JM McNab
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Horror movies have the power to frighten, disturb, and provide many a middle school sleepover with rare glimpses of full-frontal nudity. But as we've mentioned in the past, learning how these things are made can ruin the horror for the viewer, turning previously terrifying moments into episodes of campy slapstick. Which sucks.
Let's do it again.
Aside from washing Mexican food down with expired eggnog, the worst thing that can happen to your dreams would be for Freddy Krueger to show up. The guy's got knife hands, a deformed face, and most terrifying of all, an arsenal of bad puns. Any encounter with Freddy would be scary as hell -- as long as it wasn't while he was awkwardly loitering on a bench.
New Line Cinema
Like a burned, scrotum-looking Forrest Gump.
Passersby didn't exactly seem to be screaming in terror. They basically gave him the same side-eye you'd expect anyone wearing a green-and-red striped sweater and knife glove to receive.
New Line Cinema
"You, uh, need directions or anything, pal?"
Oh, and remember that infamous shot of Freddy's claw emerging from the bathtub?
New Line Cinema
Ugh, dude, now that's gonna get all rusty and shit.
Well, the reverse angle is decidedly less frightening ...
New Line Cinema
How big is that bathtub?
And for close-up shots, there was no need to use the costumed actor; any crew member wearing a Freddy glove and one of his sleeves would do.
New Line Cinema
This one showed up to work dressed like that.
As for Tina's horrifying death, whereby she gets bloodily dragged across a ceiling by unseen forces, the image of which is probably burned in your memory ...
New Line Cinema
Here it is again, just in case you forgot.
Well, you can thank two dudes for lifting the stuntwoman in place to get the shot of her falling to the bed. Two dudes who for some reason took off their shirts beforehand. Guess they didn't want to wreck their good work clothes.
New Line Cinema
Unless those are their good work clothes.
Before the franchise devolved into sexy shower murders and handsome robot doppelgangers making out with each other, the Alien movies were extremely intense. You'd think, then, that the making of one of these black rubber sex monster movies wouldn't be anything like, say, a child's birthday party. And it wasn't. Except for the time it was.
20th Century Fox
"Hey, maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our candles lit."
Yup, the stunt double for Newt, Louise Head, had her birthday party on set, attended by space marines and an android. Kind of makes your fifth birthday at Chuck E. Cheese's seem like a rancid pile of donkey shit in comparison, huh? Everyone got involved. Here's Head and Sigourney Weaver clowning around doing their best impression of the Alien Queen:
20th Century Fox
Unless this is an assault. This might be assault.
This wasn't even the first surprisingly charming behind-the-scenes moment for the franchise. Back in the first movie, there were several shots of the Nostromo crew exploring the crashed spaceship. That had the potential to be really expensive to film, so to save money, they only made a half-size set and threw a couple of kids in spacesuits into it.
20th Century Fox
Picture probably not actual size, but really, who can be sure anymore?
Cool. One of the all-time great horror movies also evidently looked like the set of a space-based Sunny D commercial.
Hannibal Lecter is one the great movie villains, a psychologist cannibal capable of eating you and then telling all your friends about your secret bed-wetting problem. But despite the fact that The Silence Of The Lambs is genuinely a terrifying film, the behind-the-scenes snapshots make it look like it was as much fun as summer camp.
Orion Pictures
Albeit one of those summer camps that should be shut down immediately.
Here's director Jonathan Demme getting a kick out of feeding Lecter:
Orion Pictures
*making airplane noises*
Even that poor girl trapped down the well seems in high spirits.
Orion Pictures
Though Precious is looking a little stiff.
And there was always time for the crew to grab selfies with Buffalo Bill's human-skin-suit prop.
Orion Pictures
God, we hope that's a prop.
Even the recent Hannibal TV show was apparently silly as hell behind the scenes. There's simply no way to wear those outfits without a bit of clowning around. Here's Lecter puffing a cigarette in his trademark mask:
Dino de Laurentiis Company
His second-grossest habit.
And here's that creepy antler monster that Will Graham keeps hallucinating:
Dino de Laurentiis Company
Like the dark and gritty Tick reboot no one asked for.
Yikes. That's less "manifestation of pure evil" and more "guy at a Halloween party realizing there's no way to pee in his dumbass costume."
Pinhead from the Hellraiser franchise is an extradimensional monster person who dresses like someone trying to really shake up their senior prom. But beneath the black leather, hundreds of face pins, and generally ghoulish demeanor, there's a normal dude. So normal that while filming the movie, some wise parent decided they shouldn't not grab a picture of the Hell Priest cradling their infant.
Dimension Films
That baby wears the same expression to this day.
And what's more relatable than a man, even a hell man, scarfing down some pizza?
Dimension Films
Even the forces of darkness are allowed to have cheat days.
And Pinhead isn't always wearing that black leather ensemble -- that's just for the office. When off work, he's perfectly happy throwing on a T-shirt to go toss the football around.
Dimension Films
Gotta work on his release a bit, though.
Before "Universal Monsters" meant the guy from Jerry Maguire doing battle against mummies (and common sense in general), it meant the characters featured in the slew of classic horror pictures that started coming out in the 1930s. For instance, the Boris Karloff version of Frankenstein remains one of the quintessential depictions of the character. It's a classic image of horror, as long as you don't catch him enjoying some lovely toast and tea.
