Forbidden to children under 16, the film The Sadness has been in theaters since July 6. Are you unbeatable on gory and bloody films?
From the elevator spilling hectoliters of (fake) blood in The Shining, to the nightclub/blood shower in Blade, to the shower scene in Psycho, the slashers Scream and the recent Taiwanese horror film The Sadness, bloody scenes are legion in genre cinema.
Whether it’s small drops of blood or vats filled with corn syrup or some other red and viscous mixture, these scenes are sometimes at the limit of sustainable.
Can you answer this quiz on the bloodiest films in cinema?
From the birth of cinema, the question of the liquid used to imitate blood quickly arose. In 1915 for Intolerance by DW Griffith, the technical team used chocolate syrup. If this dark syrup creates an illusion in black and white (this is what Alfred Hitchcock uses for Psychosis), the arrival of color in the cinema will quickly change the situation.
We then use corn syrup mixed with food coloring. In 1960, film make-up artist Dick Smith added zinc oxide and Photo-Flo, a toxic agent used in photo processing, to this mixture. The effect is there but the reddish liquid must not come into contact with the mucous membranes of the actors. Restrictive.
The formula often changes depending on the desired effect and use: liquid for blood streams or more viscous. The mixtures can therefore vary but it is often a question of foodstuffs: cornstarch, coffee grounds, syrup, coulis, sauce or chemical compounds such as potassium thiocyanate or iron chloride, the mixture of which gives a color very close to that of real blood.
Warner Bros. shining
The cult elevator scene in shining of Stanley Kubrick required 300 gallons of fake blood (about 1150 liters). The scene was shot in the studio, on a reduced scale with 4 cameras. The elevator, filled with very liquid fake blood, began to leak and it was necessary to control the opening of the doors so that the pressure was good.
Digital effects are becoming more common (and less messy) but often directors prefer to use fake hemoglobin in order to make the film, and the actors’ reaction, more believable.
For It 2, the production used fake blood created from a patented formula of methylcellulose and red dye.
For this scene in question, which echoes a famous Carrie sequence, a system of ten wide-orifice pipes sprayed the 17,000 liters of liquid. When director Andrés Muschietti said “action”, the device worked and Jessica Chastain had to dive into a vat filled with this fake blood.
“It was sickening“, recalls the actress, adding: “JI had it in my eyes, ears, nose. We filmed all night. And then Andy was like, ‘She’s good! I am very happy’. And I replied: ‘Yeah, well you’ll see if you’re that happy!’ “