Fear Exchange: BJ-C's Fear of Eye Trauma

Well we're back again with yet another edition of Fear Exchange and so quickly I should add. Never you mind, tackling fears must be done straight away to avoid the inevitable collapse of courage. No comment on when I will finally get around to seeing Jaws 2.

Anyways. This fear exchange is a little different because the first part of the deal happened practically a year ago, maybe longer. BJ-C of Day of the Woman and I embarked on a long journey to bring our readers a list of the most terrifying displays of vomit in horror movie (and other movie) history. This fear battled something I had been struggling with for quite sometime, and when the lists were completed, I felt the tiniest bit better about my situation. I still can't stand the sight of vomit and I guarantee that one day when I have a child and it throws up--I will go hide in a closet....but whatever I still faced my fear.

So now, a year later we are finally conquering the evil monster that is--BJ-C's fear of eye trauma. You know eye trauma. It's that foul beast that rears its head when we least expect it. One minute we're enjoying a delightful movie and the next--EYE TRAUMA! So without further ado, here are 9 picks each of some truly traumatic eye moments.

BJ-C's List

Carrie 2: The Rage

As little Ralphie will tell you, there's nothing worse than a kid with broken glasses. I see his argument and raise him a pair of glasses that have broken WHILE YOU'RE STILL WEARING THEM. In the dreadful "remake" to the Stephen King classic, we see the long lost half-sister of Carrie White being a vindictive little bitch and forcing shards of glass to explode into someone's eyes.

The Evil Dead

Ashley J. Williams may very well be the love of my life, but I'd be a huge flaming liar if I didn't admit that I squeal like a girl every time he jumps on the basement latch and that eye goes flying into a screaming mouth. It's the epitome of adding insult to injury.

The Beyond

Lucio Fulci really has some eye fetish. I had to narrow it down between this one and The New York Ripper and I can honestly say that my choice was based on the fact that I figured this image would be much easier to stomach than the other. It's an eye falling out in a film where a woman has pale eyes....AKA this film is my most freaking nightmare.

Cannibal Ferox

You know, I thought Cannibal Holocaust was bad. AND THEN I WATCHED THIS. What seriously happened to the filmmaker as a child that caused them to create this?! Not to mention that this is the same movie that shows a woman being hung by her rack. Uh...yeah, there's something in this movie for anyone with a bugaboo.

Guinea Pig 2

Right when I think eye trauma can't get anymore traumatic, THEY HAVE TO BUST OUT THE SPOON. It's one thing to show things getting shoved into the corneas, but it's an entirely different creature to show someone literally having their eyeball scooped out like tapioca pudding. The real kicker? This is one of the TWO options I could have done for this film. Oh yea, there's that whole shoving a needle the size of my forearm through the eye as well...

May

......She stabs herself with a pair of pinking shears and then puts the eyeball on her doll made from human body parts. Enough said.

Midnight Meat Train

Ted Raimi can take a blow to the head with a meat pounder like a pro. In what is possibly the most artistically creative use of CGI blood in a movie who's title sounds mysteriously like gay porn, this "eye-popping" (thank you, I'll be here all week) scene made me scream like a little girl. I was expecting his head to just bust open or his brain to fall out, but when his eye popped out of his head like a nerf gun...I freaking lost it.

Opera

OH MY GOD DON'T BLINK! DON'T BLINK! DON'T BLINK! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T FUCKING BLINK!

Rocky

Yes, there are movies outside of the horror genre. Horror or not this is by far the most notable eye trauma scene in the history of cinema. Now, I'm Italian and I LOVE me some Rocky Balboa, but I literally have to leave the room when Mick cuts him open just so he can see. Hell no, hizzle no.

Andre's List

Kill Bill Volume 2

I always think of this immediately when I think about eye trauma. I can't imagine what it would feel like to get your eye plucked out of your head. Just the thought that someone or something could pull your eye ball out, and that those...eye...root things could snap off and then things would hurt really bad....yeah. Bad news. Also, Uma Thurman stepping on the eyeball does nothing to make me feel any better about this situation.

