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Sunday, November 29. 2009

Gory Details

My roommate John is out in the living room watching Dawn of the Dead. Me, I don’t care for gory movies. Never have. Back in the day I saw the original Dawn of the Dead, the George Romero classic, and that put me off gory movies forever. Didn’t even want to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Last House on the Left either — but I did. Then I joined the Marines.

Bit of a dichotomy (at the very least) I agree, but movies with people getting hacked to pieces, stabbed with weird gardening tools, eaten by zombies and otherwise mutilated for cinematic excess just never appealed to my sense of entertainment.

Once, when there was a marathon of Nightmare on Elm Street movies on one of the cable channels, I watched one of them, part of the way through, but eventually switched to something else. Probably professional wrestling.

Same with the Halloween series. Had to see the movie that made Jamie Lee Curtis the famous “Scream Queen.” Didn’t watch that one all the way through although it was nice seeing Jamie Lee as a teenager.
 For purely prurient reasons, Trading Places is my favorite Jamie Lee Curtis movie. If you’ve seen it sans commercial interruption and network censoring, you know why.

For me, The Exorcist is as gory as it gets. That’s probably my favorite movie of all time. Loved the book as well. True story; one summer I was spending the season in Florida with my two sisters, Cheryl and Mary Lou. Both older and Cheryl’s son, Christopher, was but a wee lad so I occasionally found myself babysitting. Which is okay because I like to read and watch TV.

So, one night, as the two sisters were heading out to … I forget where, Mary Lou, evil as she can be, hands me The Exorcist and says it’s a good book. It’s about church stuff, Catholic Church stuff, I thought naively, the religion we were brought up in, so how interesting could that possibly be? About six hours later when they got home I was still parked on the couch reading, every light in the house turned on, petrified with every word but too engrossed to put it down, too terrified to put it down.

No lie, I read that book in one sitting, no small feat when you consider the number of pages.

When the movie was finally released I went to see it with Mom and my younger sister Elaine. I guess they figured the news reports of people fainting and running out of the theater was just Hollywood hype to get people into the theaters.

They were mistaken. In fact, it was probably a mistake to take young Elaine to see The Exorcist because I believe she still has nightmares associated with it. Nine years ago when the director’s cut was released into theaters her son Dan and I went to see it and the young lad, being brought up in the Catholic religion just like his mother, was visibly shaken.

The scene of Regan crab walking down the stairs, the faces that momentarily glowed during the electrical sequence, that freaked me out a bit too — so I got on Amazon and bought it. That movie, The Exorcist 2000, is just too good! Still the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.

But the Dawn of the Dead movies: not my cup of tea. But what are you going to do on a Saturday when you only alternatives are heart-warming stories like Forrest Gump and The Green Mile? I’ve seen both, a number of times, so they don’t stir my interest.

Now, whenever AMC features the Godfather series back-to-back, I gotta watch that! Never get tired of watching the Corleone family saga. Same with the first three Dirty Harry movies. Well, any Clint Eastwood movie is worth watching again and again — except for Million Dollar Baby. That is such a heart-breaking film. Women shouldn’t box, or fight at all. That just ain’t right, but they do. I guess my view of women and femininity is old fashioned, quaint.

There’s this Playboy model I know, Koa-Marie Turner, who is a professional wrestler. She’s currently on tour with Hulk Hogan in Australia. She loves it. Eh, I’m quaint and old fashioned. More power to Koa-Marie and all the other women who want to mix it up in the ring.

But this is a tangent, the subject of which is far a field from the original thought, but gotta mention this: Mixed Martial Arts, MMA, is really popular as a spectator sport among women. Damn! Were I thirty years younger and a foot taller!

Naah, I don’t care for gory slasher movies. The Dawn of the Dead films are so popular they were all remade with today's cinematic technology. Guess that makes them even more popular. That’s what John is watching in the living room — the new version.

Maybe I’ll watch eight hours of Sports Center, see college quarterbacks get crushed and defensive backs limp off the field after getting bounced off the turf like rubber manikins. That’s always entertaining!

Posted by Tim Forkes in Media Madness at 08:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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