10 Horror Movie Secrets They'll Never Tell You
From Shutter Island to American Psycho, you'll never get answers to these horror movie questions.
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00:00One of the key tenets of horror movies involves unfurling a mystery primed to get the audience's
00:05heart racing and palms sweating.
00:07And while most horror films will eventually dispense with the innuendo and unleash the
00:11big reveal, sometimes filmmakers like to hold something back and keep a secret close to
00:16their chest.
00:17So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture here with 10 Horror Movie Secrets They'll
00:21Never Tell You.
00:2210.
00:23What was the baby made from?
00:25Eraserhead
00:27David Lynch is fiercely protective of his film's integrity, and perhaps the best-kept
00:31secret from his entire back catalogue?
00:33What the hell Eraserhead's deformed child prop was made from?
00:37In Lynch's mesmerising debut, protagonist Harry is left to care for his swaddled mutant
00:42baby, whose unique physical appearance has left many speculating about how Lynch created
00:47it ever since.
00:48Lynch hasn't ever revealed what the child was made from, and was so committed to concealing
00:52the truth that he even blindfolded the projectionist who worked on the film's dailies during editing,
00:58and also allegedly had the prop buried after shooting was completed.
01:01Over the years, Lynch has made only hilariously vague comments like, it was born nearby or
01:07maybe it was found, while some have speculated that it was made from either a skinned rabbit
01:11or lamb fetus.
01:12While it's incredibly unlikely that Lynch used an untreated animal carcass that would
01:17decompose over the course of production, it's quite possible that he had the prop, nicknamed
01:21Spike, modelled from a dead animal.
01:23All the same, Lynch has managed to keep the secret alive for over 45 years, so there's
01:27no reason that he won't be able to take it to the grave with him.
01:319.
01:32What was real and what was a dream?
01:34American Psycho
01:35American Psycho's big ambiguity has been debated to death, namely whether or not the killings
01:41carried out by Patrick Bateman and the increasingly unhinged sights we witness throughout the
01:46film actually happened or are in fact mere fabrications within his own insane mind.
01:52Director Mary Harron has spoken at length about the film and especially its ending,
01:55but she's refused to explicitly confirm what was real and what wasn't, believing that doing
02:00so would take the movie away from the audience.
02:03She did, however, tell Charlie Rose in an interview that she felt it was a failing on
02:07her part as a filmmaker that some audiences came away believing the entire movie to have
02:12been a dream.
02:13Harron added that this wasn't her intent and she wanted to end the movie on a note where
02:16it's clear that the story is a mix of reality and delusion, though has sensibly shied away
02:21from confirming which parts of the movie are which.
02:24One can reasonably suggest, though, that all of the killings basically happened, but perhaps
02:28not in the outlandish fashion that they did in the film.
02:31And by the time Bateman's trying to feed a cat to an ATM machine and blows up a cop car,
02:35it's purely in his mind.
02:378.
02:38What does After Midnight mean, gremlins?
02:41Anyone who's seen the original Gremlins will, of course, remember the three crucial rules
02:45for looking after a Mogwai.
02:47Don't expose it to sunlight, get it wet, or feed it after midnight.
02:51The first two rules seem simple enough, but what precisely does after midnight mean?
02:56When in a day is it no longer after midnight?
02:59And moreover, what if, hypothetically, you took a Mogwai on a plane across time zones
03:03and fed them?
03:04What's the guidance there?
03:05Evidently, director Joe Dante and writer Christopher Columbus didn't expect audiences to spend
03:10too much time scrutinising that rule, but in the years following the movie's release,
03:15that's basically all they did.
03:16And so, when Gremlins 2, the new batch, was finally released in 1990, Dante decided to
03:21poke a little fun at, in his estimation, over-inquisitive fans.
03:26When Clamp Tower is besieged by gremlins, Daniel Clamp's goons ask about the plane hypothetical,
03:32and also what would happen if a Mogwai accidentally swallowed a seed in its teeth from a meal
03:36eaten before midnight.
03:38But before Billy can even attempt to answer, Gremlin Stripe bursts out of a TV screen and
03:43attacks them.
03:44It's basically Dante's tongue-in-cheek way of telling the audience, stop asking for answers
03:48because I'm never giving them to you.
03:50It's brilliant.
03:51Number 7.
