In case you haven’t yet read, my first blog non-Swan Fungus blog post ever was published yesterday on WFMU’s Beware Of The Blog. If you want to jump directly to my post, you can click through this link: “How To Overcome Discouragement”. I look forward to writing new and silly entries for WFMU every other Thursday. They won’t all be music-related, either, so you should bookmark their blog and keep an eye out for my retarded antics. Or if you’re feeling lazy you can just wait around here, because I’m sure I’ll always link to my posts as soon as they are published.
I want to spend today writing another installment of “The Top Ten Reasons Not To Attend SXSW” but it’d just be another long anti-“indie” joke, and really I’ve made that joke ten-thousand times already. So if you want to know why you should feel better about yourself for not going to Austin for SXSW, read the above-mentioned list. Or write your own. I don’t care, just so long as I don’t catch you wearing cowboy boots or a flannel shirt or Rayban sunglasses. I’ll vomit.
Then Mark reminded me today is Friday the 13th, at which point I remembered that I have never written a Top Ten list about horror movies. I’ve only written a list of really good movies, and name-dropped a ton of really bad (but oh-so-good) movies. Today’s list is going to make all future Friday the Thirteenths fun.
The Top Ten Movies To Watch On Friday The 13th
10. Night Of The Living Dead – Because it’s a classic, and if you’re home alone late at night it might actually creep you out a bit. If you can get past the idea that flesh-eating zombies don’t exist and see it as a movie about people in a quaint little town being attacked and killed for no reason, it becomes somewhat scarier. I mean, you could be gunned down in whatever city you live in for no reason, or attacked while you’re walking home at night. Even if your attackers are not zombies, you might find reason to be afraid while watching one of the all-time classic horror flicks.
09. The Shining – More psychologically torturous than bloody or gory, The Shining is a perfect late night horror film. The score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind is all kinds of eerie. It was taken off the market shortly after its release. The non-original music includes pieces by Bela Bartok and Gyorgy Ligeti among others. Watching a sane individual slip into madness should terrify you because it can happen to pretty much anyone given the right circumstances. Even you!
08. Leprechaun 4: In Space – Or, maybe you want to laugh a lot while watching a really bad movie. If that’s the case, this ranks as one of the worst movies I have ever watched in my entire life — and I have seen some terrible movies. If you’re wondering why you never saw this in theaters, stop wondering. This one was direct-to-DVD, and it really is as bad as the name makes it sound. Seriously, the Wikipedia entry alone is enough to make you laugh. See for yourself.
07. The Exorcist – Sure, times are different now than they were upon this film’s release in 1973. We see retarded Eli Roth movies meant for mongoloid moviegoers where people are cut into pieces or eaten or mutilated. A movie with very little blood rarely causes a reaction these days. But The Exorcist was more shocking to audiences in the early ’70s than any modern goofy horror-porn. People would pass out in the theaters, or cry, or vomit, or suffer heart attacks. It was an intense experience. It still is. It’s not going to make you jump out of your seat or avert your eyes, but it’s not regarded as one of the scariest movies of all time based on its age alone. The Exorcist is an awesome horror flick. Once you investigate its legendary production and weird, cursed history, you’ll view it in an entirely different light.
06. Event Horizon – My father took my sister and I to see this movie when it was in theaters (I think I was in 8th grade at the time?). It scared the shit out of me. I wish Paul W. S. Anderson would have been allowed to keep his original cut of the film (30 more minutes plus more test-audience-disapproved gore and violence), because I probably would have wet my pants. If you haven’t see this one, it’s weird. It manages to be Sci-Fi and horror without being like Leprechaun 4. Apparently there’s a DVD version with all the extra footage, so I’ll have to keep my eye open for that prize. Maybe next Friday the 13th…
05. Shrooms – This review will explain everything.
04. Teeth – I still haven’t seen this movie because the idea of penis mutilation really makes me queasy. One of these years I might get around to it, but if it is as gross as I’ve heard it is, I’m going to have to warm up to the idea a whole lot more before I’m ready to sit down with some popcorn and watch 94 minutes of heart-stopping, penis-biting action.
03. Texas Chainsaw Massacre – The original. Not one of those fancy new versions directed by dudes who have resumes filled with glittery MTV music videos. I wasn’t a fan of this movie until I actually had to drive through the state of Texas alone. Holy shit, some of the places you find yourself either in the panhandle or the vast, desolate western portion of the state look like they were ripped right out of this film. For a couple days during one trip, my sister made me call her every few hours to make sure I hadn’t been murdered and dismembered. I think the most frightening moment of the entire trip was when I turned off the highway to see a historical marker (which I never found…which only makes my experience creepier) and I wound up driving several miles on an unpaved road into absolute nothingness, until I had to stop short before driving over a strip of barbed wire that was laying across the road. I turned around as fast as I could and raced back to the highway. When I got back home to New Jersey a month or so later, and I watched this movie again with fresh eyes, I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.
02. Any Of Those “There’s Someone In The House!” Movies – They usually release one or two of these scary movies each year. The premise is, there’s a really hot teenage girl at home alone and through some series of events she realizes there’s a killer in the house with her. Sometimes there are little innocent children involved, usually in some babysitting capacity. I used to be frightened all the time when I was young and left home alone that someone might be in the house who wanted to kill me, so I have a soft spot in my guts for these films. Sometimes I still worry there are people in my house who want to kill me, and then I remember that there are way more people on the Internet who want to kill me, so I’m probably more safe alone in my house.
01. Killer Klowns From Outer Space – Classic. I used to have nightmares about this movie when I was a child. Specifically, the really brief scene with the deadly pies scared the shit out of me. I guess there was acid in the pie or something? Because you see the clowns pelting them at two policemen or guards or whatever, and then when the heroes are racing past the scene a few minutes later you just see a meaty, bony hand reaching out for help through all the pie icing. That scared me a lot as a child. So did seeing the police officer used as a puppet by another clown. The sucking sound of the clown’s hand inside the dead body made me want to curl up in a ball and die. Now, of course, I know it’s all camp and there’s no such thing as “killer klowns from outer space.” This might be the perfect Friday the 13th movie. It’s hilarious, retarded, and it somehow qualifies as a scary movie. You guys get the nachos and cheese, I’ll bring over the DVD, beers and pills. It’ll be like that time I watched Urban Legends: Final Cut, only I won’t pass out this time. I promise.
Zombi – Infinity
Dick Justice – Henry Lee
Black Mountain – Shelter
Blind Lemon Jefferson – Prison Cell Blues
Miles Davis – Frelon Brun
