explore the film legend’s impressive body of work.

Spoiler and gore warning: The entries listed contain spoilers and material of a graphic nature.

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10 Reservoir Dogs Prompted Walkouts

In 2017, Tarantino reunited with the cast of Reservoir Dogs to celebrate the movie’s 25th anniversary. There, he spoke of the controversy surrounding the infamous torture scene, where Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) hacks off a police officer’s ear lobe and douses him in gasoline. While showcasing his work at various film fests, Tarantino would count the number of people who walked out during the torture scene. “33 was the largest,” said the director.

Apparently, the scene was even too much for the legendary horror filmmaker Wes Craven, who walked out of a screening at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain. “The f—king guy who did The Last House on the Left walked out?! My movie was too tough for him,” explained Tarantino. At the time, Tarantino told a young Steve Buscemi, who played Mr. Pink, that the walkouts were a metric of success.^[1]

9 Django Unchained Battered DiCaprio

Django Unchained sees Leonardo DiCaprio assume the role of Calvin Candie, a sadistic plantation owner with a penchant for violence. While conducting a business deal with Django, the ruthless slaver goes on a rant about phrenology, the pseudoscientific notion that the contours of a person’s skull are indicative of their cognitive ability. During a rather intense monologue, DiCaprio slams his hand against a dinner table, accidentally striking a cordial glass. The glass smashes to pieces and lacerates the actor’s hand.

“He kept going,” explained one of the film’s producers, Stacey Sher. “He was in such a zone. It was very intense. He required stitches.” After the clapperboard sounded, the entire crew gave DiCaprio a standing ovation.

But that wasn’t the only time DiCaprio was injured on set. During the film’s closing act, his character threatens to kill one of the slaves with a hammer. This scene did not go according to plan during rehearsal, however. While DiCaprio was flailing his limbs, the weapon broke and hit him over the head. The hammer was eventually replaced with a foam replica for the final shoot.^[2]

8 A Lot of Thought Went into Kill Bill’s Blood

The penultimate fight sequence in Kill Bill: Volume 1 ranks as one of the bloodiest spectacles in movie history. In avenging the death of her unborn child, Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo (Uma Thurman) ends up mowing down dozens of yakuza members with a Samurai sword. As Kiddo dismembers her way through the Crazy 88 gang, geysers of blood fire in every direction. It turns out that the crew used some pretty old school methods to get the desired effect. “You can’t pour this raspberry pancake syrup on a sword and have it look good. You have to have this special kind of blood that you only see in Samurai movies,” Tarantino explained.

The team initially attempted to use a hydraulic system to simulate blood spurting from an impaled gang member. Time and time again, the technique failed. Just as Tarantino’s rage was beginning to bubble over, he drew inspiration from an old mentor. The crew fashioned squibs from Chinese condoms, filling them with fake blood and bursting them at the right moment. Tarantino claims he picked up the trick from Chang Cheh, who famously used the technique while filming his kung-fu masterpiece Vengeance. “I felt like Chang Cheh talked to me. He came to me and said ‘Hang in there Quentin! It’s going to work out. It’s bound to explode the right way once.’”

All in all, around 100 gallons of blood was used for the fight. The scene worried executives at the Motion Picture Association, who told the studio to tone down the gore for the US version of the film. Tarantino compromised, making some of the scenes black and white and removing others.^[3]

7 The Inglourious Basterds Choking Scene

Inglourious Basterds follows the antics of a group of Nazi-scalping spies in 1940s France. The Basterds are tasked with assassinating Adolf Hitler as he watches a propaganda film at a cinema in occupied Paris. But an eagle-eyed SS officer quickly deduces the identity of one of the moles, a German actress-turned-spy named Bridget von Hammersmark. The Nazi, played by Christoph Waltz, ends up strangling Hammersmark in one of the cinema’s offices, a scene that involved actual strangulation.

Tarantino approached the actress who played Hammersmark, Diane Kruger, and said “[L]ook, I’ve got to strangle you.” The filmmaker wanted to perform the act, under the supervision of a stuntman, to make certain the scene was convincing to the audience. “If it’s just a guy with his hands on your neck, not putting any kind of pressure and you’re just doing this wiggling death rattle… you’re not going to get the blood vessels bulging, or the eyes filling it with tears, and you’re not going to get the sense of panic that happens when your air is cut off.”

A similar decision was made while shooting Kill Bill: Volume 1. On this occasion, it was actually Uma Thurman’s suggestion to have someone choke her in real life. Tarantino ended up performing the unpleasant act, ensuring close-ups of the shot looked suitably horrific.^[4]

6 Danny DeVito Saved Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction’s unusual narrative structure and graphic nature meant few distributors were willing to take a risk on the project, leaving the film with severe financing issues. At the time, Hollywood executives were getting flak from the White House over the violence portrayed in their movies. The former head of TriStar, Mike Medavoy, described his initial reaction to seeing the script: “[T]hey shoot someone in the back of the car and there are pieces of his brain splattered all over. The director and I had a discussion, and I said, ‘That is really over the top, and you’re going to get blowback.’” TriStar pulled financing for the film, and Tarantino was left with few options.

Fortunately, Danny DeVito came to the rescue. DeVito was heading up a production company called Jersey Films. As Pulp Fiction’s executive producer, he pushed hard for the film’s success and managed to secure funding from Miramax. The now disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein personally looked over the script and gave it the green light.

In an unusual turn of events, Disney played a small role in Pulp Fiction’s success. In 1993, Disney purchased Miramax for $60 million. While Miramax maintained autonomy over all of its projects, Weinstein felt it necessary to get Disney on board. “[The studio chairman] read it and said, ‘Easy on the heroin scene, if you can, but that is one of the best scripts I have ever read,’” he explained.^[5]

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5 Once Upon a Time Was Cancelled in China

The release of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was cancelled in China in 2019, mere weeks before it was due to hit the silver screen. While no official explanation was given, the decision came shortly after Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon, filed a complaint about the film with China’s National Film Association.

