29 Years Later The Untold Behind-the-Scenes Terrors of ‘Se7en’

Se7en is about a pair of cops in the process of hunting down a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives. Throughout the film, there are gruesome scenes involving pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

As you know from movies like The Exorcist, where a fire burned down the entire set, sometimes the scariest things happen behind the scenes.

Here are the scariest parts of Se7en no one noticed because it all went down when the cameras were off:

Brad Pitt suffered from a gruesome injury in the middle of filming.

The entire film was shot in the rain in order to create a dark, grisly atmosphere. There’s one scene in particular where Mills is running after John Doe in the rain — but something went wrong on set.

Brad Pitt put his arm straight through a windshield. There were severed tendons, exposed bone, and buckets of blood. His injury was written into the script (which is why his arm appears in a cast for the rest of the film). However, the movie was shot out of sequence which means his cast is hidden in some earlier scenes.

If you re-watch, you might catch the office scene where his hand is limp in his pocket or the scene (above) where his hand is clearly swollen because his cast is cutting off his circulation.

A scene was shot where Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

In 1968, Kennedy was assassinated in the Ambassador Hotel (depicted above). In 1995, one of the bungalows of the old Ambassador Hotel was used as a film set.

It acted as the ‘safe house’ where Somerset and Mills interview the widow of the murdered lawyer.

The man in the gluttony scene was covered in real, live cockroaches.

True to the name of the film, seven crates of cockroaches were released for the gluttony scene. Vaseline was used in order to make sure the bugs remained on set.

The actor starring in the scene, Bob Mack, had material stuffed into his ears and nose to prevent the cockroaches from crawling inside. However, they still ended up crawling into his underwear, making the scene almost as horrific to film as it was to watch.

The man in the greed scene was made immobile by blood.

Gene Borkan played the victim in the greed scene. While stripped down to his underwear, he was hog-tied and covered in two gallons of fake blood. This fake blood was so thick and sticky that his knees actually became stuck to the floor, making it difficult for him to move.

BONUS: Although this didn’t occur behind the scenes, it’s still worth noting. According to IMDB, “At 7 minutes before the end of the film, smack in the middle of the most dramatic scene of the entire movie, a subliminal picture is shown for a fraction of a second. It is shown at 1. hour and 52 minutes and 53 seconds. Blink once with your eyes and you have missed it, but if you freeze frame around that particular time then you will see a woman’s face appear.”

So… who wants to rewatch Se7en? And good news cause 4k re-release is coming for the 30th anniversary and it’s playing again in select theaters.