Hostel

I'm never actually sure what this dude was doing to that Asian girl, but all I know is that there is a gnarly eye ball hanging out of that poor girl's head. Thanks to Paxton's quick thinking, his easy solution is to cut the eye ball off---resulting in a very sudden, unexpected and horribly gooey blob of....eye juice plopping out.

The Birds

When I was a little one, this scene caused me a great deal of stress and unhappiness.

It's very unfortunate that birds have the easy ability to peck someone's eyes out, and it was very unfortunate that Alfred Hitchcock made an entire film about birds being crazy assholes.

Audition

I know I already brought this up in my list about needles, but duh it applies here as well. That squish squish noise in the eyeballs is very traumatizing. Would YOU like to have 5 little needles plunged into your eyeballs by a psycho like Asami? Didn't think so.

Session 9

Did you ever take a class about psychology and learn about Phineas Gage? He was a railroad worker who in a freak accident had a large iron rod driven straight through his head and brain and he was okay after, just a little... different. This incident has been used when talking about t the unfortunate side effects of lobotomies. Lobotomies for some reason remain a creepy cornerstone of old mental institutions. In one of the creepiest scenes in Session 9, Warren from Empire Records finds Hank on the stairwell after he had been missing. Hank wears sunglasses and seems a little...different. It is not until later that we discover why Hank was acting all funny.... inpromptu lobotomy!

Seeing the orbitoclast being slowly pulled out of Hank's eye socket is one of the most traumatic things I have ever seen. Why did they make me look at that? Why? And yes I used the word orbitoclast. Jealous?

Dead Hooker in a Trunk

The Soska sister's Dead Hooker in a Trunk was one of the more entertaining and eye opening experiences in my indie horror watching career. A film that takes exploitation and runs with it and a film that is stuffed to the max with gore, gore and beautiful gore. One moment in particular however had me exclaiming with wonder, confusion and holy eye trauma madness. After the peak of the greatest scene in the film, Geek (played by Jen Soska) is standing in a parking garage when some dude with a baseball bat smashes her head---causing her eye ball to pop out.

I stopped trying to figure out how this scene was possible seconds after it happened because I realized it was just too fantastic to be talking logistics about. It is at once fantastic and extremely cringe inducing when you imagine such a thing happening to yourself.

Saw 2

This opening moment in Saw II may never have come to actual fruition but it's really the thought that counts. I will set the scene for you. Imagine you wake up and find yourself hooked up to one of Jigsaw's cute little death traps. You find out that he has hidden the key to your heinous trap somewhere on you....or shall I say in you. An x-ray is shown to give you a clue, showing that the key is implanted behind your eye. You now have to dig out the key with a scalpel or you DIE. Would you do it?

I gotta be honest here and say that if push should ever come to shove, I would be dead pretty quickly. I really don't care if it means I die--if I have to cut my own eye with a scalpel to free myself from some loony contraption that some loony created so that I could value my life better--I am peacing out of that world. No thanks. I'd rather take my chances with Satan.

Un Chien Andalou

This 16 minute surrealist short film from 1929 was produced in part by the master of Surrealism himself--Salvador Dali. In its early opening sequence a man sharpens a razor, next we see a close up of a woman's face being held by the man. Then without warning the man uses the razor to slice her eye ball open!

If you have ever held onto the belief that old silent films lacked the same kind of brutal gore that films today have---check this out for yourself. It's on Netflix Instant Watch and you won't be disappointed. It is to this day one of the sickest things I have ever seen--and it does not hold back one bit. The moment may be quick, but it's sure to stay with you for a very long time.

Zombie

And of course how could we talk about eye trauma and leave off the most agonizing traumatic eye scene of them all? Even if you have only seen Zombie once and remember very little about it--you will remember this scene. You will remember it because it is the longest scene ever. Much in the Lucio Fulci style of things that make you want to pull your hair out as you wait anxiously for the big pay off---this giant splinter in the eye moment will have you yelling. Just get it over with Fulci, god.

