The movie mag Empire is celebrating its 18th birthday and as part of this has published a list of the top 18-rated scenes from movies; unsurprisingly SF and horror movies make up the bulk of the list, with the now-famous chest-buster scene from Alien topping the poll. This oft-parodied scene was a real shocker to many audiences the first time round, with director Ridley Scott deliberately not telling most of the actors precisely what was going to happen in the scene so he could capture looks of genuine surprise and shock (the BBC report says “according to movie lore”, but since I’ve seen a couple of the actors involved saying this was how it was shot I think we can take it as fact, not ‘lore’).
The sheet of glass decapitation scene from the Omen came second (sorry, never shocked me even when I saw it as a youngster, I thought the whole film was hilarious and also laughed my way through the Exorcist), the astonishing man-to-wolf transformation from An American Werewolf in London came third. Isn’t it interesting that the top three all come from the days long before CGI effects, when all of these tricks had to be pulled off physically? I rewatched American Werewolf quite recently and Rick Baker and his team’s transformation scene still stands up against pretty much any modern effects; in fact I’d say it perhaps stands up better than some modern films which would use morphing and CGI today.
Fri, Apr 27, 2007
Film, TV and radio