Tarantino’s ninth installment features a parody scene where Bruce Lee meets a stunt double named Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). While on the set of The Green Hornet, the famed martial artist tells his crewmates that he could beat Muhammad Ali in a fight. “You’re a little man, with a big mouth and a big chip,” responds Booth. A sparring match ensues, during which Bruce Lee is flung into the side of a vintage car.

Shannon was unimpressed with Tarantino’s portrayal of her late father, describing the character as an “arrogant asshole who was full of hot air.” Tarantino defended the scene at a press conference in Moscow, describing Lee as “kind of an arrogant guy.” He continued: “I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that, to that effect.”

The Chinese government allegedly instructed the studio to remove the scene entirely, along with changes to some of the film’s more violent depictions. Tarantino, with the backing of Sony Pictures, stood his ground and refused to censor the film.^[6]

4 Sean Penn Inspired Death Proof

Death Proof is a bit of a departure from your standard Tarantino film. The 2007 exploitation flick takes inspiration from the gnarly B-movie titles that were standard fare across the American grindhouses of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The writer and director even went so far as to physically scratch the original footage to achieve the same low-grade image typical of the genre.

The idea for Death Proof came shortly after the release of Pulp Fiction. One night, while knocking back a few drinks in a bar with actor Sean Penn, Tarantino was musing over what type of car he wanted to buy. In Pulp Fiction, Butch (Bruce Willis) crashes his car at an intersection. Hoping to avoid the same grisly fate, Tarantino vowed to pick up a Volvo, admiring the car maker’s track record in safety. But Sean Penn had another suggestion: “[H]e said ’Well, you could take any car and give it to a stunt team, and for $10,000 or $15,000, they can death-proof it for you.’ Well, that phrase ‘death proof’ kinda stuck in my head.”^[7]

3 Kill Bill: Volume 2 Cut Entire Fight Sequences

It’s fair to say that Kill Bill: Volume 2 was fairly subdued compared to its predecessor. The original script was a lot more action-packed, featuring extra fight scenes between Bill and various other characters. One sequence was supposed to show Beatrix clashing with Bill on a moonlit beach, her wedding dress flowing in the breeze. Another pits Bill against a disgruntled Samurai warrior, played by Michael Jai White, who accuses the kung fu legend of killing his master. While the scene was cut to improve the film’s overall pacing, it eventually re-emerged as a DVD bonus feature.

An entire chapter, Yuki’s Revenge, is also missing. In Volume 1, Beatrix defeats a sociopathic school girl called Gogo Yubari, impaling her with a nail-studded chair leg. Gogo’s sister, Yuki, was supposed to hunt down her sibling’s killer in the sequel. Yuki would confront Beatrix at a motel in Los Angeles, destroying her notorious Pussy Wagon with a blast of gunfire. The drug-addled youngster proceeds to chase her nemesis through a residential area, lobbing grenades as she goes. She ultimately fails to outsmart the Bride, however, and dies in a hail of bullets.^[8]

2 Jackie Brown is Set in a Different Tarantino Universe

Most of Tarantino’s films are set in one universe, the Realer than Real Universe. From Reservoir Dogs through to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, these films are all interconnected in some way. That’s why props from one film are often seen in another. Many of the characters are even related. For example, Pulp Fiction’s Vincent Vega is the brother of Reservoir Dogs’ Victor Vega (Mr. Blonde). This universe is supposed to be a hyper-exaggerated version of our own, often involving fictional characters that interact with figures from real historical events (think Lieutenant Aldo Raine and his men assassinating Adolf Hitler in Inglourious Basterds).

Then there is the Movie Movie Universe, which includes Kill Bill, Natural Born Killers, and From Dusk Till Dawn. These movies are what the characters from the Realer than Real Universe would watch if they went to the cinema – a sort of universe within a universe.

A third and final universe also exists, called the Elmore Leonard Universe. Only one of Tarantino’s films has the distinction of appearing in this universe: Jackie Brown. The reason is simple. Jackie Brown is the only film based on the source material of another artist, the American novelist Elmore Leonard. Leonard’s 1992 crime novel Rum Punch tells the story of an airline stewardess who gets caught smuggling drug money. Tarantino simply adapted the work, altering the names of some of the characters and changing the story’s setting.^[9]

1 Hateful Eight’s Panavision Roadshow Cost Millions

Tarantino shot the Hateful Eight using 65mm Panavision film cameras that were outfitted with special anamorphic lenses. This produced an extreme widescreen format, perfect for capturing the sweeping vistas of the San Juan mountain range in southwest Colorado. Such an ambitious undertaking involved a lot of blood, sweat, and money. The old Panavision cameras, many of which were used by filmmakers during the 1950s, were rebuilt and modified. The film magazines were also altered to accommodate Tarantino’s lengthy shoots, replacing the standard 1,000-foot magazines with special 2,000-foot versions. And then there was the matter of the screening equipment.

The studio tasked Boston Light & Sound (BL&S) with fitting 100 theaters with the equipment needed for a roadshow of ultrawide screenings. The company hunted down vintage projectors from dealers, trained projection workers on how to use the old film format, and readied the theaters for a week-long run of Panavision screenings. Many venues even switched out their screens. The Music Box Theater in Chicago added a whopping 40-foot screen for the event.

All in all, the studio spent $11 million bringing Ultra Panavision back to the silver screen. Only ten films had used the format prior to The Hateful Eight. Thankfully, a number of new releases have since benefited from Tarantino’s experiment. Warner Brothers, for example, bought many of the studio’s projectors for the Panavision screening of its World War I epic Dunkirk.^[10]

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Stanley Kubrick remains one of the greatest directors of all time. Kubrick, an uncompromising perfectionist, would often make the cast and crew endure hours of reshoots. The filmmaker once made the legendary actor Adolphe Menjou perform 17 different takes of a single scene. Manjou exploded in a fit of rage, insulting Kubrick’s parentage and directorial abilities. Once the diatribe was over, Kubrick calmly responded, “All right, let’s try the scene once more.”

