Today’s Top 10 is a good one for the people who love Halloween but don’t like being scared as much as they like the costumes and fun of it all. Brian Reeves from Kansas City contributed this good-humored list of funny horror films. If you have a Top 10 list you’d like to contribute, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Here’s Brian:

Another Halloween is upon us, which means it’s time for costume parties, trick-or-treating with the kids, and scary movies. Well, not always “scary” movies. I consider myself a big horror movie buff. I’m the guy in college who watched every horror movie I could get my hands on. Good ones, bad ones I didn’t care, if it falls in the horror section, chances are I’ve seen it. But I figure there are going to be a lot of articles this week talking about scary movies you should watch for Halloween, so I’m going to take this one in a little different direction. I was originally going to write a list of the Top 10 reasons “Paranormal Activity” was a sucky movie, but I decided there was only so many creative ways to call a movie boring and uneventful. (Really, a slightly moving door and people standing in the dark is scary? Really?) Instead, I decided to have some fun with this list. After all, isn’t Halloween really about having fun? Dressing up as crazy things, getting together with your friends or family, and having a good time is what it’s all about. With that in mind, my thoughts immediately turned to one of my favorite films of the year, “Zombieland.” It’s a perfect combination of a few scares and good laughs–a perfect movie for this time of year. So with out further ado, here are my Top 10 fun movies to enjoy on Halloween.

10. Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)

Okay, there’s more comedy here then horror to start off, but this one is safe for the whole family. A movie financed by the Dow chemical company in order to spend “frozen” finances that the company had in Yugoslavia, this 80’s comedy takes us straight to the heart of classic monster country. Frankenstein has reappeared in Transylvania and an American tabloid wants in on the story. They dispatch two reporters, Jack Harrison (Jeff Goldblum) and Gil Turner (Ed Begley Jr.) to investigate. With Carol Kane, Geena Davis, Jeffery Jones, and Michael Richards all making appearances in the film, it’s like a name-that-actor trivia challenge for the adults in the room. The presence of the Wolfman, two hunchback lab assistants, and even a mummy makes sure all of the classic Transylvania monsters are present to get in on the fun. Campy, Cheesy, Perfect.

Gil Turner: Do you smell perfume?
Jack Harrison: Yes. I know what was in this room.
Gil Turner: What?
Jack Harrison: The Creature from Estee Lauder.

9. Mars Attacks! (1996)

I had a hard time deciding if this movie even belonged on the list since it’s really more sci-fi than horror. But then I decided, “Screw it. It’s my list anyway, who cares!” The first film from director Tim Burton to appear on this list, “Mars Attacks!” is a campy send-up of 1950s alien invasion movies. The premise here is simple: The aliens are invading, they do not come in peace, and what the hell are we going to do about it? It’s the little things here that keep this one so near and dear to my heart. From the rayguns that take their sound from “War of the Worlds” to the subtle background taken straight from “Plan 9 From Outer Space” when the aliens first address earth, this film really shows it’s love for old-style matinee B-movies. “Mars Attacks!” also features yet another cast that reads as a who’s who of Hollywood, with Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Michael J. Fox and many, many more recognizable faces (including one of the early roles for Jack Black) all come together to make this easily the most impressive cast on this list.

President Dale: I want the people to know that they still have two out of three branches of the government working for them, and that ain’t bad.

8. The Frighteners (1996)

Looks like 1996 was a pretty good year. Long before he was spinning tales about hobbits and rings, Peter Jackson was making some amazingly twisted horror movies. And while I love “Bad Taste” and “Dead Alive,” the Michael J. Fox vehicle “The Frighteners” is his film that makes the most sense for this list. Fox plays Frank Bannister, a psychic who can see and talk to ghosts. He uses this skill to open his own ghostbusting business.I don’t want to give too much away with this one, just know that this movie is a rollercoaster thrill ride and here things are never quite what the seem. Featuring great supporting performances from Jake Busey and R. Lee Ermey, “The Frighteners” is sure put you on the edge of your seat and tickle your funny bone at the same time.

Frank Bannister: Why is it that flies stick to you guys like shit to a blanket?
Cyrus: Ha ha, very funny. You’re a funny guy, Frank. You know, all you think about is
yourself. I could complain, too, you know. I would like some new clothes. You get to dress
nice. Here I am still looking like Linc from The Mod Squad.
Frank Bannister: You died in the 70’s. It’s a bummer.

7. Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

Elvis and JFK, both alive and in a nursing home, fight for the souls of their fellow residents as they battle an ancient Egyptian mummy. Yes, you read that correctly. All that needs to be known about this movie can be summed up in four words: Bruce Campbell as Elvis. Well, what are you waiting for, go watch it! I mean like, right now!

Elvis: Ask not what your rest home can do for you. Ask what you can do for your rest home.
JFK: Hey, you’re copying my best lines!
Elvis: Then let me paraphrase one of my own. Let’s take care of business.
JFK: Just what are you getting at, Elvis?
Elvis: I think you know what I’m gettin’ at Mr. President. We’re gonna kill us a mummy.

6. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Welcome back. A little more serious than the movies on this list so far, this Quentin Tarantino-written, Robert Rodriguez-directed journey into a lair of Mexican vampires is a little hard to classify. It starts out as a Tarantino-like crime movie about two brother bank robbers on the run. They take a family hostage to cross into Mexico, and then abruptly it turns into a B-movie horror splatterfest. While some point to the film’s unevenness as a flaw, I think it just adds to the fun. It certainly keeps it from getting boring. George Clooney and Harvey Keitel both help the movie keep its serious side, while never undermining the B-movie late night fun this film is obviously intended to be. Danny Trejo and Tom Savini (the man behind the effects in the original “Friday the 13th” and “Dawn of the Dead”) appear in supporting roles.

Kate: Are you okay?
Seth: Peachy, Kate. The world’s my oyster, except for the fact that I just rammed a wooden
stake in my brother’s heart because he turned into a vampire, even though I don’t believe in
vampires. Aside from that unfortunate business, everything’s hunky-dory.

5. Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

Ah yes, “Tales from the Crypt.” The HBO series that started in 1989 was always a favorite of mine. With this film, the premium cable series made its first and best transition to the big screen. The plot is fairly simple: A man carrying something very important holes up in a roadside motel while being chased by the forces of Hell itself. From there it becomes a simple survival tale. Who lives, who dies, who cares? Much like the television series, this film doesn’t take itself too seriously. And much like “From Dusk Till Dawn,” eventually this film becomes about the demon body count. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, Billy Zane, William Sadler, and Thomas Haden Church takes us through what the Crypt Keeper affectionately calls a “deadtime story.” This movie also has a killer soundtrack for any metalheads out there featuring music from Pantera, Machine Head, Biohazard, Minstry, Melvins and Sepultura.

Crypt Keeper: Fasten your drool cups, and ready your vomit bags! We’re going to the movies!
Frights, camera, action!

4. Planet Terror (2007)

Two words: Machine-gun leg! Robert Rodriguez makes his second showing on my list. The first half of the under-appreciated double feature “Grindhouse,” “Planet Terror” is an almost perfect homage to 70s B-level horror. A bio-virus is released on a small town and zombie style hi-jinks begin as El Wrey (Freddy Rodriguez), a man with a secret past, tries to save the town and the woman he loves. Rodriguez is able to again strike a nice balance between the horror and comedy. Purposely bad dialogue and plot holes galore (including a missing reel) are a great nod to the large number of terrible low-budget horror films that are released every year. But this movie never falls into the tedium that comes with most of the films “Planet Terror” parodies. Josh Brolin, Michael Biehn, Bruce Willis, and the smoking-hot Rose McGowan combine to give us yet another example of how Rodriguez can do big budget terror with a sly smile and Halloween fun sensibilities.

El Wray: I need someone to drive my truck.
Sheriff Hague: I’ll do it.
El Wray: You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. Your vision is probably blurred, and you’re on
your last leg…
Sheriff Hague: [sarcastic] Anything else?
El Wray: Don’t wreck it.

3. Beetlejuice (1988)

He’s the ghost with the most. Another Tim Burton film comes in at number three. It’s hard to imagine there’s anyone out there who hasn’t seen this Michael Keaton classic. In a role that was originally intended for Sammy Davis Jr., Keaton put on one of the iconic performances of his career as Beetlejuice. A recently deceased couple who’s stuck living in their own house for the afterlife wants to get rid of the new living family that’s moved in. They enlist the services of Beetlejuice to exorcise the living from their home. A wacky movie with ghosts, laughs, and island music numbers. This film is one of a kind. You know you love it, so go watch it again this Halloween.

Adam: What are your qualifications?
Betelgeuse: Ah. Well… I attended Juilliard… I’m a graduate of the Harvard business
school. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good
time during that. I’ve seen the EXORCIST ABOUT A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN TIMES, AND IT
KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE IT… NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT YOU’RE TALKING TO A DEAD GUY… NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK? You think I’m qualified?

2. Army of Darkness (1992)

The third film in Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” series, “Army of Darkness” takes the camp of the first two to an entirely different level. Ash (Bruce Campbell again) has been sucked through a vortex and ends up in medieval times. He then must begin his quest to find the Necromonicon. Raimi’s trademark style and Campbell’s one-liners make this about a much fun as you can have battling an army of the dead. I don’t know what else to say about this one except if you haven’t seen it, I don’t think we can be friends anymore. There are simply too many great lines from this movie to pick just one, but I suppose I’ll have to try.

Ash: Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This… is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart’s top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That’s right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It’s got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That’s right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?

1. Ghostbusters (1984)

If I have to tell you why this is number one then you haven’t seen “Zombieland” yet and that, my friends, is a true shame. Go see it and then re-live this Ivan Reitman-directed classic. It still makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it. Happy Halloween, everybody!

Dr. Peter Venkman: Alice, I’m going to ask you a couple of standard questions, okay? Have you or any of your family been diagnosed schizophrenic? Mentally incompetent?
Librarian Alice: My uncle thought he was Saint Jerome.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I’d call that a big yes.

Tags: 10, best, films, fun, funny, halloween, horror, lighthearted, movies, ten, top, Top 10 Fun Movies for Halloween, Top Ten Fun Movies for Halloween

A couple of years ago, I wrote a list of Top 10 Overlooked Scary Movies that got spread around the Web quite a bit. Best of all, the comment section became a great place for people to recommend other horror flicks that may not have received the attention they deserve. Today’s new list is kind of a companion piece to that one. If you are tired of renting the same stupid remakes and played-out franchises every Halloween, try some of these suggestions on for size. Some are scary (even though they may not be traditional horror movies) and some are campy, but each one of the films below has something special about it. You should seriously consider renting any of the following that you haven’t seen this Halloween.

If you have your own idea for a Top 10 list, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com.

10. Opera (1987)

This certainly isn’t the most solid movie of Italian giallo master Dario Argento’s career, but it contains two of his most visually impressive set pieces. Not known for concise (or even rational) plotting, some of Argento’s movies work better as rough frameworks that only exist to showcase a couple of inspired scenes of murder and mayhem. In this case, the central premise is based on something Argento used to joke about doing to audiences that wanted to turn away from the intense gore in his films: taping needles to their eyelids to force them to stay open. A killer stalks the movie’s heroine and does just that, forcing her to watch as he kills her friends. This movie really is all about the spectator and the eye itself. Set piece one: A flashy crane shot follows crows as they fly over the audience during an opera and descend upon a killer’s eyes. Number two: A slo-mo close-up of a bullet as its fired through a peephole in a door and–you guessed it–into someone’s eye! Yikes.

9. Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Loosely based on Washington Irving’s classic “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” this dark and funny Tim Burton movie finds the director and his favorite star (Johnny Depp, of course) having a ball upending conventions. Depp plays Ichabod Crane not as a standard hero but as an outsider–a nerdy, frightened man of science who can’t quite fathom the fact that the decapitations he’s come from New York City to investigate seem to be supernatural in nature. Christopher Walken portrays the Headless Horseman (when his head is visible), and the Oscar-winning art direction creates a spooky, mist-filled tangle of trees and forced perspectives. It may not be Depp’s funniest Burton role (that distinction belongs to “Ed Wood”), but the star’s quirky take on Crane make it loads of fun. In addition, “Sleepy Hollow” is a surprisingly violent and gorgeous movie to look at.

8. Near Dark (1987)

Unless you already knew going in, you’d likely never guess that the same woman who directed this year’s Iraq bomb-squad drama “The Hurt Locker” also helmed this twisted little vampire family story back in the late 80s. Kathryn Bigelow has always been interested in characters who crave danger (see “Point Break”), but Bill Paxton’s performance as psychopathic vampire Severen is so over-the-top cruel that he’s as funny as he is threatening. When a young cowboy in Oklahoma (Adrian Pasdar) gets turned into a vampire by a sexy young drifter (Jenny Wright), he is forced to “meet the parents,” so to speak, and enters the dangerous world of a group of vamps who live in a camper. The ending is kind of a cop-out, but Bigelow’s combination of the Western and the vampire movie has as many memorable landscape shots as it does moments of genuine tension and funny dialogue.

7. Magic (1978)

Speaking of people who you wouldn’t think would be working in the horror genre, this movie is full of prestige Hollywood personalities. Anthony Hopkins plays a creepy magician-turned-ventriloquist named Corky who spends almost as much time killing people as he does talking to his dummy Fats. Adapted by William Goldman (”Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “All The President’s Men,” “The Princess Bride”) from his novel and directed by Richard Attenborough (”Gandhi”), “Magic” is a true oddity. It starts off as a low-key (but still off-kilter) psychological examination of a person with multiple personality disorder. As Corky’s madness progresses, however, so does his temper. The scenes between Hopkins and Ann-Margret (who is the object of Corky’s unhealthy obsession) are a weird mix of tenderness and nail-biting restlessness. Burgess Meredith is also on hand to play Corky’s slimy but effective manager.

