Two days and counting
Oct. 29th, 2003 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiThe best day for horror happens in two days. Although AMC has been showing horror stuff 24/7 for the last few days already, truly a wonderful thing. They've got the last good John Carpenter movie tonight. They Live is one of those movies that everyone needs to see many times, more now than in the Reagan days in which this was first filmed. Low budget aside, it's just an amazing movie.
So, we've talked about horror movies a lot over the last week. But we've skirted around the death scenes. Let's face it -- death scenes are to horror movies what money shots are to porn. Mind you, the a-list stuff (the first Halloween, Psycho, etc) doesn't rely on it, but the late-night direct-to-video stuff sure as hell does.
First, for the horror aficionados out there, what's your favorite horror murder? And yeah, I know that's not an easy question. Marion Crane's death in the aforementioned Psycho comes to mind, of course. Few moments have been scarier. Harry Dean Stanton's in Alien was powerful, as well. Of course, both of those films are about a lot more than setting up a body count. On the exploitative side of the coin, there are few moments to beat Scream's Rose McGowan, who not only gets killed in an innovative and unique way, but who does so with a believable set up (a major problem of many "gimmick" kill movies).
Second, what murders made you actually uncomfortable (this one, in particular, is for the horror fans, as folks who don't like this sort of thing in general will, by definition, find all murder scenes uncomfortable)? As a man, I've got an inherent bias against any murder in which the man's penis is chopped off. Although I can usually tolerate it when the character is a scumbag (like the rapist who gets the "so good it hurts" handjob in I Spit on Your Grave, it bothers me when it's just another stupid teen, as in two Friday the 13th movies and the icky Dr. Giggles. I also found the over-the-top ongoing murder of Lisa Newmyer in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generationto be too extended and real. There are a few others that come to mind, but I do want this post to end eventually. :-)
Finally, a quiz. Name three movies in which someone is murdered with a flagpole as one of the weapons. And movies like Scream, where the person is killed and then hung on a flagpole, don't count. I'm asking just because it seems weird that there actually are three such movies (and the ones I'm thinking of use the flagpole in three different ways, even).
So, we've talked about horror movies a lot over the last week. But we've skirted around the death scenes. Let's face it -- death scenes are to horror movies what money shots are to porn. Mind you, the a-list stuff (the first Halloween, Psycho, etc) doesn't rely on it, but the late-night direct-to-video stuff sure as hell does.
First, for the horror aficionados out there, what's your favorite horror murder? And yeah, I know that's not an easy question. Marion Crane's death in the aforementioned Psycho comes to mind, of course. Few moments have been scarier. Harry Dean Stanton's in Alien was powerful, as well. Of course, both of those films are about a lot more than setting up a body count. On the exploitative side of the coin, there are few moments to beat Scream's Rose McGowan, who not only gets killed in an innovative and unique way, but who does so with a believable set up (a major problem of many "gimmick" kill movies).
Second, what murders made you actually uncomfortable (this one, in particular, is for the horror fans, as folks who don't like this sort of thing in general will, by definition, find all murder scenes uncomfortable)? As a man, I've got an inherent bias against any murder in which the man's penis is chopped off. Although I can usually tolerate it when the character is a scumbag (like the rapist who gets the "so good it hurts" handjob in I Spit on Your Grave, it bothers me when it's just another stupid teen, as in two Friday the 13th movies and the icky Dr. Giggles. I also found the over-the-top ongoing murder of Lisa Newmyer in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generationto be too extended and real. There are a few others that come to mind, but I do want this post to end eventually. :-)
Finally, a quiz. Name three movies in which someone is murdered with a flagpole as one of the weapons. And movies like Scream, where the person is killed and then hung on a flagpole, don't count. I'm asking just because it seems weird that there actually are three such movies (and the ones I'm thinking of use the flagpole in three different ways, even).
