March 4, 2009 | lists
Frying pan batter Mary Waronov in Eating Raoul
We decided to make this list a two-parter, as a number of the films featured here are sequels—which, in the horror genre means uprooting the entire production to Eastern Europe, without telling the guy who directed the original (who by that point would’ve designated the film an ‘Alan Smithee‘ production anyway and fled from his creditors)
As we noted in Part I of this list, movie audiences are increasingly demanding when it comes to seeing people get what’s comin’ to ‘em, and if what’s comin’ to ‘em is a household object not typically associated with mass murder, all the better.
In 1927, the first ‘talkie’ was released, 1975′s Jaws was purportedly the first movie to have earned 100 million at the box office and in 1987 another movie first: Slumber Party Massacre II became the first film (and no doubt the last) to have the entire cast perforated by an electric guitar with an electric drill attached to the end it.
While B-movie victims have been clubbed with barbwire mace, choked, maimed, burned, detonated, halved, drowned, sliced, diced and crumpled (Airbags don’t save lives when they’re deployed at the bottom of a cliff) we showed in Part I of this list that people can just as easily be ‘outboard motored’.
The films we showcase here would be relegated to obscurity were it not for novel and ingenious ways folks were sent to the great beyond, employing devices which could be procured at your local lost and found or yard sale, rather than opting for the more conventional sawed-off shotgun, axe or harpoon.
So, cock that crossbow, hit the ‘on’ switch on that portable miter saw as we look at the remaining five of our Top 10 Unique Implements That Have Killed People in Horror Movies!
5) Umbrella
Made on a budget that wasn’t so much shoestring as Velcro, this $250,000 production gets kudos here for not one, but three unique murder implements that made the night ever so deadly, if not particularly silent. Given the ubiquity of car troubles in horror films, especially on dirt roads and cul-du-sacs where entire families of deranged cannibal psychopaths invariably dwell, you wouldn’t be shocked by the use of a jumper cable—but would be if you were one of the victims in the Silent Night Deadly Night sequel. Also quite innovative was the use of an car antenna as a strangling device, which has the added benefit of picking up whatever angry right-wing call-in chat show the perpetrator would inevitably favor. However, it’s the decidedly un-Mary Poppins use of the umbrella as a souvlaki-like skewering device, that makes it feature so prominently here.
4) Pogo Stick. The movie’s tag line was “The luck of the Irish is being packed and shipped to a little town in South Dakota, whose luck may have just run out”. Well, John Lennon once sang, “If you had the luck of the Irish, you’d be sorry and wish you were dead.” Leprechaun fulfills that wish and more.
Easily the best thing she’s done other than Office Space, the flick features a young Jennifer Aniston and a dizzying plot involving a theft of coins from a Leprechaun’s Pot O’ Gold stash. This film violates that rule of life expectancy we outlined in our Top 10 Pissed off Primate Horror Films, namely, that if there is a mysterious crate it should under every circumstance, be left alone. A pawn shop owner (the type of guy who’d sell an electric guitar with a drill attached to the end of it) who finds the coins in his possession, gets pogo-sticked to death by the eponymous character as we await the definitive Segway scooter murder to be brought to the big screen.
Honorable Mention: In the horror comedy Killer Klowns from Outer Space, a cotton candy gun is used. In The Burning, a set of hedge clippers is employed with devastating results, however those rusty blades just missed the cut here.
3) Electric Guitar Drill. A staunchly pro-abstinence film (“if you go, don’t go all the way!”) Slumber Party Massacre II features the crazed rockabilly lovechild of Gene Vincent and John Travolta in Grease who, in this incoherent mess of a movie, bores everyone in more ways than one. For a Be Bop a Lula lunatic, the killer inexplicably has a cheesy heavy metal guitar instead of a more period-authentic Gretsch, and goes after a Runaways-style girl group who unfortunately cannot live up to that concept.
On Amazon.com, those who were interested in this production, also enjoyed Sorority House Massacre I, Sorority House Massacre II (who’d be left to pledge and who would want to at that point?), Cheerleader Massacre, Cheerleader Camp, and the Prom Night series. We are sensing a theme here. A unremarkable third installment in the Slumber Party Massacre series came out, following the ‘nubile scantily clad women go out and get drunk, party, fail to heed the warnings of their cement headed male companions and are picked off one-by-one by a [insert weapon here and then insert weapon into various body parts] backwoods lunatic’. To the best of our knowledge, no irascible bass-playing band mate featured prominently. We’d be more than willing to take on the creative director position in the event a flame-thrower trombonist movie were ever green-lighted. 
