Horror Scenes I Love | Through the Shattered Lens

Today’s horror scene that I love features an actor appreciated by horror fans everywhere, the great Tom Atkins.

The son of a Pennsylvania steel mill worker who originally planned to follow in his father’s footsteps, Tom Atkins served in the U.S. Navy and noticed that officers seemed to have all the fun. He also noticed that the officers all had college degrees so, upon getting out of the service, he enrolled in Pittsburgh’s Duquesne College. It was while at Duquesne that Atkins met a girl who was involved with a local theater group and he discovered that he actually enjoyed acting. Atkins made his film debut in 1968’s The Detective and he’s been working steadily ever since. A favorite of both John Carpenter and George Romero, Atkins has been a reliable horror fixture since the early 80s.

In this scene, from 1982’s Halloween III, Tom Atkins plays a doctor who desperately tries to stop the cruelest Halloween prank of all. One reason why this scene is so effective is because, if Tom Atkins can’t stop the broadcast, then that means nobody can.

Thrill us, Tom.

The Beyond

Lisa has written in detail how much she enjoys Fulci’s The Beyond. From it’s Lovecraftian themes of otherworldly dangers to Fulci’s stylistic choice of focusing on characters’ eyes and blindness.

Others also love how Fulci is able to combine not just the grand guignol sequences that his films have become famous (or infamous depending on how one judges horror films) with an ethereal look to the visuals that borders the line between being dream-like and nightmarish.

This particular scene doesn’t have that grand guignol panache of Fulci’s more dynamic scenes, but it does give a hint to the desolation and etheric sense one feels seeing that empty causeway with just Liza driving on it then suddenly seeing Emily and her guide dog just standing there at the lane divider.

While I have always had a boyhood crush when it comes to Catriona McColl, I must admit that Cinzia Monreale was quite beautiful in this film even with the weird contacts she wore to show her as having being blinded by what she saw in the beyond.