6. Slither (2006)

Sexual frustration manifests itself in the form of slimy little slugs that come from outer space in this sly and campy horror film from director James Gunn. Like a mash-up of David Cronenberg (”Dead Ringers”) and the Troma studio (”The Toxic Avenger”), “Slither” combines the desires of the flesh and the absurdity of campy horror into an inspired concoction. Nathan Fillion is the small town sheriff who must make sense of it all while still pining for his high school sweetheart (Elizabeth Banks). She’s unfortunately married to Grant Grant (Michael Rooker), the richest man in town, whose sudden ravenous desires lead to the disappearances of local pets and some strange physical deformities. “Slither” successfully combines fast-moving CGI elements that true B-movies can’t afford with the more traditional lumbering (and often hilarious) creature effects that can make them so fun to laugh at. The whole thing is  put together with a smart and silly sense of humor.

5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Director Philip Kaufman (”The Right Stuff”) directed this sci-fi/horror remake, which is unique because it’s one of the rare remakes that’s actually better than the original (Don Seigel’s 1956 film of the same name). Replacing Seigel’s Cold War metaphor with a satire of the “me” decade and all of its excesses, Kaufman peppers his movie with hippies, poets, and an evil pop psychiatrist played by Leonard Nimoy. As Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams try to uncover the truth about an alien race that’s replacing humans with unfeeling duplicates, Kaufman lays on the paranoia as thick as the parody. The result is a movie that is by turns genuinely creepy and clever.

4. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

John Landis pulls off the same feat here. Besides the Oscar-winning werewolf transformation scene by legendary make-up artist Rick Baker, this movie has a lot of other shocking and sometimes very scary moments. But it also features some of the funniest bits in any horror movie ever, as a graphically decomposing Griffin Dunne continues to haunt his old pal David Naughton (who is turning into a werewolf now) and annoy the living crap out of him. Landis mixes up fantasy/nightmare sequences to catch the audience off guard, and the gory scenes are few and far between, but this also heightens their effect.

3. Videodrome (1983)

Universal is set to remake this unsettling David Cronenberg movie (Why oh why?) that features James Woods as a public-access TV channel owner who programs a mysterious show that mesmerizes viewers by showing scenes of torture and murder. He has higher aspirations than using the snuff film for cheap entertainment, however. Cronenberg was way ahead of the curve in predicting the huge volume of TV screens that would be available and the enormous influence they would have in the future. He may not have predicted that we’d be watching tiny screens on our cell phones, but his perverted take on media had video physically melding with people’s bodies, resulting in the cult movie’s catch phrase “Long live the new flesh!” A remake that updates the technology won’t have the time-specific cultural references and may just miss the point altogether. See the original soon.

2. Eyes Without a Face, or Les yeux sans visage (1960)

Even though this disturbing French flick is widely considered a classic now (it’s available on Criterion DVD after all), I talk to people all the time who have never seen it. Georges Franju went from documentaries to directing this controversial horror film about a doctor who kidnaps young women and surgically removes their faces in an attempt to graft them onto his daughter’s, after hers was mutilated in a car accident. The psychological complexity of the three lead characters is rare for a horror movie, as is the beautiful black-and-white cinematography and the matter-of-fact handling of the plot’s more sordid details. Besides retaining much of its original shock value almost 50 years later, “Eyes Without a Face” also burns its haunting images into your brain forever. The young daughter’s white, expressionless mask was the inspiration for John Carpenter to similarly hide Michael Myers’ face in the orginal “Halloween.”

1. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

It may not be considered a strict horror movie, but it’s certainly the most terrifying film on this list. Especially when viewed in the same faux-documentary light as “Paranormal Activity,” “Henry” renders the act of murder in a far more banal and realistic manner. John McNaughton loosely based this harrowing no-budget film on real-life killer Henry Lee Lucas. Although it isn’t designed to make you think it’s a documentary, the dispassionate acting and lack of a budget make it sometimes feels like one. Michael Rooker portrays Henry as an aimless, soulless man whose existence is so dulled that he finds a purpose in life only after he begins to murder others and videotape it. The movie was considered so gruesome that it sat on a shelf for three years gathering dust before Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris dusted it off to sponsor a showing at the Telluride Film Festival. Since then, the unrated movie been the subject of much debate due to its startlingly violent palette and authentic style. Warning: Do not watch this one alone.

Tags: 10, best, dvd, films, halloween, horror, movies, rentals, scariest, scary, ten, top, Top 10 Horror Movies You Should Rent, Top Ten Horror Movies You Should Rent

Just after Scene-Stealers panned Rob Zombie’s “Halloween II” (a nice discussion about the movie is brewing right here, by the way) and since I included two horror movies (one from this list) on a list of Top 10 Pointless Remakes, we have received a passionate plea for respect of the modern horror remake pandemic. Bill Heinen has jumped into the fray, defending these films on his own terms, and has produced this list of the Top 10 Best Modern Horror Remakes. If you have a list you’d like to contribute, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Here’s Bill:

Well, here we are right after opening weekend for both “The Final Destination” and “Halloween II” and just before my favorite cinematic time of the year: the Fall, or as I like to call it, “horror season.” After both thriving and then dying in the 80s, only to be resurrected (somewhat, but never to the extent of the 80s) in the mid 90s, slasher films are back, and remakes of some classic slashers are popping up all over the place. (If you’re really into the history of the slasher, I recommend “Going to Pieces,” one of the best horror docs I’ve ever seen.)

In just the past five years, we’ve had three classic horror films - including the father of all slashers - completely overhauled with a sleeker, glossier, and one could easily say, sexier approach. And there are plenty more coming, including a new take on Freddy Krueger as more a pedophile and less a dream-monster in the upcoming “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” and Shannon Elizabeth playing every horror nerd’s favorite party hostess, Angela, in the “Night of the Demons” remake. I’ve been looking into a lot of online rumors about horror remakes that are yet to come, including Raimi’s absolutely fantastic cult classic “The Evil Dead,” to a new, improved Chucky in a “Child’s Play” remake. And, like me, most horror fans are somewhat irritated, hoping producers shouldn’t tread on films that are far from perfect, and yet perfect in their own ridiculous ways.

I personally am a huge fan of cheesy 80s horror films - you know, the ones with zero plot, fake-looking blood all over the screen, a lot of barely-clad coeds, and someone with a vendetta, a power-saw, a screwdriver, a drill, and of course, the ol’ standby, a nice big knife. That said, because I’m such a fan of these films, and by no means a tenured film critic, I have to give Hollywood some credit for at least making some interesting remakes that may not do the original film justice, but are a bloody good time in their own right. So, because we have plenty more to look forward to (or dread, depending on where you stand when it comes to these movies), here’s a list of my top 10 horror remakes thus far. Final Note: I am not going to dive into the plots of most of these, just my reasons for thinking they are decent remakes. Enjoy, and bring on the comments.

10. Shutter (2008)

Yes, Joshua Jackson is in a horror film. Yes, it is a remake of a Japanese horror flick, and many horror connoisseurs claim that Japanese horror is the best horror. I am definitely not one of them. And yes, this movie has some wonderfully creepy moments. One thing I loved about this very underrated movie is that the ghost isn’t grotesquely scary, i.e. “The Ring” or “The Grudge”; faces don’t get morphed into frozen expressions of sheer terror. The film is a little more subtle than that. Instead, we get (pardon the expression) snapshots of a supernatural nature. In the vein of films such as “Stir of Echoes” and “What Lies Beneath,” our photo-friendly ghost leaves clues for Jackson’s wife, helping her discover an ugly truth about her husband’s past. It is kind of predictable, but the moments of discovery in this film are actually unsettling, culminating in Jackson’s realization at the end that the source of his neck pain is more than just a bad mattress. I could watch that scene again and again. Not a great film, but good enough to hit number 10 on the list.

9. Night of the Living Dead (1990)

Just so we’re clear, I am talking about the remake directed by Tom Savini (the makeup and effects god of horror/slasher cinema), not the horribly crappy 3D version that should have never, ever been made. Savini knows horror; he’s had a hand in tons of slashers since the original “Friday the 13th,” and he understands what this kind of audience wants: blood, and lots of it. There are plenty of heads lopped off, limbs scattered and flung around, and, of course, zombies ravenously eating the living. Barbara isn’t a neurotic nut-job like she is in Romero’s classic; instead, she’s blowing away zombies left and right, taking charge of the situation and calling out orders like a platoon sergeant. While I think the original is probably one of the best horror films ever made, Savini had fun with this and it shows.

8. Quarantine (2008)

This one is actually closest to its source material, the Spanish film “[Rec].” If you haven’t seen the original, check it out. Even with subtitles, it’s fantastic. I saw this movie in a huge theatre and made the mistake of sitting in the front row. I can handle rollercoasters just fine, and this film, at that vantage point, made me dizzy as hell. When I rented it and watched it from the comfort of my couch, I realized it really is pretty dizzying regardless. But so is the original. Like “28 Days Later,” one of the best zombie films ever made (and completely redefined the genre, but that is for another discussion), this movie deals with an infection that rapidly spreads and immediately changes one’s nature as opposed to having the dead rise from their graves in search of tasty flesh. A fair amount of violence and gore, a LOT of jump scares (which I still think are the best kind), and plenty of terrifying night-vision episodes of cat-and-mouse, hunter-and-the-hunted sort of thing. I liked it a lot more than I expected to, so it makes the cut at number 8.

7. Last House on the Left (2009)

OK, so the original somehow, and I have no idea how, seemed so much more tame after viewing this remake. Probably because it was filmed in 1972 and there were a lot of barriers that Wes Craven couldn’t cross, as groundbreaking as it was. I can barely stand to watch rape onscreen, and LHOTL’s unrated version had a pretty long rape, the worst part being that instead of explicitly showing the event, we hear it, we see the sweat and dirt on the victim’s forehead and chin, her knuckles fruitlessly grasping at leaves, and the rapist’s son watching with a blend of horror, guilt, and the calm of a Zen monk. You can feel this scene, and it’s gut-wrenching. I don’t want to sound like a sadist here, but watching the murders of the rapist’s friends later is actually a lot of fun, his brother’s death being my favorite (a bottle of wine and a hammer in the head, plus a few fingers in the kitchen sink? awesome. fucking awesome). Yes, the ending is lame (and by that I mean the going off into the sunrise and ‘everything’s gonna be ok’ part, NOT the microwaved face, which was great), but it works overall.

6. Dawn of the Dead (2004)

I really don’t need to justify this being number 6 on the list, I just need to say two words: zombie baby. That’s right, a fuckin’ screaming, shitting, flesh-eating zombie baby. This movie didn’t have the sociological commentary like the original (claiming consumers are much like zombies, people in death do what they did in life, as in shop compulsively without knowing why, etc.), but what it did have was a lot of action. And I mean a LOT. The movie starts with a bang, probably one of my favorite horror intros ever, and only lets up a few times when everyone is in the mall doing somewhat “human” things. The escape from the mall in the armored truck with chainsaws taking out body parts all over the place was pretty great too. And Sarah Polley is not too hard to look at, especially when she’s kicking undead ass.

5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Leatherface is one of the most mysterious horror icons. He apparently is the product of a bunch of ass-backward inbred butchers who decided a while back to stay in a deserted Texas town and murder and eat anyone unlucky enough to stumble across their way. Still, it’s never explained what prompts this individual to wear other people’s faces or hunt them down with a chainsaw - a very heavy, not-too-pragmatic murder weapon. The remake came out 29 years after the original, and while the first had plenty of scary, shocking moments, this one beats it with more violence, more gore, and waaaayyyy more cruelty. Slamming a bag of salt on an amputated leg while hanging him on a meathook … ouch. The movie had a lot of chases, with Jessica Biel having to run and fight with all she has. By the end, after the ordeal she’s had, after seeing her boyfriend’s peeled face hanging off his killer’s head, after killing her friend to ease his pain, it’s actually somewhat believable that she becomes such a badass and kills the fuck out of the sheriff. This is truly one of those very rare horror remakes that I ended up liking more than the original.

4. My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)

This remake is a LOT of fun, and it is, without a doubt, the best 3D horror film ever made. Not like that’s saying a ton, but it’s something. Just like the original, the town thinks Harry Warden is dead and gone, and then the murders start up all over again. And in both films, the killer isn’t Harry at all (well, in the beginning of both films it is, but not at the conclusion). So the remake kept that part of the original … and that’s about it. The deaths in the original were more left up to the viewer’s imagination, whereas in the remake, through 3D lenses, we get to view eyeballs popping out, guts being strewn all over porches, and pickaxes flying towards us. It’s violent as all hell, it’s reckless and gory, and it’s basically a lot of running and killing. My kind of movie.

3. Halloween II (2009)

I am not pleased with two things in this movie, so I’m gonna list those first:

1. The first scene. It really doesn’t set the stage well. It showcases some bad acting from Sheri Moon Zombie, and the young Michael isn’t as evil-looking as Daeg from Zombie’s “Halloween.”

2. The mother/son Freudian thing and the Jungian/archetype thing with the white horse. Just didn’t work for me one bit. I thought it was pretty much a waste of time, though I guess it somewhat explained Myers’ purpose.