Kubrick shied away from the limelight. Despising Hollywood culture, he retreated to the English countryside in 1978. Despite this, American studios continued funding his ambitious projects. Critics lauded the New Yorker’s films not only for their technical accomplishment and choreography but also their unflinching vision. From his comedic take on thermonuclear war to a tale about a spaceship computer that tries to kill its human crewmates, Kubrick’s films were as varied as they were sinister. He particularly enjoyed exploring the darker side of humanity, something that stemmed from his misanthropic outlook on the world.

What went on behind the camera was often just as interesting as the films themselves. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at just 10 behind-the-scenes facts about the late director’s impressive filmography.

10 Crazy Things Stanley Kubrick Did To Film ‘The Shining’

10 The Scene that Scratched a Cornea

A Clockwork Orange follows the depraved antics of Alex DeLarge and his gang of “droogs.” Alex is eventually detained and, at the behest of the Ministry of the Interior, undergoes rehabilitation. During one of the film’s most iconic scenes, the delinquent is strapped to a chair with his eyes pinned open. A psychiatrist then performs the Ludovico Technique, a fictional practice in which the subject is forced to view ultra-violent imagery until they become physically repulsed.

Kubrick pressured Malcolm McDowell, the actor who played Alex, to have eyelid clamps fitted for the scene. Although McDowell protested, Kubrick eventually got his way. An eye doctor was ushered into the studio to anesthetize the actor’s eyes and apply the clamps. But the metal hooks would slip from McDowell’s eyelids and scratch his corneas. The Brit only knew the true extend of the damage after the anesthetic wore off. “I was in so much pain I was banging my head against a wall,” he explained.

McDowell asked Kubrick for 2.5 percent of the film’s box office revenue. Kubrick allegedly told the star that Warner Brothers had denied the request. Only later did he discover the truth: “[W]hen I was invited to meet the studio heads, they said: ‘You’re going to be a very rich young man on the 2.5% we gave Stanley for you.’ I knew he would never pay me.”

9 The Shining Disturbed Shelley Duvall

Kubrick is notorious for pushing actors to their breaking point, demanding dozens of reshoots to capture the perfect moment. One scene in The Shining, in which young Danny learns of his ability to communicate telepathically, entered the Guinness World Records for the highest number of retakes for a scene with dialogue. It received a staggering 148 reshoots.

It is fair to say that Shelley Duvall fared worse, though. Duvall played Wendy Torrence, a beleaguered housewife who gets chased around the Overlook Hotel by her own mentally disturbed husband. During one scene, Wendy attempts to fend off her partner with a baseball bat. She cries hysterically, swinging the bat towards his maniacal face. The emotion portrayed in this scene was very real, stemming from Kubrick’s insistence on performing reshoot after reshoot. According to cameraman Garrett Brown, the scene needed around 35 to 45 different takes.

During this time, Kubrick kept the up-and-coming actress isolated. He instructed crew members to ignore Duvall and avoid praising her performances. Years later, the actress said her time working with Kubrick was like being in hell. “[I]f he hadn’t done everything with force and cruelty, then I guess it wouldn’t have turned out to be as it was,” she added.

In a recent interview with Dr. Phil, Duvall explained that she was struggling with mental health problems. The 71-year-old went on to speak about her belief in shapeshifters, alien implants, and the Bermuda Triangle. Kubrick’s daughter condemned the interview, claiming it was a piece of exploitative and lurid entertainment.

8 A Space Odyssey’s $750,000 Rotating Set

To this day, 2001: A Space Odyssey remains a technical masterpiece. The film, released all the way back in 1968, was produced without the aid of expensive computer graphics. This meant that Kubrick needed to assemble a crew that could pull off something that had never been attempted in the history of cinema. For the story, Kubrick collaborated with famed sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke. The pair worked together to write an entire novel (also called 2001: A Space Odyssey). As the book started to take shape, Kubrick began adapting the material into a movie.

Clarke convinced Kubrick to take advice from a number of major aerospace contractors and spacecraft experts. He also worked with the likes of IBM, Pan Am, and General Motors to design various technologies of the future. For example, the film showcased a mock videophone made by Bell System (now AT&T). NASA lent a hand, too, providing the crew with mountains of hardware and technical documents.

A Space Odyssey is largely set on the Discovery One space station. The Discovery’s crew deck is shown in a state of constant spin, meaning the resultant centrifugal force keeps its inhabitants grounded. Throughout the film, Kubrick makes it seem as though the characters can run along the walls of the spherical structure. To simulate this disorientating effect, the studio brought in Vickers-Armstrong Engineering. The aerospace company spent $750,000 making a giant 38-foot wheel. Chairs, computer consoles, and stasis pods were all bolted down along the inside of the wheel. The actors would then walk in time with wheel’s rotation, making it look as if they are walking around the walls and ceiling of a circular deck. In reality, the entire set was spinning around the actors.

7 Kubrick Toyed with Tom Cruise on Eyes Wide Shut

Eyes Wide Shut tells the story of Bill (Tom Cruise) and Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman), a New York couple whose marriage hits crisis point. Bill becomes a paranoid wreck after Alice tells him that she had once considered leaving him for another man. Cruise and Kidman, who were married at the time, soon became the subject of Kubrick’s psychoanalysis. He probed the couple for sensitive information about their relationship, promising to keep the information secret. “Tom would hear things that he didn’t want to hear… It was honest, and brutally honest at times,” explained Kidman.

Kubrick filmed a dream sequence in which Kidman’s character has sex with a naval officer. This scene, clocking in at just one minute of screen time, took six entire days to film. Cruise was banned from the set while Kidman filmed the scene in dozens of erotic positions. She was then told to avoid speaking to Cruise about the shoot, so as not to allay the star’s fears.

Eyes Wide Shut made it into the Guinness World Records for being the longest continuous film shoot, taking 400 days to complete. This comes as no surprise, given that Kubrick made Cruise perform over 90 different takes of him walking through a door.

