comment #1

LexG says ...

Twitchers and groaners are usually extremely juvenile people with zero self-awareness. No serious film lover should ever have any overt, outward reaction to *anything*, not even a shriek or a jump. Just MAYBE some polite, non-Cadyesque laughter to a comedy.

People who gasp then do the collective "laugh of relief" in horror movies are either 14-year-old Filipino mall girls, or adults with the mentality of such.

And there should be a special circle of hell for people -- usually, for whatever reason, WOMEN WHO GO TO MOVIES TOGETHER, and GAY COUPLES -- who feel the need to titter and giggle at nudity and sexuality in film.

comment #2

115thDreamer says ...

Yeah, people supposed fainted during the "hypodermic" scene in "Pulp Fiction" when that first opened. I felt a bit queasy during the, ahem, "feast" sequence of "Salo", but that's about as bad as I've ever felt. Well, OK, the "crab walk" in the new cut of "The Exorcist" a few years back scared the shit out of me, but I didn't hurl or anything. Oh man, was that crab walk fucked up......

comment #3

cinefan says ...

I too was a little bit queasy during the "hypodermic" scene in Pulp Fiction. For some reason, seeing paralysis depicted on screen always makes me feel very faint and light-headed - I had a very difficult time physically getting through both Kill Bill Vol 1 and Million Dollar Baby, for example, because of that.

comment #4

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

Oddly enough, an over-the-top response to a comedy will be more likely to ruin my time out at the movies than any other genre.

Went once to an opening weekend showing of There's Something About Mary. Sheesh. Tears streaming down people's faces, coughing up lungs after severely prolonged laughing fits, rolling in the aisles (I'm literally not making any of this up). It just wasn't that funny to me, and perhaps a large part of the reason for my tepid response was the wild over-response everyone else seemed to be giving it.

To this day, I still have a problem watching more than 5 minutes of that movie even if it's just on TV or something.

comment #5

Colin says ...

People probably threw up in Bourne because of the fucking shaky-cam Greengrass uses for everything. Probably children's birthday parties as well.

comment #6

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

I know this is going much further back than the original question intended, but if I was alive and breathing in 1929, I imagine I would have had a pretty violent physical reaction to the eyeball being slit in the Dali/Bunuel film Un Chien Andalou.

I still have a hard enough time with violence inflicted on any part of the eye as it is (Hostel, I'm (not) looking at you!), but take into the account that film was a relatively new entertainment then and nothing quite like that had ever been seen before...I know I'd have issues.

comment #7

CitizenKanedforChewingGum says ...

On that same note, the scenes in ACO with Malcolm McDowell's eyeballs being forced open are nearly as difficult for me to sit through as the actual films are supposed to be for his character.

comment #8

corey3rd says ...

I threw up during Scenes from the Mall when Woody Allen and Bette Midler looked like they were going to have sex on screen.

comment #9

Terry McCarty says ...

I remember seeing a woman running up the aisle to leave the theatre (the now-closed Rialto in South Pasadena) during the mutilation scene in THE PIANO.

comment #10

LexG says ...

Handheld only causes motion sickness in people WHO ARE TOTAL PUSSIES.

MAN UP. It's a movie. What, do you lightweights also faint from reading if you turn the pages at a weird angle?

comment #11

berg says ...

correct me if I am wrong but at the NYFF screening of Pulp Fiction didn't someone have a seizure during the needle to the heart scene. the other night before Capitalism there was a man who had a seizure and an ambulance showed up to wheel him out before the movie started.

And yes there is a special circle in hell for people who waste good whisky ....

comment #12

adorian says ...

When Divine ate the "tootsie roll" at the end of Pink Flamingos, I ended up on my hands and knees, dry heaving among all the shins and shoes around me. People had to pull me back up into my seat.

comment #13

McClaneSveUs says ...

Martyrs
Inside

Two french films that didn't quite send me into convulsions, but no doubt challenged my resolve to see them through...

comment #14

sutterkane says ...

the only thing that really rattles me is compound fractures where the bone is exposed. When Cruise breaks his leg in born on the 4th of july, i got seriously lightheaded and had to leave the room. I also had a pretty physical reaction when the girl gets tossed into the pit of hypodermic needles in Saw II.

comment #15

nemo says ...