OK, that being said, I loved this movie. Now, I am biased, as I think Rob Zombie is the best horror director out there today, but it was fucking fantastic. As with his first “Halloween,” you really feel the force of Myers’ stabs, and it’s impressive and scary just how strong and powerful he is. Somehow, Zombie makes it hurt to watch, and it is graphic, but only for glimpses and seconds at a time. The original “Halloween II” (1981) took place entirely in a dimly-lit hospital with Jamie Lee Curtis basically hiding the entire time. It was somewhat scary, but not nearly as much as the first film. Though the hospital scene in Zombie’s is about 10 minutes long, it is by far scarier and more realistic than original director Rick Rosenthal’s. When she is stuck in the guard’s booth in the rainy dead of the night and Michael is slashing away at the walls, it’s hard not to feel how helpless Laurie really is. Annie’s death scene may be one of the most tragically sad and horrific scenes in the series, and her murder isn’t even completely shown onscreen. Laurie’s transformation from all-American good girl to understanding her true roots (“Angel O Myers”) is fairly devastating and uncomfortable, and you feel more empathy for her than any other Zombie character, in my opinion. Finally, this film will piss off a LOT of horror fans, or fans of Rob Zombie; it’s not simply a slasher movie, it’s a very artistic/archetypal/symbolic version of a slasher movie. That being said, I thought it was done in a beautifully horrific manner, with some shots that are hauntingly pulchritudinous.

2. Friday the 13th (2009)

OK, I might get some shit for the final two on my list, but I don’t care. There are plenty of reasons why I feel this remake was fantastic, and I’ll start with what my favorite kinds of horror films are all about: lots of breasts, lots of deaths. This movie was not only a damn good rehash of Crystal Lake massacres, it was basically a 90-minute homage to past films of the series. Instead of Jason’s mother being the killer throughout the entire movie, we see her for about a minute during the opening credits … and then we see her lose her head. I’ve talked to tons of my horror-nerd friends and we all agree that Jason is the centerpiece of the “Friday the 13th” world, not his mother, and we get both versions of Jason: potato-sack Jason, and of course, hockey-mask Jason. I’d say about half of the deaths in this film, while creative in their own right, definitely borrowed from previous films, which really excited me. Throughout my first viewing I kept thinking about how he jumped through the glass in part 5, how he used a bow and arrow (well, a harpoon really) in part 3, how he used a sleeping bag to kill someone in part 6, etc. It really was a lot of fun, and that’s what this franchise really is all about. Well, fun and buckets of blood, I suppose, but Glenn Danzig put it best when he was singing for Samhain as he chanted, “All murder, all guts, all fun.” Another thing I loved about this remake was that Jason was presented more as a highly-skilled hunter defending his land, and he defends it with a brutal force. Hell of a flick.

1. Halloween (2007)

I’m going to begin my explanation for our number one on the list by telling you all what my good friend and fellow horror guru (he actually knows WAY more about horror films than I) Kevin said after we left the theatre: “I’ve seen a lot of horror movies, and most of them in theatres, and I have never felt the way I feel right now after a movie. I have never seen something like that on screen.” And I couldn’t agree more. Rob Zombie gives us a brilliant retelling of not only the events in Carpenter’s classic boogeyman feature, but he allows us to understand that Michael Myers’ homicidal tendencies are not the result of a pagan curse or astrological anomalies (see “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers”), it simply stems from an intensely fucked-up childhood. Malcolm McDowell was a genius choice for Dr. Loomis, played originally by the great Donald Pleasance, and he was a drawing point for many people that may not have gone to see this movie for any other reason. The movie is completely unapologetic, it is brutally in-your-face, and it doesn’t let up. At all. From young Myers beating a fellow classmate to death with a large stick to adult Myers chasing his sister through a decrepit, abandoned home, tearing up floorboards and constantly slashing inches behind her, this movie is incredibly intense. Of all the horror franchises, the “Halloween” films are my favorite. Something about Michael Myers is less hokey than Jason, less comical and silly than Freddy Krueger; he’s just evil incarnate, and he doesn’t even show a passion for killing. He simply kills. Zombie may not have used too much suspense or tension or cat-and-mouse tactics that made the original such a joy to watch, but he makes up for it with a sadistic intensity that I don’t believe any remake so far has matched.

Tags: 10, best, films, horror remakes, list, movies, slasher, ten, to, Top 10 Modern Horror Remakes, Top Ten Modern Horror Remakes

Today’s list comes to us from Sean O’Connell, a New York City-based writer who also has also contributed his Top 10 Movie Brothers and Top 10 Rain Scenes. Thanks to Sean for another great list! If you have a Top 10 you’d like to contribute, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Here’s Sean:

Every day I take the subway to work, it is usually an hour commute into Manhattan. There is always this married couple that gets to the station the same time as me and are on the train for a majority of my ride. They look like the perfect couple on the outside, but it turns out the husband is a real jerk. He always blames her if they missed the train, or if they are running late, or he does not have enough money on him to get on the train. As he consistently blames her for everything short of the demise of the economy, she just sits there and takes the verbal abuse. So listening to them fight over the last six months got me to thinking, there have also been a lot of horrible husbands portrayed on the big screen. I know there have been some awful wives in Hollywood as well, but I am keeping this list dedicated to the awful husbands. Some honorable mentions that did not make the cut, Michael Caine in “Hannah & Her Sisters” (he has an affair with his wife’s sister), Ray Liota in “Goodfellas” (he cheats on his wife throughout the whole movie), and John Cassavetes in “Rosemary’s Baby” (he whores his wife out to the devil). So without further ado, here are the Top 10 Worst Husbands in Movie History.

10. Roy Neary - Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

I know right off the bat that many people will disagree with this one, but hear me out first. Forget the plot of the movie and just look at his actions. When we first see Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), he is trying to teach his son how to do fractions. His wife Ronnie (Terry Garr) is cleaning the house trying to get her husband’s attention, while he just ignores her and gives one word answers to her questions. Then after Roy sees the UFOs, he wakes up his whole family to go see the site where he had his encounter. Ronnie does her best to believe him, and all she wants in return is to be held and kissed like they used to do. Roy, in turn, pretends to kiss her while still looking up in the sky. Then when Roy is promptly fired for not showing up to work, does he deal with this? No. He leaves it all up to Ronnie. Then when Ronnie feels it is time to have a serious talk about Roy’s insane behavior, she finds him in the shower fully clothed. At the end of the movie, everyone is always happy that Roy gets on the spaceship. I see it for what it is: He is running away from his responsibilities to his family. Instead of trying to go to counseling to try and save his marriage, he jumps on the first alien ship out of here. Spielberg was quoted years later as saying that you can tell he was single when he made this movie because now that he is a family man he would never have let Roy get on UFO and leave his family behind.

Worst Husband Moment: Roy’s attempt to save his marriage leads him to instead destroying his house by building an extra large model of Devil’s Tower in his living room. He uses garbage, dirt, mud, bushes, and chicken wire. This act is what ultimately chases Ronnie away.

9. Earl Hunterson - Waitress (2007)

The culprit in this movie is Earl Hunterson portrayed by Jeremy Sisto. Earl’s wife Jenna (Keri Russell) works as a waitress at the local diner where her specialty is making pies for any occasion. Really her pie making is an escape from the horrible marriage that she has gotten herself into. We find out Earl is bad news from the beginning of the movie because Jenna wants to hide her pregnancy from her husband. The last time I checked this is supposed to be a happy event. Anyway, Earl can always be heard coming in the scene because he beeps his car horn constantly when he picks Jenna up from work. One beep will do, but he has to be a jerk. He also takes all her money that she earned because a husband is in charge of the money in his eyes. Then when he finds the money Jenna had been hiding all around the house, money she was going to use to help her escape from him, he promptly flips out. He destroys a table at her best friend’s wedding, makes her come home, and then offers to buy a camcorder with the money so they can make sex films (that is if she can get back into shape after she has the baby). When Jenna finally gets the courage up to leave Earl, she goes to the bus stop. Earl beeps his way there, stops her before she gets on, and slaps her across the face. Striking a woman, let alone your pregnant wife, will instantly get you on the top 10.

Worst Husband Moment: When Earl finds out that Jenna is pregnant, he says she can only have the baby if she agrees to never love the baby more than him. WTF? How insecure can one person be? Well his reminder of the agreement after the birth of their daughter is what prompts Jenna to finally tell Earl to hit the bricks.

8. Monk - Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

Next up on our list is Monk, played by Danny Aiello. Monk does not have much screen time in this movie but his actions as a husband have a significant impact on the movie. The wife here is Cecilia (Mia Farrow), who is a waitress in a local diner–wait, is there a trend here? Are all movie waitresses married to jerks? P.S. “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” doesn’t count because she wasn’t married to Harvey Keitel or Kris Kristofferson. So back to “Purple Rose,” after Cecilia works a hard day at the diner, she has to give her money to Monk who is out of work. Monk doesn’t pay bills with the money; he plays craps with his “friends” instead. By the way Monk is out of work and is playing craps when he is supposed to be out looking for a job. She tries many times to leave Monk but he always reminds her that she will be back because she has nowhere else to go. So the only escape she has from her awful marriage and constant beatings from her husband (we never see Monk hit her but he always reminds her that he will slap her silly again) is the movies. She goes everyday to see the same film, “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” Her devotion to the film leads to one of the characters stepping out of the film and insanity ensues. At the end though (SPOILER!), Cecilia does not get to run away to Hollywood with her new handsome actor boyfriend because he ditches her once the problems are solved. She is instead stuck in the movie theater again reminded that she has to go home to Monk because she has no other choices in life.

Worst Husband Moment: When Monk gets caught having an affair, he tries to convince Cecilia that it is her fault. He tells her he shouldn’t be left alone, that she should know how he gets when he drinks.

7. Prof. Humbert Humbert - Lolita (1962)

OK, the first three husbands were nothing compared to the next seven. “Lolita” … how do I even begin to explain how bad of a husband Humbert (James Mason) really is? For starters, he only marries Charlotte Hayes (Shelly Winters) so he can be closer to her underage (way underage) daughter Dolores (Lolita). Charlotte, who has no clue to what Humbert’s intentions are, sends Lolita away to summer camp. This makes Humbert depressed but he counts the days until she returns. When newlywed Humbert finds out that Charlotte plans to send Lolita to boarding school so that they can spend even more quiet time together, he becomes more withdrawn. Charlotte eventually finds his diary where he explains his ridiculous love for Lolita. This sends Charlotte into a frenzy and she wants Humbert out of the house, the great husband that Humbert is, he decides he is going to shoot Charlotte and make it look like a suicide. Well Charlotte beats him to the punch, while attempting to escape from Humbert she is hit by a car and dies. This news makes Humbert excited and he goes and gets drunk while taking a bath. Of course everyone just thinks that he is in denial. The rest of the movie just goes on to show that Humbert can also be a bad stepfather as well.

Worst Husband Moment: When Charlotte tries to seduce Humbert, the only way he can fulfill his husbandly duties is by staring at a framed picture of Lolita.

6. Ike Turner Sr. – What’s Love Got To Do With It (1993)

Good old Ike is the only real-life bad husband to make the list, but I’m sure there will be more to follow in the future years (the eventual O.J./Robert Blake/Jonathan Gosselin movie). Laurence Fishburne, who brilliantly portrayed Ike Turner, is the first of the movie husbands on this list to be nominated for an Academy Award. Ike is a selfish jerk of a husband who is jealous of his wife Tina’s (Angela Bassett) career. When they first meet, it seems like everything is going to be great between the two musicians, but we quickly get glimpses of the rage that lies beneath Ike Turner. Ike is constantly beating and berating Tina to the point that she doesn’t know if she is coming or going. He always reminds her that he MADE her, and that she would be nothing without him. Well, Tina eventually gets up the courage and decides to leave Ike, but the great man that he is, he decides that she can’t have her name; he thinks he owns it. Tina’s real name was Anna Mae Bullock and Ike felt the Turner name was his. He even says, “The name is mine. The name got my daddy’s blood on it. If she wanna go, she can go wherever she wanna go, but the name stays home!” What kind of a sick man thinks he owns a name? We all know that Tina gets her name in the end.

Worst Husband Moment: After a recording session, Ike throws everyone out of the studio. He then starts to hit Tina, and then rape her while screaming like an animal. Every time I watch this movie I find that this is the hardest scene to sit through.

5. Carlo Rizzi – The Godfather (1972)

Now, to be fair “The Godfather” has its share of bad husbands. Sonny Corleone cheating on his wife at his sister’s wedding and Michael Corleone lying right to his wife’s face at the end of the movie, but it is Carlo (Gianni Russo) who takes the prize. It starts out the way like many of the other bad movie marriages start where everything is great. Carlos and Connie (Talia Shire) have a storybook wedding that would make any couple blush. We eventually find out that Carlo only married Connie with dreams of one day joining the family business. When Sonny keeps shunning Carlo from family meetings, Carlo starts to take his frustrations out on Connie and ultimately decides to take matters in to his own hands. He makes a deal with two of the other rival mafia families to help take Sonny (James Caan) out. In order to achieve this, he must trick Sonny into one of his famous fits of rage. So Carlo decides to start going out all night, having affairs and having his mistress call the house looking for him. All of this makes Connie upset and forces her to confront Carlo. Carlo will not be confronted and decides to not once but twice beat his wife. Also, Carlo is the second husband on this list that hit his pregnant wife. Carlos is the first of our bad husbands who gets his in the end. Michael (Al Pacino) saw through Carlo’s little games and had him strangled on the day of his child’s christening.

Worse Husband Moment: The second time Carlo beats his wife, he first tells her to clean up all the dishes she broke. He then calls her a racial name and then chases her to the bathroom and beats her with his belt.

