30 Mindbending Movie Scenes
An American Werewolf In London (1981)
The Scene: A deliriously nutso dream sequence in which David Kessler imagines the hospital under attack from a horde of gun-toting mutant Nazis!
The Crazy: You might have been expecting werewolves. You almost certainly wouldn't have expected the above!
Pinocchio (1940)
The Scene: The Pleasure Island sequence, a cautionary tale for any would-be delinquents in the audience. Pretty effective it is, too!
The Crazy: Behave yourself or you'll be transformed into a donkey and sold into captivity. Er, okay.
Wild Strawberries (1957)
The Scene: Professor Isak has a bizarre nightmare featuring handless clocks, deserted cityscapes and the worrying site of a coffin containing his own corpse. Heavy…
The Crazy: A dream sequence in a Bergman film was never going to be particularly fluffy, and so it proves here with this head-scratching sequence.
Knocked Up (2007)
The Scene: Cirque du Soleil on mushrooms… sounded like a good idea at the time, didn’t it chaps? Oh dear…
The Crazy: Grotesque French clowns, made all the more grotesque thanks to Judd Apatow’s fish-eye lens. No wonder the boys head straight back to the hotel afterwards!
Natural Born Killers (1994)
The Scene: The diner sequence, in which Mickey and Mallory lay waste to a posse of rednecks in supremely grisly style.
The Crazy: As the camera lurches woozily around the diner, rapidly flipping between colour and black and white, you can tell that a storm is brewing. And when it finally arrives, its quite the head-rush!
Requiem For A Dream (2000)
The Scene: Sara hallucinates that she’s watching herself compete on her favourite game show, while her fridge steadily makes its way from the kitchen towards her armchair.
The Crazy: Things get increasingly upsetting as Sara’s fragile grasp on reality steadily begins to ebb away, and her fantasy life comes ramming into her consciousness with extreme prejudice.
Spun (2002)
The Scene: Brittany Murphy and Jason Schwartzman get their tweak on as they cruise round LA whilst completely out of their heads.
The Crazy: It's jump-cuts ahoy as the audience gets a look inside the minds of a pair of meth users. Not advisable for sufferers of the jitters…
Being John Malkovich (1999)
The Scene: If the idea of a portal that allows one to experience the world as John Malkovich sees it wasn't weird enough what would happen if Malkovich himself went through said portal?
The Crazy: Charlie Kaufman is in possession of a rare imagination indeed. Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich!
The Shining (1980)
The Scene: As poor old Wendy Torrance tries to make her escape, she stumbles upon a man in a bear suit giving a spot of oral relief to a fellow partygoer. Whuh?
The Crazy: It’s a moment of purest surrealism that totally throws the audience for a loop in the middle of an already hugely tense sequence!
Spellbound (1945)
The Scene: Gregory Peck recounts the bizarre dreams he's been having, in which a sinister masked man stalks him at every turn.
The Crazy: Dream sequences often give a director license to go a little "out there", and Hitchcock doesn't waste the opportunity, hiring Salvador Dali to construct his dreamscapes.
Antichrist (2009)
The Scene: Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg get down to it out in the woods, underneath the shade of an old oak tree. However, there's something a bit off about this particular oak…
The Crazy: As the camera pulls out, disembodied human hands are revealed to be poking out from the tree's various nooks and crannies. Odd.
The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Scene: The Dude gets his drink spiked, causing him to experience some extremely odd dreams in which bowling naturally features heavily.
The Crazy: Even Saddam makes an appearance, handing the Dude his bowling shoes when he hits the lanes…
Videodrome (1983)
The Scene: James Woods is settled in for a nice evening in front of the telly, only for things to get a bit mental as the screen starts addressing him directly…
The Crazy: As if the on-screen murder of the presenter wasn't enough, the television itself soon starts to morph and mutate. Pucker up, James!
Snow White And The Seven Dwarves (1937)
The Scene: Snow White’s escape into the dark forest is one of the scariest sequences of any children’s film you’d care to mention, with Snow enduring all manner of reality-distorting horrors before finally passing out.
The Crazy: Trees with gaping mouths, driftwood that snaps like a crocodile, disembodied pairs of glowing eyes… no wonder she faints!
The Fly (1986)
The Scene: As if the film wasn’t already grotesque enough, Cronenberg throws in a dream sequence for good measure that manages to trump everything else in terms of body-horror weirdness. Yes, it’s when Geena Davis gives birth to a giant maggot. Urgh.
