7 Kills That Will Tear Your Heart Out—Literally
Chandler Bullock
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There are a lot of mixed feelings this time of year. For those in a romantic relationship, it is a time for celebrating your bond together. For many more Valentine’s Day is just a copious amount of salt poured into various deep emotional wounds. Even when you have a significant other in your life, the holiday can be a reminder of every time we’ve felt like our hearts were torn asunder and stomped on.
Things could be worse, though. You could have had your heart literally yanked out of your chest. That just happens to be the case for the poor souls featured in this list. Join me in counting our blessings by reminiscing about seven heart-ripping kills from horror.
Suspiria (1977)
Dario Argento always knows the best way to a horror fan’s heart. A cast of beautiful characters, intrigue, schlock, bright colors, and absolute carnage. One of the most memorable moments in horror comes from what is arguably Argento’s seminal 1977 work, Suspiria. The entire opening sequence is a delight for any horror fiend. It has it all. Creepy eyes, a beastly hand, a giallo-style switchblade, and Argento’s signature head-through-window shot.
There are so many painful things that happen to the poor woman stalked throughout the scene, but things get cranked up at the climax. She isn’t just stabbed to death. She is stabbed so many times it exposes her still-beating heart, which gets a knife plunge for good measure. Whoever was after her had a statement to make, and make it they did.
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
Breakups can be rough. Sometimes you just can’t get your ex out of your head, and the urge to check on how they are doing can consume you. For Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews), his “ex” being in the grave was not enough to sate his curiosity. As is the case for many people in this situation, not only did he restart his toxic relationship and hurt people along the way, he caused his best friend to have his heart broken in the process.
Jason Lives is the favorite entry in the Friday the 13th franchise for many fans due to its tongue-in-cheek and pseudo-meta self-awareness. The tone of the film is set beautifully when Tommy Jarvis, accompanied by his new friend Allen Hawes (Ron Palillo), accidentally brings Jason Voorhees (C. J. Graham) back to life. Allen made it clear that his heart couldn’t take much more of the situation. So, Jason kindly alleviated Allen of his concerns by punching his heart straight out of his chest before starting his newest murderous stroll through his old stomping grounds.
The moral of this story is: leave your ex alone. It rarely ends without someone getting hurt.
From Dusk Till Dawn
For a subgenre fixated on the human cardiovascular system, it’s quite surprising how little we see of the human heart in vampire films. Robert Rodriguez decided to fix that with the release of From Dusk Till Dawn in 1996. He also flipped the genre on its head by steering away from the romance and gothy Anne Rice vibes that were all the rage at the time. From Dusk Till Dawn brought back the blood and mayhem from films such as Near Dark and Fright Night that hadn’t been seen for quite some time at this point.
There are many wonderful gags throughout the film. It’s impossible to get a cast featuring George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Juliett Lewis, Fred Willamson, and the god of gore himself, Tom Savini without some wince-inducing laughs arising. One such highlight comes just at the tail end of the first vampire massacre. After dispatching most of the blood-suckers in the Titty Twister bar, our ensemble is approached by the largest vamp of the bunch. He’s one bad dude. Fortunately, so is Fred Williamson’s Frost. He yanks the hulking brute’s heart out with one quick movement. That doesn’t seem to do the trick, though. The big man keeps coming while his heart continues to beat in Forst’s hand.
Leave it to Tom Savini to show off his knack for human anatomy to dispatch the threat with a simple pencil to the heart. A quick stab and a pat on Frost’s back is all it takes for the team to finally have a moment to catch their breath and figure out what the hell they’re going to do now.
Terrifier 2
One of the most heartwarming occurrences in the world of horror last year was the overwhelming success of Damien Leone’s Terrifier 2. The cartoonish brutality–or potatoes–dished out by Art the Clown (David Howard Thorton) might not be to everyone’s tastes. But one thing we can all agree on is how good it felt to see an indie production blast to the stratosphere the way Leone’s film did. One of the reasons it ended up stealing the hearts of so many fans is due to the highly inventive and gut-churning kills.
