10 Reasons Movie Scenes Turned Out THAT WAY
3. Pancake Karate - Cabin Fever
Eli Roth's cult classic horror Cabin Fever is an unapologetically crass throwback to the exploitation flicks of decades past, but beyond the plentiful gore, the single most memorable sequence in the entire movie actually involves... pancakes.
In act three, a disease-infected Bert (James DeBello) heads to the local store for assistance, where the owner's developmentally disabled young son Dennis (Matthew Helms) starts shouting "Pancakes!"
From here Dennis leaps around, performing karate kicks before biting Bert on the hand. It's totally bonkers, and while the bulk of the scene was in Roth's original script, believe it or not Dennis' out-of-nowhere karate moves weren't.
On the film's DVD commentary, Roth revealed that Dennis' actor Matthew Helms just showed off his karate moves during a break between setups, and Roth decided to have him perform the moves in the scene itself.
Roth was clearly onto something here, even if he surely couldn't have appreciated how such a minor choice would continue to fascinate and beguile horror fans decades later.