The Horror of Hype

Genre fans tend to feel a little unpatrioritc pledging allegiance to the same mass-produced flag saluted by 80% of the general public. We’re far more comfortable digging our way through dusty, sometimes crusty DVDs in questionable basement or neon lit video stores than we are sitting amongst the Friday night crowd at the week’s big release. 

It’s no wonder then that movies like Paranormal Activity throw some of us for a loop. How, you ask, could I possibly enjoy the same film that my coworker with the Twilight screensaver has been raving about all month? At the same time, we also get stuck trying to evaluate our own opinions amidst the chokingly thick fog of fanboy enthusiasm that surrounds new cult favorites like Hatchet and Grace. 

So how, you ask, can one navigate the dead-end, it’s-not-as-good-as-people-say labyrinth that is viewer hype? To find a map, we first have to consider the type o’ hype, and I don’t just say that because rhyming is fun.

1.  Long Awaited Hype 

Admit it: you drooled like an overly hydrated zombie when details surrounding Land of the Dead surfaced, just as you giddily brushed off your boomstick at the sound of Sam Raimi returning to his horror roots with Drag Me to Hell. When our childhood heroes reupholster their bloodstained director’s chairs, our own expectations can grow to unreachable heights. Thus, when George Romero makes a decent, if weirdly clean smelling zombie film with a happy ending in the 21st century, we put aside the flaws of the obnoxiously acted Day of the Dead and its own cheat of a final shot in order to blast horror’s indie king for seeming to sell out for CGI and Canada. 

As hard--or maybe impossible--as it is, any film needs to be seen on its own terms and unless it’s in 3D, with no tinted glasses to fog our sight. Sure, it’s depressing to watch Dario Argento continue to roll down a hill of film quality and near impossible to not look up the address of the actress narrating Diary of the Dead in the hopes of slaying her puppies and tearing our her vocal chords, but I promise you that these directors didn’t make these films simply because they hate you. Maybe they’ve lost touch or maybe their visions were simply more startling in another era. Either way, the main thing to remember is that a film should be judged against itself, not your memory of its older brother.

2.  Defensive Hype

There’s a reason nobody makes feel good features documenting the NY Yankees. We don’t care about winners born into luxury, and while not all genre fans can latch onto a sports analogy, everybody loves an underdog. 

Hence, horror loyalists stand on virtual soapboxes to warn passerbys about studio-backed cash cows like Saw while gleefully catching rides on The Midnight Meat Train. Is it fair? In theory, yes, but this comes from a long-suffering Met fan well accustomed to disappointment. Likewise, Lions Gate earned genre fan disapproval when it failed to give a wide release to 2008‘s public transportation terror trip, and I waved my fist in solidarity. 

Then I saw the movie.

While it wasn’t nearly as awful as some recent remade offerings (I’m still washing out my eyeballs for the stain imprinted by Black Xmas)Midnight Meat Train just....wasn’t good. Well-acted and polished, but dank, oddly plotted, and ultimately, quite uninvolving. Aside from battle ready horror fans and Cliver Barker bookworms, would full price ticket buyers really have wanted to spend their Friday night allowance on such an unlikable film? The same could easily be said for Repo! The Genetic Opera, a polarizing rock opera that amassed an army of devotees alongside a migraine suffering horde of conflicted haters.

The best solution I can conjure is to assume nothing. Praise the idea of an original film and support its release for people to actually see, but don’t force yourself to love something that simply isn’t your taste pallet. This leads us to ...

3. But I’m Supposed To Love This, Right?

What do you mean, you didn’t want to marry Hatchet and have its pickaxe babies? And really: what are you doing going out to a Halloween party when you could be home rewatching Trick ‘r Treat, aka The Greatest Horror Film Of All Time, for the ninetieth time this week? 

Of all the hypes out in the cinematic universe, this may be the most difficult to overcome. After two years of nearly universal ravings about a little unreleased horror anthology, it’s hard to watch a film without feeling sadly underwhelmed, angrily disappointed, or unconsciously bullied into submission (remember: Alllllllllllllll the boys love Mandy Lane). 

