Bloopers That'll Change The Way You See These Horror Movies

Although Deep Blue Sea relied heavily on CGI to bring its genetically enhanced man-eating mega-sharks to life, the movie was shot on the same sets that James Cameron used to film Titanic, which were designed to produce lifelike waves that mimic a rough-and-tumble ocean landscape. Like their real-life counterparts, the waves were unpredictable—and one of the movie's most thrilling scenes includes an accidental mini-tsunami that nearly washed the cast overboard.

Samuel L. Jackson spilled the beans on the blooper in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, saying, "When we get Stellan hooked up to the helicopter and we're trying to get back to the elevator during the storm, the waves are supposed to rush in front of us and behind us. At one point three tons of water got thrown on us by accident and we got swept toward those cargo bays and everyone thought we were going into the drink, and people were tumbling around this metal grating. ... That was not supposed to happen and we didn't have safety harnesses on and we were flailing around on this deck."

Despite the danger (or perhaps because of it), the cameras kept rolling while the cast members scrambled to stay alive and out of the water—and the end result was so exciting that there was no need for a reshoot. Said Jackson, "I thought that was pretty funny when I saw it in the final film. I said, 'Oh, they kept that!'"

In Stir of Echoes, no-nonsense blue-collar husband Tom (Kevin Bacon) becomes suddenly clairvoyant after a session with an amateur hypnotist leaves him a little too open to suggestion. Tom's condition leads him to see dead people, hear voices, and—perhaps most importantly—experience the uncontrollable urge to dig a lot of very large holes in his backyard.

Enter the blooper fairy, who blessed Bacon with a golden boot to go with his character's psychic abilities. During the aforementioned digging scene, Bacon's character takes out his frustrations on a nearby bucket, which was supposed to bounce harmlessly off the side of the house. But if you've seen the movie, you know it doesn't play out that way. Instead, Bacon kicked the bucket so hard and with such precision that it shattered the window—and because the actor is nothing if not a consummate professional, he just went with it, broken glass and all. The result was seamless: the window shatters, Bacon stays in character, and lo, Stir of Echoes director David Koepp got a scene with an explosive climax that made his protagonist look even more spectacularly unhinged.

Horror movies are a lot like comedies. Okay, not really, except that they both offer a very explosive release of tension and emotion, which is what makes a movie both powerful and fun. A good horror movie can scare your wits right out of you, while comedy's power is based on the utter delight of an audience being surprised. So hey, that's pretty much the same thing. Then there are bloopers and outtakes from horror movies. One part palette cleanser, one part reassurance that all of the horrible things in a scary movie aren't real, these bloopers add the delight of a comedy to the spooktacular thrills of well-known horror movies.

You can't make a movie without also making a few mistakes, and the horror genre is absolutely no exception. The final girl bursts out laughing during her big escape scene; the blood-spewing machine malfunctions and saturates the entire set; the flesh-eating swamp monster trips over his own tentacles and falls down a flight of stairs. Sometimes, the accidents that happen while the cameras are rolling are even too good to leave out. From hilarious bloopers that made the final cut to flubbed takes and general goofing around on the set, here's a look at some classic clips that will change the way you see some of your favorite horror movies.

Joss Whedon's 2012 entry into the horror genre was typically tongue-in-cheek, filled with intentional, hilarious subversions of various scary movie tropes—including the epic finale, in which a veritable encyclopedia of monsters escape from their cells and annihilate the technicians who've been holding them captive. But while the carnage of that last act was planned, one of its best scenes was the beneficiary of a happy (and, uh, messy) little accident, when the members of the effects crew decided to use their entire remaining supply of fake blood on actor Bradley Whitford's death-by-merman.

For those in need of a refresher, the merman emerges at the tail end of the finale to chow down on the face of poor Steve Hadley (Whitford). It's a bit of poetic justice for Steve, whose greatest unfulfilled wish was to see the merman in action—but its coup de graces comes when Steve's blood sprays rudely out of the creature's blowhole in a sort of aquatic belch.

The effect is hilarious; it's just not what the filmmakers originally planned. With only the one scene to shoot and a huge supply of fake blood being pumped through the creature's head, the merman blew like Old Faithful—and kept on blowing, until the blood ran out and the geyser-like effect was replaced by a farty red mist. Effects master David LeRoy Anderson of AFX later said, "I love the wide shot in the behind-the-scenes video where the blood keeps going and going, because it reminds me of that night, which was just hysterical. I kept thinking, 'How are they going to use this? He's sitting there flapping like a fish, and it looks like a hose spraying blood everywhere!' But the way they cut it together was perfect."