4. Martin Burney – Sleeping With The Enemy (1991)

First things first: By no means do I find this to be a good movie, but Martin Burney (Patrick Bergin) is one bad husband. The reason I felt compelled to put him up so high the list is because of what his wife Laura (Julia Roberts) planned to do just to get away from him. Here is a girl that knew divorce would not be enough, that he would always terrorize her. He was abusive, possessive, and got jealous when a neighbor would just say hi. So she decides she is going to fake her own death. Laura is petrified of the ocean and has never learned to swim. Martin convinces her to go out sailing with her one night. A storm comes and Laura is knocked overboard. Speaking of overboard, the husband in the 1987 classic comedy “Overboard” (Grant Stayton III, played by Edward Herrmann) was not so great himself. Anyway, so Martin is lead to believe his wife had drowned. End of marriage and Martin will be forced to move on. Well we find out that Laura had planned this night for months. She was taking swimming lessons so she would be able to swim to shore. She even faked her own mother’s death and moved her into a nursing home with a different name months before she faked her own death just so she could still visit her. When she did visit her blind mother, she went in disguise just in case. Now come on, all this planning instead of a divorce just to get away from one man? Martin deserves his spot at number four. Laura does get payback on her husband by shooting him twice in the chest.

Worst Husband Moment: When Martin finds his mother-in-law in the nursing home, he decides he is going to smother her with a pillow. Only because she said her daughter was married to a monster. Does that comment really condone being killed and how can you smother your blind mother-in-law with a pillow? Don’t worry, she doesn’t die.

3. Gregory Anton – Gaslight (1944)

Charles Boyer, who portrayed Gregory Anton, is the second husband on the list to be Oscar-nominated for his work. Gregory marries Paula (Ingrid Bergman), a woman who has been haunted by the death of her aunt years earlier in London. What does great new husband Gregory suggest she do in order for her to overcome her anxieties? Why, move into the very house that her Aunt died in of course. Paula agrees and soon she starts loosing small objects and hearing noises. When a watch that Gregory lost turns up in Paula pocketbook, he accuses her of stealing it–that’s classy. Poor Paula now starts to doubt her own sanity. It turns out that Gregory planted the watch there. Gregory was also hiding the small objects about the house and convincing her she was hearing noises. It turns out that Gregory’s master plan was to drive Paula crazy. Now that is what I call a wonderful husband. Bergman deservedly won the Academy Award that year for her amazing depiction of troubled Paula.

Worst Husband Moment: Gregory tells Paula that he is leaving every night, but instead he sneaks in the house through the attic. He turns down all the gaslights in the house the house so everything gets dim. Paula, since she is all alone and no one else experiences it, thinks that it is all her imagination.

2. Jerome “Jerry” Lundegaard – Fargo (1996)

The third of our Oscar nominated bad husbands is William H. Macy for his creepy performance as Jerry Lundegaard. From the opening scene we get a glimpse of just how wacked out Jerry is. He is sitting in a diner with two criminals, Carl and Gaear (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare), informing them of his plan on how he wants them to kidnap his wife Jean (Kristen Rudrud). His hopes are that he can then get the ransom money from his father-in-law and give the criminals $100,000 and keep the rest for himself to pay off his debts. This plan is so insane that even Carl and Gaear are confused by his motives and they tell him to simply ask his wife for the money. Jerry just can’t do that, so he would rather rely in two ex-cons he never met before to carry out his master plan. Needless to say, it all goes wrong, people are dying, and all wackiness ensues. Jerry starts lying to his father-in-law, trying to control the situation, just so he can get his money. When it looks like a legit business deal that Jerry has been working on might work out, he tries to cancel the kidnapping. When he finds out that he can’t stop it, he decides to just go along with it. Meanwhile, Jerry has a teenage son that is absolutely crushed by the disappearance of his mother. Jerry just tells him to keep on telling everyone mom is out of town. Jerry finds no remorse in his actions, and in no way comforts his son. (SPOILER!) Well, Jean is eventually murdered by mad man Gaear, and the police find Jerry hiding out in a motel trying to flee the scene. This all could have been avoided if Jerry just manned up and asked his wife for the money, but what do we expect from the number two bad husband in cinema history.

Worst Husband Moment: When Jerry finds out that Carl murdered Jean’s father, he decides to hide the body in the trunk of his car. This man would do anything to get his hands on the ransom money.

1. Jack Torrance – The Shining (1980)

Jack Nicholson takes the top prize on this list for his portrayal of the ax-wielding maniac husband from the Overlook Hotel. I know a lot of people are going to say that it was not his fault, that he had cabin fever. Really… I have been snowed in before to and I never felt the need to chop my family into bits. Then some might say, well he was possessed by the demons of the hotels past. The thing is, he was a jerk even before he got to the hotel. His loving wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) looks like she is afraid of her own shadow because she was forced to deal with Jack’s alcoholic past. He even ripped their sons arm out of his socket because he messed up his test papers. So even before we know what makes Jack tick, it is clearly established that he is a bad husband. Jack, as selfish as he is, decides to drag Wendy and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) up to an isolated hotel for the winter just so he can finish writing his novel. Wendy, the good wife that she is, just wants to make him sandwiches and spend some quality time with him. Jack’s loving reply to Wendy’s actions is “When you come in here and you hear me typing, or whether you DON’T hear me typing, or whatever the FUCK you hear me doing; when I’m in here, it means that I am working, THAT means don’t come in. Now, do you think you can handle that?” Jack then tries to find out who beat up their son and when he finds who did it, does he reprimand the lady in room 237, NO- he kisses the witch. Then Jack decides that it is time to destroy the snowmobiles so his family can’t escape, he destroys the radio, and gets an ax to kill his family. Of course, his plan fails and Jack becomes a frozen statue for all to see in the Overlook Hotel’s glorious botanical maze.

Worst Husband Moment: Wendy finds out that Jack has not been writing a novel at all. Remember, that was the main reason he dragged her up to the middle of nowhere. He instead has been writing, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over again. Jack finds her reading his “novel” and starts to pursue her up the stairs. He then threatens to bash Wendy’s brains in with a baseball bat. At least he calls Wendy the light of his life first.

Tags: 10, bad, characters, dumb, evil, film, husbands, list, men, movies, ten, top, Top 10 Worst Movie Husbands, Top Ten Worst Movie Husbands, Worst

Warren J. Cantrell’s Top 10 lists are becoming a regular feature here at Scene-Stealers. Cantrell’s unique voice has already given us Top 10 Reasons Why “Predator 2″ is the Best of the Franchise and Top 10 Movies Ruined by a Female Presence, so it’s only fitting that he follow those man-tastic lists up with a tribute to freakazoid actor Gary Busey. If you have a Top 10 list of your own you’d like to contribute, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Here’s Warren:

The quality of Gary Busey’s output has diminished over the years, but why shouldn’t it? Like any gladiator—any true warrior—there can be no indefinite prime. The slow and steady progression of age and insanity will take its toll on the best of us. Like Bill Paxton and Christopher Walken, Gary Busey is that most rare of commodities: the film equivalent of a relief pitcher that comes in to save either a worthy performance by others, or to salvage an already lost cause. To insert any of these three cinematic giants into a movie guarantees almost instant success either in the form of audience approval or ticket receipts (or both). Each of these three men simply cannot help but to make every film they appear in exponentially more awesome—their mere presence enough to assist a film’s transcendence from mediocre to almost-good. The films listed below properly utilized the volatile and unstable magnificence that is The Busey. The filmmakers of the movies below either found one of the maniac’s “good” days in their filming schedule, or let the ravenous man-boar off the chain and provided him space to tear the hell out of his scenes with impunity. Beyond these parameters, there really are no defining limitations to these picks. The entries listed are entirely subjective choices the author of this list felt properly showcased either The Busey’s extraordinary ability to curb his insanity long enough to get a scene in, or sufficiently brought in the man’s leash to get a stable, realistic performance out of the guy (an amazing feat all to itself, and quite worthy of recognition). Thus, I humbly give you the Top 10 Gary Busey Performances.

10. The Firm (1993), Eddie Lomax

You’re not going to find a lot of Tom Cruise vehicles on my lists (at least not in a complimentary fashion), so I feel a bit sheepish about throwing this one on here. Busey’s performance in this picture is really something to behold, however, and it is worth touching on if for no other reason than because G.B. is playing it largely straight, and does a damn fine job with his role. The Cruiser is out looking for some advice after learning that he might be working for a law firm that specializes in protecting mafia rackets, coming across a friend of his older brother from the good ol’ prison days. Playing a private detective, Busey does his part as a plot-filling stop-gap, inadvertently hooking T. Cruise up with Holly Hunter’s character, a partnership that will be mutually beneficial for both the characters involved and the twisted plot the film tries to cobble together from the ashes of Grisham’s novel. Though on screen for less than six minutes, Busey’s character performs his role as a script go-between splendidly, and even has one hell of a death to close out his final scene. Showing that though he can come to a movie with restraint and the crazy switch flipped off yet can’t leave without making at least one manly speech or stand, the film gives G.B. proper respect, allowing him to die with honor. Though shot to pieces in a torture interrogation scene in his own office, Busey gives a little back before getting the shit shot out of him. Plugging one of the hitters in the knee with a hidden desk-gun before getting blown all to hell, Busey goes down fighting and without revealing who it was that hired him to look into the firm (thus saving The Cruiser’s ass). Though a somewhat normal role without any wild-eyed screaming, Busey still turned in a performance that was as tough as it was gloriously efficient. Well done, sir.

9. Black Sheep (1996), Drake Sabitch

This one probably would have made it into a higher ranking on the list had the movie been anything except an unmitigated disaster not worthy of a middle-school sleepover party. Though amusing, “Tommy Boy” doesn’t exactly hold up as a benchmark in comedic cinema: What was once uproariously funny in the mid-90s is often lost in a future that’s seen far too many retreads and formulaic “got to raise money” SNL movie plots. “Black Sheep,” on the other hand, was a shameless cash-in which fooled nobody even at the time of its release, the vindictive aging process no less abusive in recent years. With the exception of Chris Farley’s “Kill Whitey!” speech near the end, the only salvageable pieces of this disaster are Busey’s scenes, every one of them ludicrous in ways only the master himself could manage. Like G.B. himself, his character in “Black Sheep” has no place in the functional world for he operates with no reason nor any discernible motivation. Though slightly provoked by David Spade, it’s clear that Drake Sabitch needs no cause to commence with a full-scale assault with all available weapons and resources for no other clearly defined reason than because Busey felt like kicking some ass. His character in this film is little more than a veiled artistic interpretation of Sir Gary himself: a man who wages psychological warfare on unsuspecting city folk (to him, that’s pretty much all of us) if only because it’s a job that needs to be done by somebody. Though this breed of crazy-character-acting has seen little reinvention over the last decade, people who cast Busey these days essentially looking for a slightly altered version of what appears here, give credit to the film that took this insanity and let The Busey run with it. Hence, as the mold was truly struck with this turn, it gets a nod.

8. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Highway Patrolman

This one is such a small role, but it’s so important, it simply cannot be neglected. The scene is a classic example of the “don’t try this at home” insanity that the King of Gonzo passionately embraced. After bolting from a highway cop to give the two bored drivers something exciting to do in a lonely, desolate stretch of America, Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) calmly whips his obscenely red convertible into a standstill to allow the custodian of justice ownership of the moment. In the novel, Dr. Thompson writes, “He will want the first word. Let him have it. His brain will be in turmoil: he may begin jabbering, or even pull his gun. Let him unwind; keep smiling. The idea is to show him that you were always in total control of yourself and your vehicle – while he lost control of everything.” Indeed, who better to play a slightly-off West-coast Super Trooper out of control than The Busey? After giving our hero a break for no apparent reason other than because he respects the journalist’s moxie (and his staggering collection of grapefruits and soap), the inevitable collapse in reality occurs: the patrolman asks Duke for a little kiss, as it is very lonely out there. Throwing a massive gulp of beer back in the subsequent cut scene, you got to figure he threw it Busey’s way, if only because no person on Earth can refuse the charms of so pure a creature.

7. Under Siege (1992), Commander Krill

The producers of this film gave as much to this effort as could be expected of any group of industry hacks, pairing the woefully under-achieving Steven Seagal with decent stock in a film that managed to be both entertaining and free of moral baggage. In Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey, the film got pleasant distractions from a headache-inducing Seagal, who can’t seem but to squint with furrowed brow in every single scene he’s in. Pug-face acting aside, the film does its best to keep the focus on what is most important: compound bone fractures and knife-murders. An obligatory titty-shot and helicopter demolition contribute to the effort, as does a submarine that appears halfway through the picture to create some sense of urgency, yet did little but confuse the targeted 13-year old audience with its spurious presence. The aquatic vessel did provide a spectacular death for our Mr. Busey, however, who through the course of the movie managed to kill his ship’s captain in cold blood, nearly drown the crew, commit high treason, and blackmail the U.S. government for the Presidency. As far as Busey films go, that’s a pretty full day, something that could only have been enhanced by a wicked backstory explaining the roots of Krill’s insanity. This was not a mistake made by the following film, however…

6. Surviving the Game (1994), Doc Hawkins

To do as much with this role in the time allotted to his character is a feat to behold with admiration: Busey’s turn as Doc Hawkins unquestionably one of the best in his storied career. It’s probably all for the best that he went down pretty quickly in this one, the colossal stature of Busey’s character almost too fantastic to capture properly on film. The story is simple: Ice-T is a homeless vagrant hired by a group of “businessmen” to act as a guide for a camping “expedition” deep into the wilderness, an expedition that actually specializes in taking bums into the woods to hunt for sport. Not only is Doc Hawkins the psychologist (hence the spiritual ring-leader) for a cadre of psychotic hobo-murderers, but once the hobo-chase is on it’s established that he hunts with a crossbow and Bowie knife. Jesus! Talk about hard! And that’s brushing aside the savage backstory the film gives us for his character—a monologue so brutal that the film’s plot halts completely to allow Busey about seven minutes to tell the tale. In sum, the film’s hero and the audience learn that as Doc Hawkins’ boyhood right of passage, his father made him raise a dog from puppy into adulthood, forcing the boy to murder the beast with his bare hands only after the child and dog had fully connected. Somehow, Ice-T is able to go to sleep after hearing this, and is (somehow) surprised to wake the next morning with a hand cannon in his face and a cabin full of maniacs foaming at the mouth in anticipation of his flaying. Busey is easily the most eager of the group, plowing through a plate of eggs only to be verbally restrained by the group who feel the good Doctor is too bloodthirsty even for their ranks. His death is no less fantastic: The semi-climactic hand-to-hand battle that ensues is the perfect ending to a glorious character. After taunting Ice-T for the better part of a century, Doc Hawkins is flipped wildly into a burning gasoline tinderbox pretty much right as it explodes. Yeah, that’s what I call giving proper respect to a man more than deserving of such an exit. The screenwriter later admitted he killed Busey too early! The film would be higher in ranking if it produced more of the good stuff, however, giving us a longer sip of magnificence like that provided by…

