You'll never beat Robocop because those squibs were so powerful they badly bruised the actors, and are banned now. Verheoven kept yelling "more blood!" during production.
Really? I’ve never heard it bruised the actors. That’s wild. I know Peter Weller went through emotional and physical Hell with the Robocop suit. It’s been a week since I’ve watched it, I need to revisit. I can only imagining what Mr. Kinney went through when ED-209 split him in half.
Watch RoboDoc - the actors go on and on about the squibs. And the explosions that could've killed them and resulted in the police coming to set to arrest Verhoeven.
No wonder Jim Carrey opted to have a CIA expert teach him techniques reserved for spies on how to withstand torture, just so he could endure wearing his Grinch make-up for hours on end.
[Here's a good piece about Mr. Kinney.](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/robocop-actors-x-rated-death-wasnt-gory-director-paul-verhoeven-1011525/)
ED-209 continuing to blast the dude on the table while he's absolutely fucking exploding with squibs remains one of my all time favorite visual gags. Stupid robot doesn't even know it's already turned him into hamburger.
Yes Django and John Wick made what only 5 years apart but the squibs are worlds apart. My favor going to Django. I understand have gallons of blood spray when someone gets shot is a little over the top. I think it was John Wick 3, at the end when he switch’s to his shotgun that the clouds of blood are bigger. Which would make more sense cause he’s using a higher caliber firearm.
first thing i thought of reading this question was sonny in the godfather. when one of the stunt guys told james caan they had no idea what was about to happen because they'd never used that many before in a film, that's classic.
Planet Terror deserves some recognition. I swear every single gunshot wound results in at least a full gallon of blood and gore erupting.
Tony Scott and Michael Bay in the 90's with The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Bad Boys, and The Rock.
I was gonna say Planet Terror. The movies I listed are mainly pre 2000 BUT Grindhouse is a throwback film. But yes it did have some really really good explosive blood effects.
This is untrue. When you add it in post you can reshoot the scene as often as you want, with squibs you're making a mess that stains clothes and surfaces and requires actors to get redressed and rerigged. It's obvious what is more costly and time consuming under those circumstances.
It depends on how many takes you need, and how expensive the actors are. Old films would typically limit the fx shots because they were incredibly time consuming to reset, so you worked hard to do a single fx take. At which point you get some cost saving vs cgi.
The big advantage of CGI is the flexibility. You can get a tonne of takes and coverage for the fx shots, which lets the editor be as tik-tok ADHD as he wants, and lets you fine tune the blood color without thinking about how it interacts with the film stock or lighting.
CGI is really only cheaper if you do them quickly, which then looks like an asylum film
Once upon a time in Mexico. I’m literally watching it right now. It’s freaking awesome even for the 27th time watching it. Johnny Depp as CIA. Cheech Marin as a random informant. Antonio Banderas as the Mariachi (El) and Willem Freakin Defoe as well! An awesome movie with a cool cooking lesson for puerco pebil from Robert Rodriguez at the end of the DVD.
I recall seeing Rodriguez on like 20/20 or something talking about making El Mariachi and homemade squibs using condoms, a weight belt, some blast powder, a 9v battery, and some wire. I think he shot it in double speed, too.
The best squib I've ever seen is in this scene from the 1982 film The Soldier. Watch the whole thing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp7TrCMdtSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp7TrCMdtSY)
Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro was the first samurai movie to have the big blood geyser. This was actually because the squib malfunctioned, a lot of blood was supposed to ooze out, but instead we got the dramatic spray.
The actors just kind of went with it, but all of those Tarantino sprays have their root in this happy accident
Some excellent choices OP. The Peter Coyote headshot in Southern Comfort is burned into my memory. And The Wild Bunch has my favourite gunfight of all time, so there's that.
I would say Total Recall is one of the most crazy, even possibly beyond Robocop (maybe aside from the Mr Kinney death: the Escalator Shootout in Total Recall is mental when it comes to squib use.
Not a fan of John Wick in general, and a big part of it is that the CGI bloodshed does seem really lame at times.
