In horror movies, the victims always show up at the wrong time. They’re either a little bit early or a minute too late. On one hand, they miss out on catching the culprit and on the other, they walk right into the worst-case scenario. Either way, their timing brings about their demise. And the only reason the victim’s timing is so poor is because the editor’s timing is right on.
Horror films work because of the director advising his editor’s efforts and decisions. They must keep the film lean and mean, so it can be a terrifying machine. And because of this, oftentimes certain scenes are inevitably consigned to the cutting room floor. Needless to say, the decision to remove these scenes doesn’t always come down to a basic need for a shorter movie. Sometimes a scene can slow the pace down or simply not mesh tonally with the other sequences.
With that being said, this list today will be shedding a light on some pretty awesome scenes from your favorite (and not so favorite) horror movies that didn’t make the final cut – from a fake-out death of Jason Voorhees to Freddy Krueger ruining the lives of teenage boys everywhere.
Obviously, a spoiler alert is in full effect.
10. Rosario Dawson Meets Dr. Satan – The Devil’s Rejects (2005)
Rob Zombie’s follow-up to his directorial debut House Of 1,000 Corpses in 2003, the far more serious The Devil’s Rejects, knocked fools on their behinds two years later. Continuing the exploits of Corpses villains Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), Otis (Bill Moseley), and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie), The Devil’s Rejects took the mayhem up about a thousand notches.
One character who did not make a return was the infamous Dr. Satan. Though, in a deleted scene, we do learn that he has been captured by the police and is being held at a local hospital. Rosario Dawson makes a cameo as a cute nurse named Marsha (like the Brady Bunch). After getting hit on by one of the officers (he offers to take her to a Speedwagon concert), she watches over Dr. Satan in a coma-like state. While the police are preoccupied, Dr. Satan strikes, grabbing Marsha by the neck, until he viciously rips out a huge chunk, leaving her bleeding profusely on the ground.
According to Zombie, he felt uncomfortable having Dr. Satan in the film, saying that the character would seem too out of place given the drastically different tone of the two movies.
9. Ghostface Makes Himself At Home – Scream 4 (2011)
One of the staples of the Scream franchise is the huge twist before the opening credits and that trend continued with the fourth entry of the series. In fact, director Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson created multiple versions of the movie’s famous opening to avoid spoilers and keep viewers on their toes.
In the theatrical cut of the film, the opening starts with several movies inside movies (the recurring Stab franchise). The segment includes almost every young, attractive actress known to man with Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Lucy Hale and Shenae Grimes. The final pair shown prior to the credits feature Aimee Teegarden and Britt Robertson.
In the alternative opening, Marnie (Robertson) and Jenny (Teegarden) are home alone and crank calling each other as if they were Ghostface. But everything hits the fan when Ghostface himself appears and kills Jenny in front of her friend in the living room. He then attacks Marnie and stabs her to death, which leads into the title sequence. It’s much shorter and more concise. And the fact that the scene doesn’t seem to be complete (it has no music) makes it infinitely more creepy.
8. Shorty Stays Protected – Scary Movie (2000)
Obviously Scary Movie is not a horror movie itself, but it certainly a loving homage to the genre.
As the series plummeted into a deep abyss of horribleness with each entry that passed, many people forget that the original Scary Movie was actually a hilarious and rather brilliant parody of teen horror movies.
One of the greatest sources of hilarity came from the character of Shorty (Marlon Wayans), a layabout who doesn’t seem to have any ambition outside of smoking weed. In a deleted scene, we see Shorty about to get it on with a very willing young lady. Though, she begins to have second thoughts – as she explains that “there’s a lot of teens dying because of this stuff.” Shorty reassures her that he’s got “plenty of protection.”
We then cut to the two having sex as they each brandish huge handguns (not exactly the “protection” the audience had in mind). The best part of the scene is when Shorty shouts that “someone’s coming.” His lady friend, assuming that he’s referring to the killer who’s on the loose, asks who it is until we quickly learn that it is in fact Shorty who had just came. Get it? Yeah, it’s stupid. But you have to admit, it’s pretty funny.
7. Jason Lives – Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
If Friday The 13th Part 3 is where the franchise first found its swagger, then part four is where it perfected it. If somebody was unfamiliar with Jason Voorhees and the F13 films and you could only play one movie for them, this would be it. The Final Chapter is like a compilation or a “best of” of the entire series. Everything that this type of movie is known for is on full bloody display; horny teenagers, drug-using, skinny dipping and machetes to the face.
The film ends with Jason getting hacked to “death” by young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) as his sister Trish (Kimberly Beck) looks on in shock. However, at the time, series tradition dictated they needed a fake-out dream sequence conclusion. They filmed one, and then scrapped it.
The scene is set the morning after Jason’s gruesome demise and sees Tommy and Trish asleep on the couch, until the sound of approaching sirens wakes them up. Noticing water dripping from the ceiling, Trish makes her way upstairs where she finds her mother dead in the bathtub. Jason (back from the dead) seizes the moment and promptly takes Trish out as well. Jason obviously wasn’t going to stay dead, why even pretend?
6. The Cocoon Cave – Alien (1979)
One thing we never learn about the creature in Ridley Scott’s seminal space horror is the specifics of its reproductive cycle; we only understand that they come from eggs, attach to their victims and implant something through the face that causes the animal to grow and pop out.
In a deleted scene, the film gives further insight to the creature’s reproductive cycle with the usage of human hosts. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) climbs down to a lower level of the ship trying to escape the alien where one question is answered – what happened to Brett and Dallas? We see them get captured, but there’s no sign of death. The scene gives a glimpse into the reproductive life cycle of the Xenomorph where Dallas and Brett, barely alive, are glued into eggs as hosts.
