It’s
been a while since the last full team-based CHUD LIST. Too long. With
the goal being to ease back into the swing of things and hopefully get
us on track to a list a month, here’s the latest, BAD FOR US, WORSE FOR THEM. The concept is simple.
This
isn’t a “Best Kills” list. We’ve done that and done it better than
anyone ever could (though we’ll revisit that at some point to rewrite
the history books). This is a list of forty deaths in cinema, twenty of
which that have a profound affect on the viewer whether by the sheer
tragedy of it, how emotionally impactful it is, or how it is a catalyst
for a real descent in the progression of the story. The other twenty
are deaths that go beyond the call of duty, not because they’re cool or
really well executed FX, but because they are just knee-capping in
their immediacy, brutality, or simple visceral impact. Kills that will
probably leave a mark.
We
could have done hundreds of these, but here’s twenty of each from the
CHUD staff, delivered two a day for you until the list is done. Enjoy!
Day Three – The Acid Reflux Double Feature.
Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.
Even though we’re currently finding ourselves in the midst of a remake / reboot / reimagining ass-train in Hollywood, the ’80s were when they were coming correct with them. With redos such as The Thing, The Blob and The Fly (Buy it from Amazon), it was a hell of a time to be catching the second comings of flicks. Damn near 25 years later, people still talk of Seth Brundle’s gradual slide into physical hideousness and mental oblivion. long before it became a way to get onto TMZ. And the main reason for this is Jeff Goldblum’s performance as the brilliant and quirky, yet ultimately doomed scientist who decides to have a transporter accident centuries before those poor bastards in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Hell, they got off easy compared to my man here. Because what Starfleet got back there didn’t live long, but it took Brundle weeks to arrive at his final destination as a leprous Sectaur.
Now of course Goldblum would go on to make portraying eggheads his bread and butter in films such as Jurassic Park and Independence Day, but none of them quite had that affecting quality that the oft-motion-sick, homogeneously-wardrobed, Mr. Brundle did. We sat horrified yet enthralled, unable to look away from the disgusting and gradual train wreck unfolding before us. We were afraid – yes very afraid – of the insect who dreamed he was a man, but who nevertheless awoke to a terrifying and tragic conclusion. Few are the times when a shotgun was an instrument of mercy.
Pain of Death: SEMANTICS. His life was really over the moment the superfly penis with which he wore out Ms. Davis ended up in a jar in the medicine cabinet.
Emotional Loss: HIGH. The only time Geena Davis cried more in her life was trying to face hubby Renny Harlin after Cutthroat Island shooting every night.
Will There Be a Closed Casket Funeral: More like a date with a cleaning crew, an assload of sponges and some OxyClean.
Insult to Injury: Hello? DICK IN JAR…
Security Guard in The Fly II.
And yet the guy is still coming out of this looking better than Bruce Jenner post-op…
(Buy it from Amazon), an underappreciated little cautionary tale on science gone bad is the result.
Here you have a Golden Retriever getting telepodded into a genetic Picasso, the main villain himself getting transported into a cellular Rorschach test and well, let’s just say this ain’t the movie in which to be a security guard if ever there was one. One guard gets head-vised by a descending elevator; and the head bull, Scorby (Gary Chalk) gets the David Kagen Jason Lives treatment. Then there’s this poor unfortunate rent-a-cop depicted above who gets a taste of some Ark of the Covenant-style face melting. The rub is that these security personnel are putting themselves out there for maiming and death for a corporation with a less-than-great track record for employee advancement. Hell, Beth Logan was still working graveyard after six months on the job.
Pain of Death: SEVERE. That fly shit didn’t stop dissolving meat even after the face came off like a dermal peal.
Emotional Loss: MINOR. As in character.
Will There Be a Closed Casket Funeral: Unless you want other people vomiting, yeah.
Insult to Injury: Even after all this it’s debatable whether this guy or his buddy under the elevator ends up with the more righteous squishy head.
Today’s installment written by David Oliver.