Chapter 12
I could not do this yellow in horror series without talking about how much the internal combustion engine has been a part of the horror genre, especially when the vehicle in question is yellow. I already discussed how 28 Years Later used a yellow abandoned train and how The Conjuring: Last Rites used the yellow taxicab, but I’ll dig deeper into how some other films use yellow vehicles here.
The School Bus
Yellow school buses in horror films are about as common as the yellow raincoat. Jeepers Creepers 2 followed the creeper as he stalked a group of high schoolers after their bus broke down. Not my favorite sequel, but it earns a mention here for its use of the bus as a safety net for the teens even if most of them are doomed.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 also featured a school bus in a dream sequence where the driver is driving too fast and won’t stop so the kids can get off. Of course it ends up being Robert Englund without Freddy makeup which shows his presence in the dream. At the end of the film, after the teens believe Freddy is dead, the again ride a school bus that is driving too fast. It is then revealed that Freddy is present and has passed into the real world. The school bus in this film had dual meaning. It is both a warning about Freddy and signifies the loss of innocence of the teens who Freddy terrorizes. Not the best Nightmare film in the bunch, but it does get credit for its homoerotic undertones.
The surprisingly funny 2025 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Monkey featured a school bus full of cheerleaders hanging out of the windows as it drives along. Soon they are beheaded when the bus drives by a semi. Here its meant to show how the world at large is falling apart after the twin brothers used the monkey’s powers in the wrong way.
Most notably, 2007’s Trick’r’Treat had a great sequence during which a group of tired parents hired a bus driver to drive a bus full of their special needs children off a cliff. The children eventually come back from the dead on Halloween night, much to the aging bus driver’s chagrin. Another prime example of lost innocence as these ghoulish kids come for the man who took their lives.
The London Underground
In the 2004 film Creep starring Franka Potente and Sean Harris, a woman finds herself alone and locked in a London Underground subway station. She is chased into the labyrinth of tunnels below the city by an unknown assailant. The Underground station is yellow. The bars on a train she boards are yellow. Eventually, she finds a room with sickly yellow light. In this film, yellow is both cautionary and a metaphor for somethings being far scarier than being alone. Below the streets of London, stations and tunnels colored in bright yellow to show the sickly underbelly of the city.
A Bloody Yellow Boat
In the Australian shark / serial killer film Dangerous Animals, Tucker’s bright yellow boat serves as his business and as a warning to those tourists who won’t be missed back home. The ones traveling on their own or who did not tell anyone where they were going. Don’t board that boat, the color screams. You’ll be fish bait unless you’re a pretty girl. Then you’ll be locked up below deck for a few days so Tucker can mess with your head before you become shark bait. So, if you’re vacationing abroad, don’t board a yellow boat if the captain gives off a weird vibe. For an Australian film, it’s a gutsy move making a survival film that has nothing to do with the Outback but this one is so successful that its easily one of my favorite shark horror films. I highly recommend this one if you haven’t seen it.
A Ghost Ship
When a salvage crew including Gabriel Burne, Julianna Margulies, Karl Urban, Isaiah Washington, and Ron Eldard are approached by Desmond Harrington to collect an abandoned ship, none of them could have thought it would be the Antonia Graza. The fictional ship disappeared without a trace for decades until they found it. The inside of the ship is water damaged and rusted through. Sickly yellows and browns show the rot within and the evil lurking in their group. While the opening is by far the best part of the film, the ship itself is a great setting for a ghost story and an evil ferryman.
It’s a Bird! No, It’s a Bloody Plane.
More specifically, an Airbus A340 whose seats featured yellow head rests. That was the setting for Blood Red Sky, a German language vampire film brought to us by Netflix. A mother (Noomi Rapace) is forced to protect her son when hijackers take over her plane. The twist – she’s a blood sucker. The bright yellow head rests on the seats, meant to be a peaceful addition to the plane’s stale decor, end up adding to the unsettling feeling as the movie turns violent. Soon, those yellow head rests are covered in blood. Yellow and red, together again. Lost innocence. Lost lives.
The International Space Station
In the 2017 sci-fi horror film Life, the lab on the ISS is yellow. A room dedicated to exploring how life adapts to space is the color of caution. Warning. When the crew reawakens a frozen microbe from Mars, it escapes their first failsafe (the container in the lab). Ryan Reynolds decides to use a handheld incinerator to kill it and inadvertently sets off the sprinkler system – fire in space is bad. The microbe escapes the second failsafe (the lab). Now, it’s a fight for survival. The crew should have heeded the lab color’s warning. Folly of man on full display.
