Halloween Countdown 2024 Part 5
This one gets a little dicey...
We continue our countdown to Halloween at R-Rated Movie Club this month. Have you seen any of today’s selections? What should I write about next? Let me know!
Jesus was known to use hyperbole to teach. That is, his listeners knew he exaggerated to make a point. Hyperbolic language can be vivid and sometimes quite graphic. For what it’s worth, I believe Jesus wanted people to squirm at least a little, to understand how seriously he took the need for discipleship, the requirement of strong ethics, and the reality of natural consequences.
I’ve often found that if these scripture texts come up for preaching, I may find myself compelled to offer a caveat or disclaimer about the teaching’s hyperbolic nature. Maybe that’s hedging my bets, but I just can’t see Jesus truly wanting people to literally cut their foot off if it causes them to stumble. But I get his point. He wants you to really pay attention to your living. And if he said it in stark terms to get your attention, so be it. So, that’s the disclaimer I often come to when preaching on texts like these, including the Gospel of Mark 9:42-50 here:
42 “As for whoever causes these little ones who believe in me to trip and fall into sin, it would be better for them to have a huge stone hung around their necks and to be thrown into the lake. 43 If your hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off. It’s better for you to enter into life crippled than to go away with two hands into the fire of hell, which can’t be put out. 45 If your foot causes you to fall into sin, chop it off. It’s better for you to enter life lame than to be thrown into hell with two feet. 47 If your eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out. It’s better for you to enter God’s kingdom with one eye than to be thrown into hell with two. 48 That’s a place where worms don’t die and the fire never goes out. 49 Everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good; but if salt loses its saltiness, how will it become salty again? Maintain salt among yourselves and keep peace with each other.”
Likewise, I have a disclaimer for you today. The four movies featured today all have pretty R-rated content. I mean, that’s what we’re here for, right? And this is the Halloween Countdown, right? But if you’re not into shocking scenes, including scenes with a bit of bloody violence, maybe just read the video titles, look at the screen image, nod, and slowly scroll on. All four of these definitely buried the needle on my “What is happening?!” scale when I saw them. And of course, spoilers abound.
Okay, let’s move on to…
Bad Men and Bad Falls
3:10 to Yuma is based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, my favorite writer. This modern western depicts a disparate group of deputies bringing a murderer to justice, so long as his gang doesn’t find them first. The movie has plenty of harsh gunplay, but that’s not the only way people go out. Consider that with this verse from Mark 9.
42 “As for whoever causes these little ones who believe in me to trip and fall into sin, it would be better for them to have a huge stone hung around their necks and to be thrown into the lake.
Jesus does not take leading others astray lightly, especially in the case of children. Protecting the innocent is paramount to a strong ethic. When we do well, we should help others do well. When we could’ve done better, we must do better next time. And if you’re intentionally tripping someone up, you’ve got big problems on your hands.
Murdering thief Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) has had enough of bounty hunter Byron McElroy (Peter Fonda) and lucky for him, there’s a handy cliff nearby…
The Hand That Hunts You Down and Bites You
I don’t have a lot of memories of The Hand but this amputation scene has haunted me for nearly 40 years after I saw it as a young kid. A talented comic book artist has his hand severed in a freak accident, only for it to come to life and murder people! That last sentence kind of makes you wish you were at that pitch meeting, huh?
Revisiting the clip, it is just as I’ve pictured it in my mind’s eye all this time. Some people say this movie takes itself too seriously. But if you don’t want an actor to take the material seriously, then why on earth would you hire Sir Michael Caine?!
Mark 9 sees Jesus continue with his hyperbolic warnings:
43 If your hand causes you to fall into sin, chop it off. It’s better for you to enter into life crippled than to go away with two hands into the fire of hell, which can’t be put out.
We truly can cause so much harm with our hands. You may never hit someone in your life, but do you type rumors or insults? Do you pick up possessions of want that come from unethical business practices? Do you point the finger instead of acknowledging when you should point it right back at yourself? Hands can do terrible things.