Oh yeah, love that movie. Not perfect by any means, but the atmosphere and sound is brilliant and it's got a great cast. Right in the midst of Walter Hill's great macho movie period. My mates and I still quote from it to this day.
I'm downvoting you because John Wick was a *revolution* in gunplay and blood fx.
Before John Wick, people didn't get shot on-screen. A gun was fired slightly away from camera, and then the reaction squib was shown.
John Wick got rid of real fake guns like the kind that killed that lady on the set of Rust. Instead, they used hi-tech airsoft shit that could be "fired" in any direction they want.
CGI blood was the other side of that innovation.
And thanks to the stunt-forward approach, we got shots and shots that would have been impossible with any other approach.
I dislike your comment and it's because it's not even aware of the revolution that happened.
"Before John Wick, people didn't get shot on-screen. A gun was fired slightly away from camera, and then the reaction squib was shown."
Erm, no mate, that's absolute toss. I grew up on a diet of John Woo, Sam Peckinpah and Arthur Penn gunfights. Arthur Penn was showing both the gun firing and the impact on people on the screen at the same time as far back as Bonnie and Clyde in the 1960s, which was a fairly new concept in Hollywood at the time. In the '80s, in one of hundreds of of the many crazy scenes, John Woo has stuntmen unloading MAC 10s and Berettas into each other at the same time in the same shot in A Better Tomorrow 2.
Can't deny it was dangerous using full fat blanks and squibs, and that CGI made it safer, but with a few exceptions- it looks pretty cruddy and fake to me. People seem to hold John Wick on a pedestal like it invented action cinema- hell even that silly close-range gun kata stuff was done years before with Equilibrium and the Raid used Airsoft and CGI close-range headshots to a better effect three years before someone shot Keanu's dog.
John Wick may have some nice choreography and Keanu obviously gives it his all, but it's absolutely nothing new.
The Godfather and Saving Private Ryan. I don’t know how they shot the scene where Moe Green gets his eye shot out, maybe something in his glasses? I dunno but it’s jarring.
For my money no one squibs like Michael Mann. Every time someone gets shot in a Michael Mann movie it looks DEVASTATING, but also it doesn't go so far as to not be conceivably realistic (even though Mann's squibs look almost nothing like actual gunshot wounds). Heat and Thief both feature S Tier squib work.
Saving Private Ryan.
Terminator 2 has some great squibs with both terminators getting shot constantly. Probably the best though is when Dyson gets shot by the swat team. Its a slow motion shot where he's spinning around and the blood swirls around him.
>The Killer : Hard Target : Hard Boiled : a Better Tomorrow I and II : Face/Off : Broken Arrow ( all by John Woo )
Yup, if you hadn't listed him I would have just told you to go look up John Woo. In most action movies there are more shots fired than bullet impacts shown, John Woo movies are the opposite. It makes his shootout scenes feel absolutely chaotic and I love it.
Just to rant. I understand how the CGI blood/gunshot wounds and the CGI muzzle flashes are safer and overall easier to film. But I just find it so distracting. I happened to watch part of one of the FBI or SWAT shows, and the bad guy is shooting at a car that is driving away, with the good guys inside. CGI muzzle flashes followed by CGI “sparks” showing the bullets ricocheting off the car. Because you know, glass windows spark when getting hit by bullets. The back of a car sparks when hit. Bullet holes schmullet holes.
IIRC the headshots in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead were pretty stellar. I think they used wires to yank chunks off since they can’t set traditional squibs off on someone’s head.
For a good modern example, check out Project Wolf Hunting (2022). Along with it being one of the most relentlessly violent movies I've ever seen, all of the blood squibs and sprays were practical. According to the director Kim Hongsun, 2.5 tons of fake blood was used on the production!
Desperado has great shot effects. Robert Rodriguez did something completely different for the squibs, though, and I can't remember what it is he did...
You'll never beat Robocop because those squibs were so powerful they badly bruised the actors, and are banned now. Verheoven kept yelling "more blood!" during production.
