The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Halloween@TFL: The A-Z Of Horror - Q To S

Who knew there were so many letters?

Q is for Q: The Winged Serpent!

Thank you, Larry Cohen!

R is for Reaper!

The Grim Reaper invented death and pretty much had the market cornered in chopping people up with a scythe. Then death went public domain and any masked looney could muscle in on the act. The Reaper went mostly missing from our screens after that.

He seemed to appear in Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, having loads of fun eating the souls of Michael J. Fox's neighbours. But then it turned out it was just Jake Busey wearing some carpet.

It looked like he was going to make a comeback when Final Destination announced that their killer wouldn't be some masked psycho but Death itself, come to collect the lives of some mostly hot teens who had evaded him before. Then it turned out 'Death' would be represented only by some ominous music, some shadows and some ridiculously over-complicated means of killing. Grimmy looked at his simple, reliable scythe and wept dry, bitter tears.

He once played chess against Max Von Sydow and now he is reduced to playing Battleship against Bill And Ted: The Grim Reaper needs to make a comeback and show all these pretenders what being the embodiment of fate and mortality and stuff is all about.

Eddie Izzard pointed out that the scythe was probably a state of the art tool back in the day, so maybe The Reaper should get himself a fancy new harvester of souls. A combine harvester would be too unwieldy. A chainsaw too cliche. What he needs is a weapon that truly represents death in the 21st century. So what, in this day and age, truly is death?

Hosting the Oscars. Zing!

S is for Sequels!

Yes, I know that the horror genre is about exploring and confronting our deepest fears as a cathartic process of moral transcendance, but it is also about squeezing your girlfriend's tit while she's being distracted by Freddy Kreuger. Horror movies have always been cheap, quick and formulaic fodder for a saturday night fondle or booze-up. Any horror film that becomes succesful gets sequelised as quickly and as often as possible until they stop making money.

The Nightmare on Elm Street series reached number 7 and the Friday the 13th franchise reached 10 before they teamed up for Freddy Vs Jason. Halloween is up to 8, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 6. Even The Child's Play series has 5. And this sequelisation disease is not limited to older films. Saw cost $1m and made over $50 in 1994 and we are now already up to part 3.

While a formula is set up quickly in these franchises for easy repetition, film-makers will try and add new twists to keep things fresh. They are always the same twists though. Family is usually the first to get brought up with Jamie Lee Curtis turning out to be Mike Myer's sister as early as Halloween 2. Freddy had a son in part 5, The Dream Child. Hellraiser 4 and Jason X went into space. Turning the franchise into a self-referential comedy is also popular. This happened with Freddy Kreuger around about halfway through part 3, The Dream Warriors. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre pt 2 is a big joke people are only starting to get now.

The final rule of horror sequels is that they are all completely shit.