8. "What's The Rifle For?"- Cabin Fever
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCJc8Oemwj0 I'm one of about eight people alive today who thinks Eli Roth is something more than a hack. Seriously. That's not the prelude to some crazy joke about how shitty Eli Roth is. I think he's a good, self-aware director. That's to say, this bewildering scene from Cabin Fever is so completely at odds with the underrated horror movie spoof that it's... utter genius? I don't know. I'll let you work out how you feel about it. I owe you that much, at least. Like it or loathe it, though, it's still insane and it's still totally out of place. This particular scene comes in two parts. The first part occurs at the beginning of the movie, with our teenage characters on-route to the cabin the woods that will spell death for most of them. They stop at a service station and encounter an old man behind the desk. One of the characters points to a gun behind him and asks, "What's the rifle for?" The old man casually tells them, "Oh, that's for n*ggers." The soundtrack makes a point of letting us know that our characters have entered some seriously dangerous, backwards territory. This moment has nothing to do with the main plot. Why would it? It served its purpose, right? It let the audience know that our characters were completely out of their depth. Except it is referenced again, actually, right at the very end - and in a way that nobody would ever have been expecting, either. Once the real movie is over and all the teens are dead, we go back to the service station to find a group of black people approaching it. "Oh, man," we think. "They're gonna get it!" The old man runs inside to... well, get his gun, right? But our expectations are brilliantly subverted, as he takes it off of the wall and says, "Ah, here you go, all polished and everything." Maintenance! It was all for maintenance!