9 Movie Scenes That Went Completely Over The Top
Femme Fatale started with quite the bang...
Transcript
00:00 Hollywood is known as many things, but above all, it's a luscious parade of riches.
00:05 Excess to the extreme and embarrassingly flashy things moving 24 frames a second.
00:10 With this in mind, the following moments are where directors were clearly let loose to
00:14 go mad.
00:15 Free to go as over the top as they wanted, almost certainly to the annoyance of the producers.
00:20 I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 9 Movie Scenes That Went Completely Over
00:24 the Top.
00:25 Number 9 - Mickey Rock Explodes with a Tiger - Double Team
00:29 The 90s was a vastly different time, one in which audiences could see a trailer for a
00:34 buddy action film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman and not think they
00:38 had fallen into an alternate dimension.
00:41 In 1997, it was just another in a long line of oddball pairings.
00:45 Rodman at this point was at the height of his success as a player and a paparazzi show-off,
00:50 a controversial figure even then.
00:52 Then he got it in his head that he wanted to venture into the movie business, seeing
00:56 as how well that turned out for Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal.
01:00 So he took on the role of Yats, an arms dealer who pairs with Van Damme's CIA agent to
01:04 take down a terrorist planning to sell plutonium to Iraq.
01:08 Every line of the film feels as if it were from an action script template made on some
01:13 screenwriting software somewhere.
01:16 Complete with personal vendettas, you-know-him-better-than-anyone speeches and the unlikely friendship that forms
01:21 between Van Damme and Mickey Rourke's character, it's all just played worse in this flick.
01:27 That is, except for the aforementioned Rourke's character and his death.
01:31 See, the actor was miles away from Sin City and credibility in general at this time, so
01:36 he settled for crap like this.
01:38 As a result, the end of the film finds him standing on an active landmine in a Greek
01:42 stadium which explodes just as he's attacked by a marauding tiger.
01:47 It's best not to question such a slice of cinematic heaven, so I'll just leave
01:52 it there.
01:53 Number 8 - Finn Dives Into A Shark's Mouth - Sharknado
01:57 Sharknado jokes started going around the water cooler before even the movie premiered, but
02:01 it did do something for the sci-fi network that no other show had done before.
02:05 It actually got an audience.
02:08 Many tuned in to vibe on the first entry so bad it's good spirit and, for the most
02:12 part, weren't disappointed.
02:14 Though it's diminished returns upon sequels do make audiences forget just how much goodwill
02:18 the original earned, and there is still plenty to get a kick out of in Sharknado.
02:23 But it's also a bit of a bore, with almost a half hour of character development that
02:28 goes nowhere and a lot of actors clearly there just to cash a paycheque.
02:33 What makes it exceptional though is how much payoff there is there in the final act when
02:36 that finally comes, from the insane junk science to the perfectly timed fall from helicopter
02:42 to flying shark's mouth.
02:44 But nothing stands out as much as the epic chainsaw finale.
02:47 See after all the Sharknados are extinguished, a falling shark heads towards our hero, who
02:52 is literally called Finn by the way.
02:54 Like do you get it?
02:56 Finn?
02:57 Finn like in a shark fin?
02:58 No one said this movie was so.
03:00 Well as the shark is falling, he's also running towards it, so he leaps towards it,
03:05 trusted chainsaw in tow, only to be swallowed whole by a poorly rendered CGI great white.
03:11 Years later though, he's cutting through its innards and rescuing himself.
03:15 We've seen so bad as good done wrong with snakes on a plane and this was how it was
03:20 meant to be.
03:21 Number 7 - Stop Motion Hamburgers - Better Off Dead
03:24 Four years before John Cujack forever became everyone's favourite awkward crush in Say
03:28 Anything, he was your average teen in standard 80s teen comedies, often as a second or third
03:34 character.
03:35 The exceptions One Crazy Summer and Better Off Dead were both handled under the sage
03:39 guidance of director Savage Steve Holland, and you know he's reliable because he's
03:44 willing to include his nickname right there in the credits.
