Totally Random Crap

In other chapters we've been focusing on bigger archetypal characters, such as the Hero and the Slasher. But there is so much more to the world of horror, so many other elements that have become awesomely clichéd: plot-points, deaths, scare tactics, the list goes on. Let's take a meandering stroll through what I'll call Totally Random Crap!

Corpse Art
Pretty much every single Slasher movie follows a similar killing structure: said Slasher goes around killing all our Hero's friends one-by-one, stashing the bodies somewhere so our Hero won't catch wise, until finally all the friends are dead. It is at this point that our Hero will return to the cabin (or what have you) to find the corpses of all his/her companions strewn about in very deliberate, often unusually elaborate ways (e.g. nailed to the backside of a door, rigged up to fall from nowhere when our Hero enters a room, etc).

This is Corpse Art. Started by Michael Meyers in the late 70's, perfected by Jason Voorhees in the 80's, and still embraced by Slashers to this day, Corpse Art is proof that even the most mindless and depraved of killing-machines like to express themselves.

Where has the Slasher been hiding the bodies and when did he find time to accomplish all this? Who knows? But he's making a statement, and that statement is, "Hey, look, I killed all your friends." Rather than just dump all the bodies in a big pile, our Slasher made a concerted effort to do something different, something interesting for our Hero. Sometimes it's even a little funny. Of course, our Hero never seems particularly amused by the handy work, usually just screaming and promptly running away.

I guess what they say is true: fine art is to be appreciated, not enjoyed.

The Flying Cat
In my three decades (yikes) on this planet I've had and been witness to many a cat. No doubt, cats can be eerie creatures. They will often freak me out by staring into a dark room, then suddenly running away for no discernable reason, making me wonder, "Should I run too?" But not once, ever, has a cat flown out of a cupboard or off a bookshelf and landed in front of me while I was investigating the source of a mysterious noise. I don't think cats do that. Yet inevitably when anyone is nervously exploring in a horror movie, doesn't matter if they're in an alley, abandoned house, or a parking garage, a cat will fly out of no where, screeching, and scare the shit out of them.

Needless to say, the idea is to scare the shit out of us too. It's a fake-out scare.
I'm not against fake-out scares, mind you, but let's move on from the cat thing. Please? How about someone's pet parrot flies out? That seems slightly more plausible. Though it didn't originate the Flying Cat, I blame Alien (1979) for popularizing it.

My favorite part of the Flying Cat routine is that the cat in question invariably and noticeably lands bracing itself for impact in a way no cat would if it had jumped by its own volition. So rather than being spooked by such a cheap scare, I'm merely left with the comically twisted mental image of some production goon, poised off camera, heaving this poor cat into the air take after take. I should make a movie about "actor animals" getting revenge on the asshole wranglers who make them do stupid shit for our entertainment. I'll make millions!

Monster Vision
Long before Jaws (1975) managed to forever link itself with the practice, shooting a scene from the Monster's POV has always been an easy and cheap way around special FX (hell, I can't even imagine how they could have made Evil Dead, 1981, without it.) It's also a good way to prolong the revelation of what the monster looks like. When this can, and usually does, get ridiculous is when the film tries to show us the scene not just from the Monster's point-of-view, but literally through its eyes. Shot in Glorious Monster Vision!

In theory this is a great idea. We're getting treated to what the world looks like through some horrifying creature's eyes. This idea, unfortunately, is only good on paper. Movies as a medium were designed to be viewed by us, human beings. How exactly does one show how a bat or shark sees in a 2D image projected onto a screen? You can't of course. You can only imply or give the impression of it. And I'm sure if your average horror movie had the consulting team that "Band of Brothers" had, we might get somewhere. That ain't happening though. Trickier yet is when our Monster isn't even a real creature. What's a werewolf or a vampire or a giant-sea-beast see like? That's its whole own creative clusterfuck.

The biggest problem with MV is that whatever visual effect the filmmakers are using to designate "Monster Vision" generally ends up making things difficult to see. So what's supposed to look cool just makes it seem like the Monster has crappy eyesight.

The 80's were a real boon decade for MV, likely because of the then recent advent of simple post-production video FX, giving us gems like Wolfen's (1981)MV, which decided that werewolves saw everything in crappy, cable-access grade music video FX. The worst case of MV I can think of is from the movie Grim (1995), which looks like it was shot through a kaleidoscope someone won playing skee-ball, then tinted red for no real reason. How Grim was ever able to capture his victims is beyond me. The dude is essentially blind.

Sci-fi tends to fare better when it comes to Monster Vision than horror does. For one, we're usually dealing with robots, and Robot Vision is much easier to credibly pull off. I mean, the Terminator's vision was classic 80's shit MV (way too dark, way too red), except with all those added numbers and various computery things that made it passable. As far as sci-fi monsters are concerned though, Predator (1987) is one of the only cases where Monster Vision was done really, really well (though in AVPR, 2007, the Predator's POV is classic MV).

Monster Vision is most effective when it's actually part of the story, not just masturbatory "wouldn't-that-be-cool" special FX. Arnie realized the Predator saw in heat vision, and thus wouldn't be able to see him if he could mask his body heat. Though, really, that was the Predator's Mask Vision. At the end when he takes the mask off his actual vision makes absolutely no sense. Why is MV always red? Why?!

I realize the temptation must be strong for filmmakers to come up with an iconic MV. But it's too risky. Think of how shitty Jurassic Park (1993) could have been if we'd had T-Rex Vision, or if Joe Dante had pondered, "I wonder how a Gremlin sees the world?" Aspiring horror filmmakers of the world... just don't do it.

