| Author | Message | ||
     Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
These are a staple of film and literature now. Ever since the Pit and the Pendulum, the room with walls that slowly close in to crush the protagonist have been a firm favourite. However, they don't seem to have a very good success rate. The protagonist always finds a way to stop it. Indy's latest crush pushes the button to stop it, R2D2 switches the garbage compacter off, the hero finds something strong enough to hold the walls apart long enough to crawl out, they always ecscape. Other than the Saw film where a poor sod is horribly crushed (fantastic looking arm break shot when it happens too) I'm struggling to think of an example where it actually works. According to the commentary on the Saw film it's the first time on the big screen that it's ever happened. Are they right? | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
No, they are not. To my memory, there IS a tale about a crushing room, and having the expected gruesome result, in "TALES OF TERROR FROM BLACKWOOD MAGAZINE", Robert Morrison ed., Oxford University Press 1995. I remember the book but I have failed to retrieve it from my library. I wonder where it can have evaporated. The tale is said to have been of inspiration to Poe for his Pit and Pendulum story. On a net search, the tale could be "THE BURIED ALIVE" by John Galt, or "THE MURDER HOLE" by Catherine Sinclair. But I read it ages ago, so I could not really tell...yet I remember the excruciating progress of the story. No deus ex machina there. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
They may be right about movies, of course... though obvious, I have been intending literature. I'm sorry for misunderstanding. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
I think someone gets caught in Krull too. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.19.12.142 |
There is a crushing sequence in the Vincent Price movie, MADHOUSE. However, if memory serves it's a crushing-bed rather than a room. It's on a film-set, where a maniac is trying to top people. The crew are testing various special effects, including a crushing-bed. It's supposed to stop at the touch of a button, but the maniac has buggered about with the buttons, and the crew-member is horrifically crushed because no-one can get the four-poster bed's heavy steel canopy to halt its descent. A memorable moment in an otherwise unmemorable film (though I seem to recall it had a terrific score and title sequence). | ||
| Darren O. Godfrey (Darren_o_godfrey) Username: Darren_o_godfrey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 207.200.116.133 |
I believe there is a crushing bed in the crushingly stupid "13 Ghosts". The original, not the remake. As I recall, a lawyer gets the squeeze, so I suppose it wasn't too bad... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Lord and Lady Probert, with your almost encyclopaedic knowledge of films, can you think of any crushing rooms that did their job on screen? | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
In Krull Bernard Bresslaw as Rell the cyclops dies a painful death crushed in a stone door because he has resisted his 'fated death' earlier in the film. Madhouse is indeed rubbish, I think it does have a crushing bed, and a score by Douglas Gamley who was always one of my favourite composers of that era. But Mr Finch may also be thinking of Lewis Fiander getting crushed in Dr Phibes Rises Again after putting down his bedtime reading of 'The Turn of the Screw' and finding his camp bed collapsing in on him. John Gale's score for that one is excellent, too. Kurt Neumann's original version of The Fly sees David Hedison's head and arm crushed by a steam press by Patricia Owens. But apart from Saw (V?) I can't think of any other instance of a crushing room working. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 81.152.74.159 |
All I can add is the geeky confirmation that it was indeed Saw V with the successful crushing room. And Donnie Wahlberg's head got crushed between two massive blocks of ice in Saw IV. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
More crushing fun: Some athletic fellow gets his head crushed between two parts of a multi-gym machine in Final Destination 3. Dean Halsey gets crushed beneath a steel door being jumped up and down on by a reanimated corpse in Reanimator. There's a crushing room in Fermat's Room but I can remember so little about the film I can't recall if any of the occupants actually end up squashed. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I always found the head crushing by steam press in 'The Fly' to be particularly gruesome... and the fact she has to do it twice, to her own husband, out of love!! | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.19.12.142 |
Haven't various incarnations of the Mummy crushed a few heads in their time? I seem to recall the Mummy stamping on a head until it was squashed in WAXWORK. Also, I'm sure that at least two Hammer movies featured the Mummy crushing heads. In one case, it crushed its own because its job on Earth was done. I think. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
Absolutely! Eddie Powell as Prem in The Mummy's Shroud crushes a few heads before pulling himself to pieces at the climax, while Dickie Owen stamps on someone's head in Curse of the Mummy's Tomb | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Talking of mummies, about to watch Talos: Tale of a Mummy, by Russel Mulachy, based on the Ann Rice novel (I think?). Yes, I know it's rubbish, but I fancy some B movie horror hokum. To be followed by either 'Haunted,' the rather decent adaptation of the Herbert novel, or 'Vault of Horror.' Not sure which yet. Just thought I'd share that with you. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
There's a great head-crushing scene in The Abominable Dr Phibes - with the victim in a frog mask at the masked ball, the mask slowly tightening on his head. It's filmed superbly. With the guy staggering down the stairs, you see things from his point of view - the fellow party-goers giving him strange looks thinking he's drunk, the spinning camera work to give a feeling of dizziness, and everything starts to be tinged blood-red. Lovely! | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
Oh yes indeed Caroline - that's a classic! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Another surprisingly inefficient way of killing people in the movies is to blow up a building with your opponent inside it. How often does the character who was sat next to the bomb crawl out of the wreckage with only a couple of scratches? It's statistically unlikely at best. Occasionally it leads to their ressurection as your nemesis as in Darkman - liam became the multifaced avenger because the villains blew his lab up while he was tied up next to the bomb. I think film characters definitely need to learn what works and what doesn't. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.19.12.142 |
Interesting that you mention DARKMAN. Because Liam Neesson was in it, which links to the remake of THE A TEAM, which links back to the original A TEAM, in which millions of rounds of high calibre ammunition was expended, and yet nobody ever got hurt, let alone killed. In those days it wasn't just the bombs that didn't work. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Did any of the Cube films use a crushing room? It seems an obvious one to use but I can't remember if they did and if it worked if they used it... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.21 |
Paul - I don't know if you recall the first time the A Team was screened, but I remember the press exclaiming wildly that it was going to be the most action driven, violent import from the State EVER! I remember watching the first episode and thinking it wasn't a patch on Zombie Flesheaters.  And just to repeat myself, keep any eye out for a two part documentary made a few years back called 'Ban The Video Nasties.' It's an excellent slice of social commentary about the 'video nasty era', and has interviews with critics, right-wingers, MP's, and other folk from both sides of the fence. Absolutely fascinating. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Doesn't one of the characters get crushed, or rather smeared, by the sliding mechanism of the whole cube? I love that film and haven't seen it since first release in the cinema! | ||
| Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus) Username: Rhysaurus Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 212.219.233.223 |
Giancarlo: the tale you are referring to in Tales of Terror from Blackwood's Magazine is 'The Iron Shroud' by William Mudford. This tale directly inspired Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum but in many ways is more horrible. And yes, the hero of the story does get crushed in the room. It's a slightly different set-up from the average walls-moving-closer scenario, though; the iron room in the story periodically reduces its dimensions by exactly half, forcing the occupant into an ever shrinking volumes, but those volumes remain stable before each change. In the final paragraph, the hero of the story has been forced into a space exactly the same size as his own coffin; then the room finally closes up altogether. | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 217.20.16.180 |
John P: A character does indeed end up crushed in FERMAT'S ROOM, although to say who would be to venture into spoiler territory. |