03:48 The latter of these, Better Off Dead, finds Cujack in a typical suburban teen environment,
03:53 except for when he's challenged to take part in a drag race.
03:56 There's more lunacy, like the unfunny running joke of the newspaper boy who stalks Cujack
04:01 relentlessly just for a bill of $2, but the moment you know studios became afraid of Savage
04:06 Steve and just handed him the camera is the fast food stop motion dance sequence.
04:11 At this point Cujack's character begins to suffer from hallucinations after being dumped
04:15 by his girlfriend, and while working he imagines himself as a Dr. Frankenstein figure and the
04:21 meat as a corpse.
04:23 The burger, reanimated, finds a family of hamburgers, some with instruments and hilarity
04:29 ensues.
04:30 I say hilarity because it's not really funny, it's just kind of, well it's absurd isn't
04:34 it?
04:35 It's been a long time before sausage pie.
04:38 Number 6 - Lip Syncing to Roy Orbison - Blue Velvet
04:42 Audiences only vaguely knew what to expect out of Blue Velvet at the time.
04:46 As it was director David Lynch's first trip into modern American suburbia after his work
04:50 in art house projects like Razorhead and, due to Mel Brooks' insistence, big budget
04:55 Hollywood films like The Elephant Man.
04:57 After his failure adapting Doom though, something he did after turning down an opportunity to
05:01 helm Return of the Jedi, Blue Velvet on paper looked like an interesting thriller.
05:06 A young all-American boy is walking through a field in Anytown, USA when he suddenly finds
05:11 an ear.
05:12 Where did said ear come from?
05:14 Well the film turns out to be less interested in that as the camera pans down under the
05:18 perfectly cut grass lawns to the seedy insect-filled underbelly.
05:23 And welcome to where we're spending the rest of the movie with people replacing insects.
05:28 And leading our descent into Sado's sexual madness is Dennis Hopper, snorting nitrous
05:33 oxide and expounding on his love of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
05:36 And the rabbit hole just gets deeper, until we get to the point where Al from Quantum
05:40 Leap appears and lip syncs to Roy Orbison's in-dreams.
05:43 Oh and all the while Dennis Hopper's character is just kinda going nuts in the background.
05:49 This is the scene where Blue Velvet truly goes bonkers and ratchets the insanity up
05:53 to the next level.
05:55 Number 5 - The sex scene shootout, Shoot 'Em Up.
05:59 The opening scene of Shoot 'Em Up finds Clive Owen chewing on a carrot as he witnesses
06:02 a woman about to give birth fleeing from a hitman.
06:06 Cartoonishly he dispatches the thug by stabbing him in the face with the vegetable, which
06:10 is intentionally goofy and the carrot was an intentional reference to Bugs Bunny.
06:15 As you can probably tell from this scene, if nothing else Shoot 'Em Up is a bloody
06:19 gory fast-paced video game/cartoon in live action.
06:23 With every actor chewing the scenery, particularly villain Paul Giamatti.
06:27 But the kicker comes about halfway through the never-ending shootout with Owen and Damsel
06:31 in Distress Monica Bellucci having sex as killers burst through the door.
06:36 The thing is, Owen's character doesn't stop shooting, or screwing throughout this
06:40 whole scene.
06:41 It's so over the top goofy that it was actually just flat out ripped off in the trying too
06:46 hard Nick Cage romp Drive Angry.
06:49 Number 4 - Death is a Preteen Murderer.
06:52 Final Destination 2 Final Destination was a perfectly decent
06:55 little horror movie with a small cast and a premise tailor made for a standalone X-Files
07:00 episode.
07:01 In fact, screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick first pitched it as such, but the studio adopted
07:06 his idea and then franchised it.
07:08 The second film, from late former Stuntman and Sharknite director David R. Ellis, upped
07:12 the ante on gore and spectacle and even broke a rule or two along the way.
07:17 Most notably offering a child in an explosion of blood early on in the film just to let
07:21 audiences know that it wasn't screwing around.
