The "WTF Horror" Subgenre

Right up there with the Monster Movie is another favorite horror subgenre of mine: The "WTF Horror" Flick.



Cronenberg, Barker, Coscarelli, Raimi, Lovecraft (sometimes Craven and Carpenter, and at his best, King)... even Lynch dabbles in it (although he could just be strictly labeled as WTF period). Weird shit. Stuff you couldn't possibly predict or dream of... up there on the screen, freaking you out, grossing you out, keeping you , the viewer, on your toes. Unsettling stuff that required a hell of an imagination to realize, create and display. Stuff that inspires. Stuff that can only be done with a talented crew of sculptors and puppeteers... and drugs and/or HR Geiger. Stuff you might see in a Tales From the Crypt or Twilight Zone ep or in a unknown foreign film oddity. WTF moments that you won't see in the run-of-the-mill slasher or zombie movie.

When it's not just making noise and exhibiting creepy dead kids, Supernatural Horror often goes there... Demons and poltergeists bending reality, doing whatever they can to torment the humans that wandered into the wrong house or opened the wrong portal or summoned the wrong being. Stuff when I was a kid like POLTERGEIST, TEMPLE OF DOOM, HOUSE 1 & 2, IT, THE SHINING, and THE GATE paved the way for me to have a love-at-first-sight encounter with Raimi's ridiculous EVIL DEAD series. The unimaginable body horror of Cronenberg's and Henenlotter's ouevres, Scott's ALIEN, Gunn's SLITHER, and Carpenter's THE THING, the shunting from SOCIETY. The nightmare-exploitation of the NOES series, DREAMSCAPE, PHANTASM, WAXWORK, WISHMASTER. The kitchen-sink approach and genre-smashing of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (and the more recent BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) and other 80s cult weirdness like NEON MANIACS. The goofy charm of EQUINOX. Monsters that don't adhere to our natural order (except maybe their appetite... THE MIST!) or any established myth (no rules). Body parts not behaving like they should due to removal, possession, or mutation (TEETH!). Sideshow freaks, genetic experiments, births gone wrong. Blood geysering from cabin walls, orifi, elevator doors. Dimensional gates under the bed, in a book, through a mirror. Goblins who turn you into vegetables before they eat you. Aliens that face-f**k you, impregnate you, then burst out of your chest. Midget shamans who grow out of neck-cysts. Shit-weasels. Giant-Maggot-Rape!

Even the lesser known P.O.S., SPOOKIES (thread for the more obscure), offers something for the viewer who doesn't want to be able to predict what comes next. Troma and even Full Moon (before they focused purely on dolls) use to excel at this stuff. I listened to a commentary from a director who advised that if you're going to make an original film, do something they can't see on the big screen these days (because we know they got away with some weirder shit when I was growing up). I think it's good advice and not enough up and comers think outside the box. They're too busy trying to replicate NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD's zeitgeist or be the next HATCHET. SILENT HILL adaptation may ultimately be a failure, but it managed to capture the WTF quality of the game (Lordi's DARK FLOORS really dropped the ball). Show me something I haven't seen before. Horrify me. Make me scratch my head. But please, surprise me. And no, I don't mean with a cat-scare fakeout. Amirite, Belial?



What's your favorite WTF horror flick? Moment? Any opinions on this subgenre?

EDIT: This thread stems from recent PHANTASM series and NOES series marathons.

Surely, but there's certain horror genres that are so prolific, there's a shorthand involved, a set of rules even in some cases (shoot 'em in the head!). I love GREMLINS to death, but you know HOW the bad things will happen from the get go (you just don't know WHAT the bad things are at first). You really have to put a new twist on a old story to fool a horror fan. To put us at UNease. Yeah, it can all be done in the execution of it, the pacing, the brutality. I expect a story that has familar characteristics to atleast go in different directions plot and character-wise (not always the case).

Recently Devin wrote a piece about Slasher films, the tropes, and what we look forward to when we sit down to watch one. You could make the same kind of statements about any horror subgenre you prefer (Vampires, Torture Porn, Zombies, etc). But many times I want to be knocked off my seat with something I've never seen before (stomach vagina with a vhs tape shoved in) and will probably never see again because of its disturbing absurdity. Now, the chest-bursting scene's a pop culture "milestone" (Mel Brooks even parodied it), but before ALIEN debuted, no one could have predicted it. We just had no idea how that species bred. I'm hoping the up-coming SPLICE will follow that path.

Sometimes it's fun to be a horror fan and know what you're getting into... other times I want some childhood nightmare (I never knew I had) to be conjured up, as in the Pale Man of PAN'S LABYRINTH or the citizens and other-world of Barker's Midian (fantasy and horror mix well IMO). I want to be taken down the rabbit hole and see a horror equivalent to Oz/Neverland/Wonderland: a Lovecraftian nightmare (HPL is basically his own subgenre with tropes, but still manages to maintain a solid level of WTF). Barker seems to be much more interested in creating his own mythologies than simply playing in someone else's and there's uncharted territory there for the horror fan. It's exciting.