We could certainly try to build our own Skinner boxes and block out any rumblings from around the genre community, but in the age of blogs, podcasts, and bootlegs, that’s about as realistic as Martyrs getting an Oscar for best foreign film (what, you agree? you didn’t like Martyrs? What kind of fan are you?) Ultimately there is no such thing as a universal opinion, even in a more isolated specimen like the horror community. There’s nothing wrong with not loving a film that makes Fangoria swoon, but try to not let your dislike grow with the positivity of others; don’t hate it more just to match the positive intensity of those who enjoyed it. The best way to handle this is to return to the film several months--or years--after its buzz has been died down. Sometimes, you can only discover what your genuine thoughts are after they don’t seem to matter anymore.

4.  Mainstream Mania

In many ways, Gore Verbinski has earned a rigidly uncomfortable seat for himself in the filmmaker realm of hell. No, the mini pirate boom of the 00s wasn’t that bad, but his fairly big budgeted Americanized take on Ringu is the heavily botoxed grandma when it comes to remakes, aka the Scourge of 21st Century Horror. And to think, most of 2002‘s The Ring‘s impressive box office return came straight out of the pockets of...well...everyone. Men, women, eighth graders...you couldn’t throw your popcorn without hitting someone raving about that randomly scary film they caught in the theaters, much as

Paranormal Activity and 1999’s The Blair Witch Project commandeered a normally neutral audience immune to the haunts of quiet horror.

So where does that leave you? You can’t be the only one in the office without a take on why Michael was standing in the corner, and more importantly, you may be the only one with the sense to explain that no dear, Heather, Michael, & Josh are NOT still lost in the Burketsville woods. Plus, if you avoid a film just because everybody else didn’t, you might actually miss a good movie.

Think of the experience like dining in a fancy, highly recommended but seemingly overrated restaurant you’ve yet to patron. You have to make reservations. Wait 45 minutes and still end up in a less than desirable seating area, then deal with rude waiters. After all that, even a decent meal can’t live up to the hype. Likewise, when watching a too-talked about film, one must be careful to judge it on its own terms. Any extra effort only adds to the aggravation and inevitable unmet expectation. 

In other words, wait a month into a film’s run and hit up an economy priced matinee. Make sure that when you give the film your less-than-premium-price dollars, you can judge the film on its own merits, rather than the experience that surrounded your viewing.

5. Late-to-the-Party Classics

We’ve all hear our parents and grandparents wax nostalgic on how Frankenstein lurched through their nightmares and Psycho made Janet Leigh swear off showering, but depending on your initiation process into genre cinema, many older classics can fall flat on modern eyes. Some timeless films work in any era, but when you’ve eaten cereal shaped like smiling vampires, it’s hard to accept that Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was once a force to be feared.

In order to enjoy a film that’s been written about for 30+ years, it helps to understand why it’s still relevant in today’s cinematic universe. Something like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, for example, may seem rather--well, silent--upon a blind watch, but pop in the special edition after after Blade Runner, Total Recall, or Dark City and note some of the architectural inspiration. From Birth to JoshuaRosemary’s Baby as the matriarch of eerily sterile NYC thrillers. Sometimes, the only way to fully appreciate an older, possibly dated film is to go backwards and watch with your head, not heart.

So which films have you hated due to humongous hype, or felt never had a true chance in the face of overexposure? Share your thoughts but remember: don’t get too excited. Then I’ll have to figure out what the Hype-Over-Hype-Type-Hype means, and that gives me a bigger headache than hearing Bill Moseley duet with Paris Hilton.

Quick Thoughts: Paranormal Activity

So unless you’re one of the six people left with $12 in your pocket and 90 minutes of your life to spare, you’ve probably seen Paranormal Activity and finally, one month and one false start (as the 1:50 Sunday afternoon showing decided to not actually ‘show’ the film and simply play audio for the first five minutes), I have now whittled the number down to five. Since everyone and their hamster has reviewed the film with fairly universal critique--and mine don’t really differ too much from the masses--I’ll condense my thoughts to the following:

The highest point of my film viewing, I must say, was that I sat in a fairly crowded theater full of diverse ticket buyers and not one of them laughed at the talking baby eTrades commercial. In no way does this say anything about Paranormal Activity--I could have won $9 million dollars plus a lifetime supply of pumpkin ice cream served year round and I still would have been more impressed by the slow improvement on taste and humor in general audiences today.

