ABCs of Death, The

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The ABCs of Death

Credits
Title:	The ABCs of Death
Directed by:	See Directors
Written by:	See Writers
Produced by:	Ant Timpson; Kristoffer Jorgensen; Tim League; Julie Lind-Holm; Petter Lindblad; Claire Jones; Simon Boswell; Chris Sergi; Andrew Starke; Lino P. Stavole
Music by:	Simon Boswell
Cinematography:	Manuel Dacosse; Karim Hussain; Nicolas Ibieta; Nemanja Jovanov
Edited by:	Phillip Blackford; Robert Hall
Production
Distributors:	Drafthouse Films Magnet Releasing Timpson Films
Released:	September 15th, 2012
Rating:	Unrated
Running time:	129 min.
Country:	USA
Language:	English
Navigation
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The ABC's of Death is an American feature film of the horror anthology genre. It was directed by multiple directors with a screenplay written by various writers. It contains twenty-six vignettes, one for each letter of the alphabet. The movie was presented by Magnet Releasing and produced by Drafthouse Films and Timpson Films. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 15th, 2012. It was first screened in the United States at Austin Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas on September 22nd, 2012.

Director list[]

Adam Wingard
Adrian Garcia Bogliano
Anders Morgenthaler
Andrew Traucki
Angela Bettis
Banjong Pisanthanakun
Ben Wheatley
Bruno Forzani
Ernesto Díaz Espinoza
Hélène Cattet
Jake West
Jason Eisener
Jon Schnepp
Jorge Michel Grau
Kaare Andrews
Lee Hardcastle
Marcel Sarmiento
Nacho Vigalondo
Simon Ruley
Srdjan Spasojevic
Thomas Cappelen Malling
Ti West
Timo Tjahjanto
Xavier Gens
Yoshihiro Nishimura
Yudai Yamaguchi

Writer list[]

Adrian Garcia Bogliano
Ant Timpson
Bruno Forzani
Dimitrije Vojnov
Ernesto Díaz Espinoza
Hélène Cattet
Jon Schnepp
Kaare Andrews
Keith Calder
Lee Hardcastle
Marcel Sarmiento
Martha Poly R. Mendivil
Nacho Vigalondo
Noboru Iguchi
Simon Barrett
Simon Ruley
Srdjan Spasojevic
Ti West
Yoshihiro Nishimura
Yudai Yamaguchi

A-Z[]

