Glimpse of Hell

Here's a excerpt from an article in Cinefantastique magazine, Volume 14, Number 2:

Audiences hardly have time to recover from the expansive vista of the memory bubbles when the scene abruptly switches to the blindingly fast "high-tech fall through," in which a jumbled mass of objects from Lillian's memories slide down an endless tunnel of images from the film.
One of the images on the "wall" of the "tunnel" is a seemingly endless stream of the Burroughs-Welcome building, streaking along the sides of the frame. A classic example of the multi-plane technique, the image was created by placing repeated exposures of a model of the lab building beside each other on the same frame, their sides pre-aligned so that there are no gaps and the building appears very long. This process is repeated numerous times with the camera dollying past the model, and the film advanced slightly for each pass. Other images multi-planed in the high-tech fall through were the blue, sawtoothed foam walls of the acoustics lab and the hourglass-shaped company logo endlessly repeated.
The high-tech fall through was originally to be followed by another nightmarish image, called “condo hell," which MGM included in the television ads, although it is not in the film. "Most of the 'hell' sequences got cut out of the film," said Don Baker. "They were just too strong. Not only did they jeopardize the tone of the film, but also the film's PG rating."
The Condo Hell image featured rows of weird, constantly changing faces inside vibrating helmets, slowly gliding toward the camera, set against an angular, architectural background. The faces are members of the film's cast and crew and their friends. "Peggy Weil photographed four frames of each face, registering them so the eyes always lined up," said Baker. "The eyes always stayed centered but the faces changed every four frames. We projected the faces into a rear-projection screen inside an aircraft helmet, then multi-planed all these helmets, creating rows and rows going back to infinity'."
Bob Hickson, of EEG's art department, rendered the perspective background illustration, utilizing shapes from the Burroughs-Welcome building. "About 3 by 4 feet," said John Wash. "They managed to shoot the 60 to 70 helmets with shakiness built in, matted over the background, which was given a corresponding shakiness."
"Cancer Hell," another segment of the hell sequence, is only barely glimpsed. Its gruesome, starkly realistic images of entrails and gore, inspired by the work of the Grofs at Esalen, nevertheless makes a strong visceral impression. Before it was filmed, the shot was reworked according to Trumbull's instructions. Originally it was intended to be a graceful journey through the human body. That concept wasn't working, so Trumbull decided to attempt something visceral and shocking.
For the shot, referred to as the "guts" scene, the EEG model shop built table-top sized landscapes and body parts. Stewart dubbed the models "maxitures," because they were built larger than full scale so the camera would be better able to photograph them. The models were "decorated" with hundreds of pounds of animal parts from rendering companies. The "maxitures" were built for master shots to open and close the sequence, but were never filmed.
The few frames of the sequence now seen in the film were supposed to be close-up inserts of contorted faces of people who appear to be caught in a webbing of entrails and body parts, crying out as if to be released. Made up with gashes, bullet holes and technicolor bruises, members of the crew and their family and friends were pressed into service as "tortured souls," with postproduction supervisor Bob Hippard getting the screen credit as the "screaming man."

When I saw your post, I remembered reading this and thought I'd share it...

We should start a petition to get a new DVD of the film made with the extra footage and maybe some other extras.

My mother's aunt, I guess my great aunt, back in Norway agreed to be part of an experiment. She was terminally ill and on her death bed. A special bed was used with a very sensitive scale. At the precise moment of death her weight went down by 6 ounces! Was it a soul? Her spirit?
Kind of gives you food for thought......


"The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling."
~Paula Poundstone

True, but where does the soul really lie?

"I have seen and heard things in my life that are best left UNTOLD!"

Well the film itself doesn't deal with such nasty details of real-world physics or even theoretical theological physics, etc. I think that the end point was much more an attempt to show a man's quest being fulfilled...as opposed to an actual physical representation of what might really happen if we could 'record' the afterlife. :-)