Some Monsters are Born Bad

I love horror movies.

Two hours 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.

When I watch, I sit very still with everything clenched and concentrate on keeping my tongue clear of my teeth in case I bite it off and bleed on my popcorn.  Not that it would stop me from staying to watch the rest of the movie.

I saw my very first horror movie when I was 8 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 an 8 year old? People who haven't seen it. A movie about a haunted house, a boy who gets attacked by a stuffed clown, a 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 Mulford owned two VCRs. It 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 aren't enough to scare me anymore. After seeing all of those movies, 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.