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Horror
Movie
I saw a horror
movie today.
No...no...not
the Keanu Reeves slow-talking, story with a big heart, remake of the Bad
News Bears. If you catch me going to that, I request in advance that
I be shot full of tranquilizer darts and left in a dark room to reflect
on what I've done wrong. So, the same as going to that movie, but without
a five dollar bag of popcorn.
By horror movie,
I mean the standard hour and a half romp of people being run down by a
supernatural killer who is hunting them in order to feed, or to avenge
itself for unspeakable horrors that happened to them a long long time ago.
In an insane asylum far far away.
I saw my very
first horror movie when I was 6 years old.
My parents,
who like all responsible parents of the 80s whose children may or may not
have assaulted the last babysitter with a hard-flung Fisher Price cash
register, had learned to let the television be the babysitter. That thing
could hypnotize an 80s kid. We probably just liked staring at it because
it helped avert our eyes from a room full of furniture left over from the
70s.
One fateful
night, my parents left me completely alone, in a dark house, with the television,
the VCR, and a movie they had rented for me. Poltergeist.
Who rents Poltergeist for
a 6 year old? People who haven't seen it. A movie about a haunted house,
a little boy who gets attacked by a stuffed clown, a lovely swimming pool
full of dead people, and best of all, a child my age who gets swallowed
by the television.
Throughout grade
school I had a nervous twitch.
When I was twelve
I had a friend named Bruce Clark, whose dad owned two VCRs. This was 1987,
so it was pretty cool to have two VCRs. Good old Mulford Clark would rent
three or four movies a week and make copies of them. There were hundreds
of movies in that basement and we watched all of them. Mostly because we
really liked movies, but also because we were 12 years old and Mulford
tended to favor rentals with the occasional topless woman. Watching movies
in Bruce's basement was a lot like panning for gold.
That goldmine
is where I saw some of my favorites for the first time. Top Gun. Lethal
Weapon. Stand By Me. It's also where I was re-introduced
to the nightmarish world of horror movies.
Nightmare
on Elm Street. Friday the 13th. The Blob. The
remake of The Blob. The Fly. The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre. Even Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. And hey...that
counts. Like you wouldn't run away from a tomato that was trying to kill
you.
In among countless
zombie movies, there was one called The Stuff. Here's a plot summary from
the Internet Movie Database:
"Weird
yummy goo erupts from the earth and is discovered by a couple of miners.
They taste it and decide to market it because it tastes so good. The
American public literally eats up the new dessert known as "The
Stuff" but unfortunately it takes over the brains of those who eat
it turning them into zombie like creatures. It is up to ex-FBI agent
David and a kid named Jason to stop the spread of the mind altering dessert."
Unfortunately
it takes over their brains. Yes, how unfortunate.
Killer desserts,
killer tomatoes. Rarities among the vampires, werewolves, mummies, and
psychotic students that dominate the genre. I welcome them.
The stand-by
horror movie villains just aren't enough to scare me. After seeing all
of those movies, even I could wipe out a room full of vampires, no problem.
Blindfolded. With an arm tied behind my back. On one leg. While I was sleeping.
And the hardest
part of that would be sleeping while standing on one leg.
So now I wait
as Hollywood searches through its bag of tricks for the next best scariest
thing, compared to the last best scariest thing it released. A madman.
A mutant. A monstrosity. Maybe they'll re-release Money Train.
Or they could
produce one of these plots. And pay me a million dollars.
THE
LIBRARY (originally titled "Due Date")
High school senior Dewey Decimal isn't just the captain of the chess team,
he's also the top man on the audio visual squad. Dewey is renowned for his
ability to splice, tape, and thread projectors so that biology classes can
proceed without interruption. One day when he stays late to do some repairs
in the equipment room, he discovers that the school librarian has been slaughtering
innocent freshmen and filing them alphabetically in a horrific library of souls.
Screaming and running ensue.TWO-MAN
TENT
(originally titled "Three-Man Tent")
Clarence and Walter are teenage boys who borrow camping equipment from a clairvoyant
antique dealer and hike up a spooky fog-covered mountain for the weekend. One
night while they are sleeping and their tent is trying to digest them...they
wake up and discover that the tent is trying to digest them! They escape the
tent's deadly jaws, but will they get off of the mountain alive? Screaming
and running ensue.
IN-FLIGHT
MEAL (originally titled "Passenger Heinz 57")
Newlyweds Rick and Sally Bunsworth are aboard Flight 666, headed to a honeymoon
retreat in the South Pacific. One by one the other passengers get up to use
the washroom and never return to their seats. When Rick disappears, it's up
to Sally to find him. But she only finds parts of him! And the pilots are actually
giant talking crocodiles! Screaming ensues.
You'll notice
that there's no running in that last movie. Can't run on a plane. You'd
bang your leg on the armrests. Is Hollywood ready for a horror movie that
dares color this far outside the lines of the finite formula? Time will
tell. And when that million dollar cheque arrives, I'll take you all out
for tacos.
This article
has been provided by Screamingmidget.com.
Please visit their site for more humorous articles on a variety of topics.
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