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My dad is fond of retelling, at every opportunity, the story of how he took me to see Crocodile Dundee when I was two, and during the scene where the crocodile jumps out of the water at the chick, everyone in the theatre jumped—except me; all I did was stick my feet out in front of me, which I strongly suspect had nothing to do with the film. He usually tells this story in conjunction with the story of the first and last time he ever took me on a roller coaster, also when I was about two. I just sat there, kind of bored, not moving and not saying anything the entire time. Maybe I was paralyzed; who knows. Anyway, I believe that those two incidents collectively sparked his obsession with showing me as many old horror films as he could in an effort to get me to respond. As a direct result, I grew up with classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, a long string of 1950s science fiction films, and later on I graduated to The Exorcist and The Silence of the Lambs. By the time I was fifteen, I had a thing for morbid literature. I successfully though inadvertently convinced some guy in my tenth grade World History class that I was some kind of closet psycho killer because I read Dracula, Jack the Ripper, Poltergeist, The Exorcist, and The Phantom of the Opera one right after the other, and none of them bothered me in the least. I didn't think they were supposed to. While I'm on the subject, I would like to mention that Frankenstein was the name of the doctor, not the monster, duh. Maybe it's my saw-too-many-horror-movies-at-a-young-age imagination, but horror movies these days are simply not scary. Either that, or they're severely over hyped. Or else people are just pussies. I'm inclined to believe it's the last thanks to a few "scary" films that didn't perturb me at all. I sat through The Texas Chainsaw Massacre bored out of my fucking skull while the big, burly guy behind me screamed like a girl, and then I turned around and laughed at him. The exact same thing happened during The Blair Witch Project. *Sigh.* Seriously, what is it with people? Is this a lack of self-control or what? I have never screamed during a movie, ever. I've jumped a few times, like during His Girl Friday when Earl Williams sneaked into the pressroom, but that's it. I used to date a guy who was a total idiot about horror films. He got so freaked out by that lame The Cell that we had to leave in the middle of it. I was so mad. Not that it was really worth staying, but I wouldn't have minded knowing how it ended. Mostly I was just annoyed to discover that he was such a wimp. What good is a guy if he can't even sit through a Jennifer Lopez knock-off of about three other films? It wouldn't have been so bad if it were just the film, but he was like that in real life, too. It was one of the many, many things I bore in mind when I finally dumped him. That reminds me of Psycho. Apparently, to this day, there are people with phobias of showers and out-of-the way motels. Please. Whatever happened to "it's just a movie?" That's taking suspension of disbelief way too far. I really did get caught up in Rear Window, but as soon as the movie ended, that was it, and I laughed at it the next time I saw it. And what's with zombie movies? My dad and I both had the same reaction to the first five minutes of the highly-touted 28 Days Later: "Oh, it's another zombie film; no reason to watch the rest of this, then." And yet people keep watching them. It's the same thing with teen slasher films. Why do you even bother? Do you really think something's going to be different? It never is! Even Scream, which I actually liked (well, kind of) because it cleverly poked fun at other teen slasher films, was ridiculously predictable. I mean, I'm not one of those "Oh, I knew it was so-and-so all along" types, but, I mean, it could have at least varied a bit more than it did from the clichés it parodied. Its sequels did the exact same thing. The geek didn't even get the girl, goddamnit. And oh by the way, film school is nothing like they showed there. Whoever heard of dragging heavy, rusty, dusty, greasy equipment through expensive, painted halls. Film school is like film studios: cement. And some props scattered around. You'd think Hollywood would know better, or at least, know better than to insult the intelligence of the film students who would inevitably be watching that film. I intensely dislike remakes of classics. Why do people keep trying to tamper with perfection? Bram Stoker's Dracula (more like Frances Ford Coppola's Dracula) was downright silly. I laughed hysterically at Keanu Reeves, and I concluded that though the movie would have been infinitely better without him in it, it still would have sucked because of those awful plastic costumes. Let's face it, no one is ever going to top Bela Lugosi. Bela Lugosi reprised his famous role onstage hundreds of times, but he only played Dracula onscreen I think twice of the over one hundred films he made. Poor guy had a really hard life; he had one marital disaster after another coupled with some serious drug problems, and when he died, he was so poor that Frank Sinatra actually paid for his funeral. Lugosi was buried in his famous Dracula cape, and apparently, Peter Lorre said to Vincent Price, "Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart, just in case?" Anyway, Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula is really the definitive one. A search on imdb.com pulls up almost 150 films with "Dracula" in the title, many of which are foreign, and most of which are abysmal. The same can be said for the around-one hundred variants on Frankenstein that are out there. Boris Karloff was the monster, damn it. I mean, seriously, take a look at that old footage and see if you aren't forced to agree; that has got to be one of the best performances I have ever seen. He was really a fantastic actor and also a great person. I don't know why people go on trying to remake Frankenstein; it's not like they're going to be able to top that. Same goes for Psycho. If I ever get my hands on Gus van Sant; I'm going to give him the Norman Bates treatment. What was he thinking? . . . Pity old Anthony Perkins never got away from his Norman Bates role, though; just like Lugosi and Karloff, he was a damned good actor who got roped into a stereotype. Actually, though, it was his double and not him in the famous shower scene. Hee. A final, miscellaneous point I'd like to mention is the miscategorization of horror flicks as "suspense." My dad's always saying, "Oh, fill-in-the-blank's not a horror movie, it's suspense/terror/thriller/other-meaningless-and-in-denial-synonym-for-horror." I don't get it. Horror is horror is horror. If it's supposed to be a scary movie, it's horror. Period. Stop disguising it and pretending like you don't have any guilty pleasures; it's transparent. Anyway, the moral of the story is, grow up. Most horror movies aren't scary at all. A lot of them are embarrassingly bad, and all you can do is laugh at them. I do. And I also laugh at the suckers who start screaming in the middle of them. God, people suck. |