10 Famous Horror Movie Moments That Were Completely Improvised
They're here to chew bubblegum and ad-lib one-liners. And they're all out of gum.
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00:00 Think about improvisation in movies and chances are your mind goes to comedies like Anchorman
00:04 or quick-witted dudes like Ryan Reynolds.
00:07 Horror however is not so well known for the off-the-cuff spontaneity.
00:11 I mean a genre full of sharp things like blood and guts means it requires a certain amount
00:16 of careful planning.
00:17 That's not to say though that horror is completely scared of making things up on the
00:21 spot.
00:22 It might be rarer than a comedy, but some of horror's most quotable lines and memorable
00:26 sequences were completely unscripted.
00:28 Just look at these 10 classic horror moments that were ad-libbed on the spot to see the
00:32 lasting impact of a little improvisation.
00:35 I am Marcus Bronzy, this is What Culture and it's time to chew bubble gum and ad-lib
00:40 one-liners and guess what?
00:42 I'm all out of gum.
00:44 Here are 10 famous horror movie moments that were completely improvised.
00:50 Number 10.
00:51 The helicopter crash in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
00:54 This B-movie about a salad ingredient gone bad may not have acquired quite the same classic
00:59 status as some of the others on this list, but it did kickstart a genuine multimedia
01:03 franchise with George Clooney starring in a sequel, an animated TV series and more than
01:08 one video game.
01:10 It also contains one of the most audacious pieces of improv in horror movie history.
01:15 Killer Tomatoes was a predictably low-cost affair, but they did manage to scrape together
01:19 the funds to hire a helicopter to land in the background scene of some cops that were
01:23 gunning down a mutant veg.
01:25 But as the little chopper came in to land, it spun wildly out of control and crashed
01:29 in the field.
01:30 The film's budget was barely six figures.
01:33 A chopper of that type probably cost about 60 grand.
01:37 So the cameras kept rolling and they got some unexpectedly dramatic crash footage.
01:42 How could they not throw that into the movie?
01:44 It cost a bomb!
01:45 Well, it cost a helicopter, but you know what I mean.
01:48 Over the years, the crash has become one of cult movies' most memorable scenes.
01:52 An unexpectedly real-action stunt in a cheap nonsense parody.
01:56 Number 9.
01:57 That Brutal Ending - Witchfinder General
02:00 This cult English Civil War folk horror is best remembered for its shockingly abrupt
02:05 brutal ending scene, in which Ian Ogilvie's round-headed soldier savagely hacks the evil
02:10 Witchfinder to pieces in a fit of vengeful madness.
02:13 As originally scripted, however, the film would have had a more conventional ending
02:17 reflecting that of the source novel.
02:19 Vincent Price's Witchfinder would have been dealt the same cruel fate he'd given to
02:23 others and be executed in a moment of karmic justice.
02:26 The planned sequence, which involved a whole camp full of extras, was deemed far too costly
02:31 by the producer Tony Tencer.
02:33 With Price due to start his run on Broadway musical Darling of the Day, a new ending had
02:38 to be pulled together on the spot.
02:40 This led director Michael Reeves to the far smaller and more downbeat ending with which
02:44 we're now familiar.
02:45 With soldiers rushing in at the last minute to put the axed-damaged Witchfinder out of
02:49 misery with a gunshot, Ogilvie had one moment of improvisation.
02:54 He let out an agonised howl at being robbed of taking personal vengeance.
02:58 It's this ad-libbed primal scream at a world gone mad that is the final lingering
03:02 sense the movie leaves you with.
03:04 Number 8.
03:05 Frank Hellraiser
03:07 Hellraiser was Clive Barker's directional debut and adaptation of his own novella, The
03:12 Hellbound Heart.
03:14 Unfortunately, even whilst adapting his own work, the first time Helmer was never too
03:18 precious about the final cut matching his original script.
03:21 Whilst Pinhead and his gang quickly established themselves, the real monster of Hellraiser
03:25 is teen heroine Kirsty's creepy uncle Frank.
03:29 Many of the moments that made Frank memorable, though, were made up on the spot.
03:33 An iconic shot of a skinless Frank smoking a cigarette came about because Barker spotted
03:38 actor Oliver Smith enjoying a cheeky ciggy in a full skinless make-up between takes.
03:43 Barker liked it, so he decided to chuck it in the movie.
03:46 Meanwhile, once clad in the skin of his brother Larry, many of Frank's best known lines
03:50 were made up on the spot by the actor Andrew Robinson.
03:53 Enough of this cat and mouse shit was one that Robinson ad-libbed unprompted and Barker
03:57 happily left in.