It's gross, funny, horrifying and extremely trauma inducing for anyone who gets the least bit anxious from eye gore. It's the ultimate in eye trauma! And it's so horrible yet you just can't look away...kind of like how Paola is forced to look right at that giant splinter as it comes right for her eye...

Don't forget to go to Day of the Woman and taunt BJ-C for being afraid of eye trauma! Just kidding that was a joke don't do it, being afraid of a fake shark and vomit is way more of a reason to make fun of someone....I know...sigh.

Repulsion: Quiet Perfection

I'm not even 3 minutes into Repulsion and I already know that I'm going to love it. I know this because it takes its time and lately I feel like I need to take mine. I feel like I've been pushed into this fast paced, high adrenaline type of movie watching lately. I feel like I just keep watching and watching movies---and barely take them in. When was the last time I felt true meaning coming from the TV screen? In those quiet and strangely tense opening moments, I suddenly felt like being silent. Repulsion forces you into this bubble of deep focus almost immediately--- and it does it literally, by focusing on Carole's eye.

I don't usually get so embarrassingly poetic when I talk about movies but here I can't seem to help it. I just can't get past that opening moment.

Carole sits calmly, rigidly and peacefully holding a woman's hand. Everything about it screams sadness. Is the woman dying? Is she already dead? It's filmed in such a beautiful way. And then suddenly....we are pulled into reality. Carole is a beautician who has fallen asleep while performing a manicure. It's the kind of scene that makes me wish I had thought of it first. So simple, so surprising, so oddly remarkable. The scene was attacked with slowness. It takes its time establishing its beauty instead of forcing it on us in a miraculous instance. Even my favorite film--Suspiria rushes into the beauty by splaying it across our eyes while here, it's like waiting for the dust to settle.

Repulsion is the first film in Roman Polanski's "Apartment Trilogy", where Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant follow respectively. It follows Carole--an oddly quiet and distant young woman who falls down a winding and confusing path to madness--one very small step at a time. After her sister goes away on holiday, Carole's psyche takes a turn for the worst and we become trapped in the apartment with her, unsure of what is real and what isn't.

There is so much good happening in Repulsion, that I'm finding it very difficult to know where to begin. The entire film for me could be a study in perfection. With every shot, I find myself getting more and more excited about how much I love it. For a film that has a rather simple plot---there is so much complexity involved.

I'll start with the quiet. The film is so unbelievably quiet. This nature of the film seems to identify clearly with Carole--who barely seems to say more than 20 words in the film. What makes me so interested about the often silent nature of the film is that there are noises and even some instances of music. These however are intrusions and annoyances that seem to occur.

Throughout the film there are these repeated sounds and noises that start to affect us. These repetitions of sound almost start becoming characters of their own. Each with this weird sense of depth. We have the ringing of the school bell that clangs relentlessly. The sound of dripping water, the ticking clock, the unusual sound of the elevator, the nuns laughing, the person that plays the piano, the footsteps and the sound of the buzzing flies. Each of these sounds becomes so aggravating for some reason. I felt like the real reason Carole was going mad was because of all these intrusive noises.

Then we have the closeness of the film. Repulsion takes us to the extreme in terms of how close we get to Carole. I mean this literally as some of the close ups to her face feel like the camera must have been hitting her.

I viewed this as another importance trait of the film. The closer we get to Carole, the closer we get to her madness. It's like for that hour and 40 minutes or so, we are put front and center into that apartment with her. It's like we start becoming Carole---that's how close it gets.

I noticed the film was pushing this closeness when I kept seeing a lot of this.

Do you see it?

There are all these shots of the back of Carole's head that kind of align with us. Because we can't see her face, and because the other people interacting are staring straight at her, it's kind of like they are looking at us....like we become Carole--or we at least become part of Carole's vantage point.

