"Do you notice how horror films start to sound like your mother? Don't go in the attic. Don't go to sleep. Don't go in the water after you eat. Don't go out with the boy next door, he's killed before, he can kill again." Stand-up comedian Bobby Slade

So yesterday my friend Rich and his girlfriend and I did a creature double feature, we saw The House of 1,000 Corpses and Identity (I posted the link for it in yesterday's posts). I would like to say it was almost a scary afternoon. I mean House of 1,000 Corpses started off well. For Six Feet Under fans, the actor who plays Arthur, the new mortuary assistant, is in this film. Oh c'mon you know you love him. There is something irresistable about the way he is creepy, the slinking around the funeral home, his utter lack of passion, absence of anything like a life (isolating a melody from classical music and then enhancing it while using a computer synthesizer, even Yanni has better ways to spend free time). Even if you don't like Arthur now, he does apparently grow on people. So anyway our good friend Arthur (I really should find out the actor's name) is in House of 1000 Corpses, he does a very good attempting to be a literary college student in the seventies.

So the movie starts off rather well. Good humor. The style is actually great. There have been very "stylish" horror films in the last ten years or so (The last American one was The Blair Witch Project, which received mixed reviews. I think the film was great, but then a lot of that had to do with WHERE I saw it-rural upstate new york. But I digress.) The opening was classic. It opens with an ad for Captain Spaulding's Murder Ride and Fried Chicken. The first piece of dialogue we get is between two male characters are in a car talking about which of the Manson chicks they find sexy. Great writing. But it committed too serious errors. It made the same mistake as Jeepers Creepers (a film so bad that I came out wanting a refund on my two hours), it made the evil too powerful. Once it is clear that there is no escape, I lose interest. Once there is no hope, there is no suspense. Once suspense is gone it because simply watching something gross and not being invested in a story. I have no problem with the monster winning, I just want there to be a chance that the "hero" can prevail. The other serious error that the film committed was the "too many evils" problem. This particular problem I first identified in the film Event Horizon (another film so bad that I felt used). Event Horizon wasn't even real horror movie, it was closer to a whole bunch of typical horror film premises somehow all shoved into one film. (I won't go into it now, partially because I do not want to waste useful neuronal synapses recalling and then re-analyzing the film. I have blocked most of it from memory and this is a good thing, people, a very good thing.) Anway, it resurfaced again in the re-make The House on Haunted Hill (it is a remake of a Vincent Price films in which the big scare is quite literally a skeleton hung by a visible wire). Here is a film that had a pretty good premise, a group of people trapped in a creepy former insane asylum (one of the problems I had was the main floor, which had been converted into a house, was way too cozy for a place that had been abandoned. I mean look at the decadence of the bedrooms. Don't you think they would have taken the crystal decanters before closing the place up? Of course, the counter arguement is that they spiffed it up for the party. I can't believe I wasted that much thought on that movie.). The host is known for his scare tactics and particularly elaborate practical jokes (set up well in the beginning of the movie.) The wife wants to kill her husband. And so the movie begins-is the place haunted or not? Now that is actually a great horror premise, because the viewer doesn't even know what to be scared of. (The film Alien demonstrates how keeping the actual source of the fear unidentified for as long as possible is a great technique for scaring the hell out of the audience. It was on the sci-fi channel today. It is truly one of the great horror films of all times-it was also nominated for some academy awards!) Anyway, the film does not make the best use out of the premise. It makes it very clear very early on that the place IS haunted. That would be fine. There is also the wife plot that has a minor, but predictable twist. My problem comes when they start talking about the OTHER EVIL in the basement. Oh yes, there are the malevolent ghosties, but there is the unnamable evil that sudden pops up in the last twenty minutes of the film. Totally unnecessary. The bad ghosties were enough. The other evil, on top of just being really awful special effects-a kind of moving ink blot (which is kind of funny,all I could think of when I saw it whooshing through the house is that it should be chasing the survivor around howling "What do you see when you look at this? What about this? Interesting." Shrink humor. Dig it.) it was just too over the top.There is such a thing as too much evil. House of 1000 Corpses is another film with the too much evil problem. Here you have a perfectly good premise (very much like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) a demented red neck family torturing some young college kids. The problem comes in with the Doctor Satan angle. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM AND DO PLAN TO SEE IT, DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH. STOP HERE. Like the House on Haunted Hill, the demented family is enough, but the Rod Zombie mucked it up by making Dr Satan not just a ruse to lure young travelers into the family's demented clutches, but real. And like the House on Haunted Hill, Dr. Satan falls miserably short, he basically looks like the crypt keeper kitted out with arm braces. So not scary. (Also his henchman, who looks like a rip off the leechman from the X-Files, is mentally ill. This mental instability helps our hero to escape. You see, that's the problem with crazy henchman, always "accidentally" letting the victim escape.) I would like to say that there is some excellent symbolic content in the film, and I'm sure some enterprising young American Studies or Film Analysis Ph.D. candidate will write a fine dissertation on it.

Identity had different problems. It was an interesting film, it uses and interweaves a lot of classic horror film premises. IF YOU INTEND TO SEE THE FILM, DO NOT READ. There is the one premise of a single personality systematically eliminating the "weaker" personalities (the film Psycho, based on the fine novel by Robert Bloch of the same title-interestingly enough Psycho was based on serial killer Ed Gein, the same killer who inspired the film the Texas Chainsaw Massacre-it's fun, it's a fact, it's a fun serial killer fact). The idea of different aspects of a personality turning on itself it, I have to admit, a horrifying idea. Then there is the other "premise" of the film, which is essentially a whodunnit. There are ten characters, which one is the killer? Since this premise is manufactured in the imagination of a single man, it is taken from one of the books he has read in the past, namely an Agatha Christy novel, I believe entitled Ten Little Indians (I do not have the energy to research if this is the actual title-someone want to help me out?) All the characters, seemingly strangers, are linked together. On top of it someone is killing them, in order to find the killer, the connection must be discovered. Then top of that there is another layer, no one is who they appear to be. These alternate personalities are also all pretending to be different people. Ed, played by John Cusack, who does rain spattered somberness very well as we all know from Say Anything, is a limo driver who actually was a cop. Ray Liotta (AGAIN IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THE FILM DO NOT READ THIS) is actually an escaped convict posing as a cop. Amanda Peet is predictably a murderous con woman. Larry, the hotel concierge, is actually a defunct gambler who found the owner of the motel dead and just took over the position. Etc. etc. So on top of all these characters not being actual characters ,but seperate personalities, these personalities are actually pretenses. Confused yet? Wait there's more. For the final twist, almost all of the main characters are guilty of murder. Ray Liotta is a violent con, John Cusack feels responsible for the suicide of a young mexican girl, Larry the gamber probably killed the motel manager instead of finding him dead, Amanda Peet probably killed her sugar daddy. So there you go. A deceptive cast all capable of murder, but which one is the homicidal lunatic? And the answer takes its cue from such films as Children of the Corn, The Ring, and the Omen. Apparently little kids are the new scary.

I'll say this, it was a well done film, but not, unfortunately, scary. There is hope however in the form of trailers. I particularly interested in 28 Days Later.

Now I've wasted all that time on film analysis, there is some personal business I should write about from yesterday as well, but oh look at that I don't have the time. I'll have to put it off until later. Drat.