Bones crunching and breaking

I personally like putting things in (cooked) whole chickens and then beating the chicken with a sledge hammer or other bludgeoning device.
– Billiam Baker

This technique can yield not only bone breaks but also a variety of flesh ripping sfx: Get yourself to the fish market and buy some King Crab legs, the bigger the better. Just experiment with breaking, twisting, smashing, tearing etc and you will start to hear the possibilities. It’s a great combination of the hard shell breaking with a bit of fleshy sound mixed in. I would suggest a cheap pair of leather gardening gloves as well since the crab legs are a bit prickly in spots and can be hard on the hands without protection.
– Seph Lawrence

Recently I finished a horror movie where the monster (evil spirit) was spindley and contorted-looking. It looked like an alien with its extra long thin limbs. Ended up using a bunch of different kinds of pasta to capture the different angles and sounds for this creature. I would twist, crush and break, spaghetti, elbow and linguini noodles dry. I would keep some damp (not wet) for closer shots. Gave a sense of life or fleshy bones. Worked really well.
– Rusty Dunn

Celery/Carrots/Little Gem Lettuce – try freezing them too. Jacob’s melon – melon with jacob’s cream crackers glued on it. Thin triple sheet plywood left to soak outside in the rain then dried in the sun and torn apart, snapped. Real Bones? Dog Chews? Branch snap + filter?
– Ben Minto

Breaking inside the body: Manicotti Pasta covered with a rag, close mic, break it slowly so you can really accentuate the crack.
– Edward Bauman

In addition to your regular mic, try using a contact mic on a slightly resonant surface, such as plywood, and crunch things with your boot. Use the contact mic material for the thick, heavy sweetener. Make sure the crunching items are hard enough to transmit vibration to the plywood. Walnuts have worked well for me.
– Kristoffer Larson

Raw corn. Get it with as much of the leafy stuff still on it as possible – good fresh corn. Works great for wet solid punches.
– Coll Anderson

I used acorns, small apples and walnuts on wooden parquet surface. Worked nice.
– Alexey Menshikov

Chris Sweetman told me a good technique for getting a really effective bone breaking noise. Chicken bones in a polystyrene cup, break and snap them together.
– Patrick Phelan

Crushing plastic drinks machine cups are meant to be good for bones breaking.
– Paul Arnold

Dried sunflower stalks.
-Charles Maynes

If you’ve ever wondered how to get the really over the top punch sound-effect like from old kung fu films– Beat the mess out a piece of celery with chopsticks or something similar (close mic’d) and compress it. Whip it good.
– Caleb Moore