Unhealthy Horror

At a recent Shadow Box performance of Repo! The Genetic Opera (chalk it up to research/ my addiction to seeing Anthony Stuart Head in leather on the big screen) I noticed the general unhealth of the genre fans around me. Perhaps it’s the unflattering fit of pleather, fishnets, and pre-shrunk t-shirts, but glance at any midnight movie or convention line and it’s hard to feel confident in the event of a surprise field day (though conversely, it does give you quite the edge in a surprise Battle Royale tournament). 

For a genre whose fanbase is often less than athletic (not to make any sweeping generalizations; I’m basing this on the unexplainable fact that nachos, beer, and chocolate covered anything tastes better when watching people eat or kill each other), you’d think that a few filmmakers would have tried their hands at addressing this issue. But despite their insatiable appetites and reluctance to exercise with any enthusiasm, zombies are generally reserved to symbolize human cruelty, apathy, societal breakdown, and stupidity, while slashers focus their lessons on premarital sex participants and users of illegal substances. Onscreen, such a definition has yet to include trans fats.

In any genre, the overweight are generally cast as comfortable furniture. In horror, they can be used to showcase creative killing (like the gluttonous spaghetti massacre of Se7en), comic relief (Dawn of the Dead’s Big & Tall swim trunks model), or to emphasize the grotesque in villains (the latest round of Texas Chainsaw Massacres). Even that perennial holiday favorite, Silent Night Deadly Night features a trim psycho killer, and that’s a film about Santa Clause, a character who has himself been accused of setting a bad example when it comes to eating habits.

I accept the whole escapist fantasy of film and television and wouldn’t expect to see a Lane Bryant model playing Friday the 13th’s next final girl. What surprises me is that, to my knowledge, there are few films that delve into obesity or the culture of weight with the same intellectual and/or horrific energy as, say, Cronenberg’s studies of the sexual body or even Ginger Snaps’ lycanthropic menstrual analogy. We like our struggles with religion, suburban psychology, and alcoholism metaphors just fine, but an ubiquitous health crisis, not so much. 

Perhaps the most obvious example of “fat horror” is Stephen King’s little loved Thinner. Sure, that film gave us a donut devouring stereotype of an antihero, but for all its incredible shrinking waistline, the horror was more focused on the diabolical power of Gypsies than the potential fright of diabetes. The recent Drag Me to Hell gave heroine Allison Lohman an interesting character history as a formerly chubby farm girl (because apparently Gypsies have some sort of vendetta against the overweight). While one message board posting I read insisted the entire demonic hunt was a representation of Lohman’s discomfort with her past, you’d have to find some pretty incredible spandex to stretch that metaphor over the whole story. 

One of the best genre pictures about dieting--and America’s obsession with making it look cook, in particular--is Larry Cohen’s quirkily genius 1985 The Stuff. Pre-dating the Atkins Diet popularity explosion by a good 18 years, this satirical riot of a horror-comedy targets American consumerism with a product eerily packaged with a logo similar to Target. Once again, the real subject is corporate advertising and our inability to resist it, but it does a decent--and thoroughly entertaining--job of considering one sector of the weight issue on camera.

So does cinema need to pork up, or am I missing a few delicious treats that explore or exploit the rotundity of the modern age? 

Teenage Wasteland

Like many a diehard horror fan, I tend to let out a snooty scoff when a darkly lit trailer ends with the ominously voiced narrator slowing down to deliver a PG13 rating. I haven’t been 13 for some time, and even when I was, you could usually bet a few plastic rings and JNCO jeans that my allowance was funding films like Now and Then while my screams were hurled at Scream. Buy-and-switch sneak-ins were simply the norm, especially during the mid-90s, before studio heads discovered the market for young teenage thrillers.  

A few Screams and R.L. Stine novels later, producers wised up. Today, one can usually count on finding some form of horror  on the big screen and more often than not, it’s trimmed down to lure 14 year-old boys whose mothers have better things to do than escort them to an R-rated movie. It’s hard to imagine an AMC theater without mildly risque comedies and blue-hued remakes of Asian cinema, but the American PG13 rating is barely legal itself, having only been instituted in 1984 following the intense PG violence of films like Gremlins and Temple of Doom. (Parents, take note: just because Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things is rated PG does not mean it was the inspiration for Toy Story). Tobe Hooper famously tried for a PG with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre which seems laughable amid the rampant meathooks and cannibalism. In actuality, there’s little blood and no nudity, much like the inappropriately haunting PG rated classic Tourist Trap and today, both would most likely earn a PG13.

I bring this up in part as a response to the surprisingly lackluster opening weekend of Drag Me to Hell, the rare horror film that earned an incredible 86% positive critical rating (courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes) but garnered a mere $15.8 million at the box office. Were audiences were turned off the the unRaimi-like teenage-baiting rating?

Drag Me to Hell is not a masterpiece, but in my opinion, it should serve as a template for the potential of PG13 horror. Raimi doesn’t need the R because the film works with carefully orchestrated scares, subtle black humor, and perfectly timed cuts. You know, the way a traditional little horror movie is supposed to be.

Since the success of The Ring and the juggernaut that is Saw, American studio horror has, in a sense, been divided into hardcore Rs (Hostel, Halloween  ) and glossier PG13 (Prom Night,  The Fog). While there are plenty of nonformulaic gems nestled into the PG13 category, I confess to having a genuine bias towards films that seemed marketed and made for the mall crowd.