The Lazarus Friend
You know the character. Usually he/she was the Wacky Sidekick or Sassy Best friend, they died earlier in the film, and yet here we are, post climax, the Monster defeated, the dust is clearing and in walks... the Wacky Sidekick? I know what you're thinking, "But I saw him die?" Yes, you did. What you didn't know was that this Wacky Sidekick is also a Lazarus Friend, capable of self-resurrection. It's a miracle!

The Lazarus Friend is not to be confused with a supporting character that we thought was dead, but returns during the climax (at a most opportune moment of course) to join the final battle. That's different, A) because that character actually does something useful, and B) because it was definitely planned in the script.

The Lazarus Friend doesn't do anything helpful at the end. In fact, as far as we know they were just pretending to be dead, waiting for their friends to kill the Monster, then come out of hiding. The fact that this character survives the movie is totally irrelevant to its outcome, and generally was not planned. When that other We-Thought-You-Were-Dead character "dies" earlier in the film, usually it's kind of apparent they're not actually dead. They'll fall off a bridge into the river or get slashed or shot and then fall from sight, something like that. Our other characters just assume he/she is dead and then move on. They rarely get decapitated, if you follow me.

The Lazarus Friend often survives the film as an afterthought. Maybe test audiences loved the character and were pissed off when they died. So the Lazarus Friend's miraculous return is quite often a reshoot. Brandy's character is I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) is a classic Lazarus Friend. Her death was absurdly violent for her to have survived, and it was widely publicized that said survival was a post-testing reshoot. I guess people liked her or something. I didn't.

To that end, how one views the Lazarus Friend depends entirely on how much you liked the character. In most movies I usually wish they'd left the Lazarus Friend dead. Scream (1996) on the other hand had two Lazarus Friends (not to mention Courtney Cox's We-Thought-You-Were-Dead helpful return in the climax), and surprisingly they actually added to my enjoyment of the film. Randy gets shot, but turns out to be fine once the villains are dead, and Deputy Dewey gets horribly, horribly stabbed – I was sure he was dead – but at the end he gets the classic being carted away on a stretcher resolution. Well played.

The Friend Band
Horror movies are often low-budget indie affairs, and from what I can tell, one thing all indie filmmakers love is including music by the local band they know, or worse, are personally in. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this in theory. Yeah, some of these bands will stink, but whatever, not everyone can afford to license major label music. Trouble arises when the filmmakers opt to show said band in the film.

The Friend Band will be playing at a dive bar or school dance that our heroes are attending. These sequences will always feature far too much footage of the band in question, with all sorts of dorky early-MTV-style shots where the camera will pull in and out on individual band members (trying their best to look cool), as the movie pointlessly descends into a sudo-music-video. The best/worst example I can think of a horror movie with a Friend Band is Howling: New Moon Rising (1995), which is not only the worst werewolf movie I've ever seen, but makes the unforgivable sin of featuring more of its crap music then it does of the werewolf.

A totally egregious tangent-music-video sequence that surprisingly works is in Graduation Day (1981), featuring what I have to assume, based on the chorus, is the song, "Gangster Rock." The sequence begins in a roller rink and then slowly morphs into a lengthy Slasher sequence. Actually, it's probably the best part of the movie.

The Black Best Friend
In modern horror movies, a white, female Hero will seemingly always have an African-American best friend.  Doesn't matter if the movie is schlocky (I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, 1997) or classy (Candyman, 1992, The Skeleton Key, 2005) the sassy Black Best Friend is a staple. I'm pro adding some ethnic diversity to the whitey-fests of Hollywood (why not just make the Hero Girl black sometimes?) but they never seem to have Latina best friends, or Indian, or Chinese, or Pakistani... Given the ratio of whites and blacks in the country, it's statistically impossible for all white women to have a black best friend, unless all black women are best friends with like 10 different white chicks. Which I suppose isn't impossible. Personally, I'm pulling for an Eskimo Best Friend. Eskimo!

The Teleporting Slasher
We've all seen the moment a million times. Someone, we'll say a girl, is running through the woods, away from our Slasher, as fast as she can. She keeps looking back over her shoulder to make sure the Slasher isn't gaining. He isn't. In fact, whenever we cut back to him, he's usually not even running. Just walking briskly. So the chase continues. She keeps looking back, keeps running, until – BOOM! She runs right into the Slasher. How the hell did he get in front of her? He wasn't even running. Simple. Most Slashers possess the ability to teleport. It's the only logical explanation.
           
Teleporting comes in handy all over the place, not just in the woods. Why chase your victims down the stairs of the house when the filmmakers can merely not show you for long enough that they decide you could've conceivably found an alternate way down. As a Slasher it really helps improve the overall tone of your attacks if we know you can move around like the Flash. Sure, some might say this isn't actually a superpower, just sloppy, even incompetent filmmaking, but since Jason Voorhees can do no wrong, it must be the real deal. Next you'll say that Corpse Art isn't actually an artistic expression.

As with all things Slasher, Jason is the master. He didn't start out with the ability to teleport, but rather slowly developed his teleporting powers over the first handful of Friday films, finally perfecting the process in Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), when he became what I like to call "Terminator Jason" (I used to say Robo-Jason but ever since Jason X, 2001,that has implied something different). I guess someone must have determined that Jason looked kind of silly running. Can you imagine him wasting his energy running after some drunk-ass coed these days? Frankly, I don't want to.

I find myself constantly using Scream as a positive example in these articles, which makes sense, since when Kevin Williamson wrote the movie he was directly playing off the kinds of 70's/80's clichés HORROR 101 wallows, only, you know, trying to do them cleverly. So it'll come as no surprise that Scream actually found a way to make the Teleporting Slasher make sense: there are actually TWO Slashers! You've done it again Scream!