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Friday Night at the Movies

Last night, I watched Coyote vs. Acme. Of course it was good! The plot was simple, the nostalgia was elevated, the cartoons were familiar, and violence was absurd and straight out of the 1950s. Take your kids, they’ll have a grand time! Although, to be fair, if you don’t have kids, you might want to stay home, unless you’re a real fan of Warner Bros. animation, or you just love to see anvils falling on characters’ heads.

My curse is that I couldn’t watch it without wondering what the world would be like if we had to share it with colorful, invulnerable characters who could build destructive weapons that could wreak horrendous devastation on humans and our property, but which could do them no lasting harm. The answer was clear: they’d become CEOs of corporations and destroy us all.

Bonus: I volunteered as projectionist for the 7:00 show, but no one volunteered for the 9:00 movie, so I stayed to cover that one, too. It was light work, since only two people showed up for Insidious: Out of the Further. I sold them their tickets and a few concessions, but then I could just sit in the theater and watch the whole thing, undisturbed.

It was awful. I have never liked the genre of supernatural horror; even in the long ago times, I detested The Exorcist and didn’t find it at all scary, just silly. The problem with these movies is that the screenwriters have no constraints, they can just invent random abilities and constraints, and the whole point is to generate “spooky” situations for the human protagonists. This whole movie was a couple of wide-eyed frightened people scuttling through a dark haunted house with flashlights — so bad lighting, an occasional ghost popping up for a jump scare, and an arbitrary series of hoops the good guys had to jump through to banish the ghosts. It was stupid. And this was the sixth movie in the franchise! I walked out.

I found the previews far more entertaining, which isn’t saying much. Crawlers is coming out later this fall!

OK, normal, real spiders become threat because of abnormal, unreal behavior. I’ll probably watch it. It’s fun to watch stupid people freak out over a situation I’d probably find charming.

Another movie coming out is Spider Island. It’s the same premise as Crawlers, or Arachnophobia, for that matter. I kind of suspect that Arachnophobia would be far superior.

The main feature of this movie is that it is set on a tropical island resort, so we’re going to get lots of spiders with pretty girls in bikinis. It’s not a combination that appeals to me, so I’ll probably skip it unless it’s shown right in front of my face.

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Comments

  1. Snarki, child of Loki says

    That reminds me, need to head over to ACME.
    I think they have a sale on bird seed.
    Alas, they’re “out of stock” on rocket sleds.

  2. birgerjohansson says

    The good thing with ‘The Exorcist’ was Max von Sydow. He had a knack to lift otherwise underwhelming films. He played the devil in ‘Needful Things’ (a change from playing Jesus in ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’. Bonus point: no torture porn in this Jesus film).
    .
    Other ‘Meh’ horror films;
    The Mothman was not scary at all. The Australian film about girls going missing at that rock was completely uninteresting.
    In 99% of ordinary horror films you can guess what will happen.
    But in the sequel to the Texas Chainsaw Murder Dennis Hopper steals the show with his utterly unhinged performance.

    Good films: ‘The Thing’ is great, but the special effects looked too weird.

    A surprisingly fun film: Highway To Hell (1992) with a Hell cop who hunts the wicked and takes prisoners to the underworld
    .https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kdm5Tf1g2Rg
    A cheesy but quite fun 80s film is ‘Night of the Creeps’. PZ, if you can influence the choice of films, please advocate for some of these.

  3. Rob Grigjanis says

    Mileage varies. The Exorcist and Alien have been the only films which gave me nightmares for a while after seeing them.

  4. zetopan says

    birgerjohansson@2: “.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kdm5Tf1g2Rg”

    Your link goes to OBVIOUS AI SLOP! They are “walking down the center of the road” while riding in a car? The car is a “carriage”? The cop has “strange pictures” on his scarred face? There are so many misdescriptions that it is obvious this was AI generated. Perhaps you should actually watch before linking. The amount of AI on YouTube and numerous social media sites has been exponentially exploding. Some people are very lazy and can’t be bothered to do the work so they turn to AI. And, of course, AI greatly benefits scammers and propagandists, including those infesting the US WH.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68440150
    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-shares-racist-video-depicting-obamas-monkeys-rcna257756

  5. outis says

    A pity, I opened the trailer to “Spider Island” in hope, but was disappointed.
    I was hoping someone had a good idea at last and used the plot of John Wyndham’s “Web” for the movie, but nah.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_(novel)
    Ah well, hope springs eternal. With all the good SF/horror/whathaveyou floating around, someone is bound to use that for movies sooner or later, right? Right?

  7. drdrdrdrdralhazeneuler says

    This movie is quite clearly not based on a real story.

    This is because in it, the evil US CEOs go to jail.

  8. John Morales says

    The main feature of this movie is that it is set on a tropical island resort, so we’re going to get lots of spiders with pretty girls in bikinis.

    2026 now, so… perhaps pretty boys in budgie-smugglers?

  9. vereverum says

    Then there’s Wells The Valley of Spiders compares the noble, altruistic, honest, caring, humans with the vicious, mean, belligerent, bloodthirsty, spiders. Though I don’t think they ever made a movie of it, thankfully.

  11. birgerjohansson says

    zetopan @ 4
    You are right, I was unable to find the link I had intended to show, it was months since I found a link to a good scene from the film and I could not locate the intended video.

  12. birgerjohansson says

    ^ ^ ^
    There were too many hits for “Highway To Hell”, mostly about music. I had to search for “Hellcop” to reference the film but unfortunately ended up with the AI .

  15. John Morales says

    [meta]

    Birger, why take their word for it?

    I had to search for “Hellcop” to reference the film but unfortunately ended up with the AI .

    What is truly unfortunate is you never cottoned-on that you are being had, either way.
    Be aware that just because the narration is text-to-speech, that does not entail it’s AI slop.

    To me, it reads like a translation from a different language, and it really is a movie ‘recap’.
    The uploader(s) structured this video sequentially, generated a script which was then translated , and applied regulation anti-copyright filters (like mirrored clips, zoomed-in cropping, altered playback speed for bits, that sort of thing). But it’s actual footage, not AI generated.

    (Well, it does at least show AI haters giving AI more credit than is due, inadvertently as it may be_

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