In 1996, Wes Craven's sendup of the slasher genre heralded the dawn of a new wave of smart, sleek, self-aware horror films. The special effects, however, were the same tried-and-true practical techniques directors have relied on for years, including the use of corn syrup to simulate blood. And in a movie where it seemed like someone was stabbed to death every other minute, things were extremely sloppy and sticky on set by the time the film reached its thrilling climax. This led to a hilarious unplanned exchange, when Skeet Ulrich lost control of the blood-covered phone and winged it right at Matthew Lillard's head. Lillard reacted with genuine indignation, shouting, "You hit me with the phone, d**k!"

Ordinarily, an outburst like that might have led to a shout of "Cut!" and a request to do the scene again. But according to the Scream DVD commentary, since Lillard was supposed to be playing the doofy sidekick to Ulrich's cold-blooded psychopath, his reaction wasn't even remotely out of character. Craven went ahead and kept it. As it turned out, it was a wise move; not only did the line make the final cut, it's one of the funniest moments in the movie.

Scream 3 was also improved by an on-camera mistake. The exciting conclusion to Wes Craven's Scream trilogy is full of scripted suspense, but one of its most action-packed fight scenes has a big blooper right in the middle. According to an encyclopedic collection of Scream 3 trivia, the confrontation between heroine Sidney (Neve Campbell) and killer Roman (Scott Foley) includes an actual, genuine stabbing, in the moment where Sidney leaps over a bar and nails Roman in the back with an ice pick. Foley was wearing a protective pad for the scene, but Campbell missed her mark and plunged the pick into Foley's actual flesh. No wonder his scream of surprise and pain seems so genuine!

The Descent is a pretty terrifying movie in which a bunch of young female cave explorers are stalked and killed while doing what they love best: exploring caves. To make a long story short, they're trapped in a horrendous (and horrendously dark) cave system—and if that's not bad enough, light-eschewing monsters want to eat their delicious flesh. That's why it's so funny on the blooper reel when one of the victims, face all deformed from unspeakable things, gives a big ol' kiss and a declaration of love to one of the not-yet claimed humans.

A meta, self-referential, horror-movie-skewering satire that's still a great horror movie on its own, Scream reinvented the genre for in-the-know '90s audiences. Full of references to other movies and calling out genre tropes as they happen, Scream packs in a lot of Easter eggs, such as a cameo by Wes Craven—director of both Scream and the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's already funny and clever that Craven plays a high school janitor dressed like Elm Street's homicidal janitor Freddy Krueger. This outtake is even funnier: Craven, mop in hand, displays a gift for comic pratfalls on par with Dick Van Dyke or Chris Farley.

The mid-2000s brought about a horror revival of sorts, with films often featuring attractive young people recognizable from TV being brutally killed. Take the remake of the '50s horror classic House of Wax, which starred WB heartthrobs such as Chad Michael Murray from One Tree Hill, Jared Padalcki from Gilmore Girls...and socialite, reality star, and night vision camera owner Paris Hilton. To her credit, the often dispassionate Hilton gives everything she's got to her performance as a scream queen, shrieking bloody murder as the script requires. It's not nearly as annoying as the car alarm that goes off unexpectedly in the middle of a scene shot in the woods. (You'd think some P.A. would've disabled it before film started rolling, but so such luck.)

Acting can be magical when a director gets a perfect, believable reaction from a performer—like one of abject terror in a horror movie, for example. Or, you can just pull a prank on an actor on a set of a horror movie and scare him for real. On the set of Scream 4, Erik Knudsen was apparently supposed to open a door and find nothing there. Instead of nothing, however, there was something—the terrifying and familiar Ghostface Killer of the Scream franchise. (At least Knudsen was a good sport about it.)

Fine, upstanding British actor Malcolm McDowell is always an imposing presence who dominates every scene he's in, whether he's playing the hero, an antihero, or a villain. In Rob Zombie's 2007 version of Halloween, he plays Dr. Samuel Loomis, the former psychiatrist of crazed murderer Michael Myers (Tyler Mane). Myers eventually comes for Dr. Loomis, of course, and he cowers in fear in a darkened house. McDowell seems genuinely startled when Mane breaks in through a door behind him...only to immediately launch into a comical, profanity-laden tirade. "You must be f***ing joking!" McDowell screams. "Use the front f****** door, the bell's working!"