The Yellow Car
In Stephen King’s Cujo, Dee Wallace drives her broken, barely functioning yellow 1978 Ford Pinto to a remote mechanic with her son in tow. She finds the place deserted except for one saint Bernard who has been infected with rabies. The car becomes their protection and their death sentence. They have no water and no food. The sun is baking them alive inside the car. But if they leave, the dog is waiting. Like many horror films, yellow has a dual meaning. A safety net and a cautionary tale. Don’t get too comfortable. Blood will be spilt.
In Evil Dead, Sam Raimi used a yellow Oldsmobile Delta 88. The beginning of the film is traveling to the cabin the occupants rented in the woods. The group of friends is shocked when the car’s steering wheel suddenly stops working properly and they nearly have a head on collision with a red truck. Yellow juxtaposed with red is a common occurrence in horror. In Evil Dead, it’s a warning. Something demonic is headed their way. Something they won’t survive – unlike that red truck they nearly crashed into. When Scott approaches the cabin the first time, his four friends stay near the car. The foreboding camera work showed the distance between Scott and his friends as they stay near the escape vehicle. Later, they try to escape in that car only to find that the bridge is out and they cannot leave.
In the 1991 film Joy Ride, Paul Walker buys a 1971 Chrysler Newport so he can pick up the girl he likes and drive her home after their college year ends. What ensues after he picks up his black sheep of the family brother from jail along the way is a cautionary tale for not messing with truck drivers on the road. You never know who you might be messing with. That yellow car, meant to be their safe way home, is now their only means of survival as they are chased by a crazed semi truck driver.
As for my personal favorite, the backwoods serial killers in Wrong Turn used a rusty yellow tow truck to remove any evidence of the campers they kill. When Eliza Dushku, Desmond Harrington (yeah, he’s on this blog twice today), Emmanuelle Chirque, and company stumble across the home of these killers and find their graveyard of old vehicles, one of the characters asks, “How are they getting away with this?” How, indeed, but that yellow tow truck soon gives chase to these kids as, one by one, they begin to die. That tow truck signifies the internal rot and decay of those killers who show no remorse in who or how they kill. They even laugh about it like the hunt is part of the fun.
I have one more blog for you so come back on Halloween when I talk about some of my favorite evil places. Just don’t come in anything yellow.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
Chapter 12
I could not do this yellow in horror series without talking about how much the internal combustion engine has been a part of the horror genre, especially when the vehicle in question is yellow. I already discussed how 28 Years Later used a yellow abandoned train and how The Conjuring: Last Rites used the yellow taxicab, but I’ll dig deeper into how some other films use yellow vehicles here.
The School Bus
Yellow school buses in horror films are about as common as the yellow raincoat. Jeepers Creepers 2 followed the creeper as he stalked a group of high schoolers after their bus broke down. Not my favorite sequel, but it earns a mention here for its use of the bus as a safety net for the teens even if most of them are doomed.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 also featured a school bus in a dream sequence where the driver is driving too fast and won’t stop so the kids can get off. Of course it ends up being Robert Englund without Freddy makeup which shows his presence in the dream. At the end of the film, after the teens believe Freddy is dead, the again ride a school bus that is driving too fast. It is then revealed that Freddy is present and has passed into the real world. The school bus in this film had dual meaning. It is both a warning about Freddy and signifies the loss of innocence of the teens who Freddy terrorizes. Not the best Nightmare film in the bunch, but it does get credit for its homoerotic undertones.
The surprisingly funny 2025 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Monkey featured a school bus full of cheerleaders hanging out of the windows as it drives along. Soon they are beheaded when the bus drives by a semi. Here its meant to show how the world at large is falling apart after the twin brothers used the monkey’s powers in the wrong way.
Most notably, 2007’s Trick’r’Treat had a great sequence during which a group of tired parents hired a bus driver to drive a bus full of their special needs children off a cliff. The children eventually come back from the dead on Halloween night, much to the aging bus driver’s chagrin. Another prime example of lost innocence as these ghoulish kids come for the man who took their lives.
The London Underground
In the 2004 film Creep starring Franka Potente and Sean Harris, a woman finds herself alone and locked in a London Underground subway station. She is chased into the labyrinth of tunnels below the city by an unknown assailant. The Underground station is yellow. The bars on a train she boards are yellow. Eventually, she finds a room with sickly yellow light. In this film, yellow is both cautionary and a metaphor for somethings being far scarier than being alone. Below the streets of London, stations and tunnels colored in bright yellow to show the sickly underbelly of the city.