I hate talking babies. Just cause their lips move as an adult makes inappropriate jokes does not mean they are funny.

Anyway, the movie.

I liked it. Felt edgy here and there, but not in the hyperventilating style of the either easily-frightened or chronically asthmatic teens a few rows behind me. Still, I found it effective enough and can honestly admit that the next day, I was a tad uncomfortable when my cat proceeded to sprint across my apartment trying to catch a ball of air, which I naturally have decided is my own personal demon named Simon that doesn’t like it when I watch basic cable. 

Some quick takes in SPOILER territory: I agree with the 2-Second-2-Long discussion cruising through the Interwebs. I jumped at the ‘first’ ending, was slightly haunted by the next shot, but found the final crawl a tad too long and unnecessary, especially in light of the suddenness of the creditless black screen.

Performances were fine. I believed the pair as a couple, although where a student and day trader got enough money to buy that house and spend the entire day inside it or basking in a Beverly Hills inground pool is beyond me. 

Stuff that worked? The tiny touches that built up possibility without ever shoving your face in eeriness. The broken picture. The found photo. The weirdness of those footprints. The image of someone standing for two hours. I even appreciated the subtle performance of the psychic and everything that his second visit implied. 

Basically, Paranormal Activity is a decent and effective little film that you can’t not root for in the face of its budget and scrappy climb to the top of the box office. Not the scariest film of the decade by any means, but certainly worth your time in a dark place with full attention. I’ll leave my thoughts there for now, save for a few lessons I simply can’t not impart.

Lessons Learned

Demons may haunt you for your whole life, but they won’t get violent until you move in with a really obnoxious yuppie

If you can afford a brand new convertible and a huge house in San Diego, you can afford to call a demonologist

Ouija boards have gotten much cooler looking in recent years

Saying “I have a plan” over and over again does not actually mean you have one

Tomorrow, my Pop Syndicate column will attempt to detail the hype around this and similar films and more importantly, some new methods for how to navigate unanimous praise or buildup and simply enjoy the film. Until then, here's a picture to remind us how frightening Carrot Top has become, and why no demon named Simon or Beelzebub or Sarah Palin can compare:

There Is a Place Between Heaven and Hell: It's Called Boredom

Few things are sadder than a filmmaker who debuted with a unique, creepy, and haunting little thriller making a piece of cinematic--actually, straight-to-video-matic--rotten oatmeal twelve years later. (I say oatmeal because it has the bland, thick, and generally hard-to-get-through texture and feels akin to a film that just sits in your stomach without a single bright spot of tastiness.)


Netherworld is such a bowl of emptiness, a 1992 release from Full Moon Entertainment, directed by Tourist Trap and Puppet Master’s maestro David Schmoeller. It’s an aggressively dull little “horror” that seems determined to squander any potential it builds. I imagine the filmmakers began the process by reading about Netherworlds in some mythology textbook, thinking them interesting and a ripe concept for a film, then falling asleep for three years and waking up on set in the middle of production to say “Oh. So we’re making this, eh?”

Quick Plot: A geeky young virgin buys his way into a Louisianian brothel, leading us through a dank maze inhabited by the world’s fugliest Marilyn Monroe impersonator. The real story, however, moves to a saucy prostitute getting raped by a nonpaying customer until security--in the form of a disembodied hand with carnivorously phallic fingers--violates his face. 

It’s actually a decent start but sadly, the five minute prologue is as good as the film could possibly dream of being. We’re soon introduced to Corey Thornton (Michael Bendetti), a young man of apparently no past personality save for the fact that he’s the “crackling image” of his long dead father. Corey arrives to stake his claim (I guess) on Pops’ sprawling N’Orleans estate, eager to read an old journal while drooling over the new caretaker’s underage daughter. Dad’s diary soon reveals that he’s been trapped in some sort of death dimension (a netherworld, perhaps? mmhmhmhm?) and Corey must visit a local hooker Pops used to shag to get him out.