2) Dresser / Chest of Drawers In the incredibly creepy and claustrophobic French gore fiesta High Tension (Haute Tension) the perils of not building a structure up to code are fully realized, as someone with their head stuck in a banister railing gets it lopped off by a giant cabinet dresser.
Easily one of the most creative decapitations ever brought to cinema, by the French who not surprisingly also brought us….well…cinema itself and the guillotine. [Interesting side-note: the last guillotine execution wasn't too long ago...1977 in Marseilles].
1) Basketball / Ear of corn. Our first two entrants make us almost misty-eyed and nostalgic for the likes of The Toolbox Murders. Like one’s children, it’s impossible to pick a favorite but made that much easier if one of those whippersnappers got better grades. Deadly Friend Versus Sleepwalkers. This is a pick ‘em for our number one slot: two of the most unique and highly original screen deaths ever. Both of these are book adaptations and in Deadly Friend, more creative liberties are taken than a porno version of Romeo and Juliet when a bathtub drowning from the novel somehow morphs into a basketball decapitation on screen. Unless it was shot out of a cannon, Cannonball Richards-style, you’d be hard pressed to get a Spalding up to a speed that would separate someone’s top 1/8th from the rest of ‘em.
In Sleepwalkers, incredibly, a piece of corn on the cob is driven through the back of one Deputy Horace. What’s even more incredible is that it’s been cooked and lacking the structural rigidity of its raw form. Extra points for the “No vegetables, no dessert!” cracking wise.
CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF THE TOP 10 UNIQUE HORROR MOVIE MURDER IMPLEMENTS!!!
Here’s a good one not mentioned:
Boogeyman 2 (1983)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085266/#comment
Death by:
Shaving Cream
Car Tailpipe
Electric Toothbrush
The guillotine wasn’t invented in France. The first instance of a weighted axe blade supported by a pulley system on two uprights was in the middle ages in England.
The french didn’t invent anything except surrender.
Did you even research this….Man what a HORRORble list (Sorry had to throw that in there)
“The french didn’t invent anything except surrender.”
I’m guessing your American …So short sighted before blasting the French read about WW2. You got nothing on the French people.
Thank you Adrian.
Point taken.
Speaking of points, from this point on, we will refer to the guillotine by the phrase ‘weighted axe blade supported by a pulley system on two uprights to disjoint one from one’s noggin, likely invented by the proud English in some indeterminate period sometime after the 11th century.’
The French language, in our humble estimation, is spoken in 50 countries around the world and by hundreds of millions of people, and this occurred completely spontaneously because each and every one of these countries decided it sounded mellifluous and then adopted it.
Thank you ‘Youradumbass’.
For starters, for future reference, if you’re going to use this forum to establish that someone’s a dumbass other than yourself, it would help to, at very least, spell it correctly.
Secondly, Mr. ‘You’re a Dumbass’, insinuating that someone’s stupidity derives from their being American is not going to win you any friends (beyond the none you likely already have), as 70% of this blog’s readership consists of Americans—something we very much appreciate as we consider it a pretty amazing country.
Thirdly, based on your death-by-guillotine-worthy HORROR-endous punning and lack of any punctuation, ability to reason, spell, etc, it’s pretty safe to venture that any list you would come up with beyond a ‘Things to do when I’m released from the state penitentiary’ would be an incredibly lousy read indeed.
Thank you.
What about the stiletto in “Single White Female”. There’s a weapon of death worth noting
No flying death ball with spikes and drill from Phantasm? Epic fail.
I’d like to submit death (or actually accidental homicide) by jawbreaker… from the awful Heather’s knockoff ‘Jawbreaker’ (1999)
Thanks Nappyhead. I always suspected the Willy Wonka company of homicidal tendencies.
How about “Death Bed: The Bed That Eats”? This wouldn’t actually qualify for your list because the bed is not a murder implement used by a third party, but rather an all-inclusive killing unit on its own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_bed_the_bed_that_eats
Everything about the wikipedia entry is good:
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats is a 1977 one-off horror film written, produced, and directed by George Barry.
The film was not officially released until 2003, and in the introduction to the DVD edition, Barry claims to have essentially forgotten he had made it. It now has considerable cult status.
[edit] Plot
A large, black, four-poster bed, possessed by a demon, is passed from owner to owner. The Demon was a tree, who became a breeze and seemingly fell in love with a woman he blew past. The demon then took human form and conjured up a bed. While making love with the woman she died and his eyes bleed onto the bed, causing it to become possessed. Those who come into contact with the bed are frequently consumed by it (victims are pulled into what is apparently a large chamber of digestive fluids beneath the sheets).