When it comes to the movies, comedy was my first love.
Sure, horror has my heart these days, but I can’t deny that for a huge portion of my young life I was a slapstick devotee. I knew most of the Three Stooges’ schticks by heart, couldn’t get enough of anything Leslie Nielsen was in and was much more interested in what old movie Comedy Central was re-airing than anything on Nickelodeon or Disney.
I didn’t know much about Idle Hands (1999) when it came out. Its release predated my interest in horror by several years but the preview had looked funny, sort of like if Cheech and Chong had made a zombie flick. Sure, blood and gore wasn’t really my thing at the time, but, I figured how bad could that stuff be if it was packaged in a comedy?
When it was all said and done, Idle Hands turned out to be the goriest movie I had ever seen up to that point. It’s references were totally lost on me— I didn’t even get the Evil Dead 2 (1987) connection for God’s sake. It had thrown me. Unsettled me.
But, still, it was funny.
I had seen Scream (1996) by then and Scream 2 (1997), so I was vaguely familiar with the melding of comedy and horror, but never had seen something so brazen as this. My mind was conflicted, repulsed by the gross but drawn in by the levity.
The more I thought about the experience, the more I saw the similarities that horror and comedy tended to share. As countless others have realized, creating a scare was a lot like generating a laugh. Both required careful timing, situational discomfort and a keen understanding of the intended audience. Both genres dealt in the absurd, the extreme and the fringes of social acceptability in order to explore human nature in a far more biting way than most straight-forward pictures have the ability to do.
As I grew older, my tastes altered. Expanded. Grew to encompass more types of movies, genres of entertainment, but that part of me which loved the overtly comical sensibilities of something like Monty Python or Mel Brooks didn’t ever really go away. So it was that, when I finally found my way to horror, the horror-comedy was of particular interest to me… and that particular path all started with Idle Hands.
The movie balances its conflicting tones in a number of ways, often leaning on the blatant, blasé nature of the characters in the face of the outrageous or grotesque to enhance the humor. But it’s the scene where Anton severs his own hand that best represents these sensibilities.
On the page, the scene is dramatically different, revolving around the influence of Satan himself (something the screenplay makes heavy use of that the film all but dispels) as opposed to the start-stop, comic-relief nature of what appears on screen. The juxtaposition of the two versions not only speaks to what makes the finished scene so successful, but the evolutionary nature of comedy as its transported from text to the frame.
THE SCENE
Anton steadies his hand under the blade of a bagel slicer. Mick and Pnub attempt to talk him out of it, but Anton screams and thrusts down the small guillotine. It doesn’t work. Mick attempts to hand him an electric slicer which dies once the cord is pulled out of the wall. Anton grabs a large cleaver and starts slamming it down as his hand darts around the countertop. Finally, he puts his hand in the mouth of Pnub’s severed head and tells him to bite down. He slams the cleaver down and cuts off the hand, which falls to the floor twitching. Anton screams, holding his stump as Mick runs over with a hot iron to cauterize the wound. Mick and Pnub leave to get some first aid supplies for Anton and Anton passes out from the pain.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
While the purpose and general thrust of the scene is the same, the page and the screen are very different.
The screenplay gets straight to the point, opening with: Anton grabs the still-bloody knife and pulls out the cutting board. He lays his right hand on the cutting board and RAISES THE KNIFE with his left. There’s a brief exchange with Mick and Pnub and within a few lines, Anton proceeds with his plan.
Anton grits his teeth, raises the knife high in the air, and SWINGS it down. The knife STOPS in mid-air, less than an inch above his right wrist.
“It’s not me,” Anton cries, struggling to swing down the knife, “Satan’s trying to stop me.”
The script depicts a struggle where Anton concentrates, trying with all his might to force the knife down despite it being unmovable. Anton jumps into the air and uses the entire weight of his body to force the knife down THROUGH HIS WRIST. The end result is a gory display: Not only is blood spewing out fast and thick, but his hand is still PARTIALLY ATTACHED to his wrist. It dangles by a thread.
Right from the start, the scene is sapped of its comedy, focusing on the serious task and the terrifying underlying nature of the entity bringing it about. When the hand is severed, it’s done with a jarring grotesqueness that unsettles more than it does call to attention the unfettered absurdity that the characters have found themselves in.
In the film, the scene opens on a close up of Anton’s hand. It squirms as he wraps a rubber band around it. Then, the image cuts to an ominous, low angle shot of something labeled, “Bagel Guillotine”. The humor is front and center, the mundane, poor planning and execution skills of the protagonist on full display as the viewer considers the undoubtedly poor impact a bagel slicer will have on a human wrist.