5. Point Break (1991), FBI Agent Pappas

Talk about giving a man some room to work. Busey is not only flanked by an appropriately awesome antagonist (The Swayze), but he’s paired with a young pre-”Speed” Keanu, thus allowing the film to operate in a way that sees the dynamic between each of the two fall at an equilibrium that has not been seen in a Reeves vehicle post-1995. Indeed, Busey can’t help but to steal the show from Keanu, an actor whose limited Hollywood cred at the time couldn’t even score him a plausible name in this piece of shit picture (Johnny Utah!). Though the film’s plot demands that most of the story concern itself with the budding romance between Keanu and Patrick Swayze…err, I mean, Lori Petty, Busey’s insanity repeatedly steals every frame of every shot of every scene he’s in. No matter what speech Busey’s giving, the same squinty-glared raspy intensity follows through the end of each sentence. Whether it’s laments over the hunger of a man willing to eat the ass out of a dead rhino, or speaking with nostalgic glee over simpler times when punks crapped on their hands and rubbed it in their face, the audience gets undiluted Busey the whole way through. His death in the movie is pretty goddamned outstanding as well, his bullet-riddled torso manly enough to shrug off an ass-load of hot lead for enough of a duration to put a pill in one of the baddies, taking one of the bank-robbing surfers straight to Hell with him. Busey finds the perfect groove in this picture, playing a law enforcement role with no less self-effacing hilarity than his turn in “Fear and Loathing.” Evidence? Consider that the FBI Agent he plays in this film green-lit an undercover surfing operation with a first-week rookie, drank Jack Daniel’s on the job, punched his supervisor in the face at a crime scene, and took the cuffs off a prisoner to get into a gunfight. If that’s not policing the Busey way, then I don’t know what is (nor do I wish to know).

4. The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Buddy Holly

Give credit to the film that turned the Busey loose on the world because it may not have introduced the man, but it certainly provided him one hell of a coming-out party. To watch this film now is to look at a completely different creature—one not warped by narcotics, alcohol, or extended bouts of insanity. This slender, fresh-faced kid walked into Buddy Holly’s shoes and never looked back, taking all the quiet Texas decency of the historical rock icon and infusing it with a subtle rebellious yet endearing slant. Yes, the historical record and the events in this film often don’t jive, but to harp on this too much would be to miss the point entirely, as this is a column extolling the cinematic virtues of one Mr. Gary Busey, and in this, his most (and only) Oscar-nominated performance, he does not disappoint. Not only does he play and sing the performed songs in the film himself, he and the filmmakers properly convey the most important thematic aspect of Buddy Holly’s career: social change. Buddy Holly not only blew the doors open for main stream rock n’ roll, pushing the new art form into a wider path of cultural circulation, but he also challenged established racial lines, as seen in the film by his performance at the Apollo Theatre and his marriage to a Puerto Rican woman. Both of these points are touched on in the film, and each lends weight to presenting a character that not only became famous as shit and died in an epic plane crash, but also, by all accounts, was a generous, caring, talented man with a hell of a lot to offer the world. Though The Busey went pretty well off the deep end in most subsequent outings, it’s worth it to remember what a diverse and promising actor the guy once was, and the true quality of talent that lies beneath the surface of a certifiable maniac. And while flying in a plane that runs into the side of a mountain is a pretty goddamned awesome death, it pales in comparison to his character’s demise in…

3. Predator 2 (1990), Peter Keyes

Though the two don’t share any real scenes together, that the filmmakers of this gem had the foresight to pair Busey with Bill Paxton demonstrates true commitment to the project. Playing a mysterious government operative trying to capture the Predator to usher in a new age of steel-net and shoulder-cannon warfare, Busey’s Peter Keyes runs head-long into the always solid D. Glove, whose Lt. Harrigan is so unapologetically no nonsense that not even the long shadow of Schwarzenegger could stand as the Lieutenant’s equal. Busey holds his own, however, seamlessly jumping between serious government double-talk to rebel-yell murder-acting, the breaks between these transitions sudden and magnificent. The result is a perfectly molded plot-repair whereby the audience can enjoy cheeky South Central L.A. space-carnage whilst confidently trusting that the picture provides some explanation of why the government isn’t getting in on some Predator-related research. Busey explains in his prequel re-cap and climax exposition speech that his team plans to freeze old pussy-face and take him back to the lab for a scientific prodding and poking session. As many of the films above have thoroughly showcased, however, when Busey’s characters take direct action, the initiative usually turns on him and the consequences tend to bring G.B. a quick—though often awesome—death. This movie doesn’t disappoint either, giving the audience not one, but two G.B. kills, as if the first one wasn’t properly Busey enough to warrant his exit. The second—complete—demise is more fitting a man of Busey’s stature. Talking shit right to the Predator’s face, screaming at the giant beast about his sorry space-assed inability to go home now that true men have his number, The Busey goes down hard, firing his freeze gun right up to the moment his body is cut directly in half. To even come close to this level of awesome, what with the pairing of Busey with Paxton and the screaming Predator-taunt death, one would have to turn to the man’s most frantic, drug-fueled, unhinged role—a movie that had everything, even a Baldwin…

2. D.C. Cab (1983), Dell

When I say that this film gives the world Gary Busey at his craziest, at his most randomly insane and unpredictable, I make a statement not only bold, but dangerous. If there is any doubt about which character in G.B.’s extensive catalog is the most uncontrollably frantic, I ask that you simply pop in this oft-overlooked 1983 treasure, and watch the evidence unfold. Honestly, I don’t even know where to start. In every scene where he appears, The Busey is not only speaking in the most hysterically frantic wheeze imaginable, but is spewing forth the most incomprehensible conspiracy babble that the most powdered of coke-heads could conjure. Whether it’s his assertion that Bruce Lee is not dead, but frozen and locked into an underground silo until the economy improves, or his assertion that he will, under no circumstances, work on Elvis’ birthday, the madness never stops. While I do enjoy his intense monologue near the end of the film about holding glass bottles next to his eyes after shaking the carbonated liquid within to unstable levels, how can you take that scene over, say, his attempt to woo Max Gail’s wife by telling her he’s come over with a bottle of Quervo Gold and his “lucky rubber”? To say a movie is awesome when it sports Mr. T, a Baldwin, Bill Maher, and Busey, is like commenting with shocked certainty that water is indeed wet. G.B. takes the opportunity to really stretch his legs, however, absolutely eating every other actor’s lunch when onscreen with them, running away with scenes at will and going so far over the top that even the characters in the film can’t help but to wince at the lunacy. His best line of this, or any of his films, though? Easy. “You wanna know what the worst part of oral sex is? The view!” Another gem:

Albert: “Do you do drugs, Dell?”
Dell: “I don’t remember!”

1. Lethal Weapon (1987), Mr. Joshua

Does it get any better than this? Just to make things fair, let’s discard the fact that Busey’s got maybe the coolest name in this film than any other character on his resume. Throughout the course of this movie, Busey’s so hard that he allows himself to be burned alive, rigs a house to blow, engages in some serious car-jacking, tortures the shit out of Mel Gibson in a way that could only make a Catholic happy, and gets into a goddamned mixed martial-arts brawl with a cop on another cop’s lawn surrounded by a whole bunch of other cops. Talk about balls! All you need to know about Mr. Joshua is in his profession: the trigger-man for a retired General/drug-lord who’s looking to carve out a violent corner of operations for his heroin-schemes, L.A.P.D. be damned. Mr. Joshua is not only able to outrun Mel Gibson, he calmly dispatches cops, kidnaps innocents, and tortures with ease. Giving the world its first taste of G.B. in a villain’s role, the film surprises and delights at every turn, showcasing a shockingly thin Busey easily navigating the waters of treachery like he was born for the task. Mr. Joshua not only outlives his boss and caretaker, but also gets the “Die Hard”-baddie treatment in his climactic gun-grab and dual-hero kill-shot. The performance is the most perfect mix of bag-lady level insanity with measured, restrained scenes in which G.B. is firmly established as crazy, yet in a way that provides the character, film, and actor some level of dignity. Though it would have been unthinkably awesome to thaw the blonde bastard out for one of the three subsequent sequels, the succinct clarity of the performance is one of its charms: a perfect moment in Busey-time captured for all eternity without any threat of tainting or bastardly re-invention. Mr. Joshua is the James Dean of Busey roles—that which is heartbreaking to lose, yet too grand to survive with dishonor into unavoidable disrepair.

Tags: 10, best, busey, characters, Crazy, film, films, gary, insane, movie, movies, performances, roles, ten, top, Top 10 Gary Busey Performances, weird

Our Top 10 list today comes from Will Dawson, whose Top 10 Worst James Bond Flicks list still generates lots of comments. J.D. and I both did a Top 10 list of that rare thing—the successful sequel—a while back (Eric’s Top 10 Best Sequels & J.D.’s Top 10 Best Sequels), and Will is looking at the other side of the coin today. We even had blogger Andrew Reed write a list of Top 10 Unfairly Maligned Sequels, in which he sticks up for one of the movies on Will’s list! If you’d like to contribute a Top 10 list of your own, send it to eric@scene-stealers.com. Here’s Will:

The sequel has been one of Hollywood’s most time honored inventions. However, in recent years, due to the fact that Hollywood has been running out of ideas, the sequel has come to represent a kind of dread to how bad it will be and makes people wonder “Why the hell did they make a sequel to that?” Anyway, here is a list of the 10 Worst Sequels of all time, which will make you wonder, “Why the hell did they make a sequel to that?”

10. Robocop 2 (1990)

To tell you the truth, I kind of do appreciate “Robocop 2” for its sincere camp value, and the movie is really campy. Such plot devices as Robocop talking about the merits of good hygiene, a 10-year-old drug dealer that swears like a sailor, and a little-league baseball team that rob a TV store all come to mind. However, these reasons are exactly why the movie is so bad to begin with. The first “Robocop” was an effective satire about law enforcement and what it meant to be human, while this one tries to be serious a criminal drama but ends up becoming an unintentional comedy with the clichéd message “Crime doesn’t pay…especially if you mess with Robocop.”

Cain: You Want Me?
Robocop: Dead or alive.
Cain: One of us must die.
Robocop: Alright, dead then.

9. Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds In Paradise (1987)

Taking off from the classic film “Revenge of the Nerds”, the writers decided to put the nerds in sunny Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., where they run into the same old enemies and engage in the same old sex-jinks. Although I do admire the producers for bringing back some of the original cast (unlike other movies on this list), the movie is a just rehash of the first one with the notable exceptions that the nerds are in “paradise” as it were, and Anthony Edwards has less of a role. Anyway, haven’t the nerds already gotten revenge in the first movie? Did they really need to get revenge in the second one? Oh well…..

Booger: Excuse me, miss. I just want you to know that I don’t intend to sleep with another woman until I’m back here in your arms with my head resting between your creamy thighs.

8. Air Bud 2: Golden Receiver (1998)

Oh man, I just wanted to write “The dog plays football!!!!!” and just get it over with, but I’ll delve into the mess that is “Air Bud 2.”. Basically Air Bud’s owner is on a football team that sucks so they enlist the help of Air Bud to play football, and it turns out Air Bud is super good at football. Beside the fact that non-humans cannot play high school football because it is against the rules, AIR BUD IS A FUCKING DOG AND HE DOESN’T HAVE FUCKING HANDS, thereby he CAN’T CATCH THE FOOTBALL!!!! And don’t give me this crap about how he catches it through his helmet with his mouth–if Air Bud was a real dog that did that in real life, the force and speed of the ball landing in Air Bud’s mouth would make Air Bud’s neck snap or break his teeth. Did I also mention that the dog plays football?

Coach: I’ll tell you one thing boys, that ain’t no golden retriever….that is a golden receiver!

7. The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

Oh man, I remember when the hype for this was so big in high school and I remember being really pissed off when I didn’t see it in theaters, but anyway I rented it on DVD and I thought “Well … that sucked.” “The Matrix Reloaded” has a lot of problems that I’ll sum up in a few details: convoluted plot, bad dialogue, over-reliance on special effects, one of the worst sex scene/montages in film history, too much techno music, too much philosophy, and too much Keanu Reeves. Especially too much Keanu Reeves.

Morpheus: Tonight, let us shake this cave!!!!

6. Jaws 2 (1978)

After the colossal success that was “Jaws,” I suppose you had to make a sequel to it, and although this movie has one of the best taglines in film history (“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water …”), it still is one of the worst sequels of all time. The shock factor of the shark scenes have become cliché by this point and the emphasis on the film was focused on Chief Brody’s stupid brat kids who get stranded in a sailboat whilst the shark encircles them. This makes the viewer root for the shark to eat said brat kids. You also hope that the spirit of Robert Shaw as Quint the Shark Hunter is going to show up to give Brody some spiritual advice, but he does not, which leaves the viewer with this mess of a film. I guess the reason why “Jaws 2” isn’t as fairly maligned as it should be is because of the horrendous films that followed in the series: “Jaws 3-D” and “Jaws: The Revenge.”

