Horror Chick, With Melissa Lafsky: The 10 Most Terrifying Unintentional-Horror Movies (Part Two)
Think horror always comes with axes and monsters and hockey masks? Think again. Not long ago, we brought you the the first five of the ten most gut-wrenching unintentional-horror films. Here, after a short hiatus for turkey and excessive vodka consumption, are our top five. Watch and be afraid.
5. The Truth About Cats and Dogs
Guess what? Everything you ever feared about the innate shallowness of human beings is true. No matter how beguiling, brilliant and charismatic you may be, the world will nevertheless judge you on a set of genetic factors over which you have absolutely no control. All that crap about "inner beauty" and "gorgeous personality" is, quite simply, an elephantine crock. You may have spent decades cultivating chemical magnetism and tender compassion and a rapier wit and a laugh that shoots beams of charm from your soul—but if you do not look like the chromosomal mix of Rita Hayworth and a pound of IF-grade diamonds, all that character and spirit will not matter for shit. Men/women will not approach you, they will not notice you and they will likely not respect you. And if you do manage to land the hot English photographer on the basis of said personality alone, you'll spend the rest of your life wondering if he/she is plotting to trade up. Bow before the power of the Pretty, and be horrified. (For a joy-destroying double feature, watch this one back-to-back with No. 2)
4 . Julie & Julia
Every creative thought you may have, every scrap of inspiration you may glean, every goal you set about to achieve—it's already been done, and better. Think you can write about cooking? Bitch, some pasty Amazonian chick did that four decades ago, and trumped any bourguignon your sorry ass could ever imagine. You are not original, and you have nothing new to offer. And so you will be reduced to a creative tapeworm, parasitically sucking off the achievements of others to wrangle readers and book deals, staging cheap simulacra of great accomplishments from your cheesy Queens apartment with your whiny husband who's upstaged by the swishy fashion editor from Devil Wears Prada. And then you will ruin the aspic, because you are no fucking Julia Child (though at least the part of You wasn't played by Meg Ryan).
3. A River Runs Through It
Death comes at random. It doesn't give a shit if you're smart or successful or benevolent or handsome, or how much time you've spent working out your filial differences through pregnant bouts of fly-fishing. It could take you young, it could take you rich, it could take you even if you have a face that looks like it was farted out by Aphrodite and crafted into anthropoid perfection by Michelangelo on a bender. Death could take any of us, at any time. It could take the better brother—and that brother may not be you.
2. Pretty Woman
You better be pretty. You better be really fucking pretty. You better be so fucking pretty that the concrete melts and the heavens rumble and the woodland creatures frolic and sing before your all-encompassing epochal beauty. And you'd better STAY that pretty, and pray you get the chance to display it before the Richard Gere equivalent of Charles Keating. Because if you aren't, and you don't, you'll end up like Kit De Luca, beaten by pimps and butt-slammed by winos and scraping for next month's rent as you strive to avoid getting knifed by the unwashed troglodyte with track marks under his toenails who just paid you $15 for backseat head.
If you are male, simply substitute "rich" for "pretty" in the above paragraph.
1. Kramer vs. Kramer
Think evil clowns under the bed or Tim Curry in the sewers is scary? Try this, my children: One day you will wake up, and your entire existence will have been sucked down the existential toilet and ground into shit clafoutis. Your parents will have transformed into narcissistic monsters, bent on destroying whatever remains of your mangled childhood. They will cry and shriek in public and divide their belongings with masking tape and parade you in front of lawyers and tell your teachers your bad math grade is "all his bastard father's fault" and head to California to find themselves and fuck their therapists and drink excessively and make you tiptoe around the scary naked people who invade your house on Sunday mornings. You will be transformed into a pawn, a human cigarette butt tossed and stomped at the will of raging sociopaths who have complete power over you until the day you turn 18. And you will spend the rest of your life wondering, "What did I do to bring this evil upon us?"
Give us your chainsaws, your torture porn, your artery-crushing eyeball-slicing genital-mashing carnage. Anything but this.
Melissa Lafsky prefers horror movies for some really good reasons.
Needs more novelist jokes.
Ha – I'm reformed! On to bigger and better jokes. Plus the novelists were revolting.
That was my favorite joke of yours too, but then you trumped it with "If you are male, simply substitute “rich†for “pretty†in the above paragraph."
These are great. My personal add would be What About Bob where Bob is staying over at the Doctor's vacation house in the son's room and they start talking about the inevitability of death and it goes on longer than just a joke and they're all "Oh, It's GOING to happen" and "Do you know how fast does time goes?" That's terrifying.
I never saw A River Runs Thru It. After watching that clip, am I right in thinking it's The Waltons, only with better lighting?
Oh no….. SEE IT.
Seconded. So many hot, hot men. Mmmmmm.
OK, but if anyone gets the belt behind the woodshed, I'm going to be pissed.
(seriously, I would put The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie on my horror list based soley on the amount of times Pa whipped the children. Freaked me out as a child).
Alcoholics, rivalry, fly fishing, whores and violence.
And now I'm turned on. What is WRONG with me?
"$15 for backseat head"
I'm assuming you're speaking in pre-recession price brackets.
Well, it was 1990 after all…
Adjusting for inflation, of course.
I'd like to add (500) Days of Summer. (2) hours with these people is a nightmare.
Agreed. Just saw it one a plane. I wanted to love it (love JGL) but it was sooo tedious. Turns out Four Christmases was the best movie we saw on the flight. Who knew?
ugh, no! i had to watch the first half hour of "four christmases" and it made the unborn child in my womb bleed.
i wish i was being dramatic.
You know what's most upsetting about 'Pretty Woman'? The thought that in the middle of your breakfast in some fancy-schmancy hotel, lounging in a high-thread-count monogrammed bathrobe after your whore's bath: your delicious breakfast pastry (strudel? danish?) could mysteriously turn into a fucking bagel halfway through a scene. THAT's terrifying.
