Seven Classic WTF Moments In Cinema

There’s a moment in Ridley Scott’s new film The Counsellor where Cameron Diaz humps a car windshield. That’s really the most polite way to put it. Diaz — tackily tattooed and sporting a severe hairstyle that she swishes about like a diva as she watches over her pet cheetahs — is certainly game for it as her character hops up on top of her convertible and gives Javier Bardem’s drug lord a performance of pure smut that he oh so charmingly compares to a catfish. It certainly puts a new spin on auto-erotica! (zing).

The packed audience I saw the film with were noticeably shocked at what was unfolding, which then gave way to guffaws, and, eventually, broke out into spontaneous applause. If they were at all like me, then we were simply glad the filmmakers decided to do something that wasn’t completely and utterly boring and nihilistic. Whether writer Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men, but here writing an original screenplay for the first time) intended the scene to play out the way it did, I have no idea, but I certainly wish Scott had taken the bonkers cue and ran with it. The Counsellor could have used more car-humping and less lengthy monologues about death.

In honour of Diaz and her unrivalled flexibility, let’s take a look at some other ‘out of nowhere’ moments of cinematic insanity.

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Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Warning people about spoilers for 30-year-old movies seems silly, but here’s one nonetheless.

Yes, this slasher classic pulled the ol’ gender switcheroo long before The Crying Game (1992) became the biggest secret in Hollywood. The reveal of Sleepaway Camp’s teen-dispatching killer is rightly hailed as one of horror’s biggest shocks. When ‘Angela’, the quiet and bullied camper, is revealed to be a boy in disguise, the filmmakers got a local college student drunk, shaved his entire body, and filmed him in all of his full frontal glory. It’s a scene that surely raises eyebrows, and it turned the low-budget slasher into a famous classic. It’s unlikely the proposed remake will be as delightfully crazy.

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Cabin Fever (2002)

Another horror movie, but this time there’s genuinely no explanation that I can provide. Apparently made up on the spot by director Eli Roth and having no relevance to the plot whatsoever that I can recall, Cabin Fever‘s infamous “PANCAKES!” scene is bonkers through and through. Maybe if Roth had made more of his film as indecipherably strange then I would have liked it more, but as it is it’s a load of random nonsense.

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Hollywood isn’t exactly subtle with its representation of Asians in cinema, from casting the very Caucasian John Wayne as Mongol leader Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956) to Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles (1984). Perhaps the worst, however, is the wildly offensive portrayal of Mr Yunioshi in Blake Edwards’ Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961). Described upon release by The New York Times as a “bucktoothed, myopic Japanese” and “broadly exotic”, I can’t help but assume Edwards and Mickey Rooney genuinely lost their marbles when they decided to do this skit. The above scene from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) says it all.

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Mulholland Drive (2001)

One could choose any number of scenes from a David Lynch movie — how about the lady in the radiator scene from Eraserhead (1977), or Robert Blake’s mysterious telephone call in Lost Highway (1997), or just about anything with Sting in Dune (1984) — but perhaps the most alarming is this one from Lynch’s magnum opus, Mulholland Drive.

Despite the film’s reputation as an illogical puzzle box, Mulholland Drive is perhaps the famed director’s easiest film to go along with. However, no amount of self-convincing can truly explain the presence of the scary homeless woman behind the Winkies Diner (credited simply as ‘Bum‘). Theories run rampant and YouTube is full of fan-made recreations, but what remains undeniable to me is its twisted, mad genius.

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Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971)

Oh sweet baby Jesus, what did the children do to deserve this terrifying vision imprinted on their brains? Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971) is a childhood staple, but watch it as an adult and you might be somewhat bamboozled as to how. Why not skip the whole innocence of youth delusion we try to have with youngsters and just make them watch the stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey instead? As Veruca Salt exclaims, “What is this, a freak out?” Yes, my dear. Yes, it is.

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The Paperboy (2012)

We don’t need to discuss this one much since we did that earlier this week, but needless to say, when your movie features a scene in which Nicole Kidman gives John Cusack a telepathic blowjob and it’s still not the weirdest thing that happens, then there’s not much else to do than thank the movie gods.

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Spider-Man 3 (2007)

There was no other way to end this list than with perhaps the most baffling, nonsensical, discombobulating sequence in all of cinema, the Citizen Kane (1941) of non sequitur, bizarro world musical moments. “Now dig on this,” says Spidey, followed by a close-up of Tobey Maguire’s shakin’ butt. Really? Spider-Man 3 is clearly the worst in the trilogy, but did Sam Raimi really need to bow out on such a stupefyingly weird moment such as this?

At least it’s memorable, I guess. And in the case of several of these films, including The Counsellor, that’s pretty much all they’ve got going for them.

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The Counsellor is now showing in cinemas nationally.

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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer and film critic from Melbourne, and currently based in New York City. His work has been seen online (Onya Magazine, Quickflix), in print (The Big Issue, Metro Magazine, Intellect Books Ltd’s World Film Locations: Melbourne), as well as heard on Joy 94.9.