Chief Brody: (to the shark) Alright, you big bastard! Come on! I’ve got something for ya’ now! That’s it! Attaboy, come on! Right over here!

5. The Sting II (1983)

OK, here is a list of how to make your sequel automatically suck: release your it 10 years after the first film, don’t get any of the original cast members back, and think that just because it shares a title with one of the most beloved films of all time, people will go to the theater. Well guess what? “The Sting 2” is guilty of all of these things and it sucks. In a bit of puzzling casting, Paul Newman and Robert Redford (who were perfect in the original) are replaced by Jackie Gleason and Mac Davis. Even Robert Shaw is replaced by Oliver Reed. (It appears that the producers decided to cast the next hardest-drinking actor behind Robert Shaw, who had died of drinking by that time.) Also, why would you try and sting the same person again that you did in the first one? Wouldn’t you think that the “stingee” would notice that these were the same guys who were conning him from the first movie? Unfortunately, the film still shows up on cable every now and again, so beware.

4. Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991)

Ok, so in the original “Highlander,” Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) is an immortal who wins the prize of being the top immortal by cutting off the Kurgan’s head and becomes mortal and goes off and lives with his love interest. In “Highlander 2,” it turns out that the immortals are all from a distant planet that neither of them can remember and that MacLeod was not the one who won the prize and, in fact, there are other immortals about ready to fight MacLeod to win it. Combine this with bad special effects (even for the time), the fact that Sean Connery returns after his character was killed in “Highlander,” and an absurd plot line about the Ozone layer depleting (hey, at least it was prophetic), and you have “Highlander 2”: a giant colossal piece of crap. Russell Mulcahy (the first film’s director and this film’s director) walked out of the premiere and put together a new cut of the film called The Renegade Version, which basically got rid of all the elements about immortals being from space….but even The Renegade Version is still crap. This quote basically sums up the entire film:

Louise Marcus: Okay, now let me just see if I can get this straight. You come from another planet, and you’re mortal there, but you’re immortal here until you kill all the guys from there who have come here … and then you’re mortal here … unless you go back there, or some more guys from there came here, in which case you become immortal here … again.
Connor MacLeod: Something like that.

3. Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

Ok, I’ll give Dan Aykroyd and John Landis some credit, at least they wanted to press on with the characters and take the series in a new direction, but it’s hard to do it when two of the most iconic actors in the series are dead. Seriously, this film is so unfunny that you would rather have a pineapple violently inserted up your nose then having to sit through just a minute of this movie. The sad part about this is that it appears as though Aykroyd was hoping that this would hopefully restart the series, but there’s just one problem: The Blues Brothers are not The Blues Brothers without John Belushi or Cab Calloway and trying to move on without them was a horrible mistake.

Elwood: Uh, ma’am, we’re the Blues Brothers. We do blues, rhythm & blues, jazz, funk, soul. We can handle rock, pop, country, heavy metal, fusion, hip hop, rap, Motown, operetta, show tunes. In fact, we’ve even been called upon, on occasion, to do a polka! However Caribbean is a type of music, I regret to say, which has not been, is simply not, nor will ever be a part of this band’s repertoire.

2. Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005)

The first “Deuce Bigalow” wasn’t going to rewrite film history, but at least it was mindless entertainment for an hour and 40 minutes with some good scenes. This movie, however, is terrible. The script appears to be written by a bunch of hormonally crazed 15-year-olds who don’t know anything about sex. The stereotypes are rampant and typical (woman from Chernobyl has penis for a nose, Dutch people are portrayed smoking weed, etc.), and the fact that this is a Rob Schneider movie make this film absolutely one of the worst movies I have ever seen. If you ever want your significant other to break up with you, plop this in the DVD player and watch.

Heinz Himmler: I am Heinz Hummer. I’m the gigolo with the most below. Okay? I can give you a Filthy Lopez like you never had before. I could give you a Cambodian Creamsicle… that will make you scream all night. Okay? But not now because I’m busy. So leave me alone, bitch.

1. Caddyshack 2 (1988)

Oh god, this movie is quite possibly the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Every committable offense you could make in a sequel is made: No original cast members (with the exception of Chevy Chase, who basically took the money and ran), a bad script, and the fact that none of the cast members appear to be interested at all make this film so very horrid. Jackie Mason, Robert Stack, and Dan Aykroyd are poor substitutes for Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, and Bill Murray–and you know you have a problem when this movie is rated PG, and the gopher is the most compelling character. Now, excuse me while I put in the original “Caddyshack” and try and forget about “Caddyshack 2.”

Capt. Tom Everett: If I pull the arrow out, will you p-please s-suck out the poison?
Ty Webb: Let me get this straight. You pull it out, I suck. Is there any money in it for me?

Tags: 10, all-time, awful, bad, ever, film, films, list, movie, movies, sequels, ten, terrible, top, Top 10 Worst Sequels, Worst

It’s a timely week to be writing this because after this past weekend’s domestic box office take, we have a new number-one movie on this list. Comedies are not usually as big a box office draw as an action/adventure or superhero/fantasy film, but due to a minimal amount of money spent on casting, sets and costumes, and usually no special effects, they are one of the most affordable risks for a studio. However, an R-rating severely limits mainstream potential. The films on this list are rare beasts indeed. They all rode some sort of cultural wave to become the top-grossing R-rated comedies in America. If you have a list you’d like to contribute to Top 10 Tuesday, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com.

10. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) - $128,505,958

Sacha Baron Cohen’s first reality-based prank movie debuted on only 837 screens in 2006, but grossed a wholly unexpected $26.5 million. “Da Ali G Show” was a mild hit on HBO, but it had a huge buzz and people were talking about this movie. Uninitiated moviegoers were intrigued by these strange ads and TV appearances by Cohen in character as Borat. Many people, in a funny parallel with “The Blair Witch Project,” thought this Borat guy was for real. The mix of real situations and a fictional plot made it hard for audiences to tell what was “real” and what wasn’t. They told their friends, and “Borat” did something few movies do. It grossed more in its second weekend. Expanding to 2,566 theaters, “Borat” made $28.3 million in its second week. “Brüno” opened this weekend with a bigger “30.4” million, but it was on 3,400 screens and—even though its material is more outrageous than “Borat”—it suffers from feeling a little too familiar following the groundbreaking status of its predecessor.

9. National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) - $141,600,000

Besides entering the words “toga party” and “food fight” into the popular lexicon, “Animal House” also one of the most profitable movies of all time. This John Landis-directed comedy featured John Belushi (from the still-new late night “Saturday Night Live”), Donald Sutherland, and a cast of then-unknowns (including Kevin Bacon, Karen Allen, Thomas Hulce, and Tim Matheson). It only cost $2.7 million to make, and $50,000 of that was spent on Sutherland alone. (He was actually offered a lower salary at one point and percentage points, which he turned down—assuming the film would go nowhere—and costing him millions of dollars.) This was released back in a time when there were fewer prints and they remained in theaters for a longer time, making it the most impressive box office run on the list. Its opening weekend? A mere $276,538 in 12 theaters. Regardless, it ended up being the third biggest movie of 1978 and stayed in theaters even longer than that.

8. American Pie 2 (2001) - $145,103,595

1999’s “American Pie” was credited with bringing the R-rated teen comedy (a genre popularized by “Animal House”) back into vogue. Ads showing star Jason Biggs putting his—ahem—member into a warm pie were enough to stir curiosity and good reviews earned the movie positive word of mouth. While its sequel wasn’t so lucky in that area, “American Pie 2” falls into the category of films that benefitted from their predecessor greatly. The first “American Pie” was a $102,000 smash, but it only opened at $18 million. Two months later, it was still earning a million a week. The 2001 sequel scored a huge opening weekend of $45 million off of the first movie’s good name, but posted a bigger drop-off. Two months later, it was earning only $300,000.

7. Knocked Up (2007) - $148,768,917

The same might be said about Judd Apatow’s follow-up to “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” an unexpected 2005 smash that launched the career of then-unknown Steve Carell. The posters for “Knocked Up” even featured Seth Rogen with a nerdy look—similar to Carell’s “Virgin” poster—and the tagline “What if this guy got you pregnant?” The difference between “Knocked Up” and American Pie 2,” however, was lots of critical acclaim and great audience response. It made several critics’ best-of-2007 lists (including the AFI Top 10, and lists from the New York Times, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion’s AV Club, Associated Press, Rolling Stone, and mine(!)). Like Carell before him, it made Rogen (a supporting player in “Virgin”) a star and began the onslaught of Apatow Frat Pack ‘Junior Varsity’ player movies—a stupid term used to denote anything starring, written by, or produced by Apatow or his friends. “Knocked Up” spent eight weeks in the box office top 10, the longest streak amongst May-June openers in 2007.

6. Sex and the City (2008) - $152,647,258

Really? Wow. Who woulda thunk it? Never underestimate the power of women. The magnitude of this 6-season HBO show spinoff’s box office take can only be described one way: Women like raunchy movies too, especially when they’re told from a woman’s perspective. The film was set three years after the series finale, and like “American Pie 2,” it benefitted from a huge opening weekend ($57 million), due mostly to a built-in audience from the popular show. Despite middling reviews, “Sex and the City” recorded the biggest opening ever for an R-rated comedy and for a romantic comedy. You know what this means: All four actresses (Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis), as well as writer-director Michael Patrick King, are set to return for “Sex and the City 2,” due in theaters May 28, 2010.

5. Scary Movie (2000) - $157,019,771

This Keenan Ivory Wayans-directed parody film struck a chord with viewers who had been big fans of the late 90’s rebirth of teen horror flicks—due mainly to the “Scream” trilogy that began in 1996. It was co-written by, and starred, his brothers Shawn and Marlon and it also launched the career of current go-to funnygirl Anna Faris. Unfortunately, it also launched the careers of low-budget parody hacks Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who wrote and directed “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” “Meet the Spartans,” and “Disaster Movie” (which all also star the equally talented Carmen Electra and are hugely profitable affairs). The first “Scary Movie,” however, was actually very funny—a raunchy, no-holds-barred spoof that was also smart enough to make fun of non-horror flicks like “The Usual Suspects” and “The Matrix.” In addition to the Friedberg/Seltzer movies, “Scary Movie” spawned three sequels of diminishing returns, with David Zucker (“The Naked Gun,” “Airplane!”) taking over for Ivory Wayans in 2003 on “Scary Movie 3.”

4. Pretty Woman (1990) - $178,406,268

Is it weird to have never seen the movie that catapulted Julia Roberts into the spotlight? I missed out on this little $14 million romantic comedy in the theaters and by the time it turned into this big deal, I wasn’t really interested. Richard Gere was the name star at the time, but Roberts went on to become one of the most bankable stars of the 90s following the success of “Pretty Woman.” She even won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (losing to Kathy Bates in “Misery”) for her star-making turn. “Pretty Woman” was initially intended to be a dark drama about prostitution in Los Angeles called “Three-Thousand,” but was reconceptualized somewhere along the line by screenwriter J.F. Lawton as a romantic comedy. Maybe if it would have stayed a drama Roberts would have had a better chance at that Oscar. Ha!

3. There’s Something About Mary (1998) - $176,484,651

First: The stats. By combining over-the-top gross-out humor with a dash of romantic comedy, the Farrelly brothers struck paydirt and made Ben Stiller a bankable comedy star. This movie absolutely exemplifies a word-of-mouth success. It opened in July, but didn’t hit the number-one spot on the box office chart until its eighth week of wide release in September! Second: The sad personal story. This movie cost me a chance at $250,000. Click here to read the story of how I lost an easy, easy question about “Mary” on VH1’s “World Series of Pop Culture.” (Hint: It involves me not answering the words “hair gel” correctly and an explicit second-by-second recounting of the thoughts in my head at that moment.) Third, an epilogue to this tragedy: I moved last year and discovered something awful in the bottom of a box—an official “There’s Something About Mary” promo item. What could it have been? You guessed it. It was a packet of hair gel with the movie logo plastered all over it. If only I had unpacked since the last time I moved. So lame.

2. Wedding Crashers (2005) - $209,255,921

Sure, it followed the success of “American Pie,” but the record-breaking gross of “Wedding Crashers” was only just eclipsed this past weekend, which is pretty amazing. Over $200 million for an R-rated comedy was unheard of. The high-concept “Wedding Crashers” really paved the way for “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and lots of modern comedies’ willingness to “go there.” The movie feels about a half hour too long, but features a winning combination of raunchy sex humor and sweetness, anchored by Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn’s natural rapport. This movie also waited for a while—three weeks—to hit number one at the box office. It was held back by Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate factory,” which would gross a little more than half as much by the end of its run. This was one of the first movies Scene-Stealers.com reviewed, as evidenced by the clip we used in our Scene-Stealers trailer/parody of KISS’ “Lick it Up” video.

1. The Hangover (2009) - $222,442,000 (as of July 13,2009)

Here it is, folks—your new number-one R-rated comedy champ. Todd Phillips’ sloppy-but-funny “The Hangover” follows the same pattern as a lot of movies on this list: It combines raunchy, male-oriented humor with a cast of on-the-cusp stars and an easy-to-describe high concept. (“Oh, did you see the movie about the guys who wake up in Vegas with after a bachelor party and they’ve lost the groom?” It’s just like: “Did you see the movie about the 40-year-old virgin?” or “Did you see the movie about the guys who crash weddings to get unattached chicks?”) One big difference is that its producers saw its impending success before it was even released, ordering a sequel, which is already in the works. It remains to be seen whether Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis are able to capitalize on their newfound fame like Carell or Rogen or Stiller did, but right now let’s just marvel that a movie as dirty as this IS the mainstream. “Brüno” certainly pushed the raunch factor further this week, but Cohen’s movie is too confrontational to be a $200 million hit. In the end, “The Hangover” has that “Wedding Crashers” sweetness, which gives it a much wider audience potential. It has only been out for 6 weeks, and last weekend’s $9 million take proves that it’s still got some legs.

