An actor isn't usually actually in harm's way when performing horrific scenarios for
our entertainment.
But some stars throw caution to the wind, going above and beyond to ensure their performance
conveys pure terror.
Is it worth it?
You decide.
How do you remake a Dario Argento classic like Suspiria?
If you're Dakota Johnson, the star of the remake, the answer is that you commit.
To an unhealthy degree.
As Johnson told Elle, her experience of playing the dancer:
"... f---ed me up so much that I had to go to therapy."
The shooting conditions were brutal.
The primary location was an abandoned hotel atop a mountain.
The weather was dry and cold, resulting in constant discomfort among the cast.
Plus, due to the 30 telephone poles on the building's roof, there was supposedly electricity
pulsing through the building to the point that everyone was shocking each other.
What's Johnson done since then?
She's starting her own production company, hoping to create projects that showcase what
she wants to do...
Which, presumably, include non-electrified sets.
When film critic Roger Ebert asked Shelley Duvall what it was like working with master
director Stanley Kubrick on The Shining, Duvall responded bluntly, calling it "almost unbearable."
Kubrick's film is an acclaimed horror classic, but it arguably came at the cost of Duvall's
sanity, who called shooting it "excruciating."
For nine months, she put in at least 12 hours a day, screaming and crying, bearing the brunt
of Kubrick's artistic impulses, one Hollywood legend goes that Kubrick asked for over 120
takes of a scene involving Duvall and a baseball bat.
"Give me the bat."
"Stop it!"
"Give me the bat."
"Stay away from me!"
"Stop swinging the bat."
“Please stop!”
“Give me the bat.”
And after her trials were complete, and the film was released?
Critics wrote of the film's genius in every way, except for Duvall's performance.
She told Ebert:
"The reviews were all about Kubrick, like I wasn't there…
Perhaps with a star director such as Kubrick, I said, critics get mesmerized by his name
and forget the actors."
Tobe Hooper's exploitation classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is steeped in grimy authenticity.
It really looks like Marilyn Burns was stuck in a slaughterhouse full of rotten corpses
and tortured until she screamed.
The reason it looks like this is… well, she was.
The dinner scene when she was tied up and taunted?
Hooper tied her up and set the other actors mercilessly on her.
In fact, an absurd number of the horrible events that her character endures happened
to the actress herself.
The heroic moment when Burns escapes by jumping through the window?
Burns actually jumped through a window.Thankfully she didn't get placed on a hook or have to
fight off actual cannibals.
The Exorcist is, to this day, such a picture of absolute horror, your body might hurt from
all the tension carried while watching.
But it still wouldn't compare to what Ellen Burstyn went through to play Chris, the poor
mother of a possessed little girl.
In one scene, Chris' daughter Regan pushes her to the floor, hard.
After take one, Burstyn complained to director William Friedkin that the stunt coordinator
was pulling a rope tied to Burstyn too strongly.
Burstyn told HuffPost Live:
"And Billy said, 'well it has to look real.'
And I said, 'I know it has to look real, but I'm telling you, I could get hurt.'
And so he said, 'Okay, don't pull her so hard.'"
After that, Friedkin called action, and Burstyn was slammed to the floor so hard she suffered
permanent spinal injuries.
Burstyn suspects Friedkin wanted a good-looking take at all costs.
During production on the 2003 horror film Gothika, Robert Downey Jr. and Halle Berry
were in the middle of an intense scene.
Downey was supposed to grab Berry's arm in a certain, choreographed way, but instead,
he grabbed it about as wrong as you could grab it, and it snapped.
"Noooo!
Nooooo!
Noooo!"
"Alright!"
"Owww!
Nooooo!"
Director Mathieu Kassovitz found it to be a lucky break, as the pause in shooting gave
him a chance to prep for upcoming action scenes he didn't have time to plan.
Poltergeist is riddled with controversy.
Was the production really cursed?
Did Tobe Hooper or Steven Spielberg really direct it?
All of these questions may never have official answers.
But we do know one thing for certain: actor JoBeth Williams, who played Diane Freeling,
had a hauntingly miserable time making the movie.
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, Williams called the shoot "physically very hard," especially
the moments when she was dropped into a pool full of a gross, slimy concoction.
During one particularly yucky scene, Williams shared the screen with some skeletons.
She told Reddit:
"When we were shooting, I thought the skeletons were fake, I thought the prop department made
them.
But later I found out they were REAL skeletons bought very cheaply.
That really grossed me out."
The supernatural seemed to have followed Williams home away from the film as well.
When she returned to her rented apartment after a day's shooting, all of the pictures
were crooked.
So she straightened them.
However, the next day, the pictures were crooked once again.
That's almost spookier than just about anything that's actually in Poltergeist.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.