AlamyJudge Doom shows his true self in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
Director Robert Zemeckis’ live-action/cartoon Chinatown pastiche emphasizes the violence and sadism inherent in the cartoon, with both “toons” and humans being electrocuted, stabbed, crushed, and traumatized in a variety of creative ways. A terrifying final scene sees the villainous Judge Doom, played by Christopher Lloyd, being run over by a steamroller before his flat, pancake-like back side reappears, revealing himself to be a cartoon in disguise. He peels himself off the floor and walks like a matchstick to the balloon pump to re-inflate it, and his eyes pop out to reveal blood-red cartoon eyes. he yelled in falsetto as he bounded across the room with springs appearing from his shoes, daggers coming out of his eyes, and a buzzsaw coming out of his hand. It’s nightmare fuel for a generation of kids who saw a poster featuring a cartoon rabbit and hit the “play” button expecting some Bugs Bunny-esque fun. (Robert Freeman)
AlamyBig reveal in Speak No Evil (2022)
This terrifying production (remade in Hollywood in 2024, but of lesser quality) will make you think twice about making friends during the holidays. A Danish couple befriends a Dutch family in Tuscany and soon receives an invitation to visit the Dutch countryside. What follows is a masterclass in anxiety, and just a little… off. The film is a brilliant satire of the lengths we will go to to maintain a surface level of social decorum, amplifying both the awkwardness and the underlying sense of fear with every passive-aggressive comment from the host. “Maybe they didn’t really mean it.” “Maybe it got lost in translation,” the Danes try to explain. But the film never lets go of its suffocating grip, culminating in a deeply disturbing scene that finally reveals what the hosts are up to. And even more frighteningly, an even darker horror is just around the corner. (Tom Hayden)
AlamyThe red Mt. Fuji scene from “Dream” (1990)
Akira Kurosawa’s film consists of eight short films, each inspired by the director’s own dreams. The most frightening is the dream of “Red Mt. Fuji”, in which you see a nuclear power plant exploding behind the famous volcano. One by one, the reactors are going out of control. A horde of screaming people is in a panic. Mt. Fuji itself slowly turns red, as if it is about to erupt. The scene changed and the figure disappeared. Only five people are left stranded on the shoreline, surrounded by the discarded belongings of the crowd. In a panic, director Kurosawa’s substitute asks the smartly dressed businessman what’s going on. While wiping his glasses, the businessman explained that the crowd was running to drown himself before dying from radiation. As waves of colored smoke blow toward them across the rocky ground, the businessmen, with a mixture of horror and indifference, detail the horrors each band of radioactive gas does to their bodies. Never before has a film so powerfully addressed our fears of environmental destruction. (Martha Enriquez)
—
If you liked this story, Sign up for the Essential List newsletter – Hand-picked features, videos and can’t-miss news delivered to your inbox twice a week.
For more culture coverage from the BBC, follow us on facebook and Instagram.
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
