Tag: Halloween

How to Write a Horror Movie

The last horror movie I paid money to see was The Exorcist in 19 [mumble, mumble.]  It’s a good movie, but I was old enough to know better.  Since then, I’ve lived a full and rewarding life without ever again shelling out coin for cheap adrenaline thrills.  Actually, I’ve had the hell scared out of me for real a couple of times, and I’m in no great hurry to have those feelings artificially induced.  Besides, contemporary horror movies are totally unimaginative.  For the most part, they’re just a series of heart-shocking surprises, stuck together with literal bursts of exaggerated gore.   Let me show you how it’s done.  Here’s a simple three part program that will help you write your own horror movie, and depending on how ambitious you are, take you to the very gates of Horror Movie Heaven: The Slasher Franchise.

First of all, horror movies are driven by the vivid portrayal of a single requisite character: the half dressed young woman.  She is as essential to the horror movie as the horse is to the Western.  If you don’t have at least one girl falling out of what’s left of her clothes, you simply don’t have a horror movie.  Ideally, you need one Alpha female and a couple of expendable best friends who get butchered early, to prove the villain/monster/psycho is serious, but strangers will do.  Actually, the best friends don’t even need names; all they have to do is scream.

From there, you need a boyfriend (he can be a husband as long as he’s newly minted.)  The boyfriend/husband is the catalyst that causes all the problems in the first place.  He’s the guy who ignores everybody’s advice to get the hell out of there and convinces them all to hang around and get murdered.   He comes with his own set of friends, usually a larger, stronger man and an idiot.  The larger, stronger guy gets hacked up later on to prove the villain/monster/psycho can’t be stopped, and the idiot is there for comic relief.  (Nothing much ever happens to him.)  Likewise, the boyfriend, is normally never killed, although he can be badly hurt (and usually is.)  He’s kind of a handsome Wile E. Coyote type who always survives his dumbass schemes to defend himself and the half dressed female.

Secondly, you need to drop everybody’s IQ by about 25%.  Once again, this is a fundamental feature of the horror movie.  The future victims have got to be dumb as a box of hammers and take an active part in their own demise.  For example, when confronted by a dark, rambling mansion or a deserted campsite or what-have-you, the first thing horror movie characters do is the stupidest thing possible: they split up and go exploring.  Together, they could probably protect themselves properly and possibly even beat the villain/monster/psycho bloody; individually, they’re just candidates for a toe tag.  Nor do they ever arm themselves with anything more than a toothbrush.  The villain/monster/psycho has any number of ingenious weapons available to him, but these clowns never even think to pick up a rock.  There is a willing suspension of disbelief in the movies, but the future corpses of horror must defy all reasonable thought.  Never let them grab a garden tool, pick up a kitchen knife or — heaven forbid — in a country as gun crazy as America, carry a pistol.  Also, they must run headlong down blind alleys; wander aimlessly down dark, creaky hallways and never — under any circumstances — turn on the lights.  In short, they should all be stupid enough to get outwitted by sheep.

Third, and least importantly, you need a villain/monster/psycho.  Actually it really doesn’t matter who or what this guy is.  He just needs a steady supply of sharp and/or pointy things to jab into people until they gush for the camera.  Simply remember not to kill him off at the end of the movie — in case the studio wants to pick up an option on Freddy Jason Myers, Part II.

Of course, there are all kinds of things you don’t want cluttering up your movie like plot, character development or dialogue, but those are just tricks of the trade you can learn to suppress as you go along.  Actually, for a quick shortcut to horror movie heaven just get some old Archie Comics, piece together a few of their adventures, add a villain/monster/psycho to massacre a few of them, and you’ve got it made.  Good luck!

Hallowe’en: No Time for Horror Movies

As of right now, it’s two weeks until Hallowe’en, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to take much more of this.  Make no mistake: I love Hallowe’en.  It’s my favourite occasion after Christmas, St Paddy’s Day and the Summer Solstice (I think I was a Druid in a past life.)  The problem is, like a lot of good things on this planet, idiots have got hold of Hallowe’en and they’re hell-bent on ruining it.  Every year it’s the same: one minute after Columbus Day, they trot out the Horror movies.  Then it’s wall-to-wall gore until the sugar shock wears off November 1st.  For the last nine days, our 500 channel universe has been turned into a butcher shop, and it doesn’t look like the carnage is going to let up any time soon.  So far, I’ve managed to avoid Friday the 13th in about 20 of its repetitious incarnations, Nightmare on Elm Street parts 1 through 35 and the entire Halloween franchise — except for about three minutes of Resurrection when I got the wrong Mike Myers.  If I don’t see a decent movie soon, I swear I’m going to buy Netflix.

Let me put this into perspective so we’re all on the same page.  Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, what’s-his-name with the hockey mask and anybody else with a chainsaw, pick axe or pointy stick have nothing to do with Hallowe’en.  These guys and their horrible movies were invented by Hollywood to cash in on the universal need for teenage boys to get close to teenage girls — who are looking for an excuse to let them.  (This little drop of human nature BTW, hasn’t changed since the Stone Age, but now it’s worth millions.)  That’s where horror movies came from — not from Hallowe’en.  Hallowe’en has never been about half-naked young women and dumbass young men getting their entrails splattered from here to Main Street.  Nor is it about the lunatics, maniacs, evil spirits and just plain nasty folks who stalk them.  These are all modern creations designed to separate unsuspecting youth from their money.