03:52Who is Billy?
03:53Black Christmas, 1974
03:551974's Black Christmas is something of an anomaly among the slasher genre, for despite
04:01turning a healthy profit at the box office, it never led to a sequel, just two ill-advised
04:05remakes released in 2006 and 2019.
04:09As such, film fans were spared the inevitability of a glut of sequels that over-explained the
04:13origins of the original film's shadowy killer, known only as Billy, who was played by numerous
04:19cast and crew members during production.
04:21The film's success nevertheless left many curious about Billy's past, given that Black
04:25Christmas doesn't reveal anything about Billy's identity or motivations for going on a murderous
04:30rampage.
04:31This was entirely intentional on the part of the director Bob Clark and writer Roy Moore,
04:35who felt that it was scarier to make Billy something of a blank canvas onto which the
04:39audience can project their own feelings and fears.
04:42Though the maligned 2006 remake does include a backstory for Billy, revealing him to be
04:47a victim of an abusive childhood, this hasn't demystified the original incarnation, whose
04:52past and nature still remain a mystery.
04:55Given that Clark passed away in 2007 and Moore is still keeping quiet about Billy, it's safe
04:59to say that he's going to remain an unknowable cipher forevermore.
05:046.
05:05What Does The Baby Look Like?
05:07Rosemary's Baby Rosemary's Baby concludes in unforgettably
05:11terrifying fashion when Rosemary meets her son Adrian for the first time, only to discover
05:16that the father is in fact Satan himself.
05:19Upon gazing at her child, Rosemary asks what's wrong with his eyes, to which the members
05:23of the coven remark that he has his father's eyes, before commenting vaguely upon the nature
05:28of his hands and feet.
05:29But we never actually see Adrian for ourselves in the film, leaving viewers to ponder for
05:34themselves what the Antichrist looks like.
05:37From what's said, we can certainly deduce that the boy has cat-like eyes because our
05:41brief glimpse of Satan earlier in the film showed him having the very same.
05:45And as for his hands and feet, well, it's reasonable to assume that they're cloven hooves.
05:50Ira Levin's original book more explicitly describes the baby's appearance, including
05:55horns, a tail, and piercing yellow eyes.
05:57And though the film is certainly a faithful adaptation of the text, it also doesn't mean
06:01that Levin's account is one-to-one to the movie.
06:04And for his part, in the 50-plus years since Rosemary's Baby's release, filmmaker Roman
06:08Polanski hasn't said one word about what the baby truly looks like.
06:13Given that he's 90 years old and, uh, has other things to deal with, it's pretty unlikely
06:17he'll ever chime in on it.
06:195.
06:20Was Teddy Sane at the End?
06:22Shutter Island
06:24The ending of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island has been fiercely discussed, with many concluding
06:28that Andrew Laeddis was indeed sane in the film's final moments, but faked a regression
06:33so that he would be lobotomised and not have to live with the knowledge of murdering his
06:37wife after she drowned their three children.
06:39Both Scorsese and screenwriter Leta Caligariadis have been cagey about ever affirming whether
06:45or not Andrew was indeed sane at the end, and it absolutely behooves them to be this
06:50way because why ruin everyone's fun and sew up the mystery for good?
06:54Intriguingly, Dennis Lehane, the author of the original novel, firmly believes that Andrew
06:58had lost his mind at the end, and the moment he asks, is it better to live as a monster
07:03or to die as a good man, is merely a momentary flash of sanity.
07:07Lehane doesn't believe that Andrew was suicidal enough to have himself lobotomised, but given
07:11that Lehane didn't write the movie script himself, his views on the matter are hardly
07:15objective gospel.
07:164.
07:17How Did Martin Make the Family Sick?
07:20The Killing of a Sacred Deer
07:23The mythical horror The Killing of a Sacred Deer follows heart surgeon Stephen Murphy
07:27who is effectively cursed by Martin, the son of a man who died on his operating table.
07:32Martin informs Stephen that he needs to kill either his wife, son or daughter within a
07:36matter of days or they'll all succumb to an illness that will make them eventually bleed
07:40from the eyes and die.
07:42At the film's end, as his family's condition worsens, Stephen finally gives in and indeed
07:47shoots his son dead, and lifts the curse and returns his remaining family to good health,
07:51just as Martin said it would.