That Halloween reboot must have been a pretty lively set to work on, because its blooper reel offers up another goofy outtake. What's so funny about being stabbed? As far as actor Ken Foree is concerned, everything. While Michael Myers repeatedly stabs him with a prop knife and fake blood audibly oozes everywhere, Foree gets a case of the giggles that simply can't be killed with conventional imitation weapons.

Jennifer's Body offered character relationships a bit more complex than those in the average horror movie. That's to be expected when the film is written by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody. Over the course of the film, nerdy Anita (Amanda Seyfried) comes to both love and hate her best friend, popular cheerleader-turned murderous succubus Jennifer (Megan Fox). Those mixed feelings physically manifest in a scene in which Seyfried screams accusatory things at Fox's character...and then kisses her. Or at least she tries to kiss her, as Fox is apparently so deep into her monstrous character that she takes a bite out of her costar.

The Witch is one of the most truly haunting horror movies in years, in part due to its atmospheric setting in 17th century Massachusetts and supposition that the witches of the Salem Witch Trial era just might have been real. There's tons of weird stuff in The Witch, from dark woods to kidnapping to naked people drinking blood to a goat named Black Phillip that a pair of twins says talks to them. Not so scary, though? Horses. Particularly horses needing to go about their horse bodily functions with no regard for the very expensive film production happening right in front of them.

Anthony Hopkins deservedly won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, one of only a handful of horror movies to ever take home major Oscars. Hopkins is one the best actors in the world, and as such, is quite versatile—he played an American president in Nixon, and a repressed English butler in The Remains of the Day. He even played Rocky Balboa once. Really, he did—while his face and shirt were covered in blood during a twisted and hilarious outtake on the set of The Silence of the Lambs, that is.

Zombie-driven horror comedy Shaun of the Dead made a movie star out of Simon Pegg—and reunited the actor with his collaborators from the cult British sitcom Spaced, including director Edgar Wright and costar Nick Frost. They're all good friends and seem to share the same comedy hive mind, which means Pegg and Frost frequently ad-libbed and goofed off on the set of Shaun of the Dead, ruining takes but cracking up each other and anybody else in the vicinity. For example, there's this scene, in which Pegg's slacker character behaves in front of a mob of zombies the way a lot of people probably would: by profanely asking them to move along.

The defining characteristics of a vampire have developed over more than a century of fiction and film. Everybody knows they sleep in coffins, go out only at night, and have big fangs they use to puncture their victims' necks to more effectively drink their blood. Countless vampire movies have featured scenes of vampires dramatically exposing those chompers, but it loses its dramatic effect and descends into silliness if, say, those fangs were to spontaneously fall out of an actor's mouth—as Christopher Mintz-Plasse discovered while filming this scene for the 2011 Fright Night remake.

Part horror, part comedy, Warm Bodies concerns a zombified young man (Nicholas Hoult) stumbling around and falling in love—and a kid's got to eat, so there are plenty of zombie-on-human attack scenes. Here, Hoult is supposed to be going after some human prey, but he surprises his co-star and crew with some goofing off, unleashing a loud, boisterous impression of one of the backwoods torturers from Deliverance—a very different kind of horror movie.

Eli Roth's second Hostel is maybe even more gruesome than the first. So many disturbing things go down: murder, torture, power saws used as weapons, soccer played with a human head, and all kinds of the gory stuff that makes going to the movies such a magical experience. And yet the most unnerving thing to ever go down in the movie, the moment that will linger with viewers for years to come, is this blooper from Hostel: Part II, in which a gang of chained-up captives make everyone chuckle by doing a silly little march/dance.

The sight of a dead body is a striking image for a horror movie viewer—if not one of the primary reasons a person would even watch a horror movie. But if you're an actor, seeing festering, decaying bodies—either dummies or actors in make-up—day in and day out takes the sting out of it. So really, when a snickering Shia LeBeouf approaches some monstrosity on the set of Disturbia and kisses it, he's just trying to jazz up his workday.

Mel Brooks' classic Young Frankenstein perfectly skewers old Hollywood monster movies. Comedian Marty Feldman is one of the film's many bright spots, portraying Dr. Frankenstein's faithful assistant Igor as some strange combination of maniac, pet, child, creep, and vaudeville performer. All those parts come into play in equal measure during this scene, when Feldman gets a little too carried away.