6 Dr. Strangelove Had an Element of Truth

Dr. Strangelove kicks off with an unhinged general, Jack D. Ripper, who gives the green light for a nuclear attack against Soviet Russia. Ripper babbles on about a communist plot to contaminate the American water supply with fluoride, leading to the defilement of America’s “precious bodily fluids.” The U.S. President, played by Peter Sellers, spends much of his time in the Pentagon trying to undo the actions of his rogue general.

The film opens with the following curious message: “It is the stated position of the U.S. Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurence of such events as depicted in this film.” Apparently, someone consulting on the film knew something the audience did not.

In the 1950s, President Eisenhower came up with contingency plans in the event of the Soviets launching a nuclear attack against the United States. The president fretted that a retaliatory strike would prove impossible if, hypothetically, he became either unreachable or incapacitated. So the administration came up with a failsafe. Certain high-ranking officers could launch nuclear weapons, but only if “the urgency of time and circumstances clearly does not permit a specific decision by the President, or other person empowered to act in his stead.”

Eisenhower’s successor, JFK, was surprised to learn of this directive. At the time, nuclear weapons were scattered all over Europe. The devices, few of which had any locks on them, were often under the supervision of non-American military officers. While the NATO-controlled warheads were quickly secured, the U.S. Department of Defense resisted adding security locks to their nukes. Communists, it was said, could sabotage the locks and prevent retaliation.

While writing Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick sought the expertise of the British R.A.F. pilot Peter George. Much of the airman’s novel, Red Alert, was adapted for the film. The book proved so incisive that it was read by the Secretary of Defense and officials at the DoD and Pentagon. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that coded locks were added to America’s nuclear arsenal. It is widely reported that, for 20 years, the code to these locks was “00000000” – a claim the U.S. Air Force strongly denies.

Top 10 Kubrick Stares

5 The IRA Disrupted Barry Lyndon’s Film Shoot

In 1971, Stanley Kubrick started work on the 18th century period drama Barry Lyndon. At the beginning of the film, the main protagonist, an Irishman named Barry, joins the British Army. Much of Barry Lyndon was filmed in Ireland and, as you would expect, featured British Redcoats. This did not sit well with one Irish paramilitary group.

Kubrick started filming on location in 1973. At the time, Ireland was going through considerable turmoil. A bitter feud had broken out between those who believed Northern Ireland should remain a part of the UK and those who wanted an independent Ireland. The British Army was brought in to maintain the peace. But the Irish Republican Army (IRA) saw this as an act of provocation and launched repeated attacks against British targets.

As depicted in Barry Lyndon, 18th century Ireland was largely under British control. Given this fact, along with the movie’s heavy emphasis on the British Army, the Kubrick family quickly found itself on the IRA’s hit list. In January 1974, one of the crew members received a phone call from the British security services. An agent warned them that the IRA had given Kubrick an ultimatum: get out of Ireland in 24 hours or face the consequences. He was gone in 12.

Ryan O’Neal, the actor who played Barry Lyndon, found the director hiding in his dressing room. “I went in and [Kubrick] said ‘Get down!’ because there was a window,” O’Neal explained. “I said, ‘What, they’re going to shoot me?! I’m not even English!’ He said, ‘Get down, get down!’ So he took things very seriously, and that was the end of Ireland for us.”

4 Full Metal Jacket was Literally Toxic

At the closing of Full Metal Jacket, a firefight breaks out between a platoon of U.S. marines and the Viet Cong. The action, which takes place in the city of Hue, Vietnam, was actually shot at an abandoned gasworks in Britain. Kubrick demolished parts of the complex for the shoot, peppering palm trees and billboard advertisements across the ruinous landscape. What many of the team did not know, however, was that the area around Beckton Gas Works was full of toxic asbestos.

Matthew Modine, who played Private “Joker” Davis, recently spoke about the experience: “We’d be having a cup of tea in the morning and a pastry, and the truck would go by, you know, one of the film trucks, and all the dust would fall in… You just drank the tea and ate the pastry, and didn’t think too much about the dust. There was asbestos everywhere from the buildings that were knocked down.”

Actor Adam Baldwin (“Animal Mother”) echoed his co-star’s concerns, claiming Kubrick made them crawl around in asbestos and coal. According to Baldwin, Kubrick was more concerned with the way the film looked than the health of the cast.

3 Spartacus’ Homoerotic Scene was Deleted

The first cut of Spartacus originally included a sexually charged moment between the Roman senator Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and his slave, Antoninus (Tony Curtis). Throughout the scene, which takes place in a Roman bathhouse, Crassus insinuates that he expects his manservant to please him sexually. “Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?” he asks. “It is all a matter of taste. And taste is not the same as appetite and, therefore, not a question of morals, is it?” He continues: “My tastes include both snails and oysters.”

The scene did not go down well with the National Legion of Decency. Formed in 1933, the now-defunct organization once collaborated with Hollywood to censor motion pictures which the Catholic Church deemed immoral. The studio suggested changing the line from “snails and oysters” to “truffles and artichokes.” The film’s executive producer, Kirk Douglas, refused the change, prompting Universal to cut the scene entirely.

It wasn’t until 1991 – long after the Legion’s demise – that the scene was finally restored. Dozens of editors spent hours looking through Universal’s archives in search of missing footage. There, among the 2,000 canisters, was the deleted bathhouse scene. As the clip was missing all of its audio, Universal asked Tony Curtis to redo his lines in a recording booth. But another problem remained: Olivier had been dead for several years. As luck would have it, Anthony Hopkins does a mean Olivier impression, so studio execs used the Welshman instead.

2 The Actor Who Staged His Own Kidnapping

The Paths of Glory was Kubrick’s fourth feature film. The World War I flick focuses on trench warfare between the French and German armies. A French general, hoping to secure a promotion from the top brass, commands his men to secure a German stronghold called Anthill. The troops refuse what is clearly a suicide mission. In retaliation, the general decides to court martial three of his men on charges of cowardice.

