If you simply must be a kid who runs from the cops, this is the name to have. It would have been more appripropriate if he'd stolen the car, but you can't have everything.
Horror movie shot in local house: sounds like the usual plot, in which the attractive young actors are killed one by one at the hands of a brilliant, sadistic genius who’s lured them to make a movie. Yes, that’ll work. No one will suspect a thing when the bodies start piling up. Not the grips, bestboys, caterers, set dressers, continuity manager, playback technician, and the three doctors who backed the thing and showed up on the set to see how it’s going. WHERE’S THE ACTOR? Uh – we found him in the basement, dead. Another one? Well, we’ll just have to shoot around him today. We’ll do reaction shots and fix it in post-production. Interesting how the sadistic twisted geniuses always dispose of the Attractive Young People one at a time; you never get a Type-A murderer who gets it out of the way at once, because he has meetings stacked up all afternoon.
Apparently the default style for a haunted house is still the Victorian model, with high-backed chairs, rotted filigrees, oval portraits of sour men with dead eyes and string ties, and the general sense of emotional suffocation we associate, however inaccurately, with the Victorian house. But that’s old. Very old. If the Victorian house was scary in a 40s film, it’s because it was from the Grandma era, half a century ago. The modern equivalent would be a style from the 50s no one builds any more – say, a classic one-story rambler. Haunt that, and you’re on to something. Have ectoplasm seep from the push-button GE electric range, and you’ll connect with the Boomers.
Yesterday we worried about the Feral Cows. Here’s something new to be concerned about: Killer Carp. They’re spreading from state to state, presumably by jumping into the boat and forcing fisherpeople to drive them over the border.
New Poll! I'm a dish man, myself. At press time one person has admitted he does not like ice cream. Go vote. The results will be sealed in a time capsule and placed in the cornerstone of the StarTribune buidling for future generations to enjoy, so this is your chance to be a part of history. (Well, no.)
Back in a while with the Thursday Mystery Answer, and notes on the Hiawatha / Lake Art-Deficient Intersection of Death.
Perfect horror movie set...
Building 35 was an old animal lab in a sheet metal shed with no windows. It sits next to a crumbling barn and a patch of woods. It would have been the perfect setting for a low budget horror movie but they cleaned the thing out this summer.