Title	written and directed by	Description
A is for Apocalypse	Nacho Vigalondo	A woman bursts into the bedroom of a man, presumably her husband, and proceeds to stab, burn and beat him. Nearly dead, he asks why she did this; she then reveals she has been slowly poisoning him for some time as part of a murder plot, but has had to speed up the process because she has been "watching the news" and there "wasn't enough time". Destruction is heard outside as the woman sits with her husband and waits for the end of the world.
B is for Bigfoot	Adrian Garcia Bogliano	Xochitl cannot go to sleep. Her babysitters, Dulce and Erik, fabricate a story about the Abominable Snowman coming out every night to take away kids, but only those who stay up at night. A mysterious homeless man breaks into the house and kills Dulce and Erik. The man enters Xochitl's room, but leaves as Xochitl hides under the covers, counting sheep. Note: The short was originally titled Y is for Yeti.
C is for Cycle	Ernesto Diaz Espinoza	Bruno sees a puddle of blood in his backyard, but ignores it. At night he hears a noise and checks on it, but finds nothing. In the morning, his wife Alicia disappears and he finds a hole in the bushes. He is sucked in and finds out he has been sent back in time to the night that he heard the sound; he was the one who made it. In the morning, he sees himself getting sucked into the bushes and is killed by another Bruno, making the puddle of blood seen at the beginning.
D is for Dogfight	Marcel Sarmiento	A man, adorned with a dog tag reading "Buddy", enters an underground fighting ring against a dog. The two have a vicious fight as various onlookers cheer them on. As the dog bites the man's neck, he shouts "Buddy!", causing the dog to stop. The dog suddenly turns on his handler, and lost dog posters are shown revealing that the dog previously belonged to the man. The dog and the man team up on the handler and presumably kill him.
E is for Exterminate	Angela Bettis	A man attempts to kill a spider, but keeps missing, getting bitten several times in the process. After a whole week of being stalked by the spider, and complaining about ear aches, the man finally kills the spider, but tiny baby spiders then hatch out of his ear.
F is for Fart	Noboru Iguchi	School girl Yoshie is obsessed with her teacher Miss Yumi. One day while outside, a deadly gas breaks forth from the ground and kills anyone who inhales it. Yoshie and Yumi escape into a building where the former wishes to smell the latter's farts instead of the gas. Yumi farts in Yoshie's face and she is transported to a gas-filled dimension where she and Yumi make out.
G is for Gravity	Andrew Traucki	In the first short shot mostly from a POV perspective, a man drives up to the beach where he pulls out a surfboard and a bag full of bricks. Strapping the bag to himself, he rides the board out into the ocean, where he proceeds to drown. The camera changes perspective and the viewer sees the surfboard bobbing vertically in the water.
H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion	Thomas Malling	In a WWII setting populated by humanoid animals, Bertie the Bulldog enters a strip club and is enamored by a fox woman. The fox turns out to be Bertie's Nazi nemesis Frau Scheisse, who traps him over an electrified pool of water. Encouraged by the voice of Winston Churchill, Bertie overcomes the odds and knocks Scheisse into the pool of water, where she melts and then explodes. He then winks and grins to the camera, in a parody of patriotic propaganda films.
I is for Ingrown	Jorge Michel Grau	A man has his wife bound and gagged in his bathtub. As she struggles to break free, the man injects her with motor oil, which causes her to scratch herself violently. She bleeds and then vomits before lying lifelessly in the tub. As the scene goes on, a female voice: the woman in the tub, narrates in Spanish a monologue about how her husband's abuse just makes him a “primal” animal and not any more of a man, the monologue is directed at him.
J is for Jidai-geki (Samurai Movie)	Yûdai Yamaguchi	An executioner prepares to decapitate a samurai; however, the samurai begins distorting his face into a series of bizarre and physically impossible expressions, causing the executioner to panic. A man off-screen tells the executioner to finish the job, as he notices that the samurai is performing seppuku. The executioner, who turns out to be a kaishakunin, beheads the samurai, but then laughs at the ridiculous expression that the latter made.
K is for Klutz	Anders Morgenthaler	In this cartoon short, a woman uses the toilet at a party, only to discover that her stool refuses to be flushed. The stool starts making squeaking noises as it moves on its own towards its "creator". After the woman seemingly manages to flush it, she continues to hear the squeak. As she inspects the toilet, the stool is revealed to be clinging to the ceiling above her; it drops down, re-entering her anus at high speed. She bolts upright, stunned, and then falls down dead, as the stool slides out her mouth on a stream of blood. Other party guests enter and find her body.
L is for Libido	Timo Tjahjanto	A man awakens naked and strapped to a chair, with another man in the same position. Both are forced to masturbate to a series of increasingly disturbing acts, with the last one to climax getting impaled. At one point, the woman overseeing the acts is accidentally impaled, along with the loser. The man who made it through all of the acts suddenly falls unconscious when he refuses to continue. He awakens in bed with a naked woman over him, only to discover he is part of the next act, as the woman kills him with a chainsaw.
M is for Miscarriage	Ti West	A woman tries to unclog her toilet. She goes down to the basement, finds a plunger and returns, revealing that a dead fetus is inside.
N is for Nuptials	Banjong Pisanthanakun	Shane is flirting with his girlfriend Ann using a new parrot he bought. He then proposes to her and she accepts. Suddenly, Shane's parrot blurts out "Don't be scared Joy, my girlfriend won't know." Shane tries to brush it off, but the parrot's exclamations become more lewd and damning. Ann shouts "Damn you, Shane!", grabs a knife, and stabs him to death.