Mick and Pnub enter the scene from the room adjacent, engaging in an exchange that mirrors the script. A few lines are added, Mick asking how Anton plans on cutting off his other hand and Anton responding, “Oh, the left one’s a keeper… I guess it wasn’t idle enough.” Everything from the generally casual nature of the shot-reverse-shot conversation, to the mild-mannered way Pnub places his severed head on the table with a grunt and a loud squelching sound feels light and breezy— funny in its preposterousness.
By the time the screenplay has Anton’s hand dangling by a thread, the scene in the film has only just begun to depict Anton’s attempt to cut the appendage off. Despite Pnub’s warning in the film that the slicer “won’t even cut my bagel”, Anton screams and slams the slicer down. After a short beat, he looks and finds the slicer bent upwards around his wrist which remains completely intact.
While the script reads, Anton, grimacing in incredible agony, grabs his right hand and JERKS IT OFF, the film follows Anton as he points to Mick and shouts, “grab the electric carver”. Instead of the pain and agony on the page, the film follows an energetic Mick as he grabs the carver, a look of purpose on his face which begets the reversal of all three characters’ idleness that has landed them in this situation to begin with.
Chuckling in a medium wide shot, Mick wields the electric carver and turns it on, shouting, “look at me, I’m Leatherface!” He runs forward, only to pull the plug from the wall and have the carver die out. The screenplay makes no time for silly asides, rather pushes forward to the next hand. Unlike the film, the script calls for Anton to sever both in fear that Satan himself will simply possess the other that’s still attached.
Anton frowns. Holding the knife in his left hand, he makes a few backwards slashing attempts, but doesn’t even come close to reaching his left wrist.
The humor here is oddly subdued, still being drawn from the absurdly grotesque nature of the situation, but with a little less personality. Still, Anton similarly does ask, “Mick, be a bud and cut off my hand?” To which Mick replies quickly, “Too gross.” Anton continues, trying to push the knife through with his foot and even attempts to grip the knife in his teeth, bobbing up and down over the arm. This is the closest the screenplay comes to the silly sort of dance with his hand that Anton has onscreen.
Finally, Mick remarks, “I really don’t think self-mutilation’s the answer here, Anton. I mean, you’re dealing with Satan — no matter what you do, he’ll find a way to fuck with you.” That’s when Anton spits the knife out and clutches his towel-wrapped stump as the tip of a shiny, double edged BLADE pokes through the bloody towel, EXTENDING from Anton’s wrist.
The scripted revelation that the devil himself is forcing a blade to grow organically out of Anton’s flesh practically feels like it’s from a different movie. The event is far more focused on the outrageous power of Satan and the impossible nature of any sort of victory Anton might have over him than the zany misadventure presented in the finished film. While the events in the screenplay generate more potential for fear and unease, they continue to leave less room for comedy.
The film does away with all of this, instead depicting Anton reaching into a hodgepodge kitchen drawer to remove a large cleaver. Again, he braces himself for the pain, raising the cleaver high above his head and yelling loudly as he swings it down. The image cuts to a close up of the hand which dives out of the way, just in time. This goes on for a few seconds, Anton slamming the cleaver furiously down as his hand darts about the table in a cartoonish display.
Peppered throughout are shots of Mick and Pnub. At first, Mick flinches when the cleaver comes down, but after a few attempts, he shrugs and almost looks disappointed. Pnub’s head merely seems uncomfortable as the cleaver slams down all around him. After a moment of this, the shot starts in a medium on Anton and Pnub’s head, moving in to a close up on Pnub. Anton shoves his hand in Pnub’s mouth and asks him to bite down. Pnub mutters through clenched teeth, “don’t cut me man!”
Once again, Anton raises the cleaver and releases an animalistic scream. The ritual has occurred so many times in the past few minutes that it’s more funny than distressing. The vaudevillian way in which the hand had hitherto evaded mutilation makes the splat of the cleaver as it slices through flesh just offscreen more satisfyingly silly than plainly gross.
There is no talk of Satan, no blade emerging from flesh, simply Anton’s pained screams and Pnub’s off-the-cuff, immature response, “you scream like a girl”. In a wide shot, Mick runs into the other room and returns wielding an iron, generating a “what’re you doing?” from Anton. Without a word, Mick slams the iron onto Anon’s stump, prompting a loud, curdling sizzle accompanied by the smoke of burning flesh. Anton screams and Mick responds, as casual as ever, “gotta stop the blood flow, you know?”
The screenplay still concludes with Mick and Pnub leaving to retrieve first-aid, reflecting much of the dialogue that appears in the film. Still, the two undead stoners’ roles in the scene are small in the script, their comments and participation sparse or non-existent as compared to the film. This leaves the scene perhaps feeling darker and more upsetting than intended and the comedy a bit more flat.