One of those court-martialed was Private Maurice Ferol, played by the American film and TV star Timothy Carey. According to the film’s producer, James B. Harris, Carey was difficult to control. He was also resentful of his more successful co-star, Kirk Douglas – a fact that Kubrick would often use to his advantage while filming.

In an interview in 2015, the producer said the actor even staged his own kidnapping: “Well, I got a call at six in the morning from the Munich police, saying Tim had been found abandoned on the highway, bound hand and foot, claiming he’d been kidnapped.” The cops initially assumed the studio was behind the stunt. They took Carey to the studio and drafted up a statement for him to sign. “[H]e wouldn’t sign the paper, so I fired him right there,” Harris explained.

1 The Shining’s Alternate Ending

Before The Shining’s release in 1980, the studio decided to conduct a preview screening. Attendees were not impressed with the film’s final moments, arguing it was too confusing. And so, at the request of Warner Bros, Kubrick scaled back the finale.

In what has now become an iconic piece of cinema, Jack Torrence freezes to death in the Overlook Hotel’s labyrinthine hedge maze. But Kubrick’s original cut went on to reveal the fate of Jack’s family, wife Wendy and son Danny. Cutting to a hospital reception area, we watch as the Overlook’s manager, Stuart Ullman, walks into frame with a bunch of flowers. Danny is happily playing Snakes and Ladders with one of the nurses. Ullman then talks to Wendy about her disturbing ordeal: “[The police have] really gone over the place with a fine tooth comb and they didn’t find the slightest evidence of anything at all out of the ordinary. Mrs Torrence, I think I know how you must feel about this, but it’s perfectly understandable for someone to imagine such things when they’ve been [through] something like you have.”

Ullman insists that Wendy stays at his place in Los Angeles, an offer she accepts. Just as the manager turns to leave, he throws a tennis ball to Danny – the same ball that some unseen apparition had rolled to the youngster in the Overlook Hotel.

10 Insane Conspiracy Theories About Stanley Kubrick

Science fiction has the ability to transport us to entirely new worlds, to see the possibilities of the future. Writers and filmmakers often feature technology in a dystopic setting. From rogue machines to technological singularities, tech itself becomes the source of mankind’s downfall.

Major figures in the tech industry are even starting to fear their own creations. The likes of Elon Musk and Clive Sinclair worry about the rise of sentient machines. Max Tegmark has spoken about how AI could one day change the face of cyber warfare. And the late Stephen Hawking once fretted that tech would serve to manipulate political leaders and fool the financial markets.

This idea – that civilization is destroyed by the very thing that was designed to help it evolve – has fascinated movie-goers for decades. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at 10 behind-the-scenes facts about some of the most popular movies involving sci-fi dystopias.

Warning: this list contains major spoilers for many of the films discussed

Top 10 Behind The Scenes Tales About Kubrick Movies

10 Blade Runner’s Script was a Contentious Affair

Today, Blade Runner is considered a cinematic masterpiece. But in the run-up to the film’s release in 1982, others were not so sure. The script for the film was based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The author slammed the original draft of the screenplay, claiming it stripped his story of all meaning and subtlety. Dick’s opinion only changed after David W. Peoples, who had previously worked on Return of the Jedi, was brought in to rehash the script.

Meanwhile, Harrison Ford hated the idea that his character, Rick Deckard, was an unwitting replicant. Director Ridley Scott was insistent on the twist. But preview screenings of the film left the audience confused. Scott hastily tore out some of the more ambiguous scenes, including those that alluded to Deckard’s status as an android. For the theatrical release, Warner Bros instructed Harrison Ford to record voiceovers explaining what was happening during certain moments. It is said that Ford’s flat delivery was aimed at stopping the studio from using the material – something the star later denied.

Meanwhile, studio executives were on the verge of wrestling control of the project away from Scott. Blade Runner’s impressive visuals had caused the film to go over budget by millions of dollars, and the director’s fastidious nature meant he was running behind schedule. Work on the film’s ending was equally contentious, with disgruntled crew members working 36 hours to wrap things up.

Blade Runner concludes with replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) chasing Deckard across the rooftops of Los Angeles. Batty spares Deckard’s life and, in his dying moments, delivers the now-famous “Tears in Rain” speech. In the early hours of the morning, Hauer re-wrote this part of the script and pitched the scene to his boss. “It was one o’clock in the morning. I was gonna be fired at 3,” explained Ridley Scott. “And then somebody says Rutger wants you. I said, ‘Oh s**t!’” Scott marched to the actor’s trailer and listened to the revised speech. “He read it, and it was great… I said, ‘that’s what we’re gonna do.’”

9 The Terminator 2 Crew Redirected a River

At the time of its release in 1991, Terminator 2 (T2) was the most expensive film ever made, with an eye-watering budget of around $100 million. The James Cameron epic follows the journey of John Connor as he attempts to evade a T-1000 model robot that was sent back in time to assassinate him. A T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) saves the day, spiriting Connor away on a Harley-Davidson. As the two make their escape through a Los Angeles canal, the T-1000 pursues them in a tow-truck. This sequence was no easy undertaking.

Firstly, the studio had to ensure the canal was completely dry for the shoot. They achieved this feat by diverting a nearby river with sandbags. The crew then built a fake wall on the canal overpass. A truck was plowed into the wall, nose-diving into the canal below. The team then realized that the truck was too tall to drive under the canal bridges. So, using a little bit of creative thinking, they came up with a scene in which one of the bridges shears off the vehicle’s roof. Arnie’s 30-foot motorcycle jump was achieved by suspending the bike from two cranes, situated either side of the canal. The Harley-Davidson was then pulled off the overpass at 35 mph, with the suspension wires limiting the force of the impact. The stunt was performed 20 times before capturing the perfect shot.

It is little wonder that T2 used up so much of its budget on special effects. A detailed miniature of the entire city of Los Angeles was created to portray the city’s apocalyptic destruction – a scene that nuclear experts praised for its realism. The crew also resurrected an old steelworks factory, blew up an office complex with hundreds of gallons of gasoline, lit up a freeway with 10 miles of electrical cabling, and staged an explosive helicopter crash.

