Horror Chick: Why the Heavens Should Crumble If ‘Inglourious Basterds’ Wins (Short Answer: Eli Roth) @11:40 AM
I can't stand Eli Roth. Everyone on the Internet has a strong opinion about him one way or the other, and the only difference between the two sides is that one is utterly fucking wrong. There are legions of horror fans who like him. There are oozy corners of the Web where he is worshiped and glorified. There are even fan clubs teeming with girls who think he's the zenith of swoony hotness or whateverthehell fangirls think. They are all tragically mistaken. Don't take it personally, fangirls—your mental slowness is part of the human condition. We're all morons about something. I think Jeff Dunham’s kinda funny. READ MORE 126
Horror Chick: 'The Wolfman' Cannot Escape the Curse of Michael J. Fox (Or James Cameron) @11:21 AM
As a horror icon, the Wolfman gets no respect. In theory, he’s the embodiment of a great horror concept—the literal manifestation of the Beast within, who busts out every other fortnight to rip the shit out of Victorian aristocrats or horny teens in Oldsmobiles—and yet in American cinema he’s given the strict Michael J. Fox treatment. In order to get a werewolf taken in any way seriously, American directors have to send them to various catacombs and ossuaries in London or Paris, and even then, they’re just not scary. In fact, the scariest werewolf movie to come out in the last 15 years was about a heavily ax-wounded 16-year-old girl (if you have not seen Ginger Snaps and you have a vagina, consider this your mandate). The Wolfman just doesn’t do it for us—there are consequences to having that much back hair. READ MORE 29
Horror Chick, With Melissa Lafsky: Daybreakers Will Suck Out Your Brain Cells and Smear You With Blood (And Not in a Good Way) @12:00 PM
I like gore. It’s a good equalizer. At the end of the day, we all exist in the same corporeal bodies that can be sliced, hacked, carved, and eviscerated in any number of creative ways. (Oh, I’m sick, you say? Well you’ve been reading Tila Tequlia’s Twitter feed for the past week—so judge me not.) The only problem is that somewhere along the line between The Little Mermaid and Hostel, gore became the new black. Mainstream Hollywood now relies on it, mostly to compensate for garbage scripts and awful acting. “Sorry, no decent concepts or plot lines on the menu today, but we do have a grisly melange of shofar-shaped organs in a bloody reduction, sprinkled with bush-league dialogue.” Which is a shame, because good gore really shouldn’t be wasted on crap movies—it’s like having an Oscar-worthy performance in Cheaper By the Dozen 2. READ MORE 5
The End of the 00s: Bad for Humanity, but Great for Horror, by Melissa Lafsky @10:00 AM
I'm skeptical about this whole "decade from hell" business. I mean, just because financial karma finally arrived to kick the U.S. in its bulbous consumer-driven ass, that means the entire decade is somehow linked to Satan? The last four months of 2001 were from hell—that's certainly true. And the entire summer of 2009 (when hell's photogenic spawn ruled the media with her red heels). But seems to me this ten-year span should have been dubbed "The Decade We've Been Setting Ourselves Up For During the Three Previous Decades, and Now We Act All Shocked That We're Broke and the Rest of the Developed World Wants to Lob a Shoe Up Our Ass." Anyway, fuck politics—let's talk about horror movies. READ MORE 8
Horror Chick, With Melissa Lafsky: The 10 Most Terrifying Unintentional-Horror Movies (Part Two) @11:00 AM
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. READ MORE 56
Horror Chick, with Melissa Lafsky: The 10 Most Terrifying Unintentional-Horror Movies (Part One) @4:30 PM
What makes a movie horror? There are the obvious indicators: chainsaws, spurting viscera, genital smashing and other tricks in the bloody menagerie of unapologetic depravity. But some of the scariest films sneak in under the radar, infecting your thoughts and slaying your peace of mind without showing a single oozing polyp or rotting corpse. Think about it: The point of horror is that it's all metaphor—a pictorial display of the fears, anxieties, and disappointments that thrash and roil in our consciousness. Those flesh-devouring zombies and skull-munching monsters are just physical manifestations of the Inner Human Pain that can't be defined in language (except by David Foster Wallace) but still manage to crawl in our ears and tear our guts with corrosive acid-froth. It's THIS pain that's the real killer—after all, you can always bandage that severed arm or pop an antibiotic for that flesh-eating virus. Healing the ragged wound in your soul, the nameless chasm where Darkness gnaws on your psyche… well, that's a little harder. And so we have movies! Those fuzzy celluloids that take away the emptiness and lull us into complacency with their pulchritudinous stars and pat dialogue and flashy explosions. You pay your $11.50 and laugh at sweet-as-pie Kate Beckinsale or oh-so-funny-Jim-Carrey and then WHAM – without even realizing it, you're hit with a Nightmare, fed to you in the form of a bubbly romantic comedy. THESE are the real horror movies. They catch you by surprise. At least Saw is honest. READ MORE 18