Now. I’ve never sought out a film for its sexual content and could generally care less if an unrated direct-to-video thriller utilizes its lack of a rating, but I do believe Netherworld features the lamest, tamest, and most incredibly awful sex scene I’ve seen in quite some time. For starters, it involves Bendetti, an actor who seems like the rejected older brother of the London twins who was busy watching paint dry while mid 90s audiences tried to decide who was Jason and who was Jeremy. His costar, Denise Gentile, exudes a mild spritz of heat, but since she’s previously been introduced as “the most sensual woman in the world,” are we supposed to buy that she’d keep her robe strategically covering her girly parts and use her flat early ‘90s perm to catch what’s left? Her biggest move is to softly touch Corey’s thigh. His signature is the boob cup. And whoa, the guardian of hell is named Delores? No offense to any Delori out there, but such a name calls to mind a bowling league captain before an erotic pinup girl. 

Oh, and did I mention the tepid kissing/sort of nude/not hot scene is cut with elevator style smooth jazz and a slow motion slow dance between Delores--dressed in a puffy white fringed Dallas inspired gown--and Corey’s 60 year old father? ‘Cause that’s what most witch guardians of hell fantasize about when rolling an ice cube over young men’s thighs. 

Yes, there is an ice cube. And no, it does not melt. That’s the amount of heat generated here. 

The biggest problem with a film too blah to even have good problems is that there is absolutely no reason for the audience to actually watch it. Bendetti is a tall pretty boy with the charisma of a DMV employee trying out for a community theater (and possibly named Delores), and yet we’re instantly supposed to follow him into an ill-defined underworld. The central romance is, I think, between the slick Corey and a character introduced as jailbait, so it’s nearly impossible to offer the would-be couple any sort of blessing, not to mention the fact that their chemistry is less kinetic than what happens inside a can of flat seltzer. Dialogue gets as exciting as this:

Corey: Can you teach me what I need to know?

Delores: I’ll teach you everything I know. About your body. Your mind. Your soul.

Corey: I’ll do anything, as long as you teach me what i need to know

Delores: I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you everything

Quentin Tarantino, watch your hunched-from-years-behind-a-video-store-counter back. This banter is hotter than dry ice.

High Points

I did dig a graphic, if makeup effects-y face ripoff in the film’s center. If only I had any reason whatsoever to care about the victim (or anybody else in Netherworld)

As someone with thesaurus.com bookmarked, I’m impressed by Schmoeller’s ability to use about 73 different adjectives to describe “mystical” in Thornton’s journal entry

Low Points

The only thing good about Michael Bendetti is that he has the kind of name you could hear a husky voiced trailer narrator reading off in a slightly menacing way

Why does a film like Netherworld feel the need for a two minute opening credits sequence when there’s nothing but a black screen to show? Even The Devil’s Rain found a few stock photos to toss under the names, giving us something to look forward to. Maybe it was the movie’s way of setting a blackened tone before we got remotely excited

Lessons Learned

The souls of bad people are stored in birds. Perhaps we should reinstall the tradition of throwing avian stomach-exploding rice at weddings once more

The neatest thing about having sex with your father’s prostitute mistress is that you’ll earn a colorful feather in your ear

Grabbing the breast of a 16 year old southern belle will summon all sorts of inner strength

Always dance with the dirty old redneck that likes to provide the jump scares

Rent/Bury/Buy

Why I rented this is foggy, but the day after my email informed me of its Netflixed delivery date, I came upon the badass blogger T.L. Bugg’s (of The Lightning Bug's Lair ) spot-on review of just how awful Netherworld was. With a heavy sigh and a hearty serving of pumpkin ale, I soon learned no amount of seasonal beer could make it better. And worst of all, Netherworld isn’t your so-bad-it’s-good Fear of Clowns or campily weird Demonic Toys. It’s just a bad, lazy, and dull 87 minutes that has no right to be seen, much less made by a director capable of so much more. When your best performances involves a filmmaker cameo demonstrating a neat party trick and an animatronic parrot on loan from Disneyland’s Enchanted TIki Room, you know your film needs a good old fashioned burial. 