DUDE IT'S NOT A CROISSANT?
See…YOU can't leave work at home, either.
oh it is a PANCAKE!
Oh, I don't know…Richard Gere's eyeliner is right up there.
She's a magic hooker.
Manic pixie dream hooker.
You are so right about #4. It is scary, heart-breaking and deflating.
What about 'Toy Story'? Telling kids that their toys all have personality disorders and self-esteem issues far worse than their parents.
What about just 'Toys.' android sisters and fascists and L.L Cool J!!!
Ugh, horrifying film, that. LL Cool J's acting was the least scary part!
Death comes at random. It doesn’t give a shit if you’re smart or successful or benevolent or handsome, or how much time you’ve spent working out your filial differences through pregnant bouts of fly-fishing. It could take you young, it could take you rich, it could take you even if you have a face that looks like it was farted out by Aphrodite and crafted into anthropoid perfection by Michelangelo on a bender. Death could take any of us, at any time. It could take the better brother—and that brother may not be you.
I actually want this read as a eulogy at my funeral.
It always bothered the shit out of me that my ex and (yes) his ex would allow their 12 year old daughter to dreamily watch Pretty Woman over and over again until the tape broke inside the VCR. The more I saw the movie, the more I hated it.
Parents of the Year!
This makes me feel better about letting my 7-year-old watch Lord of the Rings. At least there aren't any hos in Middle-Earth.
I think #4 was taken from Tumblr's VC Powerpoint presentation.
I'd add Dan in Real Life to my own personal list. The uber-happy family obsessed with group activities comepletly freaked me out. The creeping horror started with the women vs. men crossword puzzle and grew with the group exercising, group walks on the beach, and group games of hide and seek. All presented without satire. When they gathered together to sing songs about Dan's blind date, I couldn't take it anymore and had to stop watching. Plus, the family was so up in Dan's business I'm surprised they didn't, as a family, power up the quaint New England colonoscopy machine to see if Dan had polyps.
The message being that not only did I not grow up in an idyllic family, I couldn't cope with being in one should the opportunity present itself. I'm still a little weirded out by it, actually.
That's the reaction I had to The Family Stone, I think we were supposed to love these hellishly smug, right-on liberals who were so in touch with their feelings but I just wanted to punch them all in the face and tell Sarah Jessica Parker to run as fast as she could back to her corporate job in NYC.
And you read this!
You read this.
Hah, seems very similar, and I am properly forewarned should anyone try and sucker me into watching The Family Stone. Although it sounds like there's at least some tension, and SJP's character has the sense to flee before she's lobotomized by lusty feelings for Luke Wilson. Whereas Julliette Binoche's character is unconditionally loved, if not worshipped, by the whole entire family from the start, even though she is a globe-trotting career woman, and she loves them right back, even though they are obviously a cult. I was really wondering if Dan's wife had faked her own death to escape.
Not having seen Dan in Real Life, but having seen The Family Stone, erm, several times (TBS is really hard to turn off on a weekend), I can categorically say that The Family Stone is entirely devoid of merit.
(Also, it's the Butterscotch Stallion. And [SPOILER ALERT!] she totally doesn't flee.)
Ooops! Totally not the Butterscotch Stallion.
But Luke playing a very Butterscotch-feely role…
I've seen them both and it's hard to beat the deaf gay son with the back boyfriend.
Balls, the black boyfriend. Grrr.
Agreed, LondonLee. Norbert Leo Butz is easier to stomach than Perfectly Diverse Gay Couple.
I've always thought, and said, that 'Eyes Wide Shut' is a horror flick.
'Eyes Wide Shut' was unsettling where there were a series of strange characters, which drift in and out of focus. If horror means to frighten, then this is one of the many facets of this movie. The masked sex congregation scene is a classic element of horror, i think — it is a secret sub-society, which appears to be very powerful; any outsider is in a great danger of being deprived of his life. It is a conspiracy theory which is similar to the things seen on classic horror films, but here it is not about monsters but about sex.
Wait, Julia Roberts is pretty?
Quality tags btw.
I'd add Love Actually to this list. The message seemed to me to indicate your only shot at love was to be an aging man who woos a woman in his employ. otherwise, you are pretty much guaranteed a life loneliness (see laura linney's character).
SRSLY! The people who actually "love" this movie sadden me. It's sofaking Shmoolia Shmallisonny. Yuck.
YES. And if you are a middle-aged woman, it is your fate to be cheated on and you should just listen to Joni Mitchell lyrics AND if you take care of your disabled brother you should just give up on love AND if you are bigger than a size 4, you are fat and that makes it all the more remarkable that any attractive or powerful man will glance at you.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bamboosage/480678976/
GORILLAS IS THE MIST.
Arg. IN the Mist. Gorillas in the mist. Will leave you crying and shaking and renew your terror of African poachers for DAYS.
A fellow teacher at a school I worked at in Madrid just LOOOOOVed Pretty Woman. And she was a conservative Catholic fillipina. I never got it. For me, the worst of the movie was when Julia is having her premiere as respectable bitch at the fancy restaurant, and, as the waiter hands out the menus, she looks at one, pauses, then looks sollemly at Gere and says, "No. YOU order for me." Transformation complete. She can't even fucking decide what to eat.
watzch de spelink dere. sorry.
"sollemly" just looks better, I'm petitioning Mr. Webster directly.
Why didn't you get it, though? She's a conservative Catholic, so she probably wants someone else to do the thinking for her. That's the whole thing with Catholics.
Cabin Boy
Titantic. Worst movie I've ever seen through to the end. The most convincing character was the iceberg and he comes off as the villain – tragic!