The Best and Messiest Exploding Head Scenes
Scott Shoyer
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Hellraiser (1987)
One of my favorite horror films from one of my favorite horror writers-filmmakers-artists. Hellraiser is a gamer-changer of a film and shows just how dark and disturbing a Hollywood production can be. In this scene Pinhead has one of his Hell escapees chained up. This is definitely one of the more unique exploding head scenes on this list!!
The Fury (1978)
There’s quite a few plot points of The Fury that reminds me of Scanners, but that’s a topic for another article. The Fury is about corrupt government officials and people with crazy-powerful psychic abilities. In this scene Gillian Bellaver (Amy Irving) explodes Ben Childress’ (John Cassavetes) head and body in the film’s not soon forgotten ending.
Planet Terror (2007)
One half of the Tarantino-Rodriquez Grindhouse epic, Planet Terror is a ridiculously fun zombie flick by Robert Rodriguez. There’s tons of great special FX and gore in this one, and this exploding head scene is as fast as it is effective.
Night of the Creeps (1986)
Yet another film with an exploding head in it from 1986!! This movie drips awesome sauce all over the place. Part slasher, part alien invasion, part 1950s homage, Night of the Creeps is memorable in every aspect. Detective Ray Cameron (Tom fuckin’ Atkins) has an alien slug problem, and those pesky slugs like to reanimate corpses and make them go on killing sprees. In this scene Cameron blows off a corpse’s head, which releases more even more slugs (they gestate in the brain).
The Prowler (1981)
An often forgotten little slasher film from the early 1980s by director Joseph Zito, The Prowler is also known as Rosemary’s Killer. This is an important film as far as the history of slasher films goes, but beyond that this one is pretty forgettable. But that exploding head, though!!
These were the scenes I thought of off the top of my head. What scenes did I forget? Sound off below in the comments, and let me know what you think of the list!!