When I saw Nicholas Roeg's Performance in college I had to leave to throw up. But that had more to do with how much I drank before the movie than with anything that happened on screen.

The sight of Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis used to induce some nausea, but I eventually got past that.

comment #16

buckzollo says ...

count me in on any thread that makes reference to Salo. gnarly

comment #17

Nick X says ...

Had no problems getting through Salo, Irreversible, or any of the others mentioned on this thread. I did see Jackass 2 in the theater, though--not proud of this--and when the guy drank horse semen or whatever, I started to laugh in disbelief and a little part of my brain went, *stop laughing, you're not laughing, you're gagging, and you're about to throw up.* And I realized that I was, indeed, about to throw up.

Also, in terms of scenes I want to look away from, the only one I can think of is the baseball bat beating in the cornfield in Casino. For some reason that has always seemed so awful and so unpleasant that it disturbs me in some deep, visceral way. Good on Scorsese for showing mob violence for the ugly, awful, shameful thing it is, rather than something cool or glamorous.

comment #18

Josh Massey says ...

Working at a theater in high school, I saw/heard a couple people vomit in Alien 3 - at the sound effect of Newt's chest being cracked open.

comment #19

corey3rd says ...

I also threw up in Bar Fly since we had decided to match Mickey Rourke shot for shot with a smuggled bottle of tequila.

comment #20

Zach says ...

I doubt they were "film hounds" but didn't Mel Gibson kill a few people with The Passion of the Christ?

The autopsy at the beginning of Saw IV is probably the closest I've ever come to gagging. Runner-up: Cannibal Holocaust.

comment #21

Matthew Starr says ...

I was at the festival screening of Antichrist although I was in the balcony and this incident occurred in the orchestra level. It was pretty chaotic, people were screaming lights! while others were yelling to put the movie back on. No one around us knew what had happened.

What is interesting is that I always watch graphic movies (Oldboy, Irreversible, lots of Takashii Miike) and wonder what it would be like to watch such films in theatres. I guess now I know. People have to understand what type of film you are going to see.

It's not like Lars Von Trier is new on the block. We all know he is going to push the envelope and people should realize whether or not they can handle films like this before they go in.

comment #22

longrunner says ...

I haven't seen Antichrist, but none of the other films mentioned here have induced in me any physical reactions as described. And I'm not only not a girly man, I'm not a man. Whatta bunch of wimps.

comment #23

bridgeman says ...

This is coming from someone in Australia - do audiences in the US really cheer and applaud at movies? Honestly? I've only been to two films where some people cheered - Schindler's List (when Amon Goeth was executed) and Children of Heaven (the end of the big race). The only applause I ever heard was at the end of festival screenings.

comment #24

Renfield says ...

I was at a showing of "The Blair Witch Project" opening weekend-- before the basic public caught on that it was fake-- and a Mexican family a row in front of me started praying together during the final scene in the shack.

Oddly, this made the scene more intense for me...

comment #25

lipranzer says ...

Bridgeman - yes they do. The most memorable instance, for me, was when Orlando Bloom felled the giant creature in LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING, and the packed theater audience I sat with broke out into applause (which I joined in, if memory serves) and cheering.

When I was a kid, to show you what a wuss I was about horror movies, I went to see TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, and when Dan Aykroyd turns around and becomes a monster who starts to choke Albert Brooks, I almost ran out of the theater I was so frightened. But I haven't had a physical reaction to a movie like that since (admittedly, I haven't sat through any torture porn, or movies like SALO).

comment #26

Wrecktem says ...

Not only do people in the U.S. cheer during movies, they'll do it at the most unusual and inappropriate times. I was watching the execrable Jurassic Park 2 the weekend it opened, and during the scene where Richard Schiff is picked up and ripped in half by two T-Rexes, the audience started cheering and whooping like if Piazza had hit a home run. It seemed like bloodlust to me, like "Boy this movie's shitty. Thank God some poor guy just got ripped in half to alleviate my boredom." I was appalled.

comment #27

Geoff says ...