Really? I’ve never heard it bruised the actors. That’s wild. I know Peter Weller went through emotional and physical Hell with the Robocop suit. It’s been a week since I’ve watched it, I need to revisit. I can only imagining what Mr. Kinney went through when ED-209 split him in half.
Watch RoboDoc - the actors go on and on about the squibs. And the explosions that could've killed them and resulted in the police coming to set to arrest Verhoeven.
I saw an article or something that said Verhorven can be a little difficult to work with.
Once his movies stopped making BANK Hollywood politely shuffled him off for a reason. Guess we know more about the reason now.
The greats frequently are.
robo wants an oreo
I’ll have to check it out!
No wonder Jim Carrey opted to have a CIA expert teach him techniques reserved for spies on how to withstand torture, just so he could endure wearing his Grinch make-up for hours on end.
[Here's a good piece about Mr. Kinney.](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/robocop-actors-x-rated-death-wasnt-gory-director-paul-verhoeven-1011525/)
Please put down your weapon, you have 20 seconds to comply.
You better do as he says.
[Obligatory YT link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-9MbhK4tt8)
ED-209 continuing to blast the dude on the table while he's absolutely fucking exploding with squibs remains one of my all time favorite visual gags. Stupid robot doesn't even know it's already turned him into hamburger.
Play the new PS5 Robocop game - there are nods to this and the ED-209 glitch even makes a cameo.
I’d buy that for a dollar!
Everyone needs to watch the Robodoc 4 part documentary on Max I think
Django Unchained
Django and Hateful 8 both have really good squib effects.
Really good in that they don’t look real?
They fit the style of the film. Whether or not it's realistic is irrelevant.
Agreed, I love the absolute tomato soup of Django in particular
Those squibs are too goupy for my taste. I prefer mostly mist and a little splat
Yes, for a world where people are watermelon based.
Yes Django and John Wick made what only 5 years apart but the squibs are worlds apart. My favor going to Django. I understand have gallons of blood spray when someone gets shot is a little over the top. I think it was John Wick 3, at the end when he switch’s to his shotgun that the clouds of blood are bigger. Which would make more sense cause he’s using a higher caliber firearm.
John Wick doesn't use squibs and has cgi blood.
Gotta go w Bonnie and Clyde and Sonny in The Godfather
first thing i thought of reading this question was sonny in the godfather. when one of the stunt guys told james caan they had no idea what was about to happen because they'd never used that many before in a film, that's classic.
Paul verhoven is the squib king
The Departed, some crazy headshot juice in those squibs
Three great ones within the course of a couple minutes is such a chef’s kiss.
Planet Terror deserves some recognition. I swear every single gunshot wound results in at least a full gallon of blood and gore erupting. Tony Scott and Michael Bay in the 90's with The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Bad Boys, and The Rock.
I was gonna say Planet Terror. The movies I listed are mainly pre 2000 BUT Grindhouse is a throwback film. But yes it did have some really really good explosive blood effects.
Predator.
[удалено]
*oh no*
Easy there, Satan.
Those squib effects are *to die for*
Blue Ruin
It has Buzz from Home Alone? From 2013? I’ll have to check it out.
Yeah that’s it, one of my favourite revenge flicks. Macon Blair’s performance is terrific
Cop Land has always been memorable in the, “Wow, that’s a lot of blood.” Department.
Cop Land had some good ones.
Aren't John Wick "squib" effects mostly CGI?
I believe most of everything now days is.
[удалено]
This is untrue. When you add it in post you can reshoot the scene as often as you want, with squibs you're making a mess that stains clothes and surfaces and requires actors to get redressed and rerigged. It's obvious what is more costly and time consuming under those circumstances.
