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Stop-motion animation is responsible for some of the most heartwarming moments in the history of film, but even the most ardent fan of Claymation has to admit that there’s something inherently uncanny about puppetry where you can’t see the strings. The very act of bringing an inanimate humanoid figure to life recalls spooky tales of monsters and dark sorcery, so it’s not surprising that stop-motion has also been used as a tool to scare.

And with modern media like The Shivering Truth and Robert Morgan’s Stopmotion reminding us that animation can convey terror just as easily as cartoony laughs, we’ve decided to come up with a list celebrating six of the scariest stop-motion effects in horror.

For the purposes of this list, we’ll be considering any film that utilizes stop-motion to bring a character to life, be it as a brief photo-realistic special effect or traditional animation.

Helping you stay sane while staying safe… featuring Leonard Maltin, Dave Anthony, Miguel Arteta, John Landis, and Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Plague (1979)

Target Earth (1954)

The Left Hand of God (1955)

A Lost Lady (1934)

Enough Said (2013)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

Down to Earth (2001)

Down To Earth (1947)

The Commitments (1991)

Once (2007)

Election (1999)

About Schmidt (2002)

Sideways (2004)

Nebraska (2013)

The Man in the Moon (1991)

The 39 Steps (1935)

Casablanca (1942)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

The Night Walker (1964)

Chuck and Buck (2000)

Cedar Rapids (2011)

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

Duck Butter (2018)

The Good Girl (2002)

The Big Heat (1953)

Human Desire (1954)

Slightly French (1949)

Week-End with Father (1951)

Experiment In Terror (1962)

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (1969)

Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall (1987)

Airport (1970)

Earthquake (1974)

Drive a Crooked Road (1954)

Pushover (1954)

Waves (2019)

Krisha (2015)

The Oblong Box (1969)

80,000 Suspects (1963)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

It Comes At Night (2017)

Children of Men (2006)

The Road (2009)

You Were Never Really Here...

Out of all of Poe’s works, few have had as big of an impact on me as “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Like many youngsters with an interest in the macabre, it was the first to immediately grab my attention, its title conjuring images of a massive, swinging blade cutting a poor sap wide open. Of course, there’s more to the poem than that—it’s focused less on the titular blade and more on the paranoia it creates, as well as painting a portrait of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. It also has, quite infamously, one of the most frustrating deus ex machinas of all time, where the French army stops the swinging pendulum mere seconds before it can bisect our bound protagonist, much to the disappointment of English students the world over. While it’s hardly Poe’s best work, it’s certainly among his most iconic,...

Jan Švankmajer, the 81-year-old surrealist Czech animator, along with his longtime producer Jaromír Kallista, has launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund the filmmaker’s final project, Insects. Švankmajer, known for his dark but playful satirical works, has directed over 30 short and feature-length films throughout his career including Alice, Little Otik, and Dimensions of Dialogue. As a pioneer of stop-motion animation, he has had a direct influence on the works of Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, David Lynch, and the Brothers Quay, among many others. Švankmajer wrote the screenplay for Insects, which is loosely based on “The Insect Play” by the Čapek brothers, an allegorical comedy from 1922 […]...

The Insects

Director: Jan Svankmajer // Writer: Jan Svankmajer

Earlier this year it was announced that legendary Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, at the age of 79, was working on a new project, his first since 2010’s Surviving Life (Theory and Practice). Known for his combination of live action and animation, famously in his 1988 version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and more recently in masterworks like Little Otik (2000) and Lunacy (2005), Svankmajer returns to classic literature for the inspiration of his latest, The Insects. Previously taking pages from Goethe (Lesson Faust, 1994) and Poe (Lunacy), Svankmajer is loosely basing his latest on a 1922 play from the Capek Brothers, From the Life of Insects, combined with Kafka’s The Metamorphoses. Six amateur thespians meet in a pub to rehearse the Čapeks’ play, while their personal stories interweave with those of the characters they are about to play. The play is intended as a backdrop in which...

So…what do I mean by “What the F**k?” Movies? These are the films that, upon completing your viewing, you seriously worry about the director’s sanity. Or you can’t really comprehend what you just saw. Or you know what you watched was something magical, but can’t really put the pieces together in your mind. Or, worse, you know what happened, but certifiably it’s insane. But with this “definition” comes a few caveats: no horror films and no fully animated films. Those genres lean a little too crazy to begin with – it’s more fun to look at films that force a sense of realism, even if it’s just on the surface.

