John Carpenter and Zuni Spirits by Michele Christopher
It's just me and you today, guys. Turtle has abandoned me tonight for the world of the working. Nice that he landed a sweet job, sucks that it has to be opposite hours from mine. So I'm stuck writing a Late Night Typing all by myself, which I hate doing and which makes me grumpy. But I had a bright idea. Well, actually I had NO ideas. I can't seem to come up with a good LNT topic without bouncing things off of Turtle. Which led me to my bright idea. This week's TAFC poll is about horror movies. So, I should tie the LNT in to that, right? Sweet. Because we've written about horror movies a couple of times already. Yes, you are getting a repeat. But give me a break, ok? I start a new job (well, new position in old job) tomorrow and I'm anxious as hell. As in, I might puke up my dinner. I'm not going to give you much in the way of entertainment even if I did try to go solo tonight. So here, from last July, some stuff about horror movies. And Goldie Hawn naked. Scariest Movie As A Kid. Turtle is out in the cold: John Carpenter's "The Thing"
Oh yeah. I had some fucked up dreams. Hm. The Thing. I think the best part of this movie was just the total loss of hope. That they had to die to kill it. To save all human life. Kinda like "The Day After" except without Russians. Well, maybe not. That movie was kind of lame. This was something that I had never seen before. I was a kid. Movies like that are everywhere now. But, back then, it was different. It was like "we have to kill ourselves to end this thing." See. That was cool. Take one for the team. Hell, they were researching snow in the middle of nowhere. It's not like you're getting laid. Or maybe they were. Homosexual acts are not uncommon in all male facilties. But that's just what I heard. I think I would put them on the food chain as one above McDonald's employees, two below Office Depot employees. Not a lot going for them, if you get what I mean. So when it came down to it, they mostly just gave up. I could go into all the details of the banana faced dog or the decaptitated head that sprouted legs or the chest that was punched through and all those who held the thing down had to be burned. But, I think I'll leave you with the last words of the movie. Two people in the freezing snow. Shelter burning. Confused. Looking at one other. Staring hard. Not trusting each other. Nothing was nothing anymore.
"Neither will we." "Maybe we should try and fix the radio... try and get some help." "Maybe we shouldn't. "Then we'll never make it." "Maybe we shouldn't make it." "If you're worried about anything, let's take that blood test of yours." "If we've got any surprises for each other -- we shouldn't be in any condition to do anything about it." "You play chess?" "I guess I'll be learning." Did they live or die? Was the thing dead? Was one of them the thing? Did they learn to play chess? One of the greatest endings to a horror movie ever. - T Michele catches the spirit: Trilogy of Terror I grew up on horror. So, I’ve seen a lot of horror movies in my time. Hundreds. Movies you never heard of. Big budget crapfests. Indie crapfests. Foreign crapfests. Yea, most horror movies end up being crapfests. Just the way it is. The really great ones are far and few between. And lately, even the mediocre ones aren’t that many. The art of making a good horror movie seems to be lost. That's another rant for another day. But - gore, blood, murder, ghosts, vampires, mindfucks, slashers, freaks, voodoo....you name it, I’ve seen it. And out of all of those movies, all of the genres of horror, all of the screams within, the one movie that left such an impression on me that I still freak out when I look at a picture from it was a made for tv movie. Trilogy of Terror. Written by Richard Matheson. 1975. For those that never saw this, short premise: Black buys a Zuni fetish doll for her boyfriend. Not for nothing, but if a date ever brought me something that looked like this, I’d think twice about where things were headed. But anyhow, she brings it home and gets ready for her date. Has a fight with her overbearing mother on the phone. Yadda yadda, the doll’s necklace falls off and it’s revealed that’s a big fucking no no. No necklace = live doll. Let me tell you. What happens in the next ten minutes or so after Black realizes the doll is alive still gives me the chills, just thinking about. The light goes out in the living room. You hear a sound. He’s slashing at her. In the dark! He backs her into a closet and she traps him in a suitcase. And then you see the knife cutting a circle in the suitcase and the doll is out and back in action. Finally, Black traps the bastard in the oven, which has been on this whole time. He goes up in flames and stupid, stupid Karen Black, you dumb son of a bitch, she opens the freaking oven. Why? Did she want to stick a toothpick in him to see if he was done yet? Well no amount of my screaming at the tv for her not to do that would help. She opened the gates of hell when she opened the oven and the Zuni Spirit of Random Murder flew out of the oven and into Karen Black’s soul. I thought that was the end. That would have been cool. I could have gone to bed satisfied with that and not had too many bad dream moments because of it. But no. You hear a phone call. She’s calling her mom. Yea mom, come on over. Sorry I think you’re a fucking controlling whack job, mom. Come on over and we’ll do the hug thing, ok? Ok. And then the camera moves to her. She’s crouched on the living room floor. She’s got....teeth. Fangs. She’s got a knife. And she’s repeatedly stabbing it into the floor.
Hey, you can buy one of these dolls. I'll be damned if I'm gonna put one of those hideous things in my house. Hell, I still can't say Candyman five times into a mirror.
Michele and Turtle will get their act/times together this week and write something new. Or just spend our few minutes together having wild monkey sex and give you more repeats. We'll see. |

Comments
Not really into being scared shitless - does something crazy to my sleep pattern. There was one movie that scared me to death though and it probably really isn't that scary - I was a pretty sheltered kid. Anyway, "Lady in White" with the old chick from "Who's the Boss" scared me forever. Maybe cause the little dead girl had my sister's name...who knows. I still get the creaps when I sing the song ..."have you ever seen a dream walking..." Alrighty then...visions of wild monkey sex will make me feel better now! Well, let me re-think that one...
Posted by: Bonnie | January 22, 2007 7:38 AM
great
now i have a vision of monkeys fucking in my head.
well at least it is better than the old people fucking image that was in there before
Posted by: turtle | January 22, 2007 10:40 AM