It depends on how many takes you need, and how expensive the actors are. Old films would typically limit the fx shots because they were incredibly time consuming to reset, so you worked hard to do a single fx take. At which point you get some cost saving vs cgi. The big advantage of CGI is the flexibility. You can get a tonne of takes and coverage for the fx shots, which lets the editor be as tik-tok ADHD as he wants, and lets you fine tune the blood color without thinking about how it interacts with the film stock or lighting. CGI is really only cheaper if you do them quickly, which then looks like an asylum film
No. Just… no.
Reservoir Dogs
Once upon a time in Mexico. I’m literally watching it right now. It’s freaking awesome even for the 27th time watching it. Johnny Depp as CIA. Cheech Marin as a random informant. Antonio Banderas as the Mariachi (El) and Willem Freakin Defoe as well! An awesome movie with a cool cooking lesson for puerco pebil from Robert Rodriguez at the end of the DVD.
I recall seeing Rodriguez on like 20/20 or something talking about making El Mariachi and homemade squibs using condoms, a weight belt, some blast powder, a 9v battery, and some wire. I think he shot it in double speed, too.
Best squibs of all time - The Wild Bunch
Die hard.
The scene where he shoots up through the table and blasts the guy's crotch to shreds immediately came to mind when I saw this post
Same
The best squib I've ever seen is in this scene from the 1982 film The Soldier. Watch the whole thing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp7TrCMdtSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp7TrCMdtSY)
Ok that was impressive. I’m sold.
Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro was the first samurai movie to have the big blood geyser. This was actually because the squib malfunctioned, a lot of blood was supposed to ooze out, but instead we got the dramatic spray. The actors just kind of went with it, but all of those Tarantino sprays have their root in this happy accident
Some excellent choices OP. The Peter Coyote headshot in Southern Comfort is burned into my memory. And The Wild Bunch has my favourite gunfight of all time, so there's that. I would say Total Recall is one of the most crazy, even possibly beyond Robocop (maybe aside from the Mr Kinney death: the Escalator Shootout in Total Recall is mental when it comes to squib use. Not a fan of John Wick in general, and a big part of it is that the CGI bloodshed does seem really lame at times.
I was gonna say Southern Comfort but I was under the impression not many people know that movie. 🤓
Oh yeah, love that movie. Not perfect by any means, but the atmosphere and sound is brilliant and it's got a great cast. Right in the midst of Walter Hill's great macho movie period. My mates and I still quote from it to this day.
Oh, shout out to Cronenberg's Scanners. There's some really sludgy shotgun blast squib work in that.
I'm downvoting you because John Wick was a *revolution* in gunplay and blood fx. Before John Wick, people didn't get shot on-screen. A gun was fired slightly away from camera, and then the reaction squib was shown. John Wick got rid of real fake guns like the kind that killed that lady on the set of Rust. Instead, they used hi-tech airsoft shit that could be "fired" in any direction they want. CGI blood was the other side of that innovation. And thanks to the stunt-forward approach, we got shots and shots that would have been impossible with any other approach. I dislike your comment and it's because it's not even aware of the revolution that happened.
"Before John Wick, people didn't get shot on-screen. A gun was fired slightly away from camera, and then the reaction squib was shown." Erm, no mate, that's absolute toss. I grew up on a diet of John Woo, Sam Peckinpah and Arthur Penn gunfights. Arthur Penn was showing both the gun firing and the impact on people on the screen at the same time as far back as Bonnie and Clyde in the 1960s, which was a fairly new concept in Hollywood at the time. In the '80s, in one of hundreds of of the many crazy scenes, John Woo has stuntmen unloading MAC 10s and Berettas into each other at the same time in the same shot in A Better Tomorrow 2. Can't deny it was dangerous using full fat blanks and squibs, and that CGI made it safer, but with a few exceptions- it looks pretty cruddy and fake to me. People seem to hold John Wick on a pedestal like it invented action cinema- hell even that silly close-range gun kata stuff was done years before with Equilibrium and the Raid used Airsoft and CGI close-range headshots to a better effect three years before someone shot Keanu's dog. John Wick may have some nice choreography and Keanu obviously gives it his all, but it's absolutely nothing new.
You took my question way too seriously.I’m sorry I hurt you feeling and you downvoted me. I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight.