50. Southland Tales (2007)

Directed by: Richard Kelly

Not all these movies are necessarily “good.” In 2001, writer/director Richard Kelly found cult status with the mind-bending Donnie Darko. It took six years for him to...

Focus Features

They say that everything, in cinema at least, has been done. There is nothing new to explore, no new ground to be trodden, as this is the era of the re-make; everything these days is an update on something that’s already been done, whether it’s reimagining a hero we love, adapting a novel that’s caught the world by storm, or even just setting a common story in space.

Well, certain films want to argue with that. Certain directors think completely outside of the box, and I’m not just talking about The Human Centipede or Little Otik, a Czech film about a couple who can’t have children, so they carve a baby out of wood.

Some films are so fundamentally fascinating, that they’ve made their money on the concept, and not on the plot; these are films that sound so original that you...

Above: Eva Švankmajerová’s poster for Alice (Jan Švankmajer, Czechoslovakia, 1988).

The adage that behind every great man stands a great woman was rarely truer than in the case of the incomparable Czech animator/filmmaker Jan Švankmajer and his wife, the painter, ceramicist and writer Eva Švankmajerová (1940-2005). Eva Dvoráková met Švankmajer when she was 20 (he was 26 and working in experimental theater) and just out of college (she had studied drama at the music academy of Prague), married him the following year and for the next 45 years they were inseparable artistic collaborators. The director of a 2001 documentary about the Švankmajers, entitled Les chimères des Svankmajer, has said “The more I worked with Jan, the more I realised that the influence of Eva was essential. Their whole life is dedicated to their work, which takes on gigantic proportions, without separation.” (You can see Eva at work in this trailer for the film.

At the screening I attended of Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (2010), there were two walk-outs. I was tempted to follow, but my love of the great Czech animator’s previous work won out, making me want to experience, if not enjoy, every minute of his latest film.

Newcomers to Švankmajer would do best to start with his shorts from the 1960s and 80s, live-action Surrealist animations of everyday objects. Some people find them disturbing, but if you embrace their sheer creativity and magic, these films can take you right back to childhood, evoking its fear of the unknown, love of repetition, and sense that anything might happen.

If I hadn’t already seen two of Švankmajer’s feature-length films, having seen Surviving Life I would have said that the director should stick to short films. His tendency towards variations on a theme arguably works best in small doses,...

Surreal, grotesque and censor-baiting, Jan Svankmajer's films have been getting him into trouble for years. Jonathan Jones meets him in Prague

For today's film-makers, getting your work shown at the Cannes film festival is a dream come true. In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of early 1970s communist Czechoslovakia, it was an opportunity that turned into a nightmare, as the surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer tells me over biscuits and peanuts in the cabinet of curiosities he calls home.

I half expect the snacks to come to life – to arrange themselves into little biscuit and peanut men, and start fighting on the table top. For several weeks, I have immersed myself in Svankmajer's films, in which everyday objects take on lives of their own. In his latest film, Surviving Life, the actors are turned into puppets through animation of still photographs.

Svankmajer's short film Leonardo's Diary – animated versions of Leonardo da Vinci's...

Fans of very-much-not-Pixar animation may be stoked at the news that Czech mentalist Jan Svankmajer is at work on an adaptation of Josef and Karel Capek's Insect Play.Originally written in 1921, it's a satire on oppressive totalitarian regimes, in which humans act like insects, and insects - gloomy beetles, warrior ants, whimsical butterflies - have all the personality. Josef Kapek was killed at Belsen in 1945, giving the play a horrible prescience.Svankmajer's version, to be simply titled Insects, will "combine dark comedy, grotesque, classic horror genre, and both animation and feature acting," he says, making it very much of a piece with the animator's previous Alice, Faust and Little Otik. He's wanted to make it since the 1970s: "I always liked it. It's very misanthropic. It reminds one a lot of Franz Kafka.""Svankmajer is 76 and I'm 72," laments Jan's long-time producing partner Jaromir Kallista. "We are very old mates,...