The Crazy: You know something horrible is going to happen from the minute the sequence begins, but you probably won’t have been expecting the sheer level of ickiness of what takes place!
Zoolander (2001)
The Scene: A gloriously silly bit of head-scrambling, as Mugatu brainwashes Zoolander in supremely daft fashion. Just look at that dog…
The Crazy: It might be played for laughs, but this is still a pleasingly surreal affair, even if it largely revolves around Will Ferrell shouting!
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
The Scene: The opening freakout in which Rory Cochrane’s junky imagines himself plagued by a swarm of entirely imaginary bugs. Not very pleasant…
The Crazy: Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped animation blurs the line between fantasy and reality, creating an effective sense of heightened awareness. And of course, everyone hates bugs…
Trainspotting (1996)
The Scene: Renton feels the full force of heroin withdrawal as his parents lock him in his bedroom and force him to go cold turkey…
The Crazy: The horrifying, bloated baby crawling across the ceiling is enough to put you off drugs for life. Stay n school, kids!
Across The Universe (2007)
The Scene: A brain-scrambling circus scene in which Ringmaster Mr. Kite presides over a bizarre menagerie indeed. Come back Zippo, all is forgiven…
The Crazy: Clowns are a bit scary at the best of times, but these take it to the next level. Yikes!
Donnie Darko (2001)
The Scene: Donnie stares into the mirror, before touching it and revealing its fluid texture. Weird enough on its own, before the sudden arrival of a man in a giant rabbit suit in place of Donnie’s reflection…
The Crazy: The slow build of the doom-laden score coupled with Frank’s horrifying appearance is jarring to say the least…
Altered States (1980)
The Scene: The water-tank hallucinations, featuring the famous image of an eight-eyed goat, among various other horrors!
The Crazy: Jesus on the cross with the head of an eight-eyed goat… crazy enough for you?
Enter The Void (2010)
The Scene: The entire movie probably qualifies, but we'll opt for the sequence set within a woman's birth canal. which will buzz around your brain long after the credits have rolled.
The Crazy: Watching a sex scene from inside a woman's body as the camera follows the semen's journey to the ovum, is quite an experience...
Dumbo (1941)
The Scene: Pink elephants on parade. What exactly were those animators smoking, we wonder?
The Crazy: The discordant music is pretty disorientating on its own, but pared with the grotesquely distorted elephants, its doubly effective.
Easy Rider (1969)
The Scene: Our freewheeling heroes decide to drop some acid in New Orleans. It's quite fun to begin with, and then you get the feeling they'd probably quite like it to stop.
The Crazy: Quick-fire editing, strange imagery and a sprinkling of nudity is the perfect way to recreate the mania of a heavy dose of acid.
The Adventures Of Mark Twain (1985)
The Scene: This children's movie takes a turn for the macabre during this weird claymation sequence in which our young heroes share an encounter with, erm, Satan.
The Crazy: Satan's cruel destruction of a little clay village is both bizarre, frightening and not really suitable for children at all!
Vertigo (1958)
The Scene: Scotty's famously trippy nightmare, in which our hero finds his sleep disturbed by some very lurid imagery, as designed by expressionist artist John Ferren.
The Crazy: The close-up on the locket, complete with flashing colours and Carlotta's disconcerting stare, is disturbing in the extreme.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
The Scene: A gruelling dream sequence (or is it?) in which Satan comes to collect upon the arrangement made with Rosemary's husband.
The Crazy: It's probably one of the most uncomfortable sex scenes you'll ever witness, made all the more unnerving by the question mark over whether or not it's actually happening.
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)
The Scene: The boys attempt to check into a Vegas hotel while tripping their nuts off. Needless to say, it doesn't run entirely smoothly, particularly since the receptionist appears to be transforming into a dragon!
The Crazy: "There is no way of explaining the terror I felt," says Depp's character. And who can blame him?
Eraserhead (1977)
The Scene: Almost too many to choose from, but we’ll go for the claymation sequence in which the worm emerges from the cupboard and goes wiggling around all over the shop.
The Crazy: As well as the obviously bizarre visuals, the wheedling noises emitted by the creature only add to the sense of mania!
Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971)
The Scene: Wonka takes his party of visitors on a nightmarish boat trip through a psychedelic tunnel of horrors. Do not adjust your sets…
The Crazy: The whole sequence feels as if it's been lifted from an avant-garde horror movie rather than a slice of wholesome family entertainment.
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