The Indiana Jones Films Reveal the Awe-Inspiring Horror of Adventure
Matthew Bilodeau
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If you asked just about anyone what genre they would classify the Indiana Jones movies as, they’d naturally say action-adventure. Exploring through the jungle, searching for artifacts of legend, exhilarating chase sequences, sweeping romance, everything that you would typically associate with the genre is all but present here. Given how these movies tend to play out, however, I consider them honorary members of the horror family.
As a kid, it’s always fun to imagine yourself donning the fedora, strapping up the satchel bag, and using your whip on a globe-trotting adventure worthy of the famed archeologist. But the world of Indiana Jones paints a much darker picture for the imaginative explorer. These movies exist in an exciting, if not cruel world where the threat of death comes with the gig. And yet, its arrival is somehow more horrifying than you could ever imagine.
While all four films (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Last Crusade, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) are tonally different from one another, the danger at the heart of them remains the same. The original trilogy was born out of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s desire to pay homage to the pulpy thrills of ‘30s Republic adventure serials, albeit with a bigger budget and a gnarly edge. The constant throughline is Harrison Ford as the titular archeologist finding himself on a rescue mission to recover a coveted artifact from evil forces, and narrowly avoiding the death he’s always waltzing towards.
With the fifth and final installment, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, in theaters, I had to follow up on why the bursts of horror throughout this series have stuck with me in the same way as its much-beloved action sequences have.
Bodies of the Bold and Adventurous
There’s an excellent scare in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) thinks Indy has provided their exit to freedom, before being ambushed by mummified corpses from every corner of the room. They descend upon her as if they sprung back to life for just a moment as vengeful remnants wanting to take her soul as a souvenir. It’s not too dissimilar from the scene in Poltergeist where JoBeth Williams is surrounded by rotting bodies in the makeshift swimming pool.
Being greeted by the tortured remains of the dead is a commonality within almost any adventure story, let alone an Indiana Jones film. Where discoveries of legend are buried, those poor souls that didn’t make it are left behind, inadvertently or not, as an omen to stop whatever you’re doing and turn back. It’s one thing to see the bony remains of those left behind. But it’s equally as frightening to see how suddenly a living, breathing being can become an artifact in a matter of seconds.
Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn’t waste any time, as Indy’s exploration buddy Satipo (Alfred Molina) happily leaves him to die, while he escapes with the treasured Golden Idol all for himself. He doesn’t get far, however, as he’s brutally impaled in a booby trap almost a few seconds later. Although we only see the aftermath, just seeing those bloody spikes poking through Molina’s head and neck is a shockingly graphic reveal that still gives me chills. It only serves as a violent harbinger of what’s to come. When treasure navigates hubris, it’s only a matter of time before you’re paying the Ferryman.
Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade also feature their fair share of cobweb-covered bodies. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in comparison to the original trilogy, plays it relatively safe when it comes to the violence, but it still manages to sneak in a few gnarly deaths. Whether incinerated by a rocket jet engine, interdimensional knowledge overload, or slowly devoured by fire ants, not everyone gets a pleasant end. It’s one thing to die instantly. It’s another to see your untimely end coming in such a brutal fashion, and a lot of Indiana Jones antagonists have certainly experienced that.
The Face-Melting Wrath of God
Faith is a fascinating concept, as it forms this tenable connection between what we know and what we want to know. Throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazis uphold their belief that the Ark of the Covenant possesses the power to make their armies near unstoppable through the power of God himself. In the film’s final moments, however, we’re witness to the phrase “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” in action, and it’s glorious.
Col. Dietrich (Wolf Kahler) has his head sucked up like a human juice box, Toht (Ronald Lacey) meets a gory, face-melting end, and Belloq (Paul Freeman) finds his heading popping like a meat balloon, all while their goons are fatally lit up with thousands of electrical volts. The triple effect was achieved by VFX/makeup artist Chris Walas utilizing a vacuum machine, a time-lapsed heat gun, and a shotgun. Over forty years later, it still looks phenomenal.
