Worlds Collide

2008-04-09T22:08:00.000-07:00

When asked in a live journal "Top Fives" community what the top five places to die in a horror film are, I responded with five places, and top five scenes in which people died in said places.

The comment for your viewing pleasure:
1. Bathroom*
2. Kitchen*
3. Hospital*
4. Cemetery*
5. Bed*

*1. Top five BATHROOM scenes:
-A Blade in the Dark, while washing her hair in the sink, she blindly reaches for her shampoo to have her hand stabbed into the sink counter, in which she has to pull her hand off the knife, then proceeds to be suffocated, strangled and brought over to the bathtub to die.
-Deep Red, killed in a steamy hot bathtub leaving a clue written in steam.
-Psycho, I'd hope there's no need for an explanation.
-Street Trash, melting as you flush yourself down the toilet.
-Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, getting your ass handed to you in the shower, and by that, having Ricky punch a hole THROUGH you.

*2. Top five KITCHEN scenes
-Beating Grandma to death in The Brood.
-Getting your face tenderized in The Gore Gore Girls.
-Head in the oven in Macabre.
-Eating herself to death in Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child
-Running into a knife in the kitchen when running away from The People Under the Stairs

*3. Top Five HOSPITAL scenes:
-It's a boy! It's killing all the doctors, IT'S ALIVE!
-At least her red braids were still intact after she got shot through her head in The Beyond.
-Burning on the stairs of the hospital in The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
-Bringing the dead back to life isn't the best idea a times, some people may end up dead like they do in Re-Animator
-Dying peacefully in a hospital bed is always nice, but one doesn't expect their boyfriend to bring their body home for good as he does in Buio Omega

*4. Top five CEMETERY scenes
-"I KICK ASS FOR THE LORD" dying in a cemetery in Dead Alive
-Getting laid by a lady..no..the TALL MAN in Phantasm
-Getting your head smacked on a "head"stone in NOTLD
-Going to talk crap to Rob while he's trying to bang you in a cemetery? That's the last thing yo want to do to a Nekromantik
-You think you want to make out in the cemetery w/ Tommy? Well, how about throw up your entire digestive tract a la COTLD

*5. Top Five IN BED scenes
-Being impaled while having sex in Twitch of the Death Nerve
-Arrow through the mattress, through your neck in Friday the 13th
-Death by spiders while in bed as in This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse
-Slashed to death while in a motel bed in New York Ripper
-Being shot in bed in The Beast Within

Puns, Kids and Murder: No, This is not a post about NOES.

2008-04-07T18:25:00.001-07:00

Victims in a vast majority of horror films are of the female gender, whether they're nasty bitches who deserved it like Unhappy Camper Ally Burgess or innocent victims like The Girl Next Door Meg Loughlin, the genre does not care, you are unfortunately unlucky.

In horror films it is almost common knowledge that if you are black you are, more likely than not going to get whacked. Even if you are one of the black antiheroes of a George A. Romero film or the amazing Bobby Rhodes, the genre does not care, you are unfortunately unlucky.

Who are the lucky ones? Children. I understand that it is frowned upon to kill children in film but I don't care. I am an unbiased horror film watcher, an equal-opportunity murder voyeur. How often have hardcore horror fans admitted that few horror films actually scare them. This is often due to the fact that horror films are far-fetched, yet predictable. One of the few movies to ever successfully creep me out (besides of course, Sesison 9) is the original When A Stranger Calls. If you want to successfully scare someone, be original and unafraid of taboos. Alas, beware, with taboo comes ridicule from the masses!

Now, not all horror films save their children! Look at Robert Rodriguez's portion of Grindhouse! Not only does the kid die, the kid is played by his real life son!

My first example is an actor you may recognize as one of the most annoying children in the history of Italian horror...Giavanni Frezza. No matter how badly I may have wanted to see him gruesomely murdered by Dr Freudstein, ripped apart by a prostitute Demon or slashed to pieces by Michele Soavi, I never had the opportunity because he's a kid and luck is on his side.

Now I would like to address just how lucky some of these kids are. This kid was kidnapped and held hostage by an evil House and was later found by his father, unscathed, well-fed AND hydrated! Sometimes I wonder if he was as scared as Richard Moll during filming as I was of Richard Moll in the 1980s. I can't look at him without getting the music from fucking Night Court stuck in my head.

This next kid, talk about luck, his parents were murdered by his zombie sister and he escaped a brutal skull crushing, brain squeezing just to land in one of the most confusing final 20 seconds of a Lucio Fulci film. Why were Mary and Gerry so terrified to see that boy? Because he's a lucky, unstoppable freak.

Despite Wes Craven's People Under the Stairs R rating, I've always thought of this as a kid-friendly horror film. Sure it's cautioned as having terror and violence but it has a happy ending and a great message! What else does it have? Lucky kids lead by a Fool.

Even when some kids are just looking for trouble, they repeatedly escape it! Booy, Mike sure needs luck when escaping the Tall Man and putting up with Reggie's constant lusting after babes!

Even the evil little creeps have luck on their side! Marco may look innocent but how trustworthy is a kid that happily communicates and conspires with the dead.

Now that I've sat here and fondly gone over a few horror films with lucky kids, I guess having lucky kids in good horror films aren't so bad. Anything is better than having "tortured, revenge-seeking, ghost kids" in American remakes of Asian horror.

Hollie Horror

Worlds Collide

Puns, Kids and Murder: No, This is not a post about NOES.