But as Drag Me to Hell reminds me, PG13 doesn’t have to mean neutered. Older classics like Jaws and The Haunting hold up because the scares aren’t dependent on the spillage of human innards (not that there’s anything wrong with that, as anything by Romero and its timeliness today proves). The Others and The Sixth Sense are prime examples of how ghost films do fine with showing less, while the bubblegum goofiness of Eight Legged Freaks gives you Starship Troopers violence without the boob and blood. Meanwhile, a piece of dreck like Captivity tried to capitalize on filmgoers tiring of CW network pretty boys and girls getting mildly injured by inserting over-the-top gore scenes that would make Jigsaw blush.

Personally, I’ll always heart an R-rated film that uses its freedom wisely. I admire the recent home invasion flick The Strangers for accepting an R despite limited violence that could easily have been edited down and I’ll cry the day Final Destination or the Chucky series starts to let 8th graders inside. But in the wake of such cinematic puke like Black Christmas 06, sometimes, a tamer, more disciplined PG13 like The Uninvited doesn’t look so deplorable. I’m the first to rail against something like a Hannah Montana headlined Battle Royale remake, but  ultimately, in the right hands, a good film can always be made.

Share your thoughts (or rants) below. I’m especially curious to hear about secretly good PG13, irresponsibly tagged PG film memories of the past, and your verdict on Snakes On a Plane’s R rating concession. 

I Hear That Hell Is Suuuuuch a Drag

Let me start by offering an olive branch to any Gypsy I’ve ever wronged. I can’t imagine that the number is high, but like any imperfect human, I’ve cut off some drivers, taken a subway seat at the cost of an ambiguously aged stander, and given poor directions to strangers when in a rush.


In other words, I don’t have a lot of human sins chewing on my conscience. In other other words, if any of the victims of these seemingly minor crimes happen to have boiling Romani blood, please accept my deepest apologies in the form of your choice of home-baked muffin, cheesecake, or kitten.


As you may have guessed, I followed up Fangoria with a midnight trip to the cinema and while it doesn't revolutionize the genre, the gleeful little Drag Me To Hell is likely to make horror geeks happy and Gypsy rights’ activists offended. Sam Raimi’s critically celebrated (but so far audience-ignored) “return-to-his-roots” certainly kicks the CGI’d ass of Tobey Maguire and could teach Platinum Dunes a few lessons in how to make a horror movie. Storywise, on the other hand, it could probably learn a new trick.


Quick Plot: A young banker (Allison Lohman) is itching to climb the career ladder, but her lack of ruthlessness in loan foreclosures and skill at sandwich runs are holding her behind her oily rival. Naturally, the best way to impress the boss is to deny the mysteriously glassy eyed client Mrs. Ganush an extension, which would be fine if the old crone didn’t have that convenient ability to curse souls to an eternity of hell.

Despite being directed by a man responsible for one of the biggest blockbusters of recent years, Drag Me To Hell is a small movie, and a wise one at that. Lohman gets some help from Justin Long as her nice-guy boyfriend, but for the most part, this is a simple story about one woman crossing the wrong Gypsy. The small scope makes it a speedy and intense, if slightly forgettable 90 minutes. There are quite a few genuine scares and moments of yuck, plus some sharply humorous beats. The final product is like a Raimi brunch, a savory egg-white omelette seasoned with some R.L. Stine-ish flavor and served with a complimentary glass of embalming fluid juice (pulp content= high). The PG13 rating takes nothing away, and is almost something of a refreshment following the blatantly boob-heavy horror of recent months.


High Points
Lohman creates a vulnerable, conflicted, and overall sympathetic person as Christine...which is pretty vital, since she’s onscreen the entire film

While there have been plenty of parking garage suspense scenes, the car fight here is quite well done


Animal violence has never been so carefully, cleverly and non-offensively executed (offscreen)


Low Points
Was Lohman’s past as a “fat girl” there to flesh out (no pun intended) her character, or did Raimi cross the line in channelling Stephen King’s Thinner?

Upon first hearing, I loved the ring the title “Drag Me To Hell” had. But really, is this a command that makes any sense? Shouldn’t it be something like “Don’t Drag Me to Hell,” "I'm Going To Try Really Hard To Not Get Dragged To Hell," or, if the grammatical tense matters, “Drag Her To Hell?”


Maybe it’s just that every review or conversation I’ve heard regarding Drag Me To Hell mentions Raimi’s CGI mastery, but I wasn’t entirely sold on some of the colder computer effects

Lessons Learned
Coin collecting is dangerous. Entertain your children with some other hobby, like origami or the Sims


The best way to a WASPy mother’s heart is through harvest pie


Do I really need to say it? If Josh Whedon, Stephen King, the Wolf Man, and scores of other fiction haven’t already taught you this, do not, under any circumstance, give Gypsies a reason to hurt you. Duh.

Full Price/Sneak In/Stay Home
This is a film that deserves to be embraced, and you should consider paying for a matinee as a way to throw your figurative arms around it. By no means is this a classic on Evil Dead levels or a nightmare-inducing terrorfest like The Descent, but Drag Me to Hell is an enjoyable and genuinely jumpy horror movie that at least merits a bigger opening than a piece of camp mascot poop like Friday the 13th. If your budget is truly limited, then waiting for a DVD release won’t kill you (or damn your soul to what promises to be a very unpleasant afterlife). This is good clean (and oozing) fun that would probably make a great entry into harder-core horror for newbies (I imagine it would have gone over better at sleepovers than my 14 year old pick, Mother’s Day), yet still works as a hearty throwback for tried and true fans.