'His head is about to explode," says Ernest Mathijs, remote control in hand as he cues up the legendary exploding head shot from David Cronenberg's 1981 horror classic Scanners, crowned the best special effects shot in an important fanzine readers' poll a decade ago.
Prof. Mathijs, who heads the Centre for Cinema Studies at the University of British Columbia, is showing me the shot to illustrate his current research study. The cult- and genre-film (and Cronenberg) expert is exploring whether old-school horror-film effects – accomplished with makeup, blood, and other stuff – are more effective than digital effects, which do not offer the same visceral tangibility; the gory mess of it all. He notes that many genres have moved to digital effects as a rule, but horror directors and fans have resisted.
He's looking into whether – and why – that might change.
We met in a UBC screening room.
What are we looking at?
On this shot, three of the most famous special-effects-creature artists collaborated. They put all their trickery and mastery together and in the end they decided to go for the simplest possible solution to make it look as real as possible. They had an explosives expert, Gary Zeller; Dick Smith, who had [worked] on The Exorcist; and Chris Walas who would later do The Fly and Gremlins [among others on the special-effects team]. So this is like the Spielberg, Lucas and Coppola of special effects. And in the end they decided to stuff a fake head with just stuff – rubble, dirt, things they could find; as undefined as possible. Then they added the fake blood because a head in a horror film has to have blood, and they went behind him and with a shotgun blew it up. So the best way to make it look real is treat it as if it's real; your head's filled with messy stuff and blood and then if it's blown up, it's likely to be blown up by a bullet or a projectile hitting it. And that's the result.
This was voted the best special-effects moment of the horror genre back in 2004, but digital effects have since exploded, if you will. Is this still considered a great masterful moment?
Absolutely. Even more so because now that everything's gone digital, the horror genre's become very aware of its reliance on non-digital special effects. So this is even more important because it shows you something that digital effects cannot do.
This brings us to your study. What is the general thinking in the horror genre when it comes to visual effects – that they need to be visceral, tangible, squishy in order to be effective?
Yes, essentially, because the horror film wants to go for the gruesome effect; it wants to scare you, unsettle you, create fear. So it needs to look as real as possible. And since it involves human bodies, it needs to look as if it could feel like a human body. Digital effects are getting there if you look at what Peter Jackson does with the The Lord of the Rings. He can make a digital orc look really slimy and messy and visceral and tangible and meaty – the way a body looks. But you need a huge budget to achieve that. Most horror films have tiny budgets and if they try digital effects you end up with something that looks digital. And that doesn't strike the same kind of fear in the audience.
If I went to a horror film today, would the effects still be created in this way?
You would find a mix now. Digital effects [offer] a high degree of usefulness for stunts. For making vampires fly across a room and those kinds of things, digital effects are way superior to analog effects or wiring or whatever. But if it's about what I call the money shot of the horror films – where a duel or battle or struggle leads to one shot in which something explodes; something violently penetrates the human body and therefore violates the integrity of the human body – that shot needs to look as if it could really hurt. So you need to make it look real. One of the things that digital effects have difficulty doing is mimicking the pressure points on someone's skin. If you want to do it right you have to spend lots of money and often horror films don't have that budget.
Could a horror fan detect the difference between digital and non-digital effects?
A lot of them would. The thing is also you don't have to necessarily see it; they're well-read. When Scanners premiered it was accompanied by cover art on the fanzines where the head would be seen to explode. So people who showed up for this film knew they were going to see an exploding head. They studied this; they read in the fanzines how the head was blown to pieces; how it was done. Also they know that the horror genre constantly winks and nudges to the classics. So they want that wink and that nudge and that homage. So that's another reason to keep this alive.
I was thinking about The Exorcist – the spinning head, the vomit. Couldn't digital effects have done that better?
The twisting of the head – yes, digital effects can do better because it looks a little mechanical if you see it. But the vomiting? No.
So how do you go about this study?
I'm looking at contemporary horror films and observing how there is this increase in digital effects and there's this preservation or stronghold of the visceral effects that's reserved mostly for violent penetration of the human body and bodily fluids spilling out; and then trying to collect as much material as possible on how the audience of the horror genre perceives that change. And it's not like they're completely resistant against it; they're very realistic and they know that digital cinema actually helps the horror genre cut costs because in many cases digital effects will actually save you money.
If you have to simulate the flight of vampires then digital will save you money. If you have to give the impression that there's 1000 zombies on the street but you digitize them so you don't need 1000 extras and the logistics that come with that, that saves you money too. But they still hold onto the stronghold of that money shot. So I want to be able to [observe] that over a prolonged period of time and see where it will end.
Will this be gradually covered over like everything else and become digital once digital effects makers know how to do it in a way that's acceptable? Will the horror fans at some point say sure, whatever, we have to sacrifice something? Or will this remain the sort of ultimate point of reference?
I think it's now at a tipping point where more and more fans of the horror genre are saying oh we must be so close to being able to do this digitally. And then they're torn – but do we want to? Do we want to hang on to what we know and trust and are impressed by because it's so essential to the managing of our fear? Don't we want that tactility? Do we really want to give that up?
Marsha Lederman