Tags: 10, adult, best, biggest, comedies, dirty, funny, gross, grossing, highest, Highest Grossing R-Rated Comedies, list, rated, rated-r, raunchy, restricted, ten, top, Top 10 Lists, top ten

Warren J. Cantrell is so prolific, I’m beginning to think he keeps writing Top 10s so that no one else will get one in edgewise. So here you go: another Top 10 from the man who brought you Top 10 Reasons “Predator 2″ is the Best of the Franchise and Top 10 Movies Ruined by a Female Presence. If anyone else wants to contribute a Top 10 to the site for Top 10 Tuesday, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Otherwise, here’s more Warren with a long-winded new Top 10:

Nothing hints at a corner-cutting, dignity-swallowing director like the presence of a montage in a picture. In the trade, within high-end critic circles, the insertion of a montage as a way to tie up extraneous plot points or otherwise advance the story is looked upon in much the same way as might a parent wincing at their child who is touting their successful use of the potty whilst holding up shit-smeared hands as proof. I could make a list 50 films deep if some parameters aren’t tossed around this puppy, for truly, some films are too good to leave out, yet don’t exactly encompass the true spirit of the genuine montage. When I say genuine, I mean the director had to really cut some corners, cramming an ass-load of information into a brief two to four minutes–no dialogue, just rockin’ music and quick-cut action. Because the best montages come (quite accidentally) from the films that simply don’t have the money or patience to properly expound on certain aspects of the plot, covering vast periods and events in a desperately abbreviated fashion, this list only recognizes those montages that really went for it, and tried to wrap up more than 6 hours of events in one quick series of shots. For this reason, epic montages like those found in “Jaws,” “The Karate Kid,” “Commando,” and “Rambo: First Blood Part II” don’t make it here. Nor do I note the films that wasted the awesome promise of a good montage on slow-moving, tedious scenes. And while some decent films have had good montages, I simply could not stand putting them before truly manly (is there any other genuine sort?) montages like the ones listed. For this reason, while it was not easy letting them go: “Billy Madison,” “Stripes,” “Major League,” “Volunteers,” “Hoosiers,” and “Indiana Jones” (solid travel montage) are mentioned honorably now, yet omitted.

10. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) – Getting’ strapped.

Back in 1991, most of us had not realized how full of shit Kevin Costner was, and could still plausibly enjoy a montage, however tainted by his presence, so long as the bastard wasn’t calling the shots behind the camera. This montage does well by keeping the action and medieval steel in focus (rather than Costner and his mullet), quick-cutting the shit out of these weapon and fortification-preparation scenes. Indeed, nothing gets a man jazzed up more than watching a bunch of dudes going “A-Team” in the 12th century, harvesting Sherwood’s natural resources to build an armory and a Swiss Family Robinson-appropriate tree fort. As a child, I could scarcely imagine a scenario where one needed more than crudely fashioned swords and arrows to overcome the might of an encroaching British warlord, and to this day, I try to forget that I’ve learned otherwise. The three-plus minutes of defensive preparations played on a basic male understanding of the world: with enough music and shots of molten steel poured into casts, a man will believe in the world and the possibilities afforded to live as a fugitive forest-Prince. This montage’s rousing musical score and wise use of awesome props like stacked swords and bows let the audience forget that they were knee-deep in a fetid Costner-cesspool, something rudely thrust back upon us by concluding the sweet-ass montage with a laughable “special” f/x shot of Robin splitting an arrow in half. If a lack of British citizenship was of no concern when casting the lead, I ask this: why Costner? In “Predator,” Schwarzenegger demonstrated (admirably) that he was not only a leader of men, but also quite adept at making munitions from the bosom of nature. The pieces were all in place, yet somebody at Morgan Creek Productions failed to pull the trigger. It is for this reason that this movie places so low on this list, awesome montage be damned.

9. Teen Wolf (1985) – Wolf’s got skills.

You have to give a nod to a movie that recklessly embraces the absurdity of its plot. Certainly, this doesn’t earn a movie an automatic pass on this merit alone, but when you’re dealing with a fucking werewolf going to high school, playing Varsity basketball whilst drinking and screwing more than any other jock on campus, well, you’re a filmmaker speaking my language. I particularly love the fact that you have a mythic, traditionally bloodthirsty creature of the night walking the halls of a public institution housing minors, and not only is the school okay with it, they hook the beast up with a letterman’s jacket! Sweet-ass threads aside, we get all the goods during this montage, including the impending, unavoidable split between a newly christened werewolf and the fat friend/teammate holding him back. And that’s alright, because in high school, when you’re (inexplicably) the center of the social universe as a result of freakish ancestral abilities that give you the power to both ball and draw in poon, you need to cut loose the ballast, shotgun a beer, and ghost-ride the shit out of some vans. This film’s montage doesn’t get a higher ranking because of the inexplicable lack of clips featuring our wolf-hero fighting crime, terrorism, or even mutant sheep (all appropriate actions for a werewolf superhero). Sure, he is shown to have scored lots of ass, played some serious 5-on-5, and partied the shit out of the local scene, but without some kind of vengeful retribution (fangs and claws ripping into criminal flesh with a snarl of justice) it’s kind of empty.

8. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) – Nobody does drunk like you, Guy!

Pulling off an appropriate and accurate drunk scene isn’t easy. While some actors do indeed have an uncanny ability to act hammered, most come off as clownish attempts that resemble down syndrome more than intoxication. Enter Guy Ritchie and the montage-drunk of “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” a scene that deftly combines upbeat dance beats with celebratory drunk antics in a manner that got the jubilation of the scene’s moment spot on. After completing (miraculously) their heist of another heist, our four main characters head back to a bar for a private, all-night drunk. While Ritchie is riding in the car built from the ground-up by Wes Anderson and Tarantino, credit should be given to this scene’s graceful feeling of British style that is now (regrettably) so played out. However, this scene works because the music, performances, camera moves, and action during the shots that meld perfectly with the tone of the scene: giddy relief that our protagonists will not all have to die or otherwise get maimed in the morning. Perhaps the scene works because at our best, our most profoundly drunk, most of us wish we were having as much fun whilst looking as cool as these guys here. Ritchie’s offerings have been problematic to differing degrees since, yet here, and to a smaller extent with “Snatch,” the world watched as a passerby might, surveying with amusement a sidewalk juggler with enough skill to warrant a moment of admiration (though not any spare change).

7. Bloodsport (1988) – The smell of cheese

No, I’m not talking about the bus-riding montage where Jean-Claude Van Damme is lamenting the loss of his bro-partner (which was arguably the gayest few minutes of the 20th century). I’m talking about the fighting montage where the audience gets to watch a litany of toughs smack the shit out of each other for glory, blood, and honor. The soundtrack to this film is so difficult to obtain in its original CD or tape format that genuine copies can go for as much as a C-note (seriously). In light of the savage cut (Stan Bush’s monumental “Fight To Survive”) afforded the background of this montage, it’s hard to argue with such price assessments, as this montage strikes all vital points both in scene content and musical accompaniment. With something like four-dozen fighters to peel through so our hero can get to the demonic Bolo and his Herculean pecs, the film gives us a delightful montage to quickly discard all tertiary characters clogging up the line in front of Van Damme and his showdown with destiny. The audience is treated to a veritable feast of awesome, watching a mixed-martial-arts bloodbath in rhythm to some absolutely tight late-80’s power riffs. It’s pretty rare that a movie can outdo the clips from a montage with the music in the background, yet this film gives us a song so frickin’ sweet, they could have thrown scenes of a kitten sale fading in and out while this tune blared in the background, and it would have kicked ass. I’m not sure what I like more during this montage, the weird-ass African fighter clawing at his opponent like a goddamned Bonobo or Van Damme actually trying to play it straight as a real martial artist with quantifiable skills. The lyrics of the musical powerhouse in the background steal the scene, however, entertaining whilst motivating. For evidence, I present to you,

“My body’s ready/My heart’s on fire/I’m gonna push it over the wire/Perfect timing/Tight as a drum/The final battle’s already won

I’m taking hold of every moment/Given strength by the breath of life/I’m gonna stake my claim/I fight to survive!”

6. The Godfather (1972) – War, murder, mattresses

I almost left this one off, because in actuality, this montage is all exposition and almost no action. For a film as brutally savage as “The Godfather,” it comes off as somewhat disappointing that we don’t get more shots of mob war, fish-wrapping, wire-choking, and orange-peeling. Instead, we watch with restrained amusement as newspapers spin into frame informing us of the media war engaged by the Corleones and their “newspaper” connections. Yet subtle shots intimate the violence blowing wildly through the plot (albeit moving in fast-forward), quick, fading scenes of Clemenza settling in for a night in his “war room” or the newspaper picture of a police detective standing amicably over the corpse of a slain Mafioso. For a film largely derided for its romanticized version of La Cosa Nostra (though not for its overall quality as a picture), this montage draws out a simple facet of mob life brought more blatantly to the surface in the films to follow over the next few decades. By showing the backroom card games away from home, the headlines of murder, the stodgy rooms filled with anonymous hitters and their arsenals, the audience got a realistic sense of a true mafia war, one that witnesses men at war not only with others, but also themselves. The scene demonstrated the fight of the mob soldiers against their own manufactured images of civility and class: that which is afforded to criminals who put on a good show for the public most of the time, yet must invariably return to the gutter to do the filthy work demanded of genuine crime. With a light, cheerful, out-of-tune Italian piano piece, the audience is quickly ushered through the dregs of mafia life, outside the suits and cigarettes, beyond the respect and elegance through a world that the characters unquestioningly traverse, their concern never rising above the breezy tone emanating throughout the montage.

5. Scarface (1983) – Take d’hat fucking world, it’s yours, main! Take it to the limit!

Money. That’s not only a description of this montage, but the image that kicks it off and sweet-Christ, is there a lot of it! After solidifying his position as the go-to man for cocaine imports and distribution in Miami, Tony Montana (Al Pacino) goes to work maximizing his power base in the vacuum left in Frank’s absence. Wisely moving through what looks to be as many as six months of expansion and growth, director Brian De Palma gives the audience not-so-subtle hints regarding the extent of Tony’s ascension. We watch the spread of the protagonist’s influence through multiple business ventures, a chic wedding (that showcases a fucking domesticated tiger), lines of men marching into a bank with duffel bags full of money, and a good-for-nothing junkie wife that is in it for the gravy. The montage has been parodied before, and for good reason, as it is absolutely dripping with cheese (the background track rivals “Bloodsport”’s in sheer awesome-per-square inch), yet isn’t that the point? The film is a salute to the possibilities of life in the United States for any person with balls solid enough to take what is there. In Tony Montana, America found a willing taker, a victim of this country’s lop-sided promise who, while tough as nails and quite willing, did not understand the basic necessity of freedom: restraint. A microcosm of the thematic elements of the film at large, the montage represents both Tony at the peak of his power, yet in the midst of what will ultimately ruin him. It is Tony’s blind embrace of the American dream (and the idea that one must keep reaching for more) that will doom him, for he doesn’t understand (nor will he ever) that balls might be what it takes to get to the top, but that brains are needed to stay there. The song here is “Take It To the Limit,” and for good reason, as the montage demonstrates Tony doing what he does best, mainly chewing through everything and everyone to get higher up the social ladder (the tragic inevitability, of course, is that once to the top, to keep trying to climb will mean a terrible fall).

4. Trainspotting (1996) – Nightclubbing

While decidedly not cool, exciting, or remotely inspirational, this montage gets on the list and at a respectable spot because it comes with the truth. Resolved that he’s not cut out for clean living–that all the fresh air and camaraderie in the world will never be enough to fill the void left by the needle–Renton (Ewan McGregor) and his crew get to work feeding their habit, taking the audience through the junkie training manual page by page. Explaining the finer points of scoring or otherwise stealing, scamming, or beating so they can get the funds to score, we watch Renton fade deeper out of focus and into the abyss while Iggy Pop keeps score in the background. The cut, “Nightclubbing,” matches the lazy yet inevitable lurch of our main characters, the hollow thumping of the bass line laboriously wheezing out each beat like the repressed heart of a fixed junkie about to tie off. With this score, the visuals of all protagonists doing irreparable harm to themselves, and the voice-over dialogue about the means of getting gear, the audience is left with no illusions about the basic necessities of such a lifestyle. We watch car theft, parent theft, prescription theft, old-folks home theft, and Mother Superior getting a load shot straight into his crotch. While earlier scenes relating the pleasantries of bare handedly digging through a recently fouled public toilet or spraying your girlfriend and her family with feces were indicators of the degradation involved with this kind of life, it is the montage that brings the realities, the nuts and bolts, to the fore. This montage makes it abundantly clear that Renton and his friends live for heroin, a need that will dominate every other facet of life until nothing remains but jail, AIDS, an overdose, and a dead baby.