Universal Pictures
"Teeeeeeeeeeeea."
And sure, he's a monster cobbled together with scraps of corpses, but he's not monster enough to refuse a slice of delicious cake.
Universal Pictures
He wasn't actually invited to this, but who was going to stop him?
Similarly, the Creature from the Black Lagoon was a total goofball. Here he is mopping up around the pool:
Universal Pictures
Gotta keep your lagoon looking its blackest.
And here he is dancing a jig:
Universal Pictures
Or having to go to the bathroom.
And of course, making out with his co-star:
Universal Pictures
More like Creature from the Grope Lagoon.
The Bela Lugosi version of Dracula is another classic, which we will now ruin by showing the cast trying to figure out what the hell was supposed to happen in it with the help of a comically oversized book.
Universal Pictures
"He has to what her blood?"
Universal Pictures
"I have to suck your vhat?"
The Descent is the story of six women exploring a labyrinth of uncharted caves, only to find that they're full of deformed monster people.
Pathe
So Twitter, essentially.
To keep the actresses' expressions of fear authentic, the director kept them and the actors playing the "crawlers" separate when they weren't filming. And it's a good thing, too, because the crawlers evidently spent their downtime being ... less than terrifying. Here they are doing each other's nails:
Pathe
And gossiping about who spent the night in who's filthy slop puddle.
Or whiling away the time by smoking in bathrobes:
Pathe
Like some kind of leathery, subterranean Rat Pack. Bat Pack, we guess.
And of course, playfully exposing themselves:
Pathe
Not Safe For Aboveground Viewers.
Probably a good reason they were kept separate, then. It'd be lot harder to be scared of these guys after you've seen Crawlers Gone Wild.
Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie Psycho finds creepy motel owner Norman Bates stabbing his guests at the behest of his dead mother, in a grisly plot that could have been avoided if people in the '60s had bothered to invent Yelp. Not surprisingly, there were some on-set photos taken to promote the movie, but they're not really what you'd expect.
For instance, here's Anthony Perkins, who played Bates, having his picture taken in front of the ominous Bates house. And what better way to advertise the story of a serial killer whose best friend is a corpse in a rocking chair than by having the actor happily perch on a ladder bordered by smiling girls in matching outfits?
Universal Pictures
More gore? We'd use more gore. Maybe a scarier ladder, too.
Even stranger, a couple years after the movie came out, Harper's Bazaar had a photo shoot at the Bates Motel, featuring Hitchcock creeping on a young model.
Harper's Bazaar
He didn't have to act much.
This is unsettling on its own merits, and even moreso when you realize it's as if someone asked Hitch to perform an interpretive dance inspired by the future allegations against him.
There sure were a lot of terrifying moments in The Conjuring, from the possessed doll to the offscreen nightmare of the Nixon presidency. But there was maybe no greater scare than the reveal of the witch Bathsheba, perched atop a wardrobe.
New Line Cinema
Like Narnia's bouncer.
But Bathsheba is a tad less intimidating when posing for selfies with the director:
New Line Cinema
"Be sure you get my good side."
Or forgoing the black magic she used to hover, and instead lying on top of some plywood:
New Line Cinema
Or, least evil of all, noodling on a piano:
New Line Cinema
Making my way downtown, walking fast, Faces pass and I'm home bound
Before he was making movies about witchy love triangles in Oz and evil space symbiotes that turn you all emo, Sam Raimi made some damn good horror movies. The Evil Dead series is unquestionably classic, and as long as you weren't one of the actors maimed while shooting the first movie, making them sounds like it was pretty fun. For example, instead of killer deadites, the actors in Evil Dead 2 were often dealing with puppets.
New Line Cinema
Like Sesame Street if it had some guts.
And this is how the deadite puppets got around:
New Line Cinema
How the Henson company would have looked if it was built on top of an ancient Native burial ground.
There were still human versions of the deadites, but they were hardly more terrifying:
New Line Cinema
The Evil Read.
And here's the same guy, having a chuckle with his makeup artist.
New Line Cinema
Just some dudes gabbing and laughing and and unable to close their mouths.
Unless you work in the field of environmental protection, Ghostbusters isn't really a horror movie. Still, there are some scary parts, especially for a kid. The librarian turns into a monster, Dana is terrorized by demons, and Dan Aykroyd is convinced that America needs to see him get blown by a dead person.
But behind the scenes, even the horror elements of the movie were rather goofy. The demon hands clawing at Dana were really a trio of puppeteers playing a super-awkward round of Twister.
Columbia Pictures
So it wasn't done with real ghosts.
And the terror dog ...
Columbia Pictures
Good boy.
... was in a few shots an animatronic puppet controlled by a team of nerds.
Columbia Pictures
The crew gave them those hats to identify them as nerds.
And Slimer is certainly less horrifying when you see him wearing jeans:
Columbia Pictures
Interestingly, he switched to stockings for the sequel:
Columbia Pictures
Making him look like the world's creepiest Rockette.
Oh, and here's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man with his head off:
Columbia Pictures
"I ... should ... not ... be."
That ... that is actually quite a bit more terrifying than before. They were right to burn him.
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