(I know this isn't typical diary fair, but every so often, I like to post something like this just for fun. Join me won't you? Also, this is mainly focused on the sub genre of "Slasher" movies, in anticipation of the upcoming remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. SPOILERS AHEAD!)
A POV tracking shot takes us around the outside perimeter of a house. Through a window, we see a teenage boy and girl on the couch making out; it's getting hot-and-heavy now, and they decide to take their canoodling up stairs. We enter the house and the POV changes with the addition of a mask, and we acquire a knife. The teenage boy leaves with little more than a word (talk about your minute man). We track up the stairs, into the bedroom of the unsuspecting girl -- naked, vulnerable, oblivious -- and the knife stabs at her several times. She's dead. We track back to the outside of the house only to discover that "we" -- that is the character we've followed from his POV -- is (are?) a child. For the next ninety minutes, we are taken on a suspense ride originally titled "The Babysitter Murders," but officially called "Halloween," and a new era in horror is born.
Six years later we watch as a man in a dirty boiler room works in an, at once, haphazard and meticulous manner to fashion a tool of his trade. He cuts the fingertips from an old work glove, and then he sharpens what look like steak knives. Amid the amberish glow of some distant fire, the man works his craft until he has assembled his instrument. The sight of the instrument itself is disturbing, ghastly even; it is a glove-like apparatus affixed with huge razor-talons. "What is this thing?" we ask ourselves. This is the tool of his trade. His trade is murder.
Two great openings to what I would consider to be two great films -- Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street. The latter is scheduled to release it's -- apparently required -- remake, or "reimagining," this Friday.
In my humble opinion, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (ANOES) is an example of what can happen when an highly original idea makes it passed all the inane criticisms and concerns that plague movie studios and into an audience's collective conscience where it lives forever. And because of my fondness for the original, I harbor a certain amount of antipathy for this coming remake. Does that mean I won't see it? No, I'll be in a theatre this weekend when it's released. I will definitely see it. But if it sucks, I'll be once again on my annual hunt for Michael Bay's head.
Speaking of horror movies that suck, my whole reason for writing this diary (beyond my love of the movies and ANOES in particular) is to list my (and invite your) recommendations for the Craptacular Horror Movie Hall of Fame.
So, let's begin. (Keep in mind, I'm only 26 and so my list will mainly consist of recent entries.)
Saw VI (2009) - Hey, I love a good round of torture-porn as much as the next guy, but it's getting a little old, Guys-Who-Make-The-Saw-Movies. The only thing interesting about these films at this point is trying to anticipate what way they'll use next to bring a guy who's been dead for three movies back into the fold through nothing more than flashbacks. This one actually had one redeeming quality to my tastes which was that it was a morality tale on health care in America. Seriously, the whole movie, I kept waiting for the President to show up and say, "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message."
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989): Never mind the quibble of false advertisement (most of the movie takes place on the cruise ship from Hell, not Manhattan; it should've been called "Jason Takes Shuffleboard"). Never mind the part where Jason punches the guy's head clean off his body. Never mind the weird uncle who might be indicted for child endangerment. Nevermind all that. What's driving me crazy is that I saw this movie for the first time more than ten years ago, and I'm still trying to figure out how New York's sewage can revert the undead Jason back to his childhood self. WTF?
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993): By this point, New Line Cinema had purchased the rights to make any future Jason Vorhees vehicles from Paramount, but for some reason they did not obtain the nomenclature "Friday the 13th," hence the title. This movie is so moronically stupid, I simply lack the words, the intellect, or the chutzpah to properly brief you. But I'll try anyway. For one thing, The Great Hockey-Masked Psycho appears in only about fifteen minutes of the runtime, he's blowed up in the opening reels by some kind of FBI task force; he makes another appearance toward the end. For the rest of the movie, we are treated to Jason's spirit body-hopping from one character to the next. What's most laughable about this is that this Body-Snatcheresque plot device is triggered by a coroner eating the "dead" Jason's heart (with orgasmic glee) for some inexplicable reason.
(At this point I could go on to list Jason X, and Freddy vs. Jason, but I don't want to pile on.)
Halloween (2007) - Oh, Rob Zombie. Rob Zombie you poor, poor insolent bastard. This movie begs the question: why do bad things happen to good ideas? First of all, the white trash family was a nice touch. Ha! You thought I was serious, didn't you, Rob? The Redneck Family: A Backstory, was a horrible touch. God, Rob Zombie, you don't get why the original Halloween is scary at all, do you? A huge part of the reason Michael Myers terrified us is precisely because we don't know why he is evil. He was a canvass onto which people could paint their own fears and their worst impulses. Good Lord, you couldn't have picked up a phone and contacted John Carpenter? Mr. Zombie, you sullied the name one of my all time favorite films! I hope you're happy!
Silent Hill (2006) - "Wow." That was my first reaction to the inexorably ludicrous Silent Hill. Maybe one has to have played the video game to understand the movie. Maybe one has to drop acid. I don't know. But beyond the superfluous use of the phrase, "burn her like a witch!" there's the fact that this movie unfolded in a way that was hard to follow, damn near impossible to comprehend, and easy to mock. If ever you wanted to have an experience wherein which you curse your own body for it's constant synaptic firings, this is the movie for you.
Wolf Creek (2005) - Every once in a while, there comes a movie that can redefine the genre, a film so fresh, exciting, and clever it has the potential to reset an old and worn-out formula. That movie was called Scream. This movie, on the other hand, was a soft-core snuff film. Set in the Australian Outback, it follows three backpackers whose car breaks down. An Aussie equivalent of a Redneck offers to tow the car to his place and fix it. Uh oh. Once he's gotten the gang to his place he commences to torture them, and we the audience, have no choice but to watch. Actually, there was one other option, and I took it. I walked out on this garbage. To date this is the only movie I've ever walked out on (ten bucks is a lot of money). If there was a plot, it must've developed after I left, or it must've been in code, I have no way of knowing which.
This list is certainly not exhaustive, but it is a good sampling of -- in my opinion -- what happens when good horror goes bad. I invite you to add your own in the comments.