You want to see those three and their goons get what’s coming to them, but good lord, the way in which they’re indisposed from this Earth is haunting stuff. A great film will leave you with a striking image, among many, that you’ll never forget, especially if you first encountered it at a young age. This is always one of the first images to remind me of Indiana Jones. Even though it scared me, I rewatched it all the time because I was so fascinated as to why. In the years since, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for its horrific, world-shifting implication.
Akin to Knock at the Cabin, the thought of a wrathful Old Testament God actually is a revelation we, as human beings, will never be prepared to accept. We can barely take care of ourselves, let alone deal with the horrifying ramifications of witnessing biblical punishments in real-time. It’s one thing to read and theorize about what it would look like. It’s another thing to see it in action.
In many ways, God’s awe-inspiring power is presented as a moral means to an end. Indy never directly dispatches any of his main antagonists. Rather, the existential rulers of said artifacts do it themselves. Indiana Jones has done the world a favor, but can never put the theoretical genie back in the bottle—just hide it away.
Indy encounters another divine crossroads during his face-to-face with a room full of potential Holy Grails. Although The Last Crusade takes a considerably lighter tone than its predecessor, it saves its biggest scare for last. Having chosen…poorly, Donovan (Julian Glover) rapidly decomposes until he’s nothing but a rotting pile of dust where a person once stood 30 seconds earlier.
Where Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade show what God is capable of when the evil of humanity unsuccessfully pokes it with a stick, Indy’s middle chapter depicts what happens when an all-powerful deity gives them a helping hand.
Cult Brutality
Temple of Doom was the first Indiana Jones film I ever saw. Looking back, I consider it one of the contributing factors to piquing my interest in horror. You don’t initially believe you’re walking into a horror movie despite Spielberg literally telling right off the bat, by means of a fabulous Busby Berkely-inspired dance number, that “anything goes.” Here’s our hero in a clever James Bond riff. Now here he is floating down the rapids. Was that all pretty fun? Well, now here’s a poor dude getting his heart ripped out of his chest while he’s alive to witness the dark miracle. Oh but wait! Now here’s the sacrifice screaming as he’s lowered into a swirling pit of molten lava, as his tormentor laughs on.
Indy, Willie (Kate Capshaw), and Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) essentially walk into a horror movie already in progress. Whatever safety rafts they used to get out of danger prior have all but disappeared in the presence of Mola Ram (Amrish Puri), the intimidating leader of the resurrected Thuggee cult. Under his leadership, the radical Thuggees enslave children, perform ritual sacrifices, and concoct mind-altering drinks in the name of Kali, the Hindu Goddess of destruction and death.
Spielberg and Lucas were going through terrible breakups while making this, which they believe led to the film having a darker edge, and it shows. It’s a mean blockbuster through and through, albeit with an Indiana Jones at the end of the tunnel. Before Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hogged the spotlight, Temple of Doom was the Indy adventure that its creatives, as well as its critics, had propped up as a sort of misstep. The harsh reaction, of course, resulted in The Last Crusade, which came about as Spielberg and Lucas wanted a return to form.
I still consider Temple of Doom an exciting, if undeniably problematic favorite, especially given its crude and offensive stereotypes of Indian culture (i.e. chilled monkey brains). Spielberg even had to shoot most of the India scenes in Sri Lanka due to the Indian government taking issue with the screenplay’s depiction of their country.
If you’re watching a film with a PG-13 rating, you pretty much have Temple of Doom, along with Gremlins, to thank. It’s insane to think that a heart-ripping sequence was unleashed upon younger audiences by means of a PG rating because it didn’t quite cross the threshold into an R. There’s going to be a whole new generation discovering its intensity for the first time now that all of the Indiana Jones movies are now streaming on Disney+, and I envy them. I think it’s special in that way. For what it’s worth, Temple of Doom remains a pretty spectacular slice of gateway horror that challenges said younger viewers to experience something beyond what they may be used to. I don’t know where my fascination with the genre would have started otherwise.
Only time will tell what horrors await the next group of explorers in Dial of Destiny. One thing is for sure though. Indy is going to take out a lot of Nazis and I think that’s pretty cool. It’s comforting to know that some horrors of the world, however loud, can be extinguished with punches, bullets, cursed artifacts, and Harrison Ford.
Categorized:Editorials
