Interesting Horror Frames

"Ah. It's nearly 5 in the morning, I should probably get to bed. ...You know what, I'll check tumblr real quick, haven't done that in a hot minute."

"whaT THE FU-"

Yo, thank you all so much for the reblogs and likes, I appreciate it very much! Sorry I haven't posted content... Like at all for a loooooong time, it's been hard motivating myself to do the frames stuff. I overdid it a tiny bit with The Thing and just sorta burned myself out on it, but... Well, I definitely wanna get back to it. So if any of y'all have any horror movies you'd like to see a few frames of, ask me to check them out! I'll try to make things more manageable on my addled brain by reeling it back a bit and not doing a metric fuckload of frames for every movie, focusing on the absolute most interesting and impressive ones I can pick out. Especially since I'll be going back to college soon. I'll try and pick back up with The Thing where we left off!

Let’s take a minute to appreciate both Jed and John Carpenter’s incredible cinematography in the same post. Jed, as a dog actor, has the incredible talent of NEVER acting like a dog actually does.

He’s incredibly still, incredibly quiet, incredibly focused. He rarely blinks. His posture is... OFF for a dog surrounded by people, especially this kind of dog, which I believe is meant to be an Alaskan Malamute. Malamutes are incredibly playful, friendly dogs, and Jed is practically anti-social outside of the first scene where he licks Clark’s face.

As for cinematography, Carpenter nails a feeling of unease, even before things go wrong, with quiet, subtle shots of empty rooms, doors open to hallways or other rooms.

Nothing is wrong, but something FEELS off.

VERY off.

And that’s when Jed fucking SHINES. This scene, right here is one of the scariest in the film, and it doesn’t even have any major human characters focused on yet, just... Jed. Jed opens this door, which is scary enough, and then we get a great demonstration of how WRONG he acts.

His posture is lower than a dog like this would normally be, and he also seems... Thoughtful, in a way. He looks into this room, but stops. He turns, continues down the hall, and...

Looks into this room with a silhouetted person inside. This framing makes Jed, even though to the first-time viewer they might think he’s just a frightened dog, maybe because he’s part-wolf (which Jed was, fun fact), acting nervous, it still appears like a predatory look towards whoever’s in the room.

Then he steps into the room.

While this movie’s practical effects as a whole are phenomenal, shout out to the underappreciated effect for the loss of Lars’ eye. This is a FANTASTIC effect for something we only see for a few seconds and that the average viewer could blink and miss, and it acts as a good prelude to the kind of carnage this movie can get up to

Yeah, this dude is named Lars! He’s named in the 2011 prequel, which is a fucking mess and I hate it, but the characters are really good and Lars deserved better than to get shot in the fucking eye.

While the surviving Norwegian can’t hit a dog with a semi-automatic sniper rifle, Garry takes ONE SHOT from a revolver, and...

HEADSHOT. Moe Greene Special.

Here comes the coolest motherfucker EVER.

R. J. MacReady, played by the incomparable, incredible, WONDERFUL Kurt Russell in the performance of a goddamn lifetime. I love Kurt Russell as it is, have ever since I saw him in Big Trouble In Little China, but MacReady is a different breed of badass than the pseudo-badass from Big Trouble.

...But you know, we’ll talk more about how awesome MacReady is later. Let’s talk about how fucked this chess game is.

Okay so let’s just take a look here. From here, Mac is stated to move “Bishop to Knight 4″ and the computer moves “Knight to Rook 3″. First off I feel like these terminologies are completely impossible to understand, what the fuck do you mean “knight 4″, computer?

Not really important because THAT’S NOT WHAT HAPPENS.

THIS IS A WHOLE GODDAMN DIFFERENT GAME OF CHESS.

Either way Mac moves his King to “Rook 1″, moving it one place to the right, but the computer moves “Rook To Knight 6.” and declares it “Checkmate. Checkmate.” 

If his king is in “Rook 1″, one place to the right, but the Rook is in “Knight 6″, where the HELL is THAT and how does it allow for a checkmate?

This game of chess has more continuity errors than the one in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, and all the goddamn pieces disappeared in that one!

...Again, doesn’t really matter though.

“Cheating bitch.”

In one fell swoop we’ve established MacReady as smart, tactical, and when he loses? He takes you with him.

People seem to forget that the movie starts with the alien craft crashlanding onto Earth, which I think must’ve been a direct inspiration to the opening of Predator.

And as it burns up, hurtling towards the driest, coldest continent, we’re left with a sense of unease, at this extraterrestrial invader, as far away from US it is, still coming to our world... And then the title card.

I’ve decided, because I’ve been having a dry spell of creativity or drive, to cover a different film for Interesting Horror Frames. The Invisible Man WILL return, no worries! But... I just wanna cover something else. And what better than my favorite horror film?

John Carpenter’s The Thing, from 1982!

GOD I LOVE THIS MOVIE.

I would cite The Thing, alongside Prince Of Darkness and Alien, as being my proper introduction to the world of horror and the joy of being scared. I’ve seen it about 15 times, and have seen it at LEAST once a year for the past 8 years. It’s still one of the scariest, most effective, most tense films I’ve ever seen, and alongside being my favorite horror film, it’s my second favorite film of all time, right above Alien and right below Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Though Universal Horror is often not as focused on subtlety as some other horror eras, James Whale is often the exception. The shots of the stranger (i’ll just call him Griffin from here on out, since that’s his name) here have him nearly blending PERFECTLY into the backgrounds. Even fully clothed, there’s hints at his nature, and make simple shots such as this far creepier than they would be otherwise.

At the time, it could’ve even been a jumpscare of sorts, if one wasn’t paying attention to his side of the screen when he entered, when, all of a sudden...

EVERYONE’s looking at this motherfucker like “what in the goddamn hell is that dude’s DEAL?” It’s always great when a horror movie addresses how STRANGE the scenario it deals to the viewer is. The woman in the enter of the shot is my favorite, she looks like her game of bridge just got interrupted and she’s wondering “oh now WHAT is this STRANGE man doing interrupting my game of bridge?”

The reveal. God I love this shot. The way it’s shot from below, giving the man a monstrous stature, the clear “something’s WRONG here” appearance, and the chaos of the snowstorm outside... And Claude Rains, though you can’t hear him here, has the most chilling voice imaginable.