17. Birthday Party – Signs
Oh, did you see that? Don’t panic: it’s only the SCARIEST THING EVER PUT ON SCREEN, courtesy of M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. So imagine you’re at some kids’ birthday party in Brazil (don’t ask why) when aliens decide to invade the planet, and hey – there’s one of them, just hanging out in the yard, sniffing around for those inevitable cake and ice cream leftovers. Pausing this moment only makes the nightmares worse, and yet… we all did it, didn’t we? Yeaah, we did.
16. The Exploding Head – Scanners
There’s only one thing that everyone remembers about David Cronenberg’s Scanners, and it’s the fact that a man’s head explodes in full-on, gory detail at one point during the movie. When this thing came to VHS, then, geeks spent a lot of time trying to pause Scanners at the exact moment of explodingness. Were they trying to work out how the director made it all look so convincing? Had they gone temporarily insane? Do people secretly just want to see what an exploding head looks like when you pause it mid-way through? Yep: it’s the last one.
15. The Whiteboard – Cabin in the Woods
If there’s even an inch of nerd in you, there’s absolutely no way that you got to this point in Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s spectacular meta-horror movie Cabin in the Woods without grabbing for your remote control. It’s moments like this which really separate the theatrical experience with the home release, of course, because – for some reason – cinemas don’t like it when you shout “PAUSE THE MOVIE! I WANT TO READ WHAT’S WRITTEN ON THE WHITEBOARD BEFORE WE GO ON!” during a screening. Fascists.
14. Pazuzu – The Exorcist
One horror movie fans heard that director William Friedkin had slipped various frames of a terrifying, pale-faced demon man into The Exorcist, they made it their job to track down those moments on VHS. They might have regretted doing so, given that Pazuzu – as he’s known – is scary enough to haunt your dreams forever. There are a few instances of this guy popping up, and if you value your sanity, you’ll stay away from the pause button.
13. Butch’s Goods - Pulp Fiction
Quentin Tarantino’s movies are pretty much primed for pausing, given how dense and layered they are, both verbally and visually. Still, I’m not sure why casual fans of Pulp Fiction took such an interest in moments like: “Can I see Bruce Willis’ penis in this scene if I pause it hard enough?” Rumour is that you can actually get a glimpse of Willis’ little friend during the shower scene at the hotel in “The Gold Watch” segment – whether that’s a good thing or not is entirely up to you. It’s okay: you don’t have to tell us.
12. Three Boobs – Total Recall
As the old saying goes: “three boobs are better than one.” Or, at least, that’s how it would had we not just made it up. There’s no doubting that the part most people remember about Total Recall involves a mutant prostitute from Mars (it’s that kind of movie) approaching Arnold Schwarzenegger and exposing her triple assets. Teenagers the world over ignored the fact that such a trait was caused by a terrible genetic mutation, and utilised their pause button to, uh, get a load of all that wonderful make-up work. Yeah, that’s it.
11. I Am A Star – Boogie Nights
You sure are, Mark Wahlberg. And you’ve got one ginormous penis. Or, at least, your character in Boogie Nights does. Paul Thomas Anderson decided to finish his sort of John Holmes porn-based biopic in a hugely memorable fashion – basically by having Wahlberg’s character, Dirk Diggler, reach into his trousers and take out his weapon. Sure, it’s prosthetic, and sure, we spent a lot of time pausing this moment to try and work that out.
10. Ghost! – Three Men and a Baby
The director’s decision to leave a cardboard cutout in the background of a scene from ’80s comedy Three Men and a Baby gave rise to a myth about there being a ghost visible if you looked hard enough. See it there as Ted Danson walks by? Kind of eerie, actually. Pausing this moment became standard procedure when people got bored of looking for that dead munchkin everyone thought was hanging from the light fixture in The Wizard of Oz and wanted to freak out their friends at sleepovers. A cardboard cutout was absolutely the way to do that.
9. Hey, Was That Leonard? – Memento
Christopher Nolan’s Memento is arguably his best work, and it’s subtle touches like this one that got everyone saying things like OMG THIS GUY IS FREAKIN’ AMAZING, before Batman Begins was even a thing. Memento tells the story of a guy with memory problems (I forgot the plot), but this moment where – whilst telling an anecdote – Guy Pearce’s character, Leonard Shelby, briefly takes the place of a guy in his story, was made for the pause button. Stop it at the right second, then, and you were treated to a sly frame of our protagonist.