I think you can see where this is going. In The Hand, the hand falls into sin after it’s chopped off, not the other way around. The hand may be severed, but it’s severely committed to its task at hand: murder! Here’s the 1-minute amputation scene that scarred me as a kid, now here to scar you:
I Can’t Believe I Saw That…
I’ve only seen a few of the Saw movies, but I have yet to meet someone who would disagree that the first Saw is the best Saw they Saw, er, saw. Two strangers wake up chained to the walls on opposite sides of the room with a corpse in the middle. Through a series of ruthless, torturous “games,” it becomes clear the only way out is with a hackSaw.
Dr. Lawrence (Carey Elwes) gets brave and proves the old edict that if a hacksaw appears in act one, it must saw off someone’s foot by act three. He’s chained up for retribution, according to his tormenter Jigsaw (Tobin Bell). And again, we see Jesus continue his hyperbolic warnings that involve various body parts in Mark 9.
45 If your foot causes you to fall into sin, chop it off. It’s better for you to enter life lame than to be thrown into hell with two feet.
There’s an old expression, you vote with your feet. Where you go shows your priority. If you go to this side where there are people injuring others, if you walk over someone who needs your help, if you step on someone who has nothing, stop. Reexamine the path you’ve decided to walk. Keep your two feet and do better next time.
No one is making you watch this clip, by the way…
Hmm, maybe I should’ve gone with a clip from Misery, intead…
A Pioneering Special Effects From 95 Years Ago
Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) is a French short film from 1929. That means it arrived long before the R-rating did. But because it’s A. French, 2. a short film from 1929, and D. partly-based on the dreams of Famous-for-Being-Weird Weirdo Salvador Dali, it has very R-rated content.
Like, in the first 90 seconds.
I can’t really write a synopsis of this film because it’s so bizarre (oh, that Dali!), but I’ll describe the opening. A man sharpens his razor while gazing at the full moon. As a sharp, thin cloud slices its way across the full moon, he slices his sharp, thin razor across a woman’s eye. She doesn’t put up a fight. She’s just there for it. The special effect was achieved by… well, I’ll put that below the video so you can watch and see if you can figure it out for yourself.
Continuing in Mark 9, we see Jesus give yet another hyperbolic warning about
47 If your eye causes you to fall into sin, tear it out. It’s better for you to enter God’s kingdom with one eye than to be thrown into hell with two.
We see suffering, does it bring us to apathy or action? We see things we covet, do we let it cover us in jealousy or do we shrug it off and be content? We look around to make sure we’re well-curated, but do we let people see us for who we are (and do we try to see people for who they are or only see what we want to see)? Seeing is believing, so what we do with our eyes matters.
Stick around for 90 seconds, if you dare…
Gruesome, but very clever pioneer filmmaking yes?
Okay, so how did they do that special effect? There are a few stories, but this seems to be the most prevalent:
They cleverly cut to an extreme close up of a dead calf’s eye being sliced. They bleached the body’s fur and skin so it looked as human as possible before doing the deed. I don’t think this approach would work in today’s high-definition digital filmmaking standards. But in 1929 when talkies were brand new and color films were still a rare anomaly until 1936 when Technicolor became a widespread phenomenon.
But wow, it does look real.
Special shout-out to The Flushing Remonstrance who write original scores to old silent films, including the above Un Chien Andalou video. What a cool creative project!
Yikes, that was a lot!
A little gruesome today? I agree! If you need a palette cleanser, here’s a video about how cast saws cut off casts without hurting your skin. No one thrown off a cliff. No hands chopped off, no feet chopped off, no eyes sliced through. Just a cast!
Science is so cool:
The Halloween Countdown Is Nearly Complete!
It’s been fun to write a little bit about scary movies and scary Bible stories. I’ll have one final entry on Halloween. If you’ve got a few ideas, let me know about them in the comments. In the meantime, be sure to subscribe by the end of Halloween to be eligible to win the Halloween Countdown 2024 Giveaway Prize Pack!
Thanks for reading, sharing, and subscribing. God’s peace and good movies to you!