Then there are of course the more obvious things, like the symbolism of the cracking of the apartment's walls,

the cutting of things like the telephone cord, the potatoes growing more and more mutant looking,

and the very repulsive rotting corpse of the rabbit.

All these things in some way symbolize the degradation of Carole's mind. Cracking away, being cut off from reality, and rotting away.

Good god I love this film, and I've barely gotten to know it. It's whore-ish of me, I know but I can't help it. I just want to keep watching it. I love just becoming lost in that world of Carole's, where sexual gratification is repulsive and sickening. I want to vanish in those soft walls and get sucked into one of Carole's silent rape nightmares....wow, I never thought I would say that.

There's just so much to get sucked into. I love how we aren't ever told outright what is wrong with Carole. Sure, we can make connections about past traumas and perhaps the possibility of her being molested as a child, but are we ever really sure? It's like the judging of the old family photo that we see. Some say Carole's eyes are fixated on the man to her right, looking terrified. Is this the man that caused her trauma?

I personally just see a girl in that picture who has always been distant and strange. To me it seems as though she isn't looking at anyone, she's looking into nothingness. It's not hard to tell which one she is, since she possesses that same exact trauma filled look now. But if she's been that way for so long, why wouldn't anyone notice sooner?

My descent into Repulsion marks a landmark in my movie watching career because for the first time, I have not rushed off to IMDB to get some clarity on things I didn't understand. This isn't because I don't have questions however--it's more because I'd rather just keep my views and thoughts to myself. It's a film that can stand on its own without being 100% explained. It's a movie that I will probably think about for a very long time and it's a movie that I'll probably end up comparing to others in terms of its greatness factor. "Yeah it's good but is it, Repulsion good?"

I think what I need to do is just sit in a dark room somewhere and think about it. Remember how perfect our time was together and how great things will be when we meet again. I don't buy a lot of DVDs (Read: any) but I would seriously consider purchasing this immediately. Repulsion is a truly beautiful film, filled with the most amazing sense of quietness I've ever witnessed. It makes me wonder if the world we are presented with is so quiet---what is going on inside of Carole's mind? I imagine, screaming.

Evolution of a Bathtub

Remember baths? When I was little, I would only take baths. Now just the thought of bathing in my own filth for 20 minutes is enough to make my skin crawl. And yet in horror films....people always seem to be getting in tubs and what happens? They die. Naturally this only proves that taking a bath is a bad idea. It wasn't until today however, that I noticed just how important of a role bathtubs play.

Perhaps one of my favorite screen grabs of all time is the shot of the woman in the bathtub in Blood and Black Lace.

I still cannot get over how sublimely perfect it is. Don't you just want to hang a giant poster of that in your bedroom?

Sometime after I discovered that breathtaking shot, I found this from Argento's, Four Flies on Grey Velvet.

To me it seemed to be an obvious homage to the man that paved the way for Argento's career in the Giallo department of horror.

Tonight, I settled down to watch Repulsion for the very first time although I was quite entranced, I was also shocked to find that this shot existed.

Could it be that THIS was the scene that launched a thousand bathtub shots?

But then I got thinking. There had to have been something that preceded the Repulsion bathtub shot but what was it? No sooner had the thought left my brain than I realized that Les Diaboliques may in fact be an original starter.

But like all things I get excited about, this is probably not true. One thing is true however---the shot of a dead body in a bathtub is possibly more frequent than we ever imagined. With that one realization about these 4 connected bath tub incidents, my mind suddenly started racing and it could not be stopped.

The Shining

The Changeling

Deadline

Fatal Attraction

Jacob's Ladder

Event Horizon

And then I got to you know..thinking outside of the tub. And I realized that tub trauma is highly underrated.

The House of the Devil

A Clockwork Orange

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Stigmata

Grace

The Tingler

Requiem for a Dream

Mirrors

Cabin Fever

Hostel 2

Ghostbusters II

Shivers

Slither

The Lost Boys

See? Bad things happen in the bathtub....very bad things.