While the scene was added back to the Director’s Cut of the movie, the sequence was edited considerably from its original length. The Director’s Cut version is missing all of Ripley’s dialogue – in the full version, she tearfully promises Dallas she will save him, but when he renounces the idea she asks him what she should do, before setting the room ablaze.
On the plus side, omitting this scene left James Cameron ample means of interpretation for the sequel. Speaking of which…
5. Burke Cocooned – Aliens (1986)
Okay, Aliens leans more towards sci-fi/action than it does flat-out horror, but this horrific scene is still deserving of a shout-out.
Having escaped the Xenomorph nightmare that saw all of her shipmates slaughtered, Ripley is greeted by some folks at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation when they awaken her from hypersleep. This includes Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a junior executive with the company, a glorified bean-counter who ultimately convinces Ripley to enter the field with both him and a pack or rumble tumble Marines.
Initially, Burke seems like a firm if likeable enough sort, though soon enough reveals that he in fact has sinister ulterior motives. In the end, Burke is found out, but before the Marines can summarily execute him, he manages to sneak away, where he is taken by a Xenomorph, and presumably later chest-bursted.
Burke’s fate is confirmed in Aliens’ most well-known deleted scene. As Ripley is inside the Hive, she is suddenly grabbed by a hand. It turns out to be Burke, who is cocooned to the wall with a Chestburster inside him. He begs Ripley to kill him; she gives him a hand grenade and moves on. The scene was eventually cut because director James Cameron realized after filming that Burke should still have had a Facehugger attached to him at this point in the film.
4. The “Monkey-Cat” Sequence – The Fly (1986)
There aren’t many frames from David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly that won’t twist your stomach into knots like a pretzel, but one of the film’s most grotesque moments comes in the form of a scene that didn’t even make the final cut.
In the scene, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), mid-way though his metamorphosis into a giant fly/human hybrid, becomes desperate. He uses his telepods to fuse a baboon and a cat together, and then beats the fused creature to death with a metal pipe. The sequence goes on to show the disturbed Brundle scaling the wall of his lab up to the roof, only to feel a sharp pain in his left side.
He accidentally slips off the roof, slides down the wall, lands on a metal awning, and watches as a small, fly-like leg emerges from his torso. Horrified by this new appendage, Brundle amputates it with his teeth.
The scene was ultimately cut following a Toronto screening. According to producer Stuart Cornfeld the audience felt that there was no turning back for Seth and they lost all sympathy for his plight, which caused the rest of the film to not play as well. In Cornfeld’s own words: “If you beat an animal to death, even a monkey-cat, your audience is not gonna be interested in your problems anymore.”
3. Army Of Darkness (1992)
As the third instalment of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, Army Of Darkness is quite different from its predecessors. Where the first one was scary, the second one was funny/scary, this one is just plain funny. It’s a wonderful cap off to a near perfect series, and truly one of a kind.
In Army Of Darkness, our hero Ash (Bruce Campbell) finds himself transported back in time, forced to fight off the deadites from the first two films once again – drawing on the assistance of his trusty boomstick, the ubiquitous Oldsmobile and a specially-fashioned iron hand. Eventually, Ash is able to save the day and return to his job working at a discount store.
An alternative opening of the film has Bruce Campbell putting on his best scary voice to introduce the Evil Dead canon to newbies. If they had left it in it would have made a bit more sense than the rushed recap that made the final cut. Still, most of the audience undoubtedly already knew the story, so it probably wasn’t crucial. But it’s still pretty cool to watch.
2. Freddy Becomes A Hot Nurse – A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
In the third entry of the NOES series, Freddy Krueger takes his dream stalking crusade away from Elm Street to Westin Hills, a psychiatric hospital for the youth. In one of the most memorable moments of the film, Joey, a mute, unaware that he’s asleep, is seduced by the nurse who caught his eye earlier in the story.
The impossibly attractive nurse invites Joey to unzip her uniform, and as he does, he looks like Ralphie in A Christmas Story unwrapping his Red Ryder BB gun. They begin to make out but, of course, the nurse is actually Freddy in disguise, who merges “her” tongue with Joey’s, and then uses more tongues to restrain the poor kid to the bed.
In what is the holy grail of deleted scenes that needs to find its way to the light, originally the nurse was supposed to morph into Freddy much more gradually. Namely, the nurse’s head would have morphed into Freddy’s. They went so far as to film it with their actress in full make-up, but everyone looked at it and felt that the (disturbing) sight of Freddy Krueger’s head on a bare-chested woman was simply too much, even for an Elm Street movie.
But still, any NOES fan would be lying if they said they weren’t interested in seeing it for themselves.
1. “Not The Bees” – The Wicker Man (2006)
That’s right, the most remembered scene from a film we’d all like to forget wasn’t even included in the original theatrical version. It wasn’t until the “uncut” version of the film was released on DVD that we finally got to see the moment that would go on to spark a million online memes overnight.
In Neil LaBute’s appallingly misjudged remake of the 1973 British horror classic, Nicolas Cage drives the crazy up to a level that only he can attain, with a performance so insane that punching a woman in the face while wearing a bear suit isn’t the most ridiculous thing about it.
Towards the end of the film, Cage’s character is attacked by the local villagers and prepared as a sacrifice for a neo-pagan cult. Originally, his legs are broken and he’s simply burned alive. However, in the infamous scene that would later be included, he’s fitted with a wire mesh helmet and bees are poured into it. Cue Cage’s finest/worst acting moment ever, as he screams, “No, not the bees! The bees! Ahhhh! My eyes! My eyes! Ahhhhh!”
Are there any other scrapped scenes that you’d like to add to the list? Let us know in the comment section below.