03:58 Most memorably, though, the actor took his final line, a simplistic "f*** off" and
04:02 improvised it with a much more evocative "Jesus wept".
04:06 Now that's the way to sign off before you get torn apart.
04:10 Number 7.
04:11 You hit me with a phone!
04:13 Scream
04:14 As a knowing parody of all of the slasher horrors, Scream was only too keen to show
04:19 that sometimes everything doesn't go quite smoothly for a real killer as it does for
04:24 Jason or Michael Myers.
04:26 That means if actors fluff something, the director Wes Craven had no qualms about leaving
04:31 it in the final cut.
04:32 Case in point, one of the phones used by the killers to torment their victims with their
04:37 impromptu slasher trivia quizzes.
04:40 Actor Skeet Ulrich was aiming to slam a phone down on a countertop but thanks to his hands
04:45 being covered in murderous blood, well, it slipped and smacked into the back of co-star
04:50 Matthew Lillard's head.
04:51 Staying in character, Lillard improvised a response and snapped back "you f***ing hit
04:56 me with a phone you d***head".
04:57 It was this take that Craven left in the movie as is and really showed that the criminal
05:01 genius killers were just a couple of idiot high schoolers.
05:05 A good measure, another ad-lib from Lillard was when he suddenly blurts at Neve Campbell's
05:09 Sydney while she's calling the cops on him for murder.
05:12 "My mum and dad are gonna be so mad at me!"
05:15 Also made it into the final cut, helping make the character a more memorable screw-up than
05:19 originally scripted.
05:21 6.
05:22 Chewing Bubblegum and Kicking Arse, They Live
05:25 The history of wrestlers on film is a decidedly mixed bag.
05:28 For every Dwayne Johnson becoming his generation's most insanely charismatic action star pulling
05:34 in the big bucks, there's a Hulk Hogan as Mr. Nanny.
05:37 One thing you do get when casting a wrestler is a knack for killer one-liners and that's
05:41 exactly what rowdy Roddy Piper brought to John Carpenter's satirical anti-consumerist
05:46 alien occupation picture.
05:48 Even people who have never seen They Live know the moment where Piper's John Nadder
05:52 strides into a bank wielding a shotgun and says "I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick
05:57 arse and I'm all out of bubblegum".
05:59 And even those who don't know the scene will recognise the line from a long pop-cultural
06:03 afterlife that is included being appropriated by Duke Nukem.
06:07 Piper has said that it was just some nonsense that he came up with in the moment, while
06:10 Carpenter on the other hand suggested that he had picked the line out of the wrestler's
06:14 notebook full of potential trash talk lines.
06:17 Either way, Piper's addition to the script is what really made it zing.
06:21 5.
06:22 Game Over Man - Aliens
06:24 When it comes to facing off against the most terrifying monsters in sci-fi horror, we'd
06:27 all like to believe we'd be like Ripley, hyper-competent and kick arse.
06:31 In truth, most of us would follow a more private Hudson path, from cockiness to complete shambles.
06:37 In fact, Bill Paxton's Hudson is essentially Aliens' audience surrogate.
06:40 As such, his express elevator to hell has all the best lines.
06:44 Hudson's freak out as the Colonial Marines' escapist cut off by the crash of a dropship
06:48 was completely improvised by the actor, including infamously announcing "Game over man, game
06:54 over".
06:55 There's good reason that the character would have grown up as a gamer so this would be
06:58 his cultural reference point for when things turned really bad.
07:02 Gamer or not, it doesn't stop Paxton's ad-lib from resonating with audiences across
07:06 the years.
07:07 4.
07:08 Hannibal Lecter's Terrifying Brilliance - The Silence of the Lambs
07:13 The Silence of the Lambs was not the first Hannibal Lecter movie, but it was the one
07:17 that established the character as one of the all-time great movie monsters, winning a rare
07:22 horror movie acting Oscar along the way.
07:25 Much of that is down to Anthony Hopkins' superb performance of the caged menace.
07:29 Hopkins brought a lot to the role of the cannibal, including some things that weren't in the
07:34 script.
07:35 In the scene in which he puts on a mocking impression of Jodie Foster's southern accent
07:38 for example, that was a decision made by Hopkins on the spot.
07:42 And because of that, Foster's reaction is more authentic as she had not been expecting
07:46 Hopkins to go there.
07:47 In fact, Foster said that she had found Hopkins genuinely scary during the filming of those
07:51 scenes, something that gave their iconic interplay an additional friction.
07:55 Most memorably though, Hopkins added a bizarre hissing noise after delivering Lecter's
07:59 famous line about eating someone's liver with fava beans and a nice glass of wine.
