Somehow, I've forgotten to mention this every time the Academy Awards come up, but because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reaaaaaallllly loves montages, this year they're finally giving the horror genre its own montage. If you're wondering why, then you probably haven't been by the Blogorium before. Welcome!
The reason why is because despite the fact that horror movies have always made money for the studios when damn near nothing else would, the genre has always been treated like the red-headed stepchild of Hollywood, in part because it's easy to blame horror movies for just about everything. Since virtually every degraded, depraved, disgusting thing can and does happen at one point or another in "those" types of movies, people taking the moral high ground can argue that "horror is the downfall of our culture blah blah blah" while ignoring the potentially cathartic effect the film has on audiences.
Wait... didn't I write something to that effect in an anthropology paper? I did!!! Enjoy. And again, welcome to the Blogorium. The guy in the top photo is Dr. Re-Animator, but not to be mistaken with Herbert West: Re-Animator, who is the actual Re-Animator. Dr. Re-Animator is some European guy who sings a techno-dance song called "Move Your Dead Bones", the video of which appears on Beyond Re-Animator, the third film in the series, which I doubt ever played in theatres.
Where was I? Oh yes, horror, of which the Re-Animator films certainly count. They would also count as what I'd call "second tier" horror series, though I neglected to mention them in last night's "Four Reasons." At any rate, getting the Academy to acknowledge horror movies is something of a coup, because they generally think that, like Science Fiction and Fantasy, only nerds, geeks, dweebs, spaz's, and dorks watch those movies while blogging from the basement of their parents house. And that's only mostly true. I'm not in the basement and this isn't my parent's house...
I'm curious to see what the montage consists of; will it be strictly "first tier" horror films, or will they delve into the bizarre and creep-tacular? Because if they're still operating under the assumption that The Silence of the Lambs is a "horror" film, then we're going to have more than mere philosophical differences about what horror films really are. An FBI procedural / psychological drama about a cannibal and an Ed Gein-clone is not the same thing as, let's say, The Haunting, which you could argue is a psychological drama about a haunted house that drives a woman crazy enough to kill herself (spoiler). Or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which is about a family of cannibals and Ed Gein-clones that kill some kids dumb enough to wander into their house full of body parts and chicken bones (also spoiler).
Not to say that The Silence of the Lambs isn't creepy at times, but The Haunting scared the shit out of me the first time I saw it, and has the ability to make you fundamentally mistrust the place you're sleeping in. When a house is the enemy, it's really hard to find solace before bed. Of course, that's why you should NEVER watch The Haunting in the middle of the night alone. You should probably avoid watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre while eating barbecue, but maybe you're into ironic shit like that.
I'd also be disappointed to see things like The Rocky Horror Picture Show in a "horror" montage. Just because it's culturally associated with people you assume watch horror movies (okay, we do), and it has the word in the title does not mean Rocky Horror is part of the genre. If you haven't noticed, video stores usually put it in the "cult" category, or in recent years, "musicals." Young Frankenstein, also not a "horror" movie.
But I digress. The truth is that the Oscar Montage will probably have most (if not all) of the Universal Classic Monster Films, a shot of Christopher Lee as Dracula, Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface, Jigsaw, Hannibal Lecter (again, see above why that doesn't make sense), and other semi-iconic images from Poltergeist, An American Werewolf in London, The Evil Dead, The Phantom of the Opera, Nosferatu, Audition, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
In short, anything well enough known in the cultural zeitgeist that audiences can immediately recognize the reference. And sometimes, that's good enough. It beats ignoring horror, especially when it's as prevalent in theatres as anything else.
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