The ABCs of Death is a 2012 American comedy horror anthology film produced by international producers and directed by filmmakers from around the world. The film contains 26 shorts, each by different directors spanning fifteen countries, including Nacho Vigalondo, Kaare Andrews, Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Ben Wheatley, Lee Hardcastle, Noboru Iguchi, Ti West, and Angela Bettis.
It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012. In 2013, it was released on VOD January 31 and in theaters March 8. The end credits of the film feature Australian band Skyhooks' 1974 song "Horror Movie". The film's financial success launched the titular film series, including a second film in 2014, and a spin-off film in 2016.
Background The film is divided into 26 individual chapters, each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given free rein in choosing a word to create a story involving death. The varieties of death range from accidents to murders.
A contest was held for the role of the 26th director. The winner was UK-based director Lee Hardcastle, who submitted the claymation short for T.
Plot The film begins showing a close up of a funnel with blood pouring ominously from it. The blood proceeds to fill up various rooms inside of a house before filling up the interior of a small room containing letter blocks. The room floods as the blocks float to the top spelling out the title. Throughout the film, the blocks spell out the titles to all the segments with each of the segments ending and beginning with a focus on, or a fade into, the color red. Titlewritten and directed byDescriptionA is for ApocalypseNacho VigalondoFrom Spain. 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.Cast: Eva Llorach as Woman, Miguel Insua as ManB is for BigfootAdrian Garcia BoglianoFrom Spain, shot in Mexico. 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.Cast: Alejandra Urdiaín as Dulce, Harold Torres as Erik, Greta Martínez as Xochitl, Pablo Guisa Koestinger as YetiC is for CycleErnesto Diaz EspinozaFrom Chile. 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, initiating the chain of events that ended in him being killed as a causal loop.Cast: Matías Oviedo as Bruno, Juanita Ringeling as AliciaD is for DogfightMarcel SarmientoFrom the United States. 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.Cast: Steve Berens as The Fighter, Riley the Dog as The Dog, Chris Hampton as The Fighter's Trainer, George Marquez as The Dog's Trainer, Erik Audé as Beat Down Dude, Lisa Lynch as Card Girl, Imogen Mcaulay as The Baby, Eddie Griffith as The Goomba, Matt Bowler as Loopyloop, Joshua Diolosa as College Kid, JLouis Mills as The Hooligan, Luther Whang as The King of Dry Cleaning, Kelly Green as Roughstuff, Dee Ledbetter as Grandmema Bookie, Alex McAulay as Hippie, Elizabeth Mcaulay as Strungout, Dallas Malloy as Female Boxer, Terry Smith as Junior, Tere Beckman as Beauty, Mark Devine as The Walk In, Mark Miller-Summer as Another Bum, Rashidi Beck as Ganger Note: The credits note that the baby was filmed separately to avoid exposure to violence. E is for ExterminateAngela BettisFrom the United States. 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.Cast: Brenden J. McVeigh as The Man, Faith Hanley as The Voice on the PhoneF is for FartNoboru IguchiFrom Japan. 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.Cast: Arisa Nakamura as Yoshie, Yui Murata as Miss Yumi, Hokaze Yamada as High School Girl A, Honoka Murakami as High School Girl B, Tomomi Sugai as High School Girl CG is for GravityAndrew TrauckiFrom Australia. 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.Cast: Andrew Traucki as SurferH is for Hydro-Electric DiffusionThomas MallingFrom Norway. 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.Cast: Martine Årnes Sørensen as Frau Scheisse (body), Ingrid Bolsø Berdal as Frau Scheisse (voice), Johannes Eilertsen as Bertie the Bulldog (body), Jon Øigarden as Bertie the Bulldog (voice), Mark Steiner as Announcer, Torgny Gerhard Aanderaa as Sir Winston ChurchillI is for IngrownJorge Michel GrauFrom Mexico. 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.Cast: Adriana Paz as Woman, Octavio Michel as Man