8 The Academy Accused Tron of ‘Cheating’

Tron pioneered the use of computer graphics in the movie industry, inspiring a generation of animators to pursue a career in film. But it was actually video games like Pong and Breakout that inspired Tron’s unique aesthetics. The special effects team captured this arcade vibe by making frame-by-frame edits of live-action sequences. The scenes were originally shot in black and white, with black and white sets and costumes. This allowed animators to add Tron’s distinctive neon colors during post-processing. These edits were then combined with a range of computer generated effects, all produced using the combined talent of some of America’s biggest FX companies. For example, Magi Synthavision created the lightcycles, tanks, and recognizers. Triple-I worked on the film’s baddie, the evil Master Control Program. And RA&A designed the landscapes for ENCOM’s digital mainframe.

This process was costly and time-consuming. According to the film’s storyboard artist, Bill Kroyer, Every CG object within a frame needed six numbers to describe its position in space. So for one hundred frames – amounting to just four seconds of footage – 600 numbers were needed to describe the object’s movement. With multiple objects, things became even more complicated. These datasets were then sent to the visual FX companies, which had to input the numbers manually into their computer systems. During the rendering phase, a single frame of footage could take as long as 10 minutes to make.

Given the film’s technical accomplishments, then, it may come as a surprise to learn that Tron did not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. The film’s director, Steven Lisberger, explained why the Academy Awards snubbed the film: “We did all those effects in about seven months, which included inventing the techniques. The Academy thought we cheated by using computers.”

7 Videodrome Turned James Woods into a Couch

David Cronenberg is well known for his body horror. From turning Jeff Goldblum into a giant fly to making a film about paraphiliacs who get off on watching car crashes, he’s done it all. And yet, nothing quite beats Videodrome. Released in 1983, Videodrome follows the life of a TV executive called Max Renn (James Woods). To boost his ratings, Renn broadcasts a violent snuff show called Videodrome. He eventually discovers the show is being used to transmit a high-frequency signal that causes viewers to develop malignant brain tumors. An arms company, it turns out, is using Videodrome to kill people who enjoy watching content of a violent and sexual nature.

Renn’s exposure to the signal causes him to undergo bizarre changes, both physically and mentally. While watching TV on the couch, a giant slit appears in his abdomen. He then, for reasons unknown, reaches into the opening with a loaded gun. For the scene to work, Cronenberg sought the expertise of Rick Baker, the legendary effects artist who worked on An American Werewolf in London. Baker’s team ended up building James Woods into the couch itself, before gluing a prosthetic torso to his belly.

After spending several days in the form of a couch, Woods vowed never again to do a movie that involved having things stuck to his body. “He turns to [co-star] Debbie Harry and says, ‘When I first got on this picture, I was an actor. Now I feel like I’m just the bearer of the slit,’” Cronenberg recalls. “And she said, ‘Now you know what it feels like.’”

6 The 12 Monkeys Director Wasn’t Keen on Bruce Willis

In 1995, director Terry Gilliam began musing over his sixth film project, 12 Monkeys. The studio put forward a number of big name actors to star in the lead role, including Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage. Although the role was eventually handed to Bruce Willis, Gilliam had his reservations. It is said that Gilliam even gave the star a list of “Bruce Willis Clichés,” which he was supposed to avoid during shoots. “I explained to him my concerns about him as an actor. I hated that [pursed-lip expression] he does in his films when he gets a bit nervous. I thought, ‘God, that’s horrible’… Rectal. It’s like I’m looking at somebody’s asshole.”

Willis, who was filming the third installment of Die Hard at the time, would often struggle to shake his John McClane persona. In one scene, his character was supposed to fall to the ground after taking a blow to the head. Willis quarreled with the director, claiming the injury wouldn’t immobilize him. “‘You’re not John McClane, f**k off!’” Gilliam retorted. “He just went off and sulked by a tree and I just carried on shooting on without him and finally he came back.”

Top 10 Behind the Scenes Tales About Tarantino Movies

5 District 9 was Partly Inspired by Zimbabwean Migration

While District 9 is heavily inspired by the South African apartheid, the film’s origins lie elsewhere. District 9 is set in the same world as Alive in Joburg – a short film produced by the South African director Neill Blomkamp. Similar to District 9, Alive in Joburg asks the question, “What would happen if aliens became stranded on Earth and our two species were forced to coexist with one another?” The short mockumentary shows a bunch of desperate extraterrestrials begging for shelter, water, and electricity on the streets of Johannesburg. Locals fear the aliens, accusing them of committing rape and murder. It turns out that many of these conversations were real.

“That’s actually where the idea came from,” explained Blomkamp. “There are aliens living in South Africa, I asked ‘What do you feel about Zimbabwean Africans living here?’ And those answers – they weren’t actors, those are real answers…” Blomkamp incorporated the responses into his short film, making it seem as though the interviewees were talking about space aliens.

South Africa is home to a large population of Zimbabweans. Most of the newcomers are economic migrants, who pay people smugglers to cross the Limpopo River into South Africa. Zimbabwe’s economy suffered terribly at the hands of its former president, the late Robert Mugabe. Spiraling levels of unemployment, inflation, and taxation has prompted a mass exodus from the beleaguered country.

District 9, following its release in 2009, got into hot water with another African nation. Nigerian officials attempted to ban the movie for depicting Nigerians engaging in weapon trafficking, cannibalism, and interspecies prostitution.

4 The Matrix: Reloaded Housed Low-Income Families

The Matrix Reloaded sees Neo (Keanu Reeves) return to the Matrix in pursuit of a program that helped to enslave humanity. A sentient race of machines created the program, known as the Architect, to make humans believe they were living out their lives normally. In reality, the entire population was trapped inside a simulation, while the machines used their bodies as a source of energy.

