Horror...Comedy? Pt. 2

Well...we took down the Halloween decorations today. For me, that's a big step in some direction somewhere, and not an easy one...it's a bit like when we had to unplug grandpa, only less fun. Except it turned out that we'd just unplugged the vending machine, and I'd already popped in a dollar for a Snickers bar....in hindsight, the experience wasn't actually that much fun, so yes, I suppose it WAS a bit like when we unplugged grandpa.

Damn. I should visit the old man.

Wait...where was I?

Ah yes, the genre of "horror comedy."

Specifically, for the moment, the genre of The Pumpkin Karver. I think I left off before spoiling the ending. As you recall, murders were going on at the old Old Farmer Creeply farm, and Child X (Jonathan), despite his long history of being blamed for pumpkin slashings, was not being blamed for these particular ones. Why not? Because he keeps seeing things.

Things kind of like this. 

So you can imagine he's under a lot of stress. The picture kind of tries to set it up like it's ambiguous: either the kid is crazy, or people are being possessed by the demonic ghost of Dick Boyfriend 1, or Jonathan himself is being possessed by the demonic space bat, and you'd have the best of both worlds.

In the end, the situation resolves itself completely. By which I mean, I have no idea how the movie ended. It set up a lot of possible endings, but then seemed to want to have all of them at once (and still leave room for a sequel), so suffice to say that Jonathan is both dead AND possessed by the Dickmonic Ghost. In short, the movie's efforts at psychological depth and horror failed.

But then again, so did most of its attempts at (intentional) humor.

 When all's said and done though, Pumpkin Karver ended up being a thoroughly watchable movie, as long as you're not expecting Psycho or something. Not so much with another film we have to discuss, a film which was definitely NOT Pumpkin Karver or Psycho...

Neither Psycho nor Pumpkin Karver.

The Slaughter (2006) is, simply put, a dreadful movie that lacks any of the charm of Pumpkin Karver, or any of the wit of my retarded nephew. It's also poorly photographed, unevenly paced, the sound is often bad, and the script and acting are rarely good. The plot, if memory serves, starts off with a bunch of naked chicks trying to summon Cthulhu in a Victorian mansion. Okay, that sounds pretty good so far, right? Well, they're all dead in two minutes, so don't get your hopes up. 

Although this happens later in the picture, if you go in for that sorta thing...

A hundred years later (rough estimate), an evil businessman, so evil he never stops smoking an evil, evil cigar, hires six whacky teens (read: stereotypes) to start renovating the same house where the previously mentioned arcane experiment took place. 

If you've seen enough of these movies, you know how this one's going to turn out. Someone (the stoner) is going to unleash the evil, and it will be up to someone else (the nerd girl) to save us all, but not before some people are turned into flesh eating zombies (pretty much everyone else), and some people are killed gruesomely (...yeah, pretty much everyone else). 

From the start, the movie was...okay actually. Besides the naked chicks summoning Cthulhu. Seeing the old house, and just making out figures in the shadows or reflected in the windows for the first half hour or so of the movie did a fair job of building suspense. But of course, this movie wasn't in it for the suspsense. Oh no. It was in it for the horror. The horror COMEDY. And it fell on its fat face. 

For starters, EVERYONE in the movie is a stereotype of some form. 

A stereotypical zmobie.

Now, you might be thinking, if you're doing a movie of this sort and want to keep it "fresh" and "hip," why NOT mock some stereotypes of horror movies? Alright, then explain to me WHERE they got these stereotypes from? The "evil businessman" I suppose I can buy, that was a common enough stereotype twenty, thirty years ago (how's that for fresh?), and the "stoner" has been a mainstay in horror films since Friday the Thirteenth, but what about the "nerd girl?" That's very teen movie of you, The Slaughter. And even if I let that one by, what about the "anarchist boy?" Since when has that every been a stereotype of anything resembling horror? 

Keep in mind, when I say stereotypes, I mean it. Everybody's dialogue could be extended by adding the line, "Remember, I'm just a stereotypical stoner/nerd girl/evil businessman/anarchist/black guy/slut/person who doesn't realize how bad this movie is/person who's wishing they'd never tried acting/raging alcoholic."

Secondly, and most importantly, this supposed "humor" only manifests itself at the end. My theory? Has anyone seen Little Shop of Horrors? The original? Rumor has it, the movie started out as a serious crime story, and then morphed over time into a horror comedy involving a talking plant once Roger Corman and the gang started to realize that there was no way in hell anyone was going to take the movie they were planning to make seriously. 

Definitely not The Slaughter.

  

My theory is that The Slaughter had the same kind of history, the major differences being that the decision to turn pure horror, or even sardonic horror, into a pure horror comedy, happened on the set after half the movie had been shot. Remember how I said that the first half hour of the movie was kind of hopeful, or at least workable? After the suspense stops and the gorefest begins, the movie blunders on for a bit, and then bad jokes start popping up for no real reason at all. 

That's right, the movie BECOMES a comedy halfway through. Why? Because the filmmakers thought, first, this movie has become too stupid to take seriously. It must become a full blown comedy. There's already a sarcastic sense of humor on set, why not go all the way? That's the only way for us to save our artistic integrity! Secondly, if we're just trying to make a comedy, we don't have to try as hard! NO ONE expects real suspense from a comedy...

So, once most of the cast is dead and no one can leave the house, rather than hiding tensely from zombies, our mismatched heroes are attacking them with kitchen appliances and spitting one-liners faster than watermelon seeds. And of course, there's some nonsensical ending in which evil inexplicably survives, in the hope that enough DVDs will be sold to make a sequel. 

Unless...unless of course the movie honestly WAS shooting for being a comedy the whole way through. Which would mean that the filmmakers weren't just bad at writing scripts, directing actors and shooting film, they were also just really, really bad at understanding how you are supposed to make a horror movie. Or a comedy. Or, hell, any kind of cohesive story AT ALL. But I would prefer not to believe that. To believe that there are people out there THAT clueless would honestly be the most frightening thing I could possibly imagine...

Well...ALMOST the most frightening...