Reviewed by Amy R. Handler

(April 2011)

Directed/Written by: Quentin Dupieux

Starring: Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser and Roxanne Mesquida

Quentin Dupieux’s newest feature about a rogue tire-turned-serial killer — and obsessed stalker — is everything cinema should be but more often is not.

A tire?

Yes. A tire. All this 82-minute powerhouse asks of its audience is to pay strict attention and to keep an open mind.

“Rubber” is the story of a film director/lieutenant, dressed as a small-town sheriff, who is shooting a movie in the desert. His crew and cast consist of a bootlicking production assistant/accountant and several actors portraying deputies. A large audience, one of whom is wheelchair-bound, is given binoculars and told to stand at the top of a hill and await the show.

In the meantime, a tire arises on its own, falters and then steadies itself as it proceeds along a desert road.

Reviewed by Amy R. Handler

(April 2011)

Directed/Written by: Quentin Dupieux

Starring: Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser and Roxanne Mesquida

Quentin Dupieux’s newest feature about a rogue tire-turned-serial killer — and obsessed stalker — is everything cinema should be but more often is not.

A tire?

Yes. A tire. All this 82-minute powerhouse asks of its audience is to pay strict attention and to keep an open mind.

“Rubber” is the story of a film director/lieutenant, dressed as a small-town sheriff, who is shooting a movie in the desert. His crew and cast consist of a bootlicking production assistant/accountant and several actors portraying deputies. A large audience, one of whom is wheelchair-bound, is given binoculars and told to stand at the top of a hill and await the show.

In the meantime, a tire arises on its own, falters and then steadies itself as it proceeds along a desert road.

Peep Show, Robert's Web, the end of Merlin, a repeat for Sherlock, and the conclusion of The Trip. Meet our UK TV round-up of what's coming...

After a couple weeks' break, we play catch-up this week with new programme starts, say goodbye with series finales, and hello once more to a very welcome return visit. All coming up in the next seven days on UK telly.

Last week, the excellent Peep Show, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, aired the first episode of its seventh series. Mark is now a dad, although a reluctant one initially, and there's evidence of plenty left in the tank for the show, even at this great running distance, as you can see in our review of the premiere here. The series continues on Channel 4 tonight, Friday, December 3rd at 10:00pm and if you want to catch up, you can watch episode 1 here.

Pete Hedges' new fantasy fable is coming together quickly. We reported a few weeks ago that Jennifer Garner was attached to star, and now comes the news that she'll be joined in The Odd Life of Timothy Green by Joel Edgerton.Edgerton (soon to be seen in The Thing) will play Garner's husband, and the father of the titular child. Previous reports hinted that young Timothy was some sort of strange musical prodigy, but the Heat Vision Blog describes the story centring on a childless couple who wish for a baby via a box-burying ritual in their back yard and wake up to find that they have a child, but that he's not all he appears.We may be reaching and wildly speculating here, but that's starting to sound like a reworking of Otesánek, the Czech folktale about a childless couple who "acquire" a weird baby that eats anything and...

Jan Švankmajer seems to have entered that slightly awkward phase of the arthouse auteur's career where he's apt to be underappreciated. The critics have already said all the obvious things about him, he's had a few films place in pantheonic positions of a kind (Dimensions of Dialogue, Alice), and so we're ready to allow the dust to gather on his legacy. Yet the Great Man remains obstinately and inconveniently alive, and still making films.

His latest, Surviving Life (Theory and Practice), is doing the festival rounds, while its immediate predecessor, Lunacy (2005), has faded into the obscurity of the recent-but-not-current. I'm as guilty as anyone of this neglect: I didn't see Lunacy when it came out. preferring to wait for DVD release. I admit to being less than enamored with Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), although I quite liked Little Otik (2000), and even participated in a TV play somewhat influenced by it. Needless to say,...

My first exposure to the work of legendary director Jan Svankmajer was his strangely creepy 2000 comedy “Little Otik”, which tells the sensitive story of a childless couple and their relationship with a peculiar root baby. That’s right — a root baby. Since then, I’ve consumed as much of the man’s output as I possibly could, including the man’s underrated 2005 endeavor “Lunacy”. Much to my giddy delight, Twitch has kindly posted the trailer for the filmmaker’s latest effort, the suitably bizarre “Surviving Life”. If you’ve never seen anything by Svankmajer, you might be a little perplexed by this clip, and that’s okay. We pass no judgments here at Beyond Hollywood. Not openly, anyway. Here’s a synopsis to clarify things: Eugene (Václav Helsus) leads a double life – married to Milada, he also dreams of the beautiful Evgenia (Klára Issová). Seeking to perpetuate his dream life,...

