Horror Movies

If you get scared by slasher movies, you'd better be a woman or a fag. Yes, I fucking said it.

Seem like a random thought? Maybe, but I've been formulating this theory for a long time, and the last commercial I saw just reinforced it (obviously, one for slasher movie).

Same old story: broken down motorists find refuge in old motel, and end up getting killed or maimed by some asshole with a knife or people that like killing. If this was a bus full of cheerleaders that broke down, then I could see this being horrific. If it was the tour bus for the "Queer Eye" guys, then yes, I could see them fighting back with pillows and tears. But no, this looked like a straight, reasonably regular looking guy.

Honestly, if you're a guy, how exactly does this have you petrified?

It is the same thing that I recall asking everyone when all of the Scream movies came out: how can any man be scared of this? Men are supposed to be tough and gritty, the ones who fight and kill and drag the food back to the cave. If some jerkoff tries to take your cave, you do what you have to do. Whatever happened to keeping a stiff upper lip, closing off your emotions, and doing what needs to be done? What happened to that spirit, that, "We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender"?

It's no wonder the World War II generation fell out of touch so quickly with today's society, or that of the Sixties. You know what they would have done if some fruitcake sociopath in a Halloween costume was following them? They'd have shot the cocksucker. Or hit him with a shovel. Or stabbed him. One way or another, the murderer would have ended up dead, and the man would have moved on with his life.

These men fought in steaming jungles on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Guadalcanal, they fought on the murderous beaches of Normandy and in the deeps snows of the figid Ardennes Forest where blood froze before it leaked out of the man. They faced man, missile, and tank, and watched their brothers get blowtorched and blown apart... and then put their heads down and kept moving forward. When they were surrounded, they said things like, "Good, now the bastards can't get away", or, "We ain't retreating, we're just attacking in another direction."

When the Germans gave them terms of facing surrender or anihilation, they sent back single word answers worthy of a Spartan voice, and then sat and fought for 72 days against a force ten times their number. They downed colonels through scopes from fifteen hundred yards between hedgerows, and then switched targets. They were the destoyers of cities, the firebombers of Hamburg, the nukers of Nagasaki. They killed because they knew they had to, or else the other guy would kill them first. They felt bad about it, sure; yet, there was a duty, a job, to be done, and they would not see their children being handed a folded American flag.

Of course, while they were fighting the good fight in the green fields of France, the women were sacrificing milk for their children, stockings for their legs, and copper for their coins, all the while working in factories putting together the killing machines that drove the war against the greatest evil that the world has ever faced, the gravest danger to freedom and liberty that has ever been encountered.

All of that... so we pussy children of the 90's could huddle in a closet wound in desperate fear of some pussy with a blade who's mother never hugged him enough? To quote Eddie Murphy, "Really man? Really?"

By far the worst is when you can see the hero get worried. You can see the fear in his eyes, you can see the panic fighting in his eyes when the camera pans around him. I'm not saying the poor bastard shouldn't be scared... I'm just saying that he should know what has to be done, and not be all weepy eyed about it. You think Arnold was scared in Predator? You bet your ass he was. However, he knew what had to be done after he watched his comrades die; next thing you know, he's in a tree covered in mud with arrows built from branches that explode on impact and a Ka-Bar tied to the end of a tree trunk, muttering the famous line, "If it bleeds, I can kill it." And I'm no even going to go in to how Danny Glover killed a predator in hand to hand combat with it's own weapon.

Now, I've never killed anyone before, so maybe I'm speaking out of turn. Do I think I could? Yea. In fact, I know I could, if I knew that he was trying to kill me or someone I loved. I can only imagine someone who seriously threatened the life of a wife or child of mine... I know me, and I'd turn the knife while I watched the motherfucker die. I'm not saying I ever want to be put in that position, because I hope to God that I never am. But I know me.

I may just be overly cynical about this, because the soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan right now are some tough bastards, and heroism and bravery are not traits unique to one generation or another. But the average man has gone downhill in word and deed.

A friend of mine said it best: "Our generation's greatest curse and greatest blessing is that there has never been a war to fight." He is right on many levels.