The Top 8 Dumbest Ideas in Horror History
Steve Barton
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The A Nightmare on Elm Street Remake
Here’s a great idea… Let’s recast Freddy Krueger and make his makeup akin to a talking meatball and then put the character in a movie whose craft services budget is more than all of the previous films’ total budgets combined. And kill off the best actor you have first! Now that we’re set, let’s then put it in the hands of a director with an obvious disdain for both the character and everything that came before his version! Want to see the very definition of the term “creatively bankrupt” brought to the screen? Then this is your ticket. A nightmare indeed.
The Night of the Living Dead 30th Anniversary Edition
The very existence of this atrocity makes me physically angry. For the unaware… John Russo decided that it’d be a fine idea to film new footage and splice it into the original film as a means to celebrate Night‘s 30th anniversary. This new footage was rife with inconsistencies, such as casting actors who cannot act their way out of a paper bag (see Reverend Bucktooth below), give into a high degree of nepotism (even Russo’s dog is in the new footage… I shit you not), and then try to make Bill Hinzman look like he did in 1968 for continuity’s sake. The bad ideas don’t stop there, though… the aforementioned Reverend Bucktooth also created a new score for the movie, and Russo completely re-edited the original film to boot. Didn’t notice? Where’s the naked zombie? Even the famed newscast was re-recorded. Why? Just… why? This is artistically coming as close as you can to drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. A MINDBLOWINGLY BAD IDEA.
The Devil Inside‘s Ending
Let me set the record straight… I liked The Devil Inside. I’m unapologetic about thinking it was decent. Not great, but decent. The screening I saw it at, which I based my review on, did not have the ending attached to it you see below. The ending I saw had the car accident and then the possessed emerging from it and disappearing into the night. There was no mention of continuing the investigation online. The demon was just out there. That being said, the following screen from the film drove people mad, and even I will admit it was just a dumb thing to do. To make matters even worse, the url is now defunct. So it’s now even more glaringly stupid than before. That’s a true feat.
Anything Put Out by Ana Clavell and James Glenn Dudelson’s Taurus Entertainment Company
Taurus Entertainment worked with George A. Romero on some projects, including Day of the Dead and Creepshow, and because of that they figured they should make sequels to both with DISASTROUS results. First up was Day of the Dead 2: Contagium.
First, let’s start with part of the film’s title: Contagium. To be honest, I am still not entirely convinced this is an actual word since the spell check on my computer keeps telling me that it is not. Either way, the “contagium” is actually a viral contagion. It affects its hosts like the flu and eventually turns them into one of the walking dead. There begins the story, and there ends the story. Let’s go a little bit more into detail…
The film starts in the year 1968 in everyone’s favorite zombie town: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Apparently, a Russian soldier was captured while carrying a few vials of the virus and brought to a military hospital. We wacky Americans! We are notorious for incarcerating our Weapon of Mass Destruction-toting P.O.W.’s in places of healing! That’ll learn ’em! Obviously, one of the vials is opened, and faster than frizzy-haired Stooge Larry Fine can say, “That sounds terrible,” we have an instant zombie outbreak! Of course the Army then shows up complete with a bad CGI helicopter to “clean up” the situation before it gets out of hand.
Realizing how grave the circumstances are, one of the hospital’s staff does what any red-blooded American would do in a time of crisis: grab one of the infectious vials, hide it in a thermos, and escape with ninja-like skill through a platoon of soldiers! Of course he doesn’t make it very far, but his Thermos of Doom™ is never recovered. Until now. Or “Five Days Ago” if you’re even paying attention to the film’s subtitles. The aforementioned military hospital is now a loony bin with a work release program. A few nuts are sent out to clean up a ravine, and guess what they find! THE THERMOS OF DOOM™! *cues spooky music* It’s opened, the contagium (or whatever the word is supposed to be) is now airborne, and again a zombie outbreak ensues, but not right away.
First we have to endure our exposed humans’ transformation into zombie-dom. This takes up over an hour of the film’s 103-minute run time. Truth be told, there is barely any zombie action in this film at all. The viewer is just left to sit there through some of the most awful exposition I have ever heard or seen. Some say the original Day of the Dead was guilty of being too talky. I didn’t think so and very much enjoyed Romero’s vision. In fact, it stands as my favorite of the series. In it we were treated to some very thought-provoking lines of dialogue like, “You want to put some kind of explanation on all this? Here’s one as good as any other. We’re bein’ punished by the Creator. He visited a curse on us. Maybe He didn’t want to see us blow ourselves up and put a big hole in his sky. Maybe he just wanted to show us he’s still the Boss Man. Maybe He figured we’re gettin’ too big for our britches, tryin’ to figure His shit out.” In Contagium we have lines like, “I’m a project, you’re a project, we’re a project” and “Even the fastest deer will get hit by a car if it crosses the road too many times.” How I wish I could make this up. How I wish this could go away.
Let’s get to the special effects. They’re shit too. The main effect throughout the film seems to be that everyone gets to spit out fake blood. Everyone. There’s some attempted splatter here and there, including the most pitiful headshots I have ever seen, but nothing works. Nothing looks good. Everything is awful.
How about them zombies! They’re not your ordinary zombies. Once infected by a glowing fairy not unlike Disney’s Tinkerbell, they start showing symptoms of their illness like peeling Elmer’s Glue off of their faces to simulate peeling skin. How’s that for effects!? Also, they were apparently infected with the dreaded Corsican Contagium™, as they now feel each other’s pain as well! The zombies in Grade Z shit like Children of the Living Dead were better, and dare I say it, even THAT was a better film.
Finally, in the last ten minutes of the film, the zombie action is in full swing, and we get to see zombies making their way through one neighborhood in suburbia attacking the same victims in different clothing and wigs over and over and over again. I’m not sure if this was my imagination or not, but I’m not going back a second time to find out either. If you have the gumption, you let us know.
Dudelson and company will eventually shit-stain the Creepshow franchise, too, with Creepshow III.
Things are in the shitter right from the start. Instead of a comic book type or even animated opening, we get one that looks as if it were rendered on a Mac using Flash by a thirteen-year-old who has watched one too many episodes of “South Park.” It’s here that we meet our master of ceremonies for this tale. No, not The Creep we all know and love! Why bring back the staple character of the first two films?!? Instead we have … wait for it … wait … for … it … a demonic hot dog vendor. I can almost hear you all yelling at your screens right now, calling “bullshit.” Yet, I’m not lying. That’s what we get — the evil Boar’s Head™ Bitch who plumps when you cook ’em! Oh, how frightening! He might get *GASP* mustard on you!
After the mind-numbingly bad segments that are unabashedly passed off as coherent stories, things are then wrapped up with a pretty little bow as all the tales tie together and our diabolical fast-food peddler shows his true colors by letting his face get melted off via the worst CGI I have ever seen in my entire life. The poorness of this scene nearly defies description. It’s as if the artist(!) animating this bit (probably the same thirteen-year-old with the nifty Flash program) was suddenly seized by an epileptic fit while working on it, only to say to himself, “Aw, fuck it. No one’s ever gonna watch this anyway.” In a perfect world, my jittery friend.