A Bloody Yellow Boat
In the Australian shark / serial killer film Dangerous Animals, Tucker’s bright yellow boat serves as his business and as a warning to those tourists who won’t be missed back home. The ones traveling on their own or who did not tell anyone where they were going. Don’t board that boat, the color screams. You’ll be fish bait unless you’re a pretty girl. Then you’ll be locked up below deck for a few days so Tucker can mess with your head before you become shark bait. So, if you’re vacationing abroad, don’t board a yellow boat if the captain gives off a weird vibe. For an Australian film, it’s a gutsy move making a survival film that has nothing to do with the Outback but this one is so successful that its easily one of my favorite shark horror films. I highly recommend this one if you haven’t seen it.
A Ghost Ship
When a salvage crew including Gabriel Burne, Julianna Margulies, Karl Urban, Isaiah Washington, and Ron Eldard are approached by Desmond Harrington to collect an abandoned ship, none of them could have thought it would be the Antonia Graza. The fictional ship disappeared without a trace for decades until they found it. The inside of the ship is water damaged and rusted through. Sickly yellows and browns show the rot within and the evil lurking in their group. While the opening is by far the best part of the film, the ship itself is a great setting for a ghost story and an evil ferryman.
It’s a Bird! No, It’s a Bloody Plane.
More specifically, an Airbus A340 whose seats featured yellow head rests. That was the setting for Blood Red Sky, a German language vampire film brought to us by Netflix. A mother (Noomi Rapace) is forced to protect her son when hijackers take over her plane. The twist – she’s a blood sucker. The bright yellow head rests on the seats, meant to be a peaceful addition to the plane’s stale decor, end up adding to the unsettling feeling as the movie turns violent. Soon, those yellow head rests are covered in blood. Yellow and red, together again. Lost innocence. Lost lives.
The International Space Station
In the 2017 sci-fi horror film Life, the lab on the ISS is yellow. A room dedicated to exploring how life adapts to space is the color of caution. Warning. When the crew reawakens a frozen microbe from Mars, it escapes their first failsafe (the container in the lab). Ryan Reynolds decides to use a handheld incinerator to kill it and inadvertently sets off the sprinkler system – fire in space is bad. The microbe escapes the second failsafe (the lab). Now, it’s a fight for survival. The crew should have heeded the lab color’s warning. Folly of man on full display.
The Yellow Car
In Stephen King’s Cujo, Dee Wallace drives her broken, barely functioning yellow 1978 Ford Pinto to a remote mechanic with her son in tow. She finds the place deserted except for one saint Bernard who has been infected with rabies. The car becomes their protection and their death sentence. They have no water and no food. The sun is baking them alive inside the car. But if they leave, the dog is waiting. Like many horror films, yellow has a dual meaning. A safety net and a cautionary tale. Don’t get too comfortable. Blood will be spilt.
In Evil Dead, Sam Raimi used a yellow Oldsmobile Delta 88. The beginning of the film is traveling to the cabin the occupants rented in the woods. The group of friends is shocked when the car’s steering wheel suddenly stops working properly and they nearly have a head on collision with a red truck. Yellow juxtaposed with red is a common occurrence in horror. In Evil Dead, it’s a warning. Something demonic is headed their way. Something they won’t survive – unlike that red truck they nearly crashed into. When Scott approaches the cabin the first time, his four friends stay near the car. The foreboding camera work showed the distance between Scott and his friends as they stay near the escape vehicle. Later, they try to escape in that car only to find that the bridge is out and they cannot leave.
In the 1991 film Joy Ride, Paul Walker buys a 1971 Chrysler Newport so he can pick up the girl he likes and drive her home after their college year ends. What ensues after he picks up his black sheep of the family brother from jail along the way is a cautionary tale for not messing with truck drivers on the road. You never know who you might be messing with. That yellow car, meant to be their safe way home, is now their only means of survival as they are chased by a crazed semi truck driver.
As for my personal favorite, the backwoods serial killers in Wrong Turn used a rusty yellow tow truck to remove any evidence of the campers they kill. When Eliza Dushku, Desmond Harrington (yeah, he’s on this blog twice today), Emmanuelle Chirque, and company stumble across the home of these killers and find their graveyard of old vehicles, one of the characters asks, “How are they getting away with this?” How, indeed, but that yellow tow truck soon gives chase to these kids as, one by one, they begin to die. That tow truck signifies the internal rot and decay of those killers who show no remorse in who or how they kill. They even laugh about it like the hunt is part of the fun.
I have one more blog for you so come back on Halloween when I talk about some of my favorite evil places. Just don’t come in anything yellow.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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