3. 300 (2006) – Victory…with style

It’s pretty hard to beat this montage, as it provides all the glorious excess one has come to expect after something like a century of cinema, and a hundred years of montage fine-tuning. Having already established that our Spartan heroes kill pretty much anything that comes within screaming distance, the industrial music cranks up while we watch as Greek butchery is taken to a visual level hitherto unseen: Asian and Middle Eastern baddies carved up like Easter hams. Wisely removing the film from any troublesome anchors in reality by giving the scenes at the Hot Gates a flashback/campfire re-telling twist, we can watch with delight as Leonidas and his crew perform superhero-level feats of slaughter on beast, man, and monster. It also helps that every Spartan in the montage seems to understand that they are, in fact, knee-deep in a montage, flexing and glaring with perfectly postured intensity. Of all other montages on this list, no other has a higher body count, a fact that propels this particular entry so high into consideration (easily over one hundred onscreen deaths in under five minutes). There’s also a lot of variety here, and that takes a lot of creativity. Sure, you could have something like 240 seconds of short-sword hacking (or if you’re Oliver Stone, 240 minutes) and that would be commendable in montage land, but with this, you get spear kills (a friggin’ rhino among the victims there), sword slices, troop whipping, grenade volleys, and a goddamned mutant-performed decapitation. Executing a perfect fusion of special effects, action, music, and death, director Zack Snyder gets special props for giving the audience a montage worthy of his subject matter, one so gloriously violent and beautiful that even a Spartan would applaud.

2. Army of Darkness (1992) – Who’s with me?!

What montage could possibly bump the relentless savagery and stylized murder of “300,” pushing the glorious massacre of the Persian hordes aside? There are only a handful of men who could pull off such a staggering coup, and Ash (Bruce Campbell) is one of those men. After explaining that all people from the future aren’t swaggering, battle-hardened warriors with 12in. dicks of steel (translation: “loud-mouth braggarts”), our time-traveling hero gets to work fortifying the castle, training his men, and preparing some 20th century mayhem. Like any good montage, this one crams maximum exposition into the three or so minutes afforded to the piece; yet the tone of the film remains forever light, the montage striking a perfect balance of compelling and humorous. Director Sam Raimi has carefully constructed a universe where the audience can faithfully subscribe to the hurried, half-assed explanations afforded to the story. As battle drums and flutes wail optimistically in the background, it is explained through a series of quick shots and deep fades how Ash is able to arm his men with gunpowder, train them with sweet-ass pike moves, rebuild his ride into a battle wagon, and reveal (finally) that he does indeed have spare shotgun ammo in the trunk. Turning these skills on the “Spider-man” franchise in later years, Raimi demonstrated his talents early on with this outstanding work, showing off his uncanny ability to quickly brush aside necessities like plot construction and exposition to give the audience their payoff (which, if done right, will elicit forgiveness for other transgressions). In this case, that payoff is a medieval battle of armored knights against an army of the living dead, commanded by the protagonist’s face-shot Bizarro doppelganger. To even approach this level of awesome, one would have to look at…

1. All “Rocky” (1976-?) training montages – Witness a man doing man’s work!

Really, was there ever any doubt? The first “Rocky” film in 1976 practically invented the modern montage as we know it, and rightly so, as the movie does more to inspire, fire up, or otherwise motivate a man to go out and rip push-ups and sprint up steps than a shot of amphetamine straight into the eyeball. And no, I’m not going to pick one montage over any of the others, because that simply wouldn’t be fair (except in the case of “Rocky V,” which gets no explanation, justification, or cred). To pick, say, the original “Rocky” montage over that which transpires in Mother Russia in “Rocky IV” would probably be the cinematically correct choice, but only if you checked your nuts at the door for the day. Sure, picking scenes of Rock in the meat-packing plant slamming away in the original’s montage would be understandable, yet upon closer inspection, how could you look a person in the eye and say those scenes beat Stallone charging up the side of a goddamned mountain, screaming the name of his opponent for all in the commie country to hear? Even then, you have to give credit for the bromantic “Eye of the Tiger” beach scenes in “Rocky III” which, while pretty gay, didn’t know it at the time, so hence, get a pass. Trying to pick which montage is better is like choosing which of your children you love most. I am content to toss all of them under one umbrella, and resign myself to the fact that Rocky Balboa taught us all that to get ahead in this world, one need only hit the streets (or the forest) and tear ass through whatever park, sidewalk, or junkyard gets in your way. Doing squats with a fucking log over his shoulders, one-armed pull-ups under a geodesic dome, lifting wagons holding friends and family, and yes, climbing a mountain, Rocky Balboa and these montages affirm the brutal fact that plagues every male on this planet: While worthy of life (maybe), you’ll never be as much a man as Stallone. Links to three training montages above; here’s “Rocky II”!

Tags: 10, film, in, montage, montages, movie, rocky, ten, top, Top 10 Movie Montages, training

This list comes to us from Sean O’Connell, a New York City-based writer who also contributed a Top 10 Movie Brothers list some time back. If you have a Top 10 you’d like to contribute, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Here’s Sean:

Since we are in the thick of the summer movie season you would think that gorgeous summer weather would follow. That is not the case here in New York City. Our summer has been held hostage by constant rain. It has rained 21 out of 25 days here in the month of June alone. The sun has been gone for so long now that the Cullen family from “Twilight” could have taken a summer vacation here with no worries. That is how bad it is. So while I have been trapped inside, it got me thinking of great rain scenes from movies. Here is my top ten rain scenes of all time. Hope you enjoy it and I hope it stops raining here.

10. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

This may not be the greatest movie ever made, but the NYC rain scenes have been pretty dead-on as of late. I am constantly looking over my shoulder as I walk up 7th Avenue for a giant wall of water to come crashing down on me. As far as the movie goes, this was the one scene that was the most enjoyable. The rude New Yorkers meet their demise and the smart school kids live. The special effects were great and who doesn’t want to see an oil tanker float up 5th Avenue? Once the rain stops, so does the movie unfortunately. It gets caught up in some environmental message while the new Ice Age ascends rapidly (didn’t the first one take over a century to happen, not a day?), Jake Gyllenhaal tries to remind us why we need to pay attention in science class, and Dennis Quaid walks from Washington D.C. on snow shoes that look like tennis rackets to find his son he has lost touch with.

9. Return of the Living Dead (1985)

In this Dan O’Bannon classic, rain plays a prominent role not once but twice. After two bumbling warehouse workers (portrayed by James Karen and Thom Mathews) accidentally set free a poisonous gas from a secret lost army canister, all hell breaks loose. This gas, when released, causes the dead to rise. So when a dead medical cadaver and the half dogs for veterinary school come to life, they are forced to burn them in an incinerator. This just causes all the poisonous gas to be released into the atmosphere, which causes an awesome acid rain storm. The result is that all the bodies in the neighboring cemetery come to life and now need to eat brains to make the pain go away. In the end, our heroes contact the army only to get blown up by a nuclear missile. This again causes the gas to go into the atmosphere and now the rainstorms are happening all over the country. So any rain that can bring about zombies has to make the list.

8. Back to the Future Part II (1989)

This rain scene doesn’t happen until the end but has one of the greatest time travel twists ever. Marty and Doc (Michael J. Fox & Christopher Lloyd) have once again successfully completed their mission, avoided destroying the space-time continuum and were getting ready to leave 1955 for 1985. Just then, the famous Hill Valley rainstorm (the one that destroyed the clock tower) spreads to Hilldale. Doc is already in the Delorean and Marty is on the ground down below. Lightning strikes the Delorean and it seems that Doc has been incinerated. Then a torrential down pour happens, and a strange man in an overcoat appears. Turns out he is from Western Union and was told by Doc (who is now in the Old West) to be there at that precise moment to deliver a letter that tells Marty how to get home. I always wondered: If the letter is about 70 years old, why didn’t the rain destroy it right there? Anyway, watching Marty scream, “The Doc is Alive, he is in the Old West, but he’s alive!” in the pouring rain still makes me smile.

7. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

OK, any movie where the audience re-enacts the rain scene in the theater by shooting water guns in the air and holding newspapers over their heads to shield them from drops of water has to be on the list. The rainstorm in the movie causes couple Brad and Janet (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) to get a flat tire. Their search for a phone and escape from the downpour leads them to the Frank-N-Furter Castle, home of transvestite Tim Curry. Since the rain got Brad and Janet’s clothes soaked they are forced to spend a bulk of the movie in their underwear.

6. Spider-Man (2002)

I really deliberated on this one for a long time, mainly because I always got mad that this was the one scene from this great movie that gets shown most of the time. I am, of course, talking about the famous upside-down kiss, but since it became an iconic part of the movie, I felt forced to put it on the list. We all know what happens: Thugs are attacking Mary Jane, Spidey saves the day, and gets a kiss for his reward. This all happens as Mother Nature is unleashing a heavy rainstorm. The one good thing that came from this scene was Kristen Dunst’s wet T-shirt look that kept every teenage boy happy that summer.

5. Unforgiven (1992)

Rain is prominent throughout Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award-winning Western. It is raining in the opening scene where Little Bill (Gene Hackman) tries to settle a dispute between the owner of the whorehouse saloon and the two cowboys responsible for the attack on a prostitute. It is raining while Little Bill is trying to build his house–he is not a very good carpenter because the roof is constantly leaking. The most important rain scene, however, is saved for last. The rain clouds come rolling in just as William Munny (Eastwood) finds out (SPOLIER ALERT!) his best friend Ned (Morgan Freeman) was killed by Little Bill. Munny, a recovering alcoholic, is now about to become the monster he once was–the man who killed women, children and everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. The transformation is complete as he rides into town in the rain and you see the empty bottle of whiskey thrown into a puddle. Munny enters the saloon and takes care of business in a great shoot-out, then rides out of town in the rain.

4. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

The battle for Helm’s Deep during the second of Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy was the best combat scene from the entire thing. The whole amazing war happened while sheets of rain fell from the sky. You would think a fight scene would be hard to follow during a rain sequence, but not here. Everything is well choreographed and the action is top-notch.

3. Forrest Gump (1994)

Everyone always remembers that “life is like a box of chocolates,” but I bet you everyone also left the theater after seeing this remembering the different types of rainstorms there are. When Forrest (Tom Hanks) is fighting in Vietnam, he narrates, “One day it started raining, and it didn’t quit for four months. We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin’ rain … and big ol’ fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath. And then one day it just stopped.” That is what we are going through here in NYC. I hope it stops suddenly just like it did in the movie.

2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

This rain scene is one of my all time favorite movie scenes. Who can forget Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) raising his outstretched arms triumphantly in the air after escaping from Shawshank Prison through a sewage tunnel? The rain beats down on his face as he smiles for the first time in a long time as a free man. The image of a free Andy will always stay burned in my brain and every time I watch this scene it still sends chills up my spine. Nothing beats Red’s (Morgan Freeman) narration as the scene is unfolding: “Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can’t even imagine, or maybe I just don’t want to. Five hundred yards … that’s the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.” This arguably would be the greatest rain scene in movie history if it were not for number one.

1. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Come on, you saw this coming. It even has the word rain in the title. Who can forget Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) incredible dance number in the rain? Don just says goodnight to Kathy Seldon (Debbie Reynolds) after a great evening. He is so happy at the turn of events that he feels he must sing about it while it is raining. He swings on lampposts, jumps in puddles, and twirls an umbrella the whole time. He never seems to mind that he is soaking wet. Some trivia tidbits about the scene, Kelly had a 103-degree fever the day of filming the scene. Co-director Stanley Donen (Kelly was the other co-director) wanted to send him home, but Kelly refused. So massive preparations were taken so that it could be filmed in one take, and it was. The most famous rain scene in movie history was done in just one take and Kelly also improvised most of his dance moves. Also, the rain consisted of a mixture of milk and water so it would show up better on film. This mixture caused Gene Kelly’s wool suit to shrink. In 1971, Stanley Kubrick paid twisted homage to this musical rain sequence in the immortal “A Clockwork Orange.”

Tags: 10, baptism, best, film, list, moments, movie, rain, scenes, symbolism, ten, top, Top 10 Movie Rain Scenes

What a shock! For the first time since 1943, there will be ten Oscar nominees for Best Picture and not five. The 2010 Academy Awards will have 10 movies in the Best Picture category. Wow– that was way out of left field.

It’s a little late for “The Dark Knight” and  “Wall-E,” but at least everyone can stop wondering whether Pixar’s “Up” will get a Best Picture nomination next year, because it’s pretty much guaranteed now. I actually like this idea a lot because it opens the door for a lot of edgier movies (like “The Wrestler,” last year’s best movie) to get the “big guns” nomination that they deserve. On the other hand, this is going to seriously throw off Oscar prediction pools and allow a niche movie to possibly take home the big prize!

NYTimes’ Media Decoder is reporting that in a Q&A session that followed the announcement, AMPAS president Sid Ganis said: “I would not be telling you the truth if I said the words ‘Dark Knight’ did not come up.”

More thoughts: Will this make choosing the best movie of the year easier? I don’t think so. If anything, it’ll make it harder. So we’ll have a worse winner (although it doesn’t get much worse than “Crash), but they’ll nominate some better films in the process (which will all split the vote so something mediocre and inoffensive can win)! Feeling queasy again…

From Oscars.org:

Beverly Hills, CA (June 24, 2009) — The 82nd Academy Awards, which will be presented on March 7, 2010, will have 10 feature films vying in the Best Picture category, Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis announced today (June 24) at a press conference in Beverly Hills.

“After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said Ganis. “The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.”

For more than a decade during the Academy’s earlier years, the Best Picture category welcomed more than five films; for nine years there were 10 nominees. The 16th Academy Awards (1943) was the last year to include a field of that size; “Casablanca” was named Best Picture. (In 1931/32, there were eight nominees and in 1934 and 1935 there were 12 nominees.)

Currently, the Academy is presenting a bicoastal screening series showcasing the 10 Best Picture nominees of 1939, arguably one of Hollywood’s greatest film years. Best Picture nominees of that year include such diverse classics as “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Stagecoach,” “The Wizard of Oz” and Best Picture winner “Gone with the Wind.”

“Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,” commented Ganis. “I can’t wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February.”

The 82nd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2. The Oscar® ceremony honoring films for 2009 will again take place at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.

Tags: 10, 2010, 5, 82nd Academy Awards, best picture, Feature, five, new, nominees, Oscars, ten