My tastes can be questionable at times, but one of the reasons I adore HOWLING 3 is how ridiculous and batshit insane it can be. Not only are some of the FX way out there, but there are werewolf nuns, a werewolf ballerina, an undead werewolf aboriginal shaman, an Alien-homage pregnancy dream, marsupial werewolf birth and baby, etc.

Maybe not a horror flick (atleast not strictly), but FREAKED definitely falls into this category for me. "It's about Mr. T as the bearded woman. It's about Bobcat Goldthwait as a sock."

Chris Cunningham's entire video and commercial resume comes to mind.

Which is a huge influence on Silent Hill (game & adaptation) easily. The inability to decipher between hallucination/nightmare and reality consistantly through a film always puts me on edge.

Just wanted to add that the gang's reaction to Norris' autopsy Doc-arm-removal, transformation, and head escape in THE THING is a great WTF moment, and one of my faves. Bottin rocks so hard here. Obvious pick, but appropriate to the thread.

"You gotta be f**king kidding!" Truer words were never spoken.

EDIT: And as already mentioned, before I discovered EVIL DEAD and PHANTASM, I had THE GATE as a kid. Eyeballs growing out of hands. Undead dudes falling down and breaking into tiny demons. Melting phones. A giant stop-motion beast coming up through foyer floors. Yeah, you "real" horror-fans and gorehounds probably think it's tame/lame, but I loved it (barely remember the sequel though). Sort of in the vein of DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, only weirder and yet, with an explanation.



And HOUSE 2: THE SECOND STORY. Prehistoric beasts, undead cowboys, a dogerpillar, crystal skulls, John Ratzenberger as an electrician/adventurer. I ate that shit up.

I still have yet to see it, but I suppose EXORCIST II qualifies for this thread? Atleast the trailer does. I'm utterly baffled.

Yeah, it benefits greatly from the genre-mixing. Something T Miike (another well-known Japanese director) likes to do as well.

USAMAKI does have that "coulda been a TZ" episode feel.

More obscure foreign stuff like MYSTICS IN BALI were touched on in the more general "Obscure" thread. Any horror flick that revolves around a culture or folklore I know nothing (or little) about usually has quite a few WTF moments for me. "Why is that witch head with trailing organs flying around and sucking out unborn babies???"

Kurtzman's THE RAGE was trashy but filled with lots of goopy weird gags. Speaking of KNB, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN's crazy ending was filled with enough vampire species variety to fill several movies. I like that approach. DEAD ALIVE (like BAD TASTE and MEET THE FEEBLES) is chock-full of originality and bizarre moments: rat-monkey, ear-pudding, kung-fu priest, zombie baby, mom-boss-beast, etc. For me, the weirder the better.

ROCK N ROLL NIGHTMARE.

EDIT: Just watched the trailer for SANTE SANGRE. I got no clue.

I can easily see how the plot summary for PRINCE OF DARKNESS could register a WTF sensation. Green goo? Possessed homeless people? Dreams? Warning from the future? Wait... Satan? It if wasn't tied directly to Christianity, it would almost be Lovecraftian.

"Satan possesses one of the students who becomes gruesomely disfigured, develops powers of telekinesis and regeneration, and attempts to bring Satan's father through a dimensional portal using a mirror (initially failing because the mirror is too small)."

It's pretty bizarre. ALTERED STATES (and FROM BEYOND) uses science too, but that doesn't negate the weirdness necessarily.

Telepathic Jennifer Connelly talks to bugs, killer chimp with a razor, mutant kid in the basement, pit of maggot-stew and body parts, Donald Pleasance in a wheelchair...

CREEPERS AKA PHENOMENA: Trailer.



From another thread... THE PIT!

Bizarre and hilarious. Watch with friends!



That's what I'm hoping. There's already a few I've never heard of that are now on my radar.

Oh ye of little faith...
Good call on Dellamorte Dellamore though.
Nah, that part was done with guys in demon-suits (visible in the trailer), but the part where the little demon arm gets caught in the door, falls off, and splits into little slithery worms was stop-motion.

EDIT: Many of the Full Moon flicks I've watched over the years don't deserve recommendations, but contain some bizarre elements worth checking out (atleast in their marketing materials): The flying stone hand with the snake head fingers in NETHERWORLD, the midget classic monsters in THE CREEPS, the weird music video interludes in BAD CHANNELS, the moneyshot of THE SEED PEOPLE, the head of the family in HEAD OF THE FAMILY, Garey Busey as the GINGERDEAD MAN...



I unapologetically love the trashy entirety of TERRORVISION and TROLL though.

Full Moon Trailers: Shadowzone, Shrieker, Subspecies, Subspecies 2, Shrunken Heads
Full Moon Pictures 10 Years of Madness.