07:24 Now future films in the series, apart from maybe three, felt like tired retreads of this
07:30 one, always trying to outdo the blood and viscera on screen, but this was the rare moment
07:35 where a mainstream horror felt properly shocking.
07:38 Number 3 - Give Me The Elephant - Darkman.
07:40 Oddly, the most comic book-like director Sam Raimi ever got was with a film that had no
07:45 comic book source material.
07:47 Frustrated with his inability to secure the rights to the Shadow, a 1940s radio character
07:52 voiced by Orson Welles, Raimi and his brothers set out to create their own comic hero origin
07:57 story.
07:58 And everything that you'd later see in his Spider-Man movies is actually kinda present
08:02 in Darkman.
08:03 I mean the scene in which Spidey beats the mugger who killed his Uncle Ben is pretty
08:07 much shot for shot the scene in which Liam Neeson's Peyton Westlake is beaten by the
08:12 mafia here.
08:13 After this scene, once Westlake is burned beyond recognition and impervious to pain,
08:17 he goes on a revenge spree, imitating his killers with artificial skin and turning them
08:22 against one another.
08:23 As you might have guessed from this director, there are plenty of zany moments along the
08:27 way, most of them dealing with Westlake's homicidal glee, but the best is when he actually
08:31 tries to be normal.
08:33 After perfecting his skin for up to 99 minutes in the sunlight before it melts, he starts
08:37 courting his former fiancée, eventually taking her to the amusement park.
08:42 There he falls into the weirdest fight ever, but Raimi shoots the entire event with all
08:46 the flair and energy of a panel from Tales of the Crypt or something, much in the way
08:51 the Creepshow did a decade previous.
08:55 The Opening Scene - Femme Fatale
08:58 Femme Fatale is probably the most misunderstood film in Brian De Palma's filmography.
09:02 And while some see it as a sleazy Cinemax director slumming it, others praise it as
09:06 one of his very best.
09:08 One thing is certain though, it's not what it appears on the tin.
09:12 It plays to all the director's greatest strengths and interests, you know, complex
09:16 plotting, voyeurism and an excellent climax, and constantly has the right audience second
09:21 guessing everything.
09:22 As you might guess, to give away too much is to spoil the film, but just know that it
09:26 begins with two women making out during a heist at the Cannes Film Festival.
09:31 In this scene, everything is in place for the heist to go off.
09:34 Every player has their role.
09:35 There's the lead, who seduces the model wearing the diamond crested clothing meant
09:39 to be thieved.
09:40 There's the scuba diver with the blowtorch, the guy in the van, etc.
09:45 But very quickly the film betrays convention when none of the characters actually do their
09:50 job and instead are screwed over by the lead.
09:53 Now it may not always make literal sense which is why it ends up on this list, but it does
09:58 always make cinematic sense, even when it's subtly screwing with its audience.
10:02 1.
10:03 Rambo, Conan and Gandhi - UHF
10:07 If anything serves as convincing evidence that everyone was doing cocaine in the 1980s,
10:11 then Weird Al Yankovic's feature film UHF.
10:15 At least Weird Al here had the coherency to write a script that did make sense while still
10:19 including side clips that would work equally well in an era appropriate Saturday Night
10:23 Live skit.
10:25 And it was the producers, presumably also out of their minds, that gave him the green
10:28 light for this movie.
10:30 Now a cult classic, Yankovic's work has time to indulge his every whim.
10:34 From conning the librarian to an ultra-violent Gandhi who orders steak medium rare before
10:40 gunning down his opponents.
10:42 And to its credit, pretty much every clip tops the one preceding it, allowing a bit
10:46 of flow to what could have been a disjointed crazy mess.
10:49 Still, it's hard to believe that this got made.
10:53 So that's our list, I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
10:55 What do you think about these surprising scenes and are there any interesting ones I missed
11:00 off here?
11:01 While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe and
11:03 head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
11:08 Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thank you so much for watching, and I'll see
11:11 you soon.
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