8. Closet Death – Burn After Reading
There’s something about a headshot coming out of nowhere that makes us want to go back and pause the movie during the moment of impact – let’s call it Scanners syndrome, for lack of a better term. Brad Pitt’s death comes so very unexpectedly in the Coen’s Burn After Reading, and it all happens in less than a second. Which means we totally went back to see what this handsome fellow looked like the moment that bullet entered his skull. Yes, we’re weird here.
7. When This Happened… – Wild Things
We won’t insult your intelligence by explaining why this is good.
6. The Skull – Psycho
After all the sh*t has gone down Psycho, Norman Bates ends up in a mental institution, where we see that he seems to have taken on his mother’s persona entirely. To suggest this in something of a subliminal fashion, then, Hitchcock overlays a cheeky frame of a skull-faced Norman whilst we listen to to him nattering on in Norma Bates’ voice. You had to be super quick to get this one paused at just the right time – people went mad trying to do such a thing in the VHS days. Then again, we all go a little mad sometimes, don’t we?
5. Flexibility – Entrapment
Sometimes you need to pause a movie in order to really appreciate the time and effort that the filmmakers took to create a sequence of astounding quality. And sometimes you need to pause a movie in order to really appreciate whatever it is that Catherine Zeta-Jones’ butt is doing. Sean Connery was in Entrapment, you say? We only remember this scene. And funnily enough, absolutely none of the plot, either. Pause and admire.
4. Tyler Flash – Fight Club
With Fight Club, David Fincher purposely set out to screw with you – and boy did he succeed. All throughout the flick, we’re treated to various subtle moments that Fincher clearly put in so that you’d think you were going insane (in a pre “I’ll check it on DVD” era). Which includes splicing single frames of Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden, into the movie at random just to throw off your senses. Sure, you can argue the merit of such inclusions, but that’s not the point. The point is: David Fincher, you absolute b*stard.
3. When Phoebe Cates… Well, You Know – Fast Times At Ridgemont High
Fast Times At Ridgemont High has a lot going for it, but there are, uh, “two” things in-particular that most people recall when somebody mentions the name of this movie. That’s to say, many an adolescent boy spent the sum of those long, summer evenings pausing it at the exact moment when Phoebe Cates climbs out of the pool, walks towards the camera, and unhooks her bikini top from the middle. This is just a fantasy scene in the film, of course, which begs the question: was it necessary? Well, presumably they cast Cates, saw her in a bikini, and felt that it was their God-given responsibility to show the word her assets. Let the pausing commence!
2. Sex? – The Lion King
When it comes to messages and secrets hidden with the frames of their products, it’s the Walt Disney Company who reign supreme – though that’s probably not something they’d be proud to admit. Yes, Disney’s position as a children’s company means that they’re automatically the most interesting to investigate in this department – and there are lots of Disney movies rumoured to have suspicious things lurking in their frames. I guess the animators – for all their creativity – never imagined audiences would be able to pause from the comfort of their living room.
Out of all the rumoured Disney pause moments, then, the one that seemed to irk parents the most was the apparently intentional inclusion of the word “SEX” in The Lion King, which occurs as Simba slumps down on a cliff and blows a bunch of leaves in the air. Disney defended this as a purposeful nod to the sound effects “SFX” department, of course, because that’s exactly what the Walt Disney Company would say. SFX. Sure.
1. The Leg Cross – Basic Instinct
Let’s not beat around the bush: the crude question on everyone’s lips here, of course, was: “What is up there, exactly?” Hey, I said it was crude. So here it is: arguably (or inarguably, perhaps) the most famous paused movie moment in cinematic history, made so presumably because it really plays into that “wait a minute: did I just see what I thought I saw?” territory.
Sharon Stone was one of the hottest actresses of the ’90s, of course, and she was probably never hotter than she is here in Paul Verhoven’s erotic thriller Basic Instinct. Approximately 85% of the male population have attempted to precision pause this little ditty, in which her character – Catherine Tramell – offers Michael Douglas a little glimpse into her special area. Lucky guy!
Source at http://whatculture.com/film/17-paused-movie-moments.php/
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