As the film starts setting things up for the epic final showdown between Art and its badass final girl, Sierra (Lauren LaVera), our favorite monstrous mime has one last kill to get out of the way. He takes down Sierra’s best friend, Brooke (Kailey Hyman) in brutal fashion with a splash of hydrochloric acid to the face and a handful of stabbings with a wooden club covered in various shrapnel. The reason it makes this list is for the final moments as Art rips Brooke’s heart straight out of her pulpy sternum and takes a bite out of it for good measure.
Art is a great role model for the times, showing young viewers the importance of getting in your daily dose of iron. Popeye, eat your heart out. That is, if Art doesn’t get to it first.
Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood
Remember how I just lamented the lack of heart-throbbing kills in vampire films? It would appear that the Crypt Keeper agreed with me when he crafted his twisted tale of the Bordello of Blood. This film is jam-packed with all the viscera, sex, and hamtastic performances longtime fans of the anthology series have come to love over the years. It also sports an impressive FOUR heart-ripping kills!
The most impressive of the bunch happens when head honcho vampire Lilith (Angie Everhart) seduces one of the bordello’s latest patrons. She gives him more tongue than his heart could take. No, seriously. Her tongue elongates just before she slips it down his throat and snakes all the way to his heart. She then presses it out of his chest from inside and immediately takes a bite right in front of him. It is truly a sight to behold!
You can check out all of the cardiovascular carnage present in the film via the clip above.
The Woman
Lucky McKee is an unsung treasure in the horror genre. He has a knack for delivering on some of the most disturbing concepts with equally satisfying payoffs. His 2011 sequel to the Andrew van den Houten-directed film Offspring, entitled The Woman, dishes out violence on a wide scale. The film revolves around a woman from a cannibalistic tribe who is captured by a staunchly conservative family in a sick and twisted experiment to see if they can “tame” her.
The abuses showcased in this film are both physical and mental, as the family’s patriarch, Chris Cleek (Sean Bridgers), dispatches various sinister training methods to break the titular Woman’s (Pollyanna McIntosh) spirits. He forces her to wear a dress, have her hair cut, and plans on integrating her into society. Fortunately, the Woman gets her comeuppance by the film’s end as she finally escapes the confines of the makeshift prison she has been held captive in for the majority of the story. She takes down each and every one of her abusers in gruesome fashion. Like with any delicious dinner spread, she saves the best dish for last.
Her final revenge killing is Chris himself. She skillfully deflects a rifle blast by knocking the gun against Chris, causing him to shoot himself in the shoulder. She dives right in and digs into his chest with her bare hands. After having a bit of fun with his entrails, she grips his heart and slowly removes it. She keeps eye contact with Chris the whole time so he can watch her indulge in getting a good bite from his heart, as he finally slips away.
The scene will have you cheering with or without context, but I cannot urge you hard enough to check this film out. McKee is a master at showcasing the horrors of mundane society. The Woman is amongst his finest work.
Holidays
I thought it would be fitting to close things off with an example from a scene all about Valentine’s Day itself. The 2016 anthology film, Holidays consists of eight horror shorts dedicated to a specific holiday each. The writer/director duo of Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer reunite for the segment “Valentine’s Day,” which follows a young girl by the name of Maxine (Madeleine Coghlan) who is madly in love with the coach of the school’s swim team, Coach Rockwell (Rick Peters). She is also relentlessly bullied by her classmate, Heidi (Savannah Kennick).
After seeing how badly Maxine is treated by her classmates, Coach Rockwell decides to lift her spirits by putting a seemingly innocent Valentine’s Day card in her locker. The gesture sends Maxine into fits of euphoric mania, convinced of the love between her and Coach Rockwell. She must get him something that truly shows off her feelings for him. She has already given him her heart figuratively. It only seemed fitting she should give him the literal heart of the girl who has been keeping them away from each other this whole time.
The segment closes with what has to be one of the most tragic and horrifying Valentine’s Day gifts of all time. I just hope Coach Rockwell was grateful for the hard work Maxine put into getting it for him.
These are just a few examples of times people’s hearts were torn asunder in horror films. What are some of your favorites? You can let me know on Twitter @_Shockaholic.
Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at Dread Central!
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