07:53But the film concludes without ever explaining how Martin is able to do this.
07:57We don't see any outwardly supernatural shenanigans throughout the film, and there's no particular
08:02hint that Martin is anything but a flesh and blood human being, but with that in mind,
08:06how did it all happen?
08:08Many might argue that considering the nature of the phenomenon is rather missing the point,
08:12but all the same, the curiosity is totally understandable.
08:15If you try to unravel the story in a grounded manner and consider that Martin might have
08:19been using biological agents to poison the family, you're going to lose yourself down
08:23a highly contrived rabbit hole.
08:25It's only important that Martin has the power and the awful dilemma this creates for Stephen.
08:30That's the dramatic meat of the movie, and clearly there was no interest in exploring
08:34the practical mechanics beyond this.
08:373.
08:38Where did Jean Jacket come from?
08:40Nope.
08:41Jordan Peele's Nope offers up a fantastically unique riff on a superficially familiar alien
08:46invasion scenario, though provides virtually no exterior context for the presence of this
08:51focal UFO nicknamed Jean Jacket.
08:54First and foremost, we're left with no indication of where Jean Jacket came from.
08:57Are they from outer space, or have they always resided in the clouds of Earth?
09:01Though many fans initially believed that the film's title was a sly acronym for Not of
09:06Planet Earth, Peele ultimately confirmed that this wasn't his intent, and despite discussing
09:10the movie at length over the last year plus, has refused to reveal Jean Jacket's origins.
09:16Caltech professor John de Beery, who assisted Peele with Jean Jacket's design, implied in
09:20interviews that he felt the creature was otherworldly in origin due to its unconventional biology
09:26compared to all known creatures on Earth.
09:28Peele also called Nope an alien movie in interviews, though on the other hand, the film's VFX supervisor
09:33felt that Peele had conceived Jean Jacket as a terrestrial entity which has resided
09:37on Earth since potentially forever.
09:39Neither of these collaborators have the authority to say one way or another where Jean Jacket
09:44came from, however, so without Peele being forthcoming on the matter, it's destined to
09:48remain a secret for the ages.
09:502.
09:51What Did Anna Whisper?
09:53Martyrs
09:54Unforgettable French horror film Martyrs concludes with protagonist Anna being flayed alive by
09:59a secret society of individuals who believe that torturing young women will make them
10:03enter a euphoric state and see a window into the afterlife.
10:06After Anna apparently enters such a state, the leader of the group, known only as Mademoiselle,
10:12arrives and Anna whispers something in her ear, presumed to be an account of what she
10:15saw when she became a martyr.
10:18In the next scene, however, Mademoiselle asks her assistant if he can imagine what comes
10:22after death, and when he says no, she tells him, keep doubting, before shooting herself
10:26in the face.
10:27The mystery of what Anna said to Mademoiselle has agonised fans of the film for the last
10:3215 years.
10:33There are two obvious possibilities.
10:34Death leads to nothing and the secret society's experiments have basically been a waste of
10:38time, or there's something so amazing waiting beyond that Mademoiselle couldn't wait any
10:43longer to go there and swiftly took her own life.
10:46But the filmmaker has kept his lips sealed ever since Martyrs' release, and it's a smart
10:50move, ensuring that the film has remained a consistent talking point in the horror fandom
10:54ever since.
10:551.
10:56What Does It All Mean?
10:58Bo is Afraid
10:59Ari Aster's Bo is Afraid is categorically a not-for-everyone movie, but whether you
11:04love it, hate it, or fall somewhere in between, it's fair to say that Aster does a stellar
11:09job of keeping the reality of the situation teetering on an ambiguous razor's edge.
11:14Are the increasingly surreal sight Bo encounters, like, most disturbingly, a giant penis monster
11:19hanging out in the attic of his family estate, to be taken at face value, or are they imagined
11:24in his anxiety-riddled brain?
11:26Or is it a little from column A and a little from column B?
11:29Aster has made it clear in interviews that he doesn't have much interest in shedding
11:33any light on the matter, beyond affirming that the film's central theme is guilt, something
11:38most anyone watching could surely pick up on.
11:40And honestly, it's just as well that Aster would prefer Bo is Afraid to live on as a
11:44gorgeous, hilarious, dreamlike mess of a movie, rather than demystify it and ruin everyone's
11:49fun.