I devoured just about every gnarly horror film I could find on VHS when I was a kid, so I don't really have visceral reactions.

However, when I was watching the final act of Takashi Miike's "Audition" I couldn't sit still. I even had to rub my Achilles heel at one point because the shocking images on display started to give me a phantom pain of sorts in my feet.

comment #28

arturobandini2 says ...

Salo on the big screen definitely killed my appetite for chocolate for a good two months. The star of Wenders' Kings of the Road pinching a kielbasa-sized loaf on the side of the road nearly did same (tho the sunset was very pretty). I'm pretty sure had I seen Adjani's subway miscarriage scene from Possession on a big screen, it would've tested my gag reflex. Last time a movie actually spooked me was the title sequence from the original The Eye. My mind was baked and not at all ready to be fucked with during the friggin' title sequence.

comment #29

Drew McWeeny says ...

LexG, there are a percentage of people who get intensely motion sick during handheld footage. It has nothing to do with them being "pussies," but is an actual medical issue. Sometimes they're able to see the movies on a small screen, but it just depends how severely they're affected. It's one of the reasons I think the overuse of that aesthetic is a bad thing... you're excluding some of your audience in an actual physical manner. They literally can't sit through it.

comment #30

Caustic712 says ...

Geoff beat me to it with "Audition." I had nearly been lulled to sleep until the phone call, um, causes a reaction in the girl's apartment. At some point near the conclusion, I found myself off the couch, pacing, knuckle between my teeth. Whew!

comment #31

Terry McCarty says ...

LexG wrote:
Handheld only causes motion sickness in people WHO ARE TOTAL PUSSIES.

Waited to see CLOVERFIELD until DVD release. No problem watching it at home, but I would have felt at least mildly queasy in a theater.

comment #32

BurmaShave says ...

There's a clip online right now from LAW ABIDING CITIZEN that I thought was just a promo but it seems to be some kind of bootleg effects demo, anyway it's just Butler shanking another guy in prison repeatedly in the neck and getting covered in his blood. It made me ill, odd.

comment #33

mitchtaylor says ...

A scene in The Beyond, when a dog attacks someone, nearly had me vomiting. I think this had more to do with the circumstances under which I saw it, though... alone, skipping out on working a graveyard shift with a feeble excuse to catch a midnight screening. It was my first real job and I was scared to death someone would catch me playing hooky.

comment #34

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

"And there should be a special circle of hell for people -- usually, for whatever reason, WOMEN WHO GO TO MOVIES TOGETHER, and GAY COUPLES"

How hard is it to imagine that LexG pussied out when he wrote that and resisted his urge to make it "fags."

I really wish I did get motion sick from hand held flicks and his "pussy" label would apply. Because, as I've said since antagonists were old enough to try that one on me, hey, you are what you eat....

comment #35

Bob Hightower says ...

A friend of mine went to see DUCK SOUP at the Museum of Modern Art and laughed so hard he became hysterical and fell on the floor. He had to be helped into the lobby. Just as he was
starting to calm down, Groucho Marx stepped out of the elevator, and my friend went hysterical again. Groucho looked at him quizzically.

comment #36

LexG says ...

Deathtongue, that shit doesn't fly over here... The Lexman is a friend to people of all stripes and even has a substantial gay following, which is fine by me. I'm like the meathead version of Kathy Griffin in that regard. Whatever floats anybody's boat, I couldn't care less. But class move throwing that dart from 30 miles out on the off chance it would stick.

That said, it's my anecdotal, experiential... er, experience, that a LOT of gay folks -- be they friends, acquaintances, coworkers, or the quite obvious Sunday matinee crowd at the Arclight in matching mesh tube tobs and 1999 Radiohead cuts -- tend to giggle or laugh to defuse content that's too serious and sexual subject matter. You can say that's a stereotype or a broad generalization, and to some degree it maybe is. I'm certainly not saying it holds true for all or even MOST gay men.