For the record, here’s the Twitter version of how Hallowe’en came about in the first place.  Despite all the ghosts and goblins, Hallowe’en actually started out as a quasi-religious holiday, back in the way back days.  This was at a time when Christians were battling Pagans for the collective souls of the European multitudes.  Religious marketing was at its cutthroat best.  As I’ve said before, the early Christians weren’t stupid and they incorporated a lot of pagan traditions into their rituals to ease the masses into accepting Jesus as their personal saviour.  In those days, pagans (and most Christians) believed that unsatisfied souls walked the night, and they could, on occasion, mete out some pretty mean-spirited (pun intended) retribution on the living — if they saw fit.  The church decided that November 1st, Hallowmas, a day that already honoured the saints would be a good opportunity for people to pray for the souls of the recently dead, thus, aiding their journey to heaven and getting them away from the God fearing living.   Since midnight masses were de rigueur in those days, the church services took place at night or on All Hallows’ Eve.  (Sound familiar?  We know it in its corrupted form as “Hallowe’en.”)  However, the nouveaux Christians of the day continued to hedge their bets.  On their way to church, they wore cloaks, masks and even costumes – all to disguise themselves from the assembled apparitions who were hanging around consecrated ground, awaiting prayers of deliverance.  In addition, some of the poorer members of the parish would accept coins or food from the wealthier patrons to add their prayers for the dear departed.  That’s it: the time, the place, the costumes, the tricks and the treats.  There’s a lot more to it, but for bare bones it serves our purpose.

If you notice, there were no chainsaws, axes, heavy mallets or ball peen hammers.  There were no knives, swords, machetes, garden forks, shovels or soup spoons.  Nobody got stabbed, jabbed, poked or prodded.  Nobody was torn limb from limb, dismembered, eviscerated or even bruised.   It wasn’t a bloodbath, nor even a slight rinse.  Originally, and for most of its history, Hallowe’en was spooky, creepy, perhaps even a little frightening, but murder and mayhem were never on the agenda.  It’s only recently that it’s been turned into a three-week multi-channel splatterfest.

Next Week:  How to Write a Horror Movie, and Whatever Happened to Spooky?

Halloween: Just a Few Simple Rules

With only seven more sleeps until Halloween, it’s time to refresh the page and review.  Some of us (and I won’t mention any names – yet) have forgotten the true spirit (pun intended) of Halloween and need to get back on track.  So let’s just take a few minutes to revisit some of the simple rules of Halloween so that we can all have a super fun and safe evening.

First of all, Halloween is scary, not gory.  Severed limbs, guts and running sores are for the F/X department of B-grade movies.  Leave them there!  Halloween costumes are supposed to frighten you, not make you vomit.

Ladies, a one-piece French-cut bathing suit is not a costume.  I don’t care what colour it is or what kind of a tail you put on it.  Nor do furry-eared hair bands, a black nose and magic marker whiskers turn you into a cat, dog, bunny, wolverine or dingo.   And that goes double for those little red rayon devil horns.

If Mother Nature and Quarter Pounders™ have made you the Fat Elvis, do not dress up as the skinny Elvis.  That just looks sorry.  Go for the sequins — not the leather.  Otherwise, you just come off as a hyper-extended football.

Couples!  The Nut ‘n’ Bolt or Plug ‘n’ Socket costumes are totally overdone — unless you’re gay.  Then you’re just providing way too much information.

Do not, under any circumstances, put a costume on your dog or cat.  That is just mean.  They don’t know it’s Halloween, and they trust you.  Don’t make them look stupid.  (Where the hell is PETA when you need them?)

If you have to explain your costume more than twice, you either have simple friends or you don’t know what you’re doing.  For example, wearing a white sheet covered with old cans, papers, bones and debris (White Trash) is perfectly acceptable.  However, wearing a tuxedo with a rope around your neck (Well Hung) is not.

Costume cross dressing is fine as long as you’re not already a transvestite.  If you are, that’s cheating.

I don’t care what Anne Rice and what’s-her-name from Twilight say, vampires are not cozy.  Nobody’s going to cuddle up with a vampire and watch Dancing with the Stars.  If you do, you deserve everything you get.  Therefore, if you’re going to do vampires this Halloween put some heft into it: look the part, and a little Euro-trash accent wouldn’t hurt.

Charlie Sheen is not a costume; it’s a disease.

Always remember there is a noticeable gap between sexy and smutty.  If the button-down chick from Accounting comes to the party as Scheherazade — that’s sexy.  If Roger from sales comes as a Genie with a magic lamp glued to his crotch, that’s just smut.

Speaking of sexy, Little Bo Peep, Little Red Riding Hood and Little Miss Muffet are not sluts – they’re storybook characters.  The operative word here is “little.”  You’ve got 364 other nights of the year to play dress-up in the privacy of your own home.  There’s nothing wrong with risque on Halloween, but there are plenty of grownup women to choose from, like Pocahontas, Maid Marion or the chick from Star Wars.

Building is better than buying.  Part of the buzz of Halloween is putting together a costume.  Any fool with a credit card can be Snow White or the Wicked Witch, but it takes a real imagination to go as the Apple.

Priests, nuns and Popes do not have décolletage.  If you’re going to make fun of somebody’s religion, pick on the Moslems: they bite back.

If kids still come to your door on Halloween, it is never acceptable to give out lame treats.  I don’t care how committed you are to a better society; on one night a year you can lighten up, for God’s sake!  For example, do not give out toothbrushes, dental floss or mouthwash.  Organic Free Range oatcakes are okay — if you just shut up about it.  Money’s alright too, but remember these kids probably have a better pension plan than you do.

Finally, Halloween is not carte blanche to be a jerk.  Scaring the bejesus out of your adult friends is one thing, but pulling that crap on little kids isn’t very nice.  Besides, Dad might be waiting at the sidewalk.

So — if we all follow these few simple guidelines, we can all have a ghoulish good time.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Wednesday: “Jack the Ripper: The Face of Evil”