Chris Higgins
No Signal: When Movies Use Cell Phone Signal Loss to Heighten Drama
by Chris Higgins - September 24, 2009 - 2:49 PM

No Signal is a YouTube “supercut” of various movie moments in which the protagonists find themselves without a cell phone signal — you can bet a murderer/terrorist/alien is right around the corner when that happens! Don’t go through that door, cell phone guy! Wondering what the term “supercut” means? Blogger Andy Baio (who popularized the term) described it thusly:

This insane montage of (nearly) every instance of “What?” from the LOST series started me thinking about this genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage.

For lack of a better name, let’s call them supercuts. (Thanks, Ryan.)

Also includes in Baio’s explanation is a huge list of supercuts, including the rather notable every “dude” from The Big Lebowski (warning: contains some spicy language). Anyway, on with the show. No Signal (warning, some occasional swear words creep in):

(Via Waxy.org.)

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Comments (6)

  1. The “F-word” montage from the Big Lebowski is also quite legendary. It’s surprising how evenly the movie progresses while only using the specific instances where the f-bomb is dropped.

    posted by Bert on 9-24-2009 at 3:12 pm

  2. @ Bert

    In Bruges had an F***ing Bruges extra where they showed all the F-bombs used in the movie. As I recall, it was hilarious.

    posted by Jonny on 9-24-2009 at 3:50 pm

  3. LMAO. My husband and I watch a ton of movies (we own about 2000) and one of our favourite things to do is try to call when the cell phone signal will go out. Hahaha, this post made our evening.

    posted by Amanda on 9-24-2009 at 7:18 pm

  4. One of my favorite uses of the cell phone signal in movies is in Hot Fuzz. As Sergeant Angel is using public transportation to get out to his new post in the country his cell phone bars keep dropping. Excellent fun movie!

    posted by Katie on 9-25-2009 at 11:46 am

  5. As technology progresses, people have to keep adding in these things to make the situations plausible. The ‘no signal when you need it most’ thing has become so common, I’m suprised the characters even check anymore.

    posted by Jenny on 9-28-2009 at 5:55 am

  6. The challenge is to come up with innovative ways of dispensig with the cell phone. In ‘the Hitcher’, the bad guy simply snapped the good guy’s cell phone in half. Any more suggestions on how to deal with this problem?
    Paul

    posted by Paul on 11-4-2010 at 2:08 am

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