Why My Childhood was less than normal

This afternoon I hopped onto my blog only to discover that slashfilm posted my last blog entry about "fucked up movies to show at a party" on their site. Thanks so much guys!



Now I feel pressured to do a follow-up. What to write about? Originally I was thinking about covering Horror Movie sequels that are better than the original. I knew if nothing it had to be something related to horror. I'm a long time fan of the genre and thus can talk at length about most of the films.

It was while searching for an idea, I watched Jaws 3D for my weekly column That One Guy on Geekscape. Presenting...

HORROR MOVIES THAT RUINED EVERY DAY THINGS FOR ME

10. Sleepaway Camp
I'm bringing out the big guns early on this one. It's hard to explain this one without spoiling the ending. For that reason, you're going to have to watch the movie for this to make sense to you. ... Okay you watched it now? WHAT AN ENDING RIGHT!? Sadly that ending made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to trust the opposite sex. Since the moment I've seen that movie I have trust issues. The worst thing is that Angela is basically the type of girl I'd want to get with... she's quiet, she's shy, she's 13... it's the perfect combination. But just when you get close to her, she chops your head off with an axe. What the fuck! Oh and she's also really a dude. I warned you to watch the movie if you didn't want spoilers

9. Funny Games
Whether you watch the original or the American remake it doesn't really matter. Funny Games is an innovative horror film that will make you never want to go on vacation again. When a family goes to their vacation home the last thing they expect is for two pop culture experts to come and torture them with a series of games. The winner gets to see daylight. Funny Games is bleak and dark. It will never make you want to stay home alone... or even with family again. Or at the very least... make you think twice about letting someone borrow some sugar or eggs.

8. Poultrygeist: The Night of the Chicken Dead
Troma's not known for making sincere horror movies. Much like other indie horror directors Lloyd just wants to make you vomit. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he'd fail. Polutrygeist however succeeds in it's goal... making you think twice about eating fast food. While the concept of eating fast food until you turn into a zombie chicken isn't remotely frightening, the scene in which Troma superstar Joe Fleishaker begins spraying shit all over a bathroom after eating a rotten chicken egg will make even the strongest of stomaches to flips. This scene did more for me not eating at McDonald's than any Morgan Spurlock documentary ever could.

7. Neighbor
While Sleepaway Camp ruined 'the opposite sex', the film Neighbor simply ruined sex. This is the newest film on the list and since I'm friends with the director I'll not ruin the highlight of this gore-tastic film. What I will say is that you'll never look at swizzle sticks the same way. Watching this scene with a group of friends was the first time I saw one of my friends get physically ill from a movie sequence (and we've watched Pink Flamingos together). The scene is so vile that even the movie's editor vomited while cutting the scene together. After watching it I was unable to have an erection for a week. Hear more about it on Episode 3 of my podcast.

6. Poltergeist
While Poultrygeist ruined fast food for me, Poltergeist ruined meat products for me for months. If you grew up watching this movie, you know what I'm talking about. It starts with someone digging through the fridge innocently enough. Shortly afterwards the steak begins to crawl across the table before exploding open with maggots crawling everywhere. Suddenly there are maggots everywhere. The scene continues until a face is pulled apart and I turn into a vegan for a week.

5. Alligator
When I was a little kid I loved the Alligator. It was gory, funny and oh yeah... it fucked me up for life. It was all because of this scene, which I can't describe in words so I just have to show it to you.



Yeah. Holy shit! When I was a kid, shortly after seeing that scene my cousin would push me off his diving board while another cousin would pull me underwater. What made it worse was that my cousin’s pool looked EXACTLY like the one in the movie. I couldn’t swim in pools for years after that.

Years later it dawned on me that none of this scene made sense. Based on where the Alligator’s head is located where the fuck is the rest of its body? Stuck inside the concrete?

4. Magic
Magic isn’t so much a Horror movie as a psychological thriller. I tend to hate when people make this argument like they’re two extremely different things. Specifically when talking about a movie like Silence of the Lambs… it’s about a guy who kills fat girls to wear their skin and another guy who eats people. Fuck psychological anything… that’s a horror movie. Magic is all about character and a man’s descent into insanity. Is he the puppet master or the puppet in his comedy show?

I won’t spoil anything here but if you weren’t already terrified by ventriloquist dummies from reading Goosebumps as a kid, this movie will put the nail in the coffin of puppet based terror.

3. Stephen King’s It!
This is a classic source of childhood phobia’s. What’s weird is when I was a kid I watched Killer Klowns From Outer Space without any issue. Those clowns were super murderous and terrifying but Pennywise the Clown from the mini-series It! is easily the number one reason kids my age are terrified of clowns.

What’s ironic is that it didn’t make me even remotely terrified of giant spiders created by fear. Go figure.

2. Frozen
Adam Greene is the best hope horror movies have. For the last decade or so horror movies have been in a quality decline. While they were never ‘great’ they had a sense of fun. While Halloween is a classic ‘masterpiece’, there’s just as many bad horror movies like Happy Birthday to Me that have a carefree feeling of fun throughout.

Adam Greene makes both types of movies. The Hatchet movies are hilarious and gory. Meanwhile Spiral was well crafted. Each film he makes tackles a new style of horror. Frozen goes for route of clastrophobic horror. I didn’t like skiing in the first place, but I fucking hate it after watching this nightmare scenario. Imagine (if you will) being trapped on a ski-lift for 3 days in the dead of winter with wolves crawling beneath you. Skin starts to freeze, blister and peel. Leg’s break. Wolves feed. And Skiing is no longer something you want to do this winter.

1. Jaws
If you were paying attention to the beginning of this blog you’d have guessed that this would be the movie I named number 1. I hate swimming. I hate pools because of Alligator, but Jaws is what started my fear of the water.

When I was a kid my parents rented me Jaws The Revenge, it’s definitely the worst of the series, but since I hadn’t seen any of the other films yet I had nothing to compare them too. At that point I was still able to deal with the Ocean… it was when my dad sat me down to watch Jaws that truly fucked me up.

To pick one scene is difficult, but if you put a gun to my head I’d say it was the scene where you first see the shark as it eats a random nameless townsman. Immediately after we see the shark chomping on him. We see his leg slowly fall to the ocean floor. I remember being eight watching that scene and screaming. I shut off the TV and ran upstairs to my parents. While I still can’t swim… Jaws is one of my all time favorite movies.