Tell Me When It's Over...

I'm not a particularly squeamish person... I am a grown adult (physically anyway), but even as a child I wasn't too badly hounded by terrors. Actually I would almost venture to say that I had less phobias as a child than I do today. I was never really afraid of the dark. Snakes do not haunt my nightmares. Nor do spiders or the like. I do have a problem with parasitic insects which I'll discuss in the next post... But for the most part I don't have an excessive amount of your "normal" phobias.

So I'm pretty tough right? Manly.

No... Not really. You see the whole purpose of that paragraph above, was to prepare you to be swept up in whatever hilarity / life lesson / touching story I'm about to hit you with next (oh the suspense... which will it be!?). It's sort of my 'thing' I suppose.

So this evening we're going to discuss some scenes in movies and such, that this previously mentioned grown adult, still cannot watch with both eyes open.

When I was very young, I spent the night at a friend's house in Charleston... He had HBO and a gigantic sectional couch. We fell asleep in his living room one evening watching some movie or another. This would have been the early 90's I suppose.

At some point during the night, I woke up and my eyes focused upon the TV. My mind immediately locked upon the actor and said "Hey, that's Arnold Schwarzenegger" (really proud of myself for spelling that without looking it up... henceforth in this post he shall be referred to as 'Arnold').

So there was Arnold on the screen... Looking like he was having a rough time. He's standing in a dingy bathroom looking at himself in the mirror. "What's he doing I wonder... and why does he look so fucked up?" (Okay, I probably didn't say 'Fucked up' even in my mind at this point... but you get the idea).

So then Arnold proceeds to take a razor blade and cut out his eye.

This is of course the scene in the original Terminator where the battle damaged T-800 removes his eye to reveal the red glowing dot, and dons the big black sunglasses.

I had no idea what I was looking at at the time as I was recovering from my sleep. I had not seen the original Terminator yet... I actually saw the second one before the first.... And I'm pretty sure I hadn't even viewed the second one yet at this point. But I knew that whatever it was, it was very very bothersome to my sensibilities. I knew that I did not want this fellow to cut out his eye, and that if he just absolutely HAD to cut out his eye, I did not want to witness it. CUT. OUT. HIS. EYE.

Now, as I've grown older this scene has settled with me, and I'm no longer particularly bothered by it. I only include it here because it was sort of the first movie I ever saw that I had to say "Yep... I'm not going to be looking directly at that. Call me when it's over."

With that said, lets move on to some newer fare shall we?

Anybody see Prometheus last Summer? No? Just me and Weapon Mods huh? He didn't review that one did he? Hmm...

Well if you did manage to see it, you may remember (how could you forget?) a little scene where a poor "impregnated by the alien spawn in her husbands body" lady is forced to give herself a C-Section in order to avoid being exploded from the inside by a rapidly growing alien creature. She manages to get the thing removed, and then staples (yes, staples.) her stomach back together.

Wow folks. Just wow. I watched this movie again last night, and let me state for the record that I LOVED this movie, but that scene did not get any easier to view.

Next up, another Arnold offering.

Remember that remake of the Colin Farrell movie that Arnold made back in the early 90's? Total Recall? (That was a joke guys, please don't letter-bomb my office, we just got this place cleaned up.)

Toward the end of that film, there is a scene where, through various circumstances, Arnold and the female lead end up lying unprotected upon the surface of Mars. What happens next will be sort of difficult for me to explain. There is a lot of face expanding, and eye bulging, and Arnold makes "AUGHUAHGHAUHGUHAHGUHGUAHUGHUAUGHH" noises. Their faces turn red and swell up... and it's just awful alright?

Well a big machine generates a magical atmosphere for Mars just in time to save them. And somehow, their faces return to normal... I'd think they would be fucked up for life after that? Hmm... Hollywood eh?

How about Cast Away? This is one of my favorite movies, and Tom Hanks is one of my favorite actors.

There are a lot of really emotionally rough scenes in this movie. But none of these are the focus of my writings. That's right... You know where I'm going, don't you? Removing his own infected tooth with the edge of an ice skate by pounding on the end of the skate with a big rock? Holy fuck. That would hurt. I want no part of that scene. I will watch it... sort of... but ow. Just ow.

Now we get to the mother of all "I don't want to look..." movie scenes... It has to be Robocop. The original, unedited scene in Robocop, where he is 'killed' by the thugs at the beginning.

I cannot watch this scene. The others on this list, I see them, and it's like "Hmm... bothersome." But this one... When I see it I think "I'm going to go get a drink... No no... No need to pause it. I'll be back when the screaming stops."

It's not so much what happens in the scene, as it is Peter Weller's facial expressions during it. Particularly when his hand is removed. It's just awful guys.

80's... you were fucked up, okay? Stay away from me.

There were a few runners up in this... I considered Kill Bill: Volume 2, where Uma Thurman crushes that girl's eye between her toes? Seems like there was something in Event Horizon too but it's not coming to me right now. So uh... The end.