10 Most Ingenious Special FX In Horror Movie History

4. The Shunting - Society (1989)

Evil Dead Mia
Society Productions Inc. Wild Street Pictures

If you've never seen Society, then this will be a hard sell: Society, like all good horror, has something to say about, well, society. That it features some of the most graphic, bizarre, nausea inducing, downright disgusting scenes of 'human' interaction ever put on film, slightly distracts from the message director Brian Yuzna is attempting to convey.

This is sick stuff but Society deserves its entry here, purely for the last act of the movie, colloquially known as 'The Shunting.'

Raised in wealthy Beverly Hills society, Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock aka Eddie from Baywatch) believes that something is not quite right with his family. So far, so normal, but when he gets his hands on a recording of his parents and friends engaged in some form of sinister orgy, he begins to suspect that he might just be right. Little does he know that his affluent parents and their friends, are indeed not entirely human after all.

The orgy Bill heard on the tape and attends in the last part of the film is simply known as 'The Shunting,' a mass gathering of aliens who have the ability to distort and meld their bodies with others, feeding from humans in the process.

Slimy bodies stretch and tangle as the celebration commences, oozing and mutating before our eyes. This utterly unique effect was designed and created by 'Screaming Mad George' aka Jôji Tani, a Japanese artist known for A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 and 4, plus The Abyss and Predator.

Contributor
Contributor

A lifelong aficionado of horror films and Gothic novels with literary delusions of grandeur...