For all its efficiency a guillotine isn’t easy to erect. Sometimes you have to swing an ax. The pulse quickens and the reverberation connects those on each end. These four title sequences take a little off the top and open films that put a lump in your throat.

SISTERS

Brian De Palma, what hath thou wrought? Snapshots of a devil-fetus(es), the aural anxiety brought to us by Bernard Herrmann in a style reminiscent in tone of his work on the opening titles for Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

“What the devil hath joined together let no man cut asunder.”

RIGET (THE KINGDOM)

I’ve come to know the title sequence of Lars von Trier’s “Kingdom” well; I’ve read the subtitles enough times to know the narration to its core. I will on occasion watch it without subtitles to bask in the black. There is death in every visual, even the water seems dead. Then, those hands. Not to mislead, but anyone raised on Romero smiles at that moment.

What happens next is perhaps the most jarring occurrence in title sequence design; this lushly cinematic sense of sheer dread is halted by spastically edited Dogme 95 footage that was shot on sub-standard video and scored to music fit for a late-in-the-episode SNL skit. All this as an introduction to one of the best television series in history.

THE CHANGELING

An absolute thing of beauty where the sheer gravity of the action between the titling becomes the film’s constitution. As the opening sequence resumes we get the aftermath of too-great an emotional weight. And we know, most of us from personal experience, the doorman’s perspective; he wants to help but there is nothing to be done.

ONIBABA

Fields of whipping reeds that house an abyss. What emerges? The jazzy paranoia of Hikaru Hayashi’s percussive score jolts one from uneasy contemplation while the frame remains remarkably disciplined -the music is allowed to do its job. We see patterns in the wind. There is movement there. And it is chaotic and hungry and wholly uninviting. An opening to a cinematic masterpiece that is the very embodiment of a most fearsome artifact, the Noh mask.

Note the consistency of design in the title sequences to the Alien Quadrilogy. Note too how they differ. Does each tangent of theme reflect the respective film?

ALIEN

Crossing over an eclipsing planet with the title appearing in non-linear, segmented letters. From the outer letters inwards (even the middle swath of the letter "E" is last to appear). Everything pointing to the center because the center is where the parasitic pupae of the Alien comes from; the middle of you. Steady, dark tension.

ALIENS

The sparse, soldiering snare drum opening to an almost digital yet organic titling, like the profile of some never before seen hive. The text, apparitional at first, seems to be gestating; the "I" blooms into a symbol of life and we are in the story with a masterful tilt down on the encroaching vessel. Fairly glorious.

ALIEN³

The last brassy notes of the Twentieth Century Fox theme holds and contorts into the reverberating growl of the film's soundscape. Then, the familiarity of the abyss punctuated by staccato, mini cut scenes that move the story along. New format, familiar threads...the wrinkle, we begin to understand, will be in the telling. Nothing comforts quite like facehuggers interrupting stasis to earn cinematic trust!

ALIEN RESURRECTION

The womb-like viscera of human and alien-crossed monstrosities connotes a bastardization.

Conceptually interesting but perhaps too great a departure. And no one puts bug guts anywhere near their mouth. Not unless they are chocolate covered and never if they're space bugs. And who fires spitballs at a window needed for navigation? I can't seem to get past that, even with the now-boilerplate spaceships in space shot.