But face it, we all kinda know the officeplace gay guy whose default mode is irony and playing things off with a laugh or a charming quip. And when they're sitting behind you in a theater, it's not unheard of that they'll laugh or titter at sex scenes or shrewish women or over-the-top scares. Or in the case of the rather fey dude sitting Indian style next to me with his boyfriend during a Penelope Cruz movie, break out into a giddy little opera clap every time Penelope showed up, then HISSSSSSSS every time her catty rival showed up.

comment #37

Rich S. says ...

William Castle would be proud.

comment #38

Krazy Eyes says ...

While a freshman in college, we were watching Fulci's NEW YORK RIPPER, when during the infamous razor blade scene we heard a loud crash behind us. One of our roommates had wandered in and was watching the movie from the doorway. When the scene in question happened he had fainted dead away and smacked his head on the door frame which required a trip to the campus doctor.

comment #39

JD says ...

Honestly, I think people freak-out far more because of confrontational sound design and irrational visual experiments than they do because of conventional scares. I've seen so many experiemental films over the years that scared me far more than any Hollywood horror film ever has.

When I saw Antichrist (and Enter the Void for that matter) at TIFF, you could feel the sense of dread and unease in the theatre.

The only movie that ever made me feel like I was going to pass-out was the train-sinking sequence in Von Trier's Europa. The combination of the second-person voice over and Von Trier's decision to cut back and forth from above the water and below the water gave me a genuine drowning sensation. Not sure it has the same effect on DVD.

comment #40

DeafEars says ...

"the only thing that really rattles me is compound fractures where the bone is exposed. When Cruise breaks his leg in born on the 4th of july, i got seriously lightheaded and had to leave the room."

A friend of mine - a guy, FWIW - actually fainted during this scene. How'd you like DELIVERANCE?

I laughed so hard during the "Biggus Dickus" scene in THE LIFE OF BRIAN that I was having trouble breathing - I was starting to think I might literally suffocate.

comment #41

Glenn Kenny says ...

I almost lost it at the climax of "Audition." What helped was looking at the even more overtly demonstrative reactions from others in the audience. That made it seem kind of funny, actually.

I can understand why at least one specific shot in "Antichrist" might make a grown man cry, or hurl. Actually, more than one.

comment #42

George Prager says ...

What about those who walk out of a movie and make sure everyone knows it? Usually happens when closeted butch lesbians drag their boyfriends out of movies like TRUE ROMANCE. Or the Bernie Madoff lookalike and his wife after George Carlin tells the joke in THE ARISTOCRATS. What they fuck did they think they were going to see?

comment #43

Wrecktem says ...

I remember a girl loudly protesting when she stormed out of Monty Python's Meaning of Life, right after the Mr. Creosote scene. Her boyfriend followed behind, begging her to come back and watch the rest of the film.

One wonders why she waited until the end of the scene to leave.

comment #44

Floyd Thursby says ...

Chan-wook Park says he closes his eyes during horror films--as good a solution as any.

comment #45

Edward says ...

I had a girlfriend who wanted to see MP's "The Meaning of Life," I knew she wouldn't like it, but since I wanted to see it we went. She fell asleep and woke up just when Mr. Creosote got interesting. Her reaction was worth the price of admission. Need I mention that was one of our last dates?

comment #46

Bob Hightower says ...

According to Joseph McBride's biography of Steven Spielberg, Spielberg recalled an incident he helped create when Irwin Allen's dinosaur movie THE LOST WORLD played one of Phoenix's biggest theaters in 1960: "My friends and I took a lot of white bread and mixed it with milk, Parmesan cheese, creamed corn, and peas. We put this foul-smelling mixture into bags, went to the movie, and sat in the highest balcony. At the most exciting part, we made vomiting sounds and squeezed the solution over the balcony on the people below. We did it for laughs. Little did we realize that it would begin a chain reaction of throwing up. The movie was stopped, the houselights came on, and ushers appeared with their flashlights -- ready to kill. We were so frightened that we raced out the fire-escape exit. Even though we had brought two cars, the seven of us ran about a mile and took a bus home." In Spielberg's production THE GOONIES, one of the kids tells that story about himself, calling it "the worst thing I ever done."