Love the One You're With

If you’ve read anything about Deadgirl, a first time effort by co-directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel, you may be expecting an unwatchable piece of exploitation rich in zombie rape and I Spit On Your Grave levels of depravity. You’d be wrong on two counts, since 1) I Spit On Your Grave is a film I’ll defend for other reasons and 2) Deadgirl is actually a haunting, disturbing, and somewhat restrained little film that’s far stronger than its premise could have damned it to be.

Quick Plot: High school stoners JT (Noah Segan) and Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) cut school one day to hang out in the local abandoned asylum (was my suburban hometown the only place in America that didn’t have of these, by the way?). Upon tossing around some rolling chairs and chugging unbranded cans of beer, the boys come upon a bolted room and a beautiful corpse chained inside. Rickie is freaked out. JT is aroused. 

The next day, Rickie returns to find JT has drawn his own conclusions about the “Deadgirl”: she’s undead and has been left all alone. Rickie remains horrified but has no idea how to pry his best friend’s um, attention, away from what seems like a gift from the gods. As children of broken homes in a small town with no future, JT and Rickie are aware that they have little else going for them. The don’t catch the attention of the ladies--not the fleshy Daisy Dukes-donning gas station pumper and certainly not Rickie’s unrequited crush of a cute redhead dating the token jockjerk. For JT and later, their even more fried friend Wheeler, life has never been better than having a gorgeous, complacent, full grown woman tied to a table for their personal pleasure. The more sensitive Rickie, on the other hand, knows it’s wrong but isn’t quite ready to alienate his best friend (and sadly, the only thing he seems to have in his life) over a corpse.

I worry my synopsis of Deadgirl is still making the film sound a tad homemade pornish, but it is a surprisingly sensitive film. I can’t downplay the subject matter and indeed, there are some extremely uncomfortable scenes that some filmgoers won’t make it through. Overall, however, Deadgirl is disturbing and thoughtful, not exploitive and gratuitous. The most horrific moments are found in JT’s increasingly distant dialogue, while the actual sex is portrayed with appropriately un-erotic staging. Think of the non-cathartic nature of the torture scenes in The Girl Next Door, as opposed to the more heavily stylized scenes that tend to rear their glossy heads in mainstream cinema.

Overall, Deadgirl has the feel of a short story in a zombie anthology mixed with an indie drama about small town youth. The performances are a tad inconsistent (perhaps there’s only so much Candice Accola can do with Charlie Brown’s Little Redheaded Girl role compared to Segan’s creepily macabre JT and Fernandez’s likable enough RIckie) but hold steady enough to sell a film that depends so much on its characters. There are some truly memorable images, such as Deadgirl’s overly makeup’d face which is, one scene later, covered with a magazine cutout that recalls Claire’s Season 4 collage work in Six Feet Under.

High Points

We’ve seen zombies as everything from choreographed two-steppers to Olympian sprinters and softball players, so it’s pretty impressive to see a film that brings something new not just to an undead-themed story, but also in its creepily haunting depiction of the “Deadgirl,” aided by Jenny Spain’s careful performance.

Abandoned asylums make everything better

It’s refreshing to see a film about teenagers that doesn’t force trendy lingo or pop culture references into their mouths. There’s nary a cell phone or high speed Internet connection to be found, and it adds a strange timeliness that make Deadgirl work for any era

Low Points

Although occasionally evocative, the score calls attention to itself far too often

First of all, is it a requirement for all high school films to feature a character named Johnny? Next, does Johnny always have to be played by an actor pushing 30?

Lessons Learned

Abduction is far more difficult than it looks, unless you’re the big man on campus and you’re throwing two stoners into your trunk in the middle of school recess

Oh, boys. Do I really have to tell you to be careful where to put your valuables?

Meat left in the open will spoil***

Winning Line

“I wish I was 15 again.”

“I’m 17.”

“Man, I wish I was 15 again.”

I actually really love this quick exchange between Rickie and his mother’s girlfriend, played by the solid character actor Michael Bowen. It captures the lack of adult influences on Rickie and his friends, but more importantly, it quietly points out that 17 is indeed a different point of life

Rent/Bury/Buy

Deadgirl is currently on Netflix’s Instant Watch, so give it a try when you’re in the mood for a serious, dark, and deep ride into a mean mean place. The production values are top notch so if you can get behind the characters and survive the idea of what you will see, then I recommend a tryout. It almost has a Jack Ketchum-y feel that’s been numbed by some IFC serum. It won't brighten your day, but it will provide a thoughtfully unsettling film experience worthy of your time.

