I had seen previews for the movie The Cabin in the Woods and it looked like your usual slasher, gash-her, zombie breath, bloody limbs caught in bear traps horror flick, the kind where the monster is about to crush some body's skull with a cement block and then the sweet young thing decides to take her shirt off. Yawn, seen it.
Then I read the AP review and instead of the usual 3/4 of a column article there was one small paragraph. "Whatever you are doing, stop and go see this movie. Less information ahead of time the better." And then the four sweetest words in the universe to the serious movie buff, "the hype is justified."
Oh, they got me, they got me good with those four words. My eyes glazed over, my heart rate accelerated and I was nearing physiological nirvana. Lordy, lordy my life will have purpose and direction this weekend. I'm going to the movies.
There is a system to watching a classic horror flick and keeping the contents of your stomach in your stomach. You study it and it absorbs you until you inhabit an impervious plane unaffected by gore and body fluid because these are just special effects and you marvel at the loving genius of the technicians who produced this artistic insanity using computer screens and red-tinted Karo syrup, or whatever they use these days.
I have read everything Stephen King published until 1980 when I realized he met his pinnacle with The Stand and all his novels since have been inadequate and weak. But I'll tell you, that guy could describe one of his characters getting disemboweled for three and a half pages and make it sound like a sunset, all the lovely reds and pinks. And that's what true horror genre is all about, the senses illuminated.
And then there's the additional bonus of actor Fran Kranz who plays Marty the stoner dude and Kranz says he patterned his character after Shaggy in Scooby Do. What's not to love?
Then I read the AP review and instead of the usual 3/4 of a column article there was one small paragraph. "Whatever you are doing, stop and go see this movie. Less information ahead of time the better." And then the four sweetest words in the universe to the serious movie buff, "the hype is justified."
Oh, they got me, they got me good with those four words. My eyes glazed over, my heart rate accelerated and I was nearing physiological nirvana. Lordy, lordy my life will have purpose and direction this weekend. I'm going to the movies.
There is a system to watching a classic horror flick and keeping the contents of your stomach in your stomach. You study it and it absorbs you until you inhabit an impervious plane unaffected by gore and body fluid because these are just special effects and you marvel at the loving genius of the technicians who produced this artistic insanity using computer screens and red-tinted Karo syrup, or whatever they use these days.
I have read everything Stephen King published until 1980 when I realized he met his pinnacle with The Stand and all his novels since have been inadequate and weak. But I'll tell you, that guy could describe one of his characters getting disemboweled for three and a half pages and make it sound like a sunset, all the lovely reds and pinks. And that's what true horror genre is all about, the senses illuminated.
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| Is this a comedy? Yes, it is. |
And then there's the additional bonus of actor Fran Kranz who plays Marty the stoner dude and Kranz says he patterned his character after Shaggy in Scooby Do. What's not to love?
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