A number of programs attempt to stop Neo from reaching the Architect. An impressive chase sequence breaks out on a freeway, replete with slow motion gun fights, martial arts brawls, and vehicular destruction. Of course, this level of chaos couldn’t take place on an actual freeway, so the crew simply built one.

In Alameda, San Diego, the studio spent millions of dollars building a 1.5-mile stretch of road on an old navy runway. The project required 7,700 tons of concrete, 1,500 tons of steel, and 1,500 tons of lumber. Once filming was over, Warner Bros worked with the county to dismantle the sets. The salvaged materials were then used to make homes for low-income families in Mexico. For both sequels, 97 percent of the deconstructed sets were recycled, amounting to 11,000 tons of material.

3 A.I. Surpassed Jurassic Park’s Animatronics

A.I. Artificial Intelligence started out as a passion project for Stanley Kubrick. The acclaimed director started development of the film in the 1970s, collaborating with various writers to produce a script. But Kubrick soon realized that the technology needed to achieve his vision did not exist. With the release of Jurassic Park in 1993, Kubrick became convinced that Steven Spielberg should direct his movie. Following Stanley’s death in 1999, the Kubrick family persuaded Spielberg to take over.

A.I. shows humanity on the brink of war with its own robotic creations, or mechas. To design the mechas, Spielberg brought together a team of CGI and animatronics experts. With Stan Winston at the helm, who had previously worked on Jurassic Park and The Terminator, shooting was wrapped up in just 68 days. Some of the actors spent up to three hours in the makeup chair as artists transformed them into discarded mechas. In one scene, a group of damaged robots, played by amputees, are seen scouring a landfill in search of replacement parts. The film took advantage of Winston’s mistakes, using a mountain of failed props to populate the mecha graveyard.

One of the most sophisticated animatronics was a 3-foot-tall teddy bear. According to Winston, Teddy was even more sophisticated than the T-Rex and velociraptors in Jurassic Park. The model used during action shots housed a total of 50 servo motors – half of which were needed just to simulate the bear’s facial expressions. In a sense, the technicians became actors themselves, adjusting Teddy in real time to make sure his reactions and movements were believable.

One of the most difficult aspects of Teddy’s scenes was getting the lighting to look natural. VFX supervisor Scott Farrar explained the problem: “The giant ape in Mighty Joe Young (1998) only had an average of 700,000 hairs, and they were a foot long. This little pipsqueak teddy bear has a million and a half little hairs, and each of those has eight curve segments to it. That’s 12 million manipulations to worry about!”

2 Ridley was Booted from Blade Runner 2049’s Set

Ridley Scott did not direct the sequel to Blade Runner 2049. That was left to the Canadian film director Denis Villeneuve. As executive producer, Scott often made appearances on set, hovering over Villeneuve’s shoulder. The director eventually expressed his discomfort: “He came on set one day and, after a few minutes having him behind me, it was unbearable. I made a joke, I said to him, ‘Hey, Ridley, who’s your favorite director?’ He said, ‘Oh, I love Ingmar Bergman and Kubrick’… so I said, ‘How would you feel if you were on set directing, and you had Bergman just behind you.” While Kubrick took the comment in good spirits, he quickly got the message and left.

2049 was not the box office hit that many were expecting, falling far short of its $300 million production and marketing costs. Ridley Scott claims the movie flopped because it was “f**king way too long.” As for where the franchise goes next, Scott says he’s currently working on ideas for the next movie.

1 The Original Ending to Star Wars was Dark

In the Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) sees a vision of his own face underneath Darth Vader’s mask. Later, Vader gives Luke the iconic “I am your father” speech, before trying to turn him to the dark side. The Revenge of the Jedi leans heavily into the idea of Skywalker turning. He spends much of the film dressed in black slaying his enemies with a light saber. Many have theorized that Luke used the dark side to overpower Vader during their final confrontation. After he slices off Vader’s hand, Emperor Palpatine goads the young Jedi: “Your hate has made you powerful.”

The final episode, originally called Revenge of the Jedi, could have been much darker. One possible ending to the original trilogy would see Luke following in his father’s footsteps. George Lucas suggested to co-writer Lawrence Kasdan that Skywalker should turn after Vader reveals his face. From a transcript of the meeting: “Luke takes his mask off. The mask is the very last thing – and then Luke puts it on and says, ‘Now I am Vader.” Luke would then make it his mission to destroy the Rebel fleet. Kasdan reportedly loved this idea.

Mark Hamill is also on record saying he pushed Lucas to turn Skywalker into a villain. Harrison Ford wanted Han Solo to die fighting the Empire on Endor, caring little about what happened to his character. But Lucas decided against both ideas, believing the film needed to appeal to a younger audience.

10 Fascinating Behind The Scenes Images From Movie History

Some movie scenes have such a huge impact the first time around, that they warrant a re-watch, or you know, 30 re-watches. These include the shower scene in Psycho, the “you are a toy” scene from Toy Story, the “he slimed me” scene from Ghostbusters and the training montage in Rocky. Often, awesome lines punctuate these types of scenes and lead to fans reciting them whenever the opportunity presents itself.

On this list are some of the most beloved scenes in movie history, some accompanied by great lines, guaranteed to induce at least a goosebump or two.

Top 10 Under-Appreciated Movies Of The Last 20 Years

10 “Avengers! Assemble.”

Watching the final battle scene in Avengers: Endgame has become bittersweet after the sudden passing of Black Panther actor, Chadwick Boseman. It was revealed in 2019 that the Black Panther originally had a longer fight sequence against Ebony Maw during the last battle scene, but it was ultimately cut when it didn’t truly fit in with the Iron Man and Thanos build-up.

The scene where Black Panther appears for the first time after the snap, does have the potential to make one teary-eyed, however. The look that passes between him and Captain America says more than words could, and the line “Avengers! Assemble” is the perfect way to kick off the fighting after all the lost heroes return.
Audiences’ reaction in cinemas during the original screening says it all.

9 “Things are gonna be different now.”