***A personal story: When I was in high school, every health class was forced to undergo the inevitable STD slideshow which was fabulous on every level. First, the teacher (who apparently freelanced with this lesson plan all over Long Island) asked us to raise our hands if we planned on going away to college. Without any irony or exception, she pointed to the 90% of the class and claimed that each and every one of us would get crabs, because that’s what happens when you share a toilet. This was followed by magnified shots of just what crabs are and what they do, which in turn was followed by one of the school jocks--sadly not named Johnny--trotting outside and returning with a very reddened face.

Screw world peace: I just want a crown

Oh. Ma. Gawd.

The 2009 Ms. Horror Blogosphere has begun, and I'm totally a contestant. This is a friendly competition run by one Mr. B-Sol of The Vault of Horror , who I'm sure is way cooler, better at dancing, and 73% less oily than Mario Lopez. Not only does he deliver one of the best horror blogs in the Information Superhighway, he's also taking time out to celebrate some of the horror community's female bloggers for all their snappy wisdom.


Details on voting/the talent competition are still to come, but for now, head over to The Vault to learn more about my fellow representatives and read my own entry.   You're thankfully spared a swimsuit photo, but I do explain how my parents instituted a ratings system, why I would bang Michael Myers, and which horror icon should father my child.

2009 Goes For the Hat Trick

A Friday the 13th in November is to horror fans what Italian Christmas is to American Sicilians. It’s a perfectly timed, almost gluttonous Gregorian gift dedicated to those of us still mourning the rotting of pumpkins, price jumps on DVDs, and questionable glances from coworkers at our refusal to take those those Halloween decorations. Sure, that silver glittered skull head looks a little conspicuous next to paperwork, but on this particular matchup of weekday and date, it’s as natural as a turkey at Whole Foods.

In other words, think of today as an encore of October 31st, only a little more secular and a lot less obvious. Others may scoff--or more likely, ignore--your enthusiasm, but that’s no reason to not celebrate this rarity in the style of your choice. Here are a few suggestions for how to make the most of this pagan loved, Christian trashed, and slasher film revived holiday of a different sort.

1. Relive childhood terror:

Every horror fan has one true love, and by love, I mean that first film that invaded your nightmares and forced you to say “Mom, dad...we’re gonna need a bigger nightlight.” See how much you’ve grown by revisiting the boogeyman you knew before puberty proved to be more frightening. Most likely, you’ll laugh at your past softness and how tough your skin has turned but on the other hand, you just may reawaken a long dormant inner turmoil ready to churn its way into modern buttery psychosis. Don’t pretend you’re not excited. 

2. Face your fear: 

For Lars Von Trier, it’s flying. Billy Bob Thorton, antique furniture. Homer Simpson? Sock puppets. Most of us outgrow some of our minor phobias, like a too-informed Santa Clause, the dark, or what happens if you eat watermelon seeds and drink water afterwards, but no matter how old you may be, the Visitors of V would still be able to identify your current dread and use it to torture out secret battle plans of The Resistance. Maybe you’re still unnerved by fuzzy spiders or can’t seem to breathe when standing at extreme heights. Use today as a true test of your strength. Ask the teenage part timer at your local PETCO to let you touch a tarantula or take a trip to your nearest open-to-the-public skyscraper. Sound too therapy inducing? How ‘bout renting a movie? Trust me: my coulrophobia has been cured following a laughable rental of Fear of Clowns.

3. Make every decision based on a coin toss: 

What to have for lunch: Chinese takeout or a sub? Call heads or tails and toss up your quarter. The real trick is that every time tails comes up, scream Nooooooo!, explain that this is the doomed option, and choose it anyway. Guaranteed to annoy those around you and, if they’re self-reflective, cause them to reevaluate any former beliefs regarding their superstitious leanings.