Roll up, roll up: there's a special offer on today's Clip joint – buy one, get one free. Georgie Hobbs goes four-eyed looking at movies within movies, little cinematic treats buried Kinder Surprise-style within the main feature

Some days it seems all new releases come with a two-for-one offer. You expected a single movie. But thrown in – totally free, probably somewhere round the middle – you got another. The film within a film looks like a device on the rise, from the not-yet-made The Spirit 3 that plays in a cinema in Kick-Ass, to the phoney trailers that kick off Tropic Thunder or Death Proof.

But it's not new, of course. As long as film-makers have been making films, they've been interested in getting metaphysical. So who's done it best? This month the BFI celebrates the work of the sole female director to emerge from the French new wave: Agnes Varda. Eighty-two last birthday and still going strong.

Just over a week ago Twitch brought you word of a Surviving Life [Theory and Practice] -- the latest effort from legendary director Jan Svankmajer. Svankmajer has built an international cult on the strength of films like Little Otik and Faust and is one of the most unique and compelling animators on the face of the planet. Anything new from the man is cause for immediate celebration and we're proud to bring you the first images released from Surviving Life. 

Eugene leads a double life - one real life, and another life in his dreams. In real life, he is married to Milada; in his dreams, he has a young lover called Eugenia. Sensing that these dreams have a deeper meaning, he goes to see a psychoanalyst, who interprets his dreams for him. Gradually we learn that Eugene lost his parents in early childhood and was brought up in an orphanage. In the meantime,...

By: Alison Nastasi

Gotta love those dark Germanic fairy tales. They are ripe with strange folklore, the supernatural, and some of the most grotesque creatures ever imagined. These stories are intrinsically woven into the fabric of horror culture. You would think there would be more amazing fairy tale film adaptations, but only a few immediately come to mind: The Company of Wolves, Little Otik, Snow White and the Seven Dwarf and Labyrinth. Perhaps they hold more magic on paper, but it's inevitable that filmmakers will continue to turn to these tales for inspiration.

Earlier this year it was reported that Tommy Wirkola, the Norwegian director behind the Nazi-zombie flick Dead Snow will make his first U.S. feature with Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. The film is being produced by Gary Sanchez Productions--the Paramount company run by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Chris Henchy and Kevin Messick.

Read the rest...

Having examined the American fright features populating the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival’s Midnight collection, it’s high time to look at a pair of European genre movies playing the event. One of them is actually part of the Spotlight section instead, as Lunacy's Czech writer/director Jan Svankmajer, at age 71, now qualifies as a Grand Old Man of oddball cinema as opposed to the young turks populating the Midnight realm. And despite its title, Lunacy may be the least “mad” of Svankmajer’s features, committing (pardon the pun) to a straightforward story interspersed with the filmmaker’s traditional surreal stop-motion animation. In an onscreen introduction, the filmmaker describes his latest work as “a horror film, with all the degeneracy of the genre,” and is interrupted by a fleshy animated tongue skittering past his feet. That’s a sign of things to come, as the stop-motion isn’t nearly as...

• Lunacy Czech madman and stop-motion guru Jan Svankmajer (Alice, Little Otik) returns with his latest bastard child, Lunacy. The plot concerns a nomad who may or may not be suffering delusions of paranoia. Taken in by a mysterious benefactor, he is led through a series of increasingly bizarre circumstances that ultimately question the degree of his own sanity and that of those around him. To introduce the film’s themes, Svankmajer himself appears onscreen to state that there are two competing ways in which to deal with psychosis - tolerance or punishment. Is he talking about Lunacy’s characters who all seem to be suffering from (or perhaps been set free by) some degree of madness or is he slyly referring to larger moral issues? Chock full of symbolism, Lunacy alternates between literal interludes of stop-motion slabs of meat that seem to be indulging in their own dementia and

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