Vampires and Tigers and Crap! (Oh My!)

So...what started out this past weekend as a discussion on the sad state of horror for the past decade has turned into a movie. Well maybe, if we're lucky. Vaguely stated it has become a trilogy idea (as nearly everything I write turns into a trilogy lately) and it involves Vampires. Oh yes. And no, I'm not telling you anymore, because it's becoming a good story. You'll like it. You'll buy the DVD. And the Soundtrack, which I'm already planning on writing with my band, the Age of Death. You like them too.

Well, ok enough of my attempted mind control. (Did it work?) As it stands there's a pretty good outline and several characters are developing nicely. If your particularly curious about what I'm writing, go back and read my Borg Dreams posts for now. More of that shite's coming soon as well.

Horror used to tell a story, and had a moral, a higher meaning. After that it at least shocked in a fundamental and gruesome way without excessive gore. Now all horror has left are pseudo murder-mysteries with a killer on the loose (Scream), pure gore fest (hostel)

To be fair there have always been more than enough crappy horror flicks (The Head that Wouldn't Die) but they weren't POPULAR when they sucked.

And for the record, I at no point considered movies such as The Village, Resident Evil or Return of the Living Dead to be "horror" movies. The Village, I thought, was a very good movie, with no "horror" in it. It was more a tragedy (In literature a tragedy is a work where the protagonist seeks to separate himself from society, it is not a "sad" story). Resident Evil was an action flick straight up. There was no surprise and very little suspense. We knew the enemy was umbrella corp and the zombies. Blow 'em up and head on home. Thats action. And for those of you who for some reason think the Return of the Living Dead series is horror, you have mental problems. Those are comedies (in the modern non-literary sense) meant to poke fun at horror (especially the night/dawn/day of the dead movies). Night of the Living Dead, THAT was a horror movie. Dawn of the Dead (even the remake) was a zombie horror movie.

What makes a horror movie? To me it's quite simple. HORROR. There must be fear. Not surprise at sudden noises, but genuine fear occurring as the result of sympathy for the protagonist in their plight against some evil foe.

For example, in Rob Zombie's film, House of 1000 Corpses (which I loved by the way) you pretty much end up hating at least one of the "heroines" of the tale and may or may not sympahise with the other main characters. You sympathize with the "bad guys". The killers. Gives some interesting insight into the mind of Zombie, but when completed with the Devil's Rejects, the audience is drawn to the family, rather than their victims, most of whom are not seen for very long before they're killed.

Then there's "When a Stranger Calls" which was a ripoff of one scene from "Scream" which was in turn a ripoff of "Dial M for Murder". Some movies deserve to be remade. They're good and in the right hands, the remake can also be good. These movies are ones which have mostly gone out of public consciousness and thus can offer something seemingly new by being revisited. When Scream did the scene, it could be considered tribute to horror history. This new film? Pure ripoff shite.

And... Snakes on a Plane? Didn't see it, not going to waste the brain cells...but SHIT what the hell are they thinking?

I could go on, but I've successfully removed the portions of my brain that held the horrid memories of other crap piles, and I don't want to remember any more.