In the end, Anton’s lopped off hand does spring to life in the script before the scene concludes. The hand crawls up his pant leg and onto his shirt and brushes against the bare skin at the base of Anton’s neck. The hand grabs him by the throat and he falls to the ground as the hand’s knuckles turn white, squeezing hard. Anton is forced to move his blade-appendage between the hand and his throat, cutting his neck but prying the hand loose.
From out of nowhere, CHILLINGLY SINISTER LAUGHTER erupts.
The scene leaves the reader with Satan’s direct communication with Anton, the laughter signifying that Anton is indeed his plaything. The hand takes control and raises the abandoned knife, ready to cut off Anton’s other hand before being interrupted by the doorbell.
Onscreen, the scene concludes very differently. Mick and Pnub leave to get first-aid (“and burritos”, according to Pnub). Anton, woozy from the blood loss, teeters in a medium wide shot before passing out with a slight moan.
No disembodied laughter, no battle with his other hand— not yet, at least. Instead the scene leaves the viewer with a sense of faux-closure, the characters thinking they have defeated the evil and a tone which begets the bizarre and silly as opposed to the dark and demented. While the act of severing an evil limb is certainly a disturbing one, the film balances it with the appropriate amount of buoyant hilarity, helped very much by the presence and participation of its resident zombie potheads.
Ultimately, the film’s simplification and tonal shift allows the scene to carry the weight it needs to within the narrative, while staying true to the nature and humor of the remainder of its runtime. The scope of the screenplay is impressive and its villain far more terrifying, but the ecosystem of a horror comedy is a fragile one and the finished scene seems to serve that balance far better than what appeared on the page.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“I think every healthy person at one point in their life has been the kid at the table who sticks peas up their nose,” said director Rodman Flender, quoted in a 1999 CNN article written by Andy Culpepper (Found Here), “I know it’s something I used to like to do. I think that’s what attracts — that’s the attraction of this film.”
Comedy will always be my first love in film. Which is why no matter how steeped in horror that I become, a good horror-comedy will always speak to me on a deeply personal level. Certainly some work better than others, and rarely are they perfect, but the mixing of flavors present in the best the sub-genre has to offer can sometimes be the strangest, freshest and most fun way to spend 90 minutes.
There are a lot of reasons the movie works as well as it does: Devon Sawa’s fantastic performance, the chemistry between the supporting characters and the appropriately spooky Halloween backdrop, to name a few. But it’s the melding of these elements that brings the narrative to life, something that becomes incredibly apparent during the scene where Anton chops off his own hand.
On the page, the scene contained an element of darkness, of gruesome gore and otherworldly influence that toned down the humor and ratcheted up the horror. In the finished film, the scene evolved into more of a slapstick showcase, allowing for the characters to have some fun despite the off-putting nature of the sequence’s premise.
Of course, horror and gore were still an integral part of why the sequence works. A combination of a practical prosthetics and digital effects bring Pnub’s head to life as it sits on the table, Elden Henson at times performing the severed body part himself, seated below the table. In a reference to Evil Dead 2, an animatronic hand was created, shown twitching on the floor once severed, adding a sense of realism to the otherwise fantastical situation.
Elaborate effects aside, much hinged on Devon Sawa’s ability to play the stoner with the possessed, evil hand. In the same article mentioned above, the actor talked about his performance:
“When I read the script I was so attracted to it. I was so excited. It was such a challenge for an actor to do something like this, and I love to be challenged… The way we went, me and my hand just spent a lot of time working together.”
Comedy and horror are two volatile art forms. Capable of working entirely or not working at all with just the tweak of a few seconds between lines or the slightest shift in mannerisms or reactionary acts. Timing is everything. From the page to the screen, every decision matters and ultimately leads to the finished work, for better or for worse.
In the case of Idle Hands, a lot of creative personalities were at play, all lending their talents and skills to a project that changed dramatically from conception to reality— creating something that no one of them could have created solely on their own. I may not have realized it at the time, but it introduced me into the world of horror-comedy that I had only ever seen hinted at previously. And, if you can’t tell, I liked what I saw.
Over the years, I have come to learn that the gory horror-comedy is not for everyone. That some, see it as an affront. Still, for those of us that enjoy such films, there is rarely a better treat. I think Rodman Flender said it best during the original press junket for the film:
“I hope people laugh and scream and have a good time. I think it’s a good date movie… I hope dates elbow each other and ask, ‘How could you?’ I hope people have fun.”
Now there’s a guy who gets it.
Idle Hands (1999): Written by Terri Hughes and Ron Milbauer & Directed by Rodman Flender
