Sunday, August 9, 2009

Last Word on "Planet of the Dead"

Absolute gospel truth: today I was chatting with the kids next door (the disturbing Gabriel, the beautiful Maeve and Gene who is the five-year-old equivalent of Happy Italian Guy from Turn Left). Anyway, as conversations are want to do we ended up discussing the Scary Movie franchise and awkwardly explaining that it wasn't SUPPOSED to be scary, it was actually making fun of such horror films. Irritatingly, the only gags I could remember from the film weren't particularly satirical ones, unless you count the black guy sodomizing the evil possessed clown doll under a bed... but that's hard to describe at the best of times.

"I prefer things that are funny and scary," says Maeve as her brothers attempt to climb trees and release wild dogs on the public. "Like in Doctor Who. There was this girl and she stole something from a museum, and Dr Who said 'Can I have that?' and she said 'Look after it' and he said 'I will' and then he hit it a lot with a hammer."

We both chuckle at the thought.

"Yeah, I'm glad he smashed it up," adds Maeve. "She was really a mean person."

4 comments:

Miles Reid-Lobatto said...

Honestly, I took 'Scary Movie' back to the video rental place after half an hour. I find that if you don't laugh at least once during the first half-hour of one of those kinds of movies, you should get a refund.

Youth of Australia said...

Yeah, I can't really argue with that. It's a shame that Scary Movie stole the thunder from the OTHER horror parody that came out at the same time, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th - far funnier, far ruder, far more subtle. It won me over from the first scene where the killer, in a Jason-style hockey mask, lights up a cigarette after his first murder, which causes his mask to catch fire, so he dives into a bird bath to put out the flames, but his mask has melted into a ghost shape. It kept me laughing all the way to the "Where are they NOW? Dead mostly" end credits.

Scary Movie 3 isn't bad, but maybe because they were sticking to plots rather than random cliches.

Jared "No Nickname" Hansen said...

...now I'm ashamed that I found Scary Movie quite funny at the time.

That said I was thirteen going on fourteen at the time so I have a decent excuse. I think me and my friends were referring to ejaculation as 'spoof' at that stage..

Also, it's re-assuring to know that the target audience didn't like Lady Michelle Ryan either. Their was a fairly big rift I felt watching between what I was meant to feel about her and what I was actually feeling.

Youth of Australia said...

There were bits of SM1 I enjoyed

- "You RUINED Schindler's List!"
- Buffy snapping her own femur and making the killer wince
- the suicide pact scene, and the whole "Did Scream make sense? No!" stuff
- the ethnic exodus of town once the white chicks copped it

I was annoyed the last gag of the film was totally ripped off Rocko's Modern Life - the epilogue where Heffer says a heartfelt goodbye to the milking machine he unexpectedly had sex with. It was a lot funnier then too.

Also, it's re-assuring to know that the target audience didn't like Lady Michelle Ryan either.
Why I thought it merited blogging.