For many years, fans have laughed, cried and marvelled along with the characters of the Fast & Furious franchise. When Paul Walker died in 2013, there was an overwhelming sense of disbelief and shock that reverberated across the world. The filmmakers were faced with some tough decisions as Walker’s passing happened during the filming of the 7th movie and, ultimately, they decided to let Brian O’Conner go, but not in the tragic way he did in real life.

With a heartbreaking montage at the end of Furious 7, friends and fans were able to say goodbye to Walker’s character. The scene, accompanied by a tearjerker song courtesy of Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, is summed up best by Tyrese’s character who simply says, “things are gonna be different now.”

8 “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

On a lighter note (see what I did there), some iconic movie scenes don’t have to be tragic or deep to make an impact. It just has to connect with its audience. In a time of teen flicks galore, along the lines of Clueless and many others, The Craft came along and instantly cast a spell over audiences. Its plot centers around female friendship and empowerment, and, of course, witchcraft, and the movie became a surprise hit after its release in 1996.

One particular scene in the movie sees four teenage girls trying out a spell during which one of them is levitated off the floor by the other three who are chanting the words, “light as a feather, stiff as a board.” The whole set-up is about as 90s as it could possibly be, but the scene still has the power to enchant a whole new generation of viewers all these years later.

7 “Day-O.”

Beetlejuice is still one of the weirdest films ever made. It has ghosts who can make their heads do weird things, creepy intro music, a strange affinity for calypso music as well as a handbook for the deceased.

And then of course there is the infamous dinner scene where all the guests get up to involuntarily sing “Day-O” while doing peppy dance moves and hitting themselves in the face. To add to the weirdness, hands emerge from the plates on the table and push the guests off their chairs.
Good luck getting the song out of your head after watching the clip.

6 “Did you feel that?”

The water rippling in a glass and a young boy asking, “did you feel that?” pretty much encompasses the feeling of dread that the unforgettable Jurassic Park T-Rex scene was going for. The growling of the T-Rex builds the tension even further. The expressions on the characters’ faces when they finally spot the massive dinosaur, perfectly rounds out this Steven Spielberg classic scene.

Spielberg got the idea for the scene after listening to an unnamed Earth, Wind, and Fire song in his car with the bass turned up. He noticed his rear-view mirror vibrating and immediately knew what needed to happen.

5 Parting the Red Sea

Prince of Egypt is an underrated hand-drawn animated gem produced by DreamWorks. It follows the story of Moses on his journey as he tries to get his people freed from slavery. There is compelling family drama, excellent animations, fantastic music composed by Hans Zimmer and a whole bunch of highly memorable scenes.

One scene that will probably always leave goosebumps in its wake sees Moses parting the Red Sea so that his people could escape the approaching Egyptians. The parting is preceded by a giant fire column, meant to deter the Egyptians, and a pensive moment as Moses wades into the shallow water before raising his staff. He hears God speaking to him and then strikes the water with the staff, causing water walls to spring up on either side of him.

Look out for the whale shark silhouette as the Israelites slowing make their way through the sea on dry ground.

4 ‘’My tiny little nipples went to France.”

Before being endowed with all God’s powers, Bruce Nolan was having a rough time. In Bruce Almighty, Bruce not only misses out on a long-wished-for promotion that eventually goes to the hated Evan Baxter, but cracks also start appearing in his relationship with Grace Connelly. However, when he finally realizes what he could achieve by means of the power transfer, he decides on a little revenge directed at Baxter. This scene is the result.

Sure, it’s slapsticky and over-the-top, but do we really expect anything less from Jim Carrey?

3 “I’m not your f…..g mommy!”

When fans don’t hate the main character in a horror movie, they tend to root for them to overcome their obstacles and take out the bad guys. The Ring Two saw this type of scenario and fans were elated when Naomi Campbell finally flushed Samara down the well after the two clashed near the end of the film. Seeing Samara emerge from the dark well the way she did, crawling legs over head while crying “Mommy!” was enough to give anyone nightmares back in 2005, and I for one am glad that she was thrown back where she belonged.

That last line is absolutely perfect.

2 “I’ve never hit a kid before.”

Zombieland was a huge hit in 2009, surpassing more than $60 million in box office revenue within 17 days. It features Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin as survivors of a zombie apocalypse and follows their road trip as they attempt to flee the undead.

The movie also features Bill Murray playing himself disguised as a zombie so that he can move freely around town. He is sadly killed off after being mistaken for a real zombie. Before his untimely demise, the fleeing group arrives at Murray’s house and Abigail Breslin’s character asks, “Who’s Bill Murray?”. This immediately prompts Tallahassee, played by Woody Harrelson, to retort “I’ve never hit a kid before. All right? I mean, that’s like asking who Gandhi is.” After which she immediately asks, “Who’s Gandhi?”

The sequel, Zombieland: Double Tap, was released in 2019 and features a ‘revived’ Bill Murray.

1 The loss of three sons

Tearjerker scenes are often remembered far longer than their comedic or dramatic counterparts. The scene with the mother in Saving Private Ryan is a prime example of this. All these years after the movie’s release, it still finds itself on many a list of ‘most iconic’ movie scenes. You can tell from Mrs Ryan’s demeanor as she watches the official military car pull up, that she already knows bad news is eminent. Everything that happens after the two men get out of the car is devastating. It is a raw depiction of what thousands of families experienced during war time and is guaranteed to bring a tear to anyone’s eye.

+ “He can’t see without his glasses!”

And since everyone loves a sad movie, here is probably the most harrowing scene ever captured for a childhood classic movie. In My Girl, Vada, played excellently by Ana Chlumsky, approaches the casket of Thomas (Macaulay Culkin) who died after being stung by bees. She becomes instantly overwhelmed by the sight of her best friend in the casket saying, “… his face hurts, and where are his glasses? He can’t see without his glasses!”

My Girl was released in 1991, and this scene remains one of the saddest in movie history. Try and watch the clip without shedding a tear. It’s not as easy as it may seem.

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