O is for Orgasm	Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani	A man and a woman, credited as "L'homme" and "La femme", respectively, have sex, which is presented in a series of abstract, dimly-lit, close-up shots, such as bubbles, cigarettes, leather, moaning and breathing. The short ends with the man pulling out a leather belt and strangling the woman as she lets out one final orgasm.
P is for Pressure	Simon Rumley	A prostitute must take care of her three children as her boyfriend, a reckless man himself, steals all of her saved-up money. Desperate, she takes up a gig at what appears to be a photo shoot. However, the man pulls out a small baby kitten that she gives to the prostitute, who promptly puts the kitten down and crushes it underneath her shoe. Afterwards, the prostitute is seen happily spending the day with her children.
Q is for Quack	Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett	The actual filmmakers, playing themselves, are upset over having gotten the letter Q for their segment and, whilst struggling for ideas, decide to make theirs the only segment of the film to feature an actual on-screen death. Adam and Simon, along with their cameraman Juan Carlos, go out to shoot an actual living duck on film (since "nobody gives a shit about animals"). Adam and Simon's guns suddenly jam and then unexpectedly go off, killing the pair. Juan Carlos runs away, leaving the still-living duck in the cage.
R is for Removed	Srđan Spasojević	A man is continually subjected to constant surgeries, as his skin contains full rolls of 35mm film. He is covered in bandages, but seemingly adored by the public who want to touch his skin. Eventually, his skin begins to produce less and less film and he escapes, killing several men in the process. He makes it to a train yard and crushes himself underneath one of the cars; shortly afterwards, it begins to rain blood.
S is for Speed	Jake West	Roxanne kidnaps Lulu from an abandoned outpost in the desert, while being chased by an invincible hooded figure. After putting Lulu in the trunk of her car, Roxanne speeds off, but runs out of gas. Roxanne attempts to bargain with the hooded man, but he refuses, admitting that she "gave [him] a run for [his] money". She takes his hand and is shown to have died in a drug den. Lulu wakes up, takes Roxanne's drugs and hallucinates the desert.
T is for Toilet	Lee Hardcastle	In this claymation short, a child is being taught how to use the toilet by his parents. The toilet suddenly grows teeth and eyeballs and telepathically locks the door. It brutally kills and devours the child's parents before lunging at the child, revealing it all to be a nightmare. The child decides to use the toilet for real, but a loose screw frightens him, leading to him getting his head stuck in the toilet seat. His father laughs upon seeing him, but the toilet tank then comes loose and falls, crushing the child's head and causing the father to scream in horror. NOTE: This short spawned a sequel called Ghost Burger, where it is revealed that the child survived his injuries.
U is for Unearthed	Ben Wheatley	In the second short shot entirely from a POV perspective, a vampire rises out of its coffin as a small mob attempts to sedate and kill it. The vampire flees from the mob, stopping to feed upon a passing woman, before being taken down by a flaming arrow and knocked unconscious. The vampire awakens as a prisoner of the mob, who have its teeth pulled, the vampire itself staked, and finally its head cut off as it stares at its killers.
V is for Vagitus (The Cry of a Newborn Baby)	Kaare Andrews	In New Vancouver, A.D. 2035, women must petition the government for permission to bear children. Lainey, an officer, successfully petitions for one, but discovers she is infertile. She and her robot partner, Nezbit, break into a facility to hunt for "mentals". They discover a family which Nezbit subsequently kills; he then beheads the family's baby. Lainey's boss, Stoker, enters and criticizes her, due to her sympathizing with the family. The baby's head turns out to be alive and possessing some psychic power, as it proceeds to blow up Stoker's head, while the dying father tells Lainey that she is its mother now. Note: This short started as an idea for a feature film.
W is for WTF!	Jon Schnepp	Jon Schnepp is working on an animated short relating to the letter W when his friends and crew members tell him to come to the conference room to watch the news. The short begins to devolve into scenes involving zombie clowns, a puppet in Hell, chem trails, a warrior woman battling a giant walrus, and a flying baby monster, all while a newscaster chaotically spouts end-of-the-world babble. Jon's head is cut off and stabbed by a cartoon warlock as he shouts "What the fuck!?".
X is for XXL	Xavier Gens	Gertrude, an overweight woman, wanders the streets of France as people everywhere taunt her size; she is haunted by images of thin, attractive women. She sadly gorges herself on food before deciding to finally do something about her weight. Using a variety of sharp objects, Gertrude proceeds to cut the fat off of her body. She walks out of the bathtub in a skeletal state and missing all her skin; she poses briefly and then bleeds to death.
Y is for Youngbuck	Jason Eisener	A pedophilic janitor teaches a young boy he has been watching from afar to hunt deer, and is then implied to sexually assault the boy. The janitor continues to watch all the boys play basketball and then licks up their sweat afterwards. The boy, haunted by his time with the janitor, appears in the gymnasium and kills him with the severed head of a deer. Note: Features the song "Vengeance" by the Australian Synthwave duo Power Glove.
Z is for Zetsumetsu (Extinction)	Yoshihiro Nishimura	A mysterious man named Dr. Strangelove is shown the "positive" aspects of American culture and how it relates to Japan. All throughout, imagery of rice and sushi, a topless woman with a Nazi hat and giant penis, and naked people with hats resembling bombs reading "Big Boy" are unapologetically shown throughout. Strangelove stands up and shouts "My Emperor, it is standing!" as his penis rises exposed and fires rice. Note: The short was originally titled R is for Rice.

Notes & Trivia[]

The ABCs of Death redirects to this page.

The tagline to this film is "It's not educational".

Recommendations[]

External Links[]

References[]