08:04 Watching this scene, you can even see Hopkins pause between saying 'chianti' and the
08:08 hiss, giving the director a chance to cut if he wanted.
08:11 It seemed like that unsettling hissing noise really set the tone, and they left it in,
08:16 and good that they did because it's hard to think of that reference or any kind of
08:19 parody around it without that noise.
08:21 3.
08:22 Here's Johnny – The Shining
08:24 Infamously unpopular with the writer Stephen King, Kubrick's film version of The Shining
08:30 has nevertheless gained iconic horror status, in part due to Jack Nicholson's manic lead
08:35 performance.
08:36 Nicholson's randomly exclaiming "Here's Johnny" was taken from the introduction
08:40 of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, which had run since the early 1960s, but it was just
08:45 one of several things that the actor had tried during three days of takes for the notoriously
08:49 perfectionist Kubrick, smashing about 60 doors in the process.
08:53 The director, not exactly a big chat show viewer, reportedly didn't even get the reference,
08:58 but put it in the movie anyway.
09:00 Kubrick wasn't the only one, as the line would develop a life of its own beyond its
09:04 origin appealing to people who had never seen or heard of Carson.
09:08 2.
09:09 You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat – Jaws
09:11 You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat rapidly entered the pop culture lexicon after police
09:15 chief Brody understatedly responded to his first proper sight of the full scale of Jaws'
09:21 gigantic great white shark.
09:24 Before that though, the line had already been a sort of memetic in-joke among the movie's
09:28 cast and crew.
09:29 On top of all the other problems that made filming at sea such a nightmare, Jaws' stingy
09:33 producers would only stump up the cash for a tiny support boat.
09:37 This had led to "You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat" becoming an on-set catchphrase whenever
09:41 the latest crisis hit.
09:42 Lead actor Roy Scheider was a particular fan of the phrase and tried to frequently insert
09:47 the dialogue into different scenes throughout the movie.
09:50 Credit must also go to Oscar-winning editor Verna Field.
09:53 As to Scheider, I mean she was the one to spot the perfect alignment of the actor's
09:57 favourite ad-lib and the best possible place for it in the movie.
10:01 Proof that even the best moments of on-screen, on-the-spot brilliance still need some post-production
10:06 assistance.
10:07 1.
10:08 The Blair Witch Basically everything in the Blair Witch project.
10:11 There are horrors where lines or moments of action are improvised on the spot, but a horror
10:15 that's almost entirely improvised?
10:17 Well, that's a whole lot rarer.
10:19 Still, that's just one way in which, love it or hate it, Blair Witch changed the game
10:23 for horror cinema.
10:25 The production began with just a 35-page outline, no regular script and no dialogue.
10:31 From the interviews with the locals that began the movie, with real unscripted conversations
10:35 with the actual townspeople of Burksville, Maryland, to the chilling final shots, huge
10:39 amounts of the actual content of the Blair Witch project were made up on the fly.
10:43 The three lead actors were really just sent into the woods with cameras and each morning
10:47 they would receive an outline of what their character should do.
10:50 Beyond that, all their dialogue and actions were improvised.
10:53 It all gave a sense of authenticity and genuine tension, especially as tempers frayed and
10:58 it became increasingly difficult to tell how much of the fraught arguments between the
11:01 trio were simply improvised acting.
11:04 Before that famous ending, directors Daniel Merrick and Eduardo Sanchez hadn't actually
11:07 decided what to do when the shoot began.
11:10 By the time it came to the film's climax, actor Michael C. Williams was just told to
11:14 abandon the terrified co-star Heather Donoghue and run into the creepy house.
11:19 Then a producer tackled him to the floor and shoved him in a basement in the corner just
11:23 in time for Heather and her camera to stumble into this unexpected scene and give a real
11:28 natural reaction.
11:29 Plenty of later horrors tried to recapture what made Blair Witch such a hit, with varying
11:33 degrees of success.
11:35 Few though committed quite so much to the sense of naturally occurring fear that comes
11:39 from almost total improvisation.
11:41 So there you go.
11:43 I am Marcus Bronzey and that was 10 famous horror movie moments that were completely
11:47 improvised.
11:48 Got something to add to the convo?
11:50 Let us know in the comments below.
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11:58 I'm on all social medias as well.
12:00 That's Marcus Bronzey, M-A-R-C-U-S-B-R-O-N-Z-Y.
12:04 At twitch.tv/marcusbronzey on weekdays.
12:07 And my podcast called Ain't Got A Clue, get that wherever you listen to those.
12:10 Until next time, peace.