Horror Chick, With Melissa Lafsky: Why 'The Fourth Kind' Needs to Suckle at the Teat of Malcolm Gladwell @11:45 AM
Collectively, we think alien abduction is dumb. I mean really dumb. Like, if I came home one day and said, "Hey, I was abducted by aliens," somehow that would launch me deeper into Fucking Nutcase Territory than "Hey, I was possessed by a demon who's been stalking me since childhood," or "Hey, I was screwed six ways from Sunday by a modern Dracula who looks like Fabio after a brief stay at Auschwitz," or even, "Hey, I turned an entire investment bank into a giant vampire squid." But really, why is alien abduction so much nuttier than demon possession or vampire sex or Matt Taibbi's anti-Goldman rage? It's simply a matter of agreement—we all agree that it's crazier, so it is. It's the same reason why, say, Scientology is grounds for unbridled derision, while Catholicism is a "legitimate" religion. At least Xenu lets you wear a condom. READ MORE 4
Horror Chick, With Melissa Lafsky: Why the 'Saw' Movies Are the Most Important Films Ever Made (No, Really) @12:15 PM
There are many, many things more fun than watching the Saw movies. Like eating acid-coated glass shards. Or starring in Japanese vomit porn. Or dating a novelist. All of these rank infinitely higher on the enjoyment scale than actually sitting through the unholy torture-fetish buffet that is Saw. And yet it's the most popular horror franchise in history. Seriously, it is—at this point James Wan could slice open his tongue, lick blood on a page, Lionsgate would produce it, and it'd do $60 million in domestic box office alone. READ MORE 35
Horror Chick, With Melissa Lafsky: 'Paranormal Activity' Is the SCARIEST MOVIE EVER (About Suburban Yuppie Starter Homes) @12:30 PM
We all have irrational fears. Random terror at things that, in reality, have little to no chance of killing us. Spiders, clowns, snakes, commitment, wet bread—the list goes on. My irrational fear is that I'm being watched. Ever since I hit puberty, it's been the same: there's a camera behind my bathroom mirror, or a telescope pointed at my window where some cackling dipshit is observing everything I do (and judging me the whole time). Yes, it's silly—;though back when I lived in SoHo it turned out to be truer than I'd like. (Note to self: Never take the ground floor apartment.) READ MORE 17
Horror Chick, With Melissa Lafsky: See 'Zombieland' Or I Will Eat Your Brain @1:00 PM
Vampires are still so in right now. They're like the peephole platform heel of the horror world. Everywhere you turn, they're frolicking in orgy-prone Cajun towns or masquerading as brooding (read: constipated) adolescents who awe their high school classmates and destroy feminism. Good times. But want to know what's a far better time? Zombies. (No spoilers ahead.) READ MORE 7
Horror Chick, with Melissa Lafsky: 'Pandorum' Is Bullshit In Spaaaaaace! @9:45 AM
I thought about reviewing Tucker Max's new filmmaking atrocity this week, since let's face it, that thing is scarier than 90% of the torture-porn child-killing slasher flicks out there. But doing so would require one step not even I am willing to take: actually watching the fucking thing. So instead, we're going to talk about the genre of sci-fi horror instead. Because space is friggin scary. READ MORE 24
Horror Chick: 'Jennifer’s Body' Is Garbage, But You'd Tap It Anyway @9:44 AM
Today's lesson from the Tao of Horror: If a B horror flick has the world's most fuckable star and the only screenwriter who can A) show up in her own movies and B) be recognized when she does, is it still a B horror flick? Yes, my people. Yes. Case in point: Jennifer's Body, which, despite a level of media attention unusual for horror openings (attributable to said star and said screenwriter), bombed on opening weekend, not even scraping $7 million. (For comparison, All About Steve did $13 mill, and critics likened it to perforating your eyelids with safety pins for two hours.) READ MORE 17
Horror Chick: 'Sorority Row' @4:20 PM
Admit it: you laugh a little when the horror movie killer turns out to be a girl. You think it's funny. Ha ha! The BIG twist…it's a chick! Doesn't really matter which chick it is, or why a 100-pound brunette with Hawaiian Tropic skin and an altered proboscis chose to become a homicidal maniac—it's funny. Gives a film immediate camp status. You know it's true. You raging neosexist pig. Just kidding— I laugh too. Plus I'm a lousy feminist who's pro-Brazilians and anal scenes, so who am I to judge. READ MORE 10