4. Treat yourself:

So how many elementary aged witches and goblins hit you up for those Reeses two weeks ago? If you’re like everyone I know with a door, the answer is, quite sadly, a handful. So what’s the backup plan for that bowl of fun-sized Snickers? It’s almost time to make room in your pantry for canned pumpkin and candy canes so I recommend you do yourself a favor and purge the cabinets of all Halloween candy. If your karma is low, bring it to work and make sure your office mates know who’s fattening them up. Otherwise...well...Snickers has protein, so what’s stopping you from plastic bagging your lunch?

5.  Sound and fury:

Unsubstantiated superstitions annoy me, but none receive my throaty disgusted sigh with more phlegm than those of the theatre world. My favorite (to hate)? Ye olde curse of the Scottish Play, better known to most sensible people as Macbeth. Legend has it that Shakespeare’s tragedy is so dramatically cursed, just saying the thane’s name inside the walls of any theatre will summon enough bad luck to make sayings like “break a leg” sound not so figurative. Because I find this stupid and not at all because I once auditioned for a play in college with a monologue from Macbeth and didn’t get the part because I didn’t know this rule, I heartily despise this superstition. My solution? Be a cultured antisuperstitionist and see a show tonight. Enjoy it. Clap and discuss its theme. Just rename your date for the evening Macbeth and be sure to say his or her name at every chance you get before the curtain falls. And at intermission. And on your way out. 

6. Karaoke with Christopher Lee: 

You know what’s great about DVDs? Subtitles. You know what’s great about 1973‘s The Wicker Man? Well, pretty much everything but for the purpose of today, let’s go with its music. Sadly such classic ditties as The Landlord’s Daughter and Sumer Is Icumen In didn’t go platinum, but that doesn’t mean they don’t go well with a big screen TV, a few musically inclined friends, and a lot of Guinness. Hold your own pagan sing-a-long in your living room and videotape it for posterity and blackmail. Nudity optional (just like Britt Ekland’s rear).

7.  A Necessary Remake:

There are few things you should love more than the original Wicker Man, but one such activity worthy of adoration is making fun of Neil LeBute’s woefully misguided, painfully misconceived, and laughably misogynist remake of the same name. It’s easy enough to poke jokes at Nick Cage’s kung fu moves and bear suit brawling, but do you really think you could have done a better job? There’s only one way to find out: invite that same incredibly open group of friends over, pop in the rented DVD (because your money should be going to a better cause, like charity or Netflix) and take turns dubbing the Oscar winner’s lines. Bonus points for capturing his pained whine and bee stung screams with just the right amount of confusion and ham.

8. Monster Makeover:

Since many Halloween decorations are autumn themed, it is indeed possible to keep some of your favorites on display through the dearth of November. Then again, you may also be forced to explain why your dancing ghost candy dish is appropriate when everybody in the office is planning Thanksgiving dinner. Rather than gain a reputation as the lazy employee with bad timing, transform your pumpkins and ghouls with a more seasonal look. As you can see, all it took for my CVS rag witch was a post-it, two rubber bands, some leftover Halloween feathers, a paper clip, Q-tip, and the top of pen box and she’s become a regular contestant for a politically incorrect Thanksgiving pageant.

9.  Cheers, Mr. Voorhees:

No Friday the 13th is complete without, well, some form of Friday the 13th. It’s easy enough to pop in your boxed set or tune into one of the random cable channels sure to be airing a marathon, but why not make it a little more interesting (or just inebriated) with a perfectly suited drinking game? If alcohol isn’t your poison, might I suggest a fresh bag of half priced candy corn? Either way, toss in any one of twelve Crystal Lake adventures and take an unhealthy serving of bodily harming evil every time any of the following occurs onscreen:

-a final girl demonstrates her uptightness with an apprehensive glance or turndown of sex

-a class clown character tries to joke with Jason, only to then freeze, hold a stupid smile followed by a “what the fuuuuh,” and open his or her mouth before a scream is silenced by a brutal and fast slaying

-Jason tilts his head

...and so on. Feel free to edit according to whichever installment you choose. For example, I’d expect anybody watching Jason Takes Manhattan to take a gulp at every shot of Rennie’s cheap gold necklace or actorly tears. 

Have any more advice? Hurry and post it. Otherwise, remember it carefully for the next big Friday: coming soon in August of 2010.