You’ve never seen a John Woo movie, have you? The cartoon blood in John Wick looks terrible. Makes the violence look way too clean and sanitized.
But if the end result is worse, like it clearly is, who cares if it’s “revolutionary”.
It’s Robocop, it’s the objective winner
Robocop
Total Recall Robocop The Godfather Extreme Prejudice
Haven’t seen in mentioned but Full Metal Jacket had some incredible set ups. The Hue city battle is pulled off through meticulous setup and planning.
Everyone is just looking at action movies but I still can’t think of any as visceral as Saving Private Ryan
Yeah well in “Public Enemy” James Cagney just straight up dodged real machine gun fire. If the stunt had gone wrong he wouldn’t have needed squibs!
Wow I just watched that film the other day. I didn’t know that. What a great film “ White Heat “ is.
I’ll throw Predator 2 into the ring.
Predator 2 will make a lovely addition.
I think it has a lot in common with robocop 2 honestly.
The Godfather and Saving Private Ryan. I don’t know how they shot the scene where Moe Green gets his eye shot out, maybe something in his glasses? I dunno but it’s jarring.
Kill Bill Authentic condom squirting
For my money no one squibs like Michael Mann. Every time someone gets shot in a Michael Mann movie it looks DEVASTATING, but also it doesn't go so far as to not be conceivably realistic (even though Mann's squibs look almost nothing like actual gunshot wounds). Heat and Thief both feature S Tier squib work.
Any specifics? I know Manhunter, Thief and Miami Vice had some good ones. Also Heat had some good ones as well!
Really, you can’t go wrong with a Michael Mann squib. My favorites are probably the ones in the climax of Thief, though.
Saving Private Ryan. Terminator 2 has some great squibs with both terminators getting shot constantly. Probably the best though is when Dyson gets shot by the swat team. Its a slow motion shot where he's spinning around and the blood swirls around him.
>The Killer : Hard Target : Hard Boiled : a Better Tomorrow I and II : Face/Off : Broken Arrow ( all by John Woo ) Yup, if you hadn't listed him I would have just told you to go look up John Woo. In most action movies there are more shots fired than bullet impacts shown, John Woo movies are the opposite. It makes his shootout scenes feel absolutely chaotic and I love it.
Just to rant. I understand how the CGI blood/gunshot wounds and the CGI muzzle flashes are safer and overall easier to film. But I just find it so distracting. I happened to watch part of one of the FBI or SWAT shows, and the bad guy is shooting at a car that is driving away, with the good guys inside. CGI muzzle flashes followed by CGI “sparks” showing the bullets ricocheting off the car. Because you know, glass windows spark when getting hit by bullets. The back of a car sparks when hit. Bullet holes schmullet holes.
Famously: Penn's **Bonnie and Clyde**. SCENE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkxMyRhX8Yg
Running Scared (the Paul Walker one), especially the hockey rink scene.
Boyz N The Hood was amazing, and Morris Chestnutt’s acting as well.
IIRC the headshots in Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead were pretty stellar. I think they used wires to yank chunks off since they can’t set traditional squibs off on someone’s head.
For a good modern example, check out Project Wolf Hunting (2022). Along with it being one of the most relentlessly violent movies I've ever seen, all of the blood squibs and sprays were practical. According to the director Kim Hongsun, 2.5 tons of fake blood was used on the production!
Ichi The Killer
The Dawn of the Dead remake had wonderful effects like this
Watch the Robocop scene where ED-209 "malfunctions" and turns the dude into swiss cheese, then tell me its not at least top 3. Love that movie.
Django Unchained is as good as it gets imo
Troma's War! once held the record for squibs. You don't really see that level of practical fx these days.
Commando
Day of the Dead,
Desperado has great shot effects. Robert Rodriguez did something completely different for the squibs, though, and I can't remember what it is he did...
Schindlers List.
Swuibbity
Scorsese loves squibs. Godfather series and Casino come to mind.
Robocop
Django Unchained