Howdy there, Scream Freaks! This week your host with the most was trying to enjoy some “Zombeavers” on Netflix, when all the fun was suddenly sucked out of the room when my girlfriend, Mandy, saw her one hot button trot across the screen. “They have a dog in this movie?” she gritted, “You know they’re just going to kill it. That’s the only reason why any animals are in horror movies anymore!”
Now, if you recall our review of “Monster Dog,” you’re aware Mandy is a big animal lover and never wants to see any harm done to them, but come on – it’s a movie! It’s not a real! It’s just a bunch of animatronics and CGI shit all over the screen whenever you see a poor critter taken out as a warm up to the characters you’re about to watch get slaughtered. And what about those characters? We can watch people get sliced and diced in every sick way imaginable, but as soon as an animal is found dead on screen – BOOM! Demands are made to change the movie, pouty walk outs happen, and sometimes tears come on like tsunamis.
You remember “Shark Night”? We were psyched to see that when it came out, but holy shit, it was Niagra Falls the moment that hick throws the poor dog into the shark infested waters toward the end. Of course, I don’t budge from the theater because I’m too cheap, but I’ll be damned the dog lives and even helps kill a shark! Rejoice from Mandy, right? Nope. Just a lot of swearing at the filmmakers for putting her through such a traumatic experience. Same thing happened when we saw “Cowboys VS Aliens” at the theater. She found it impossible to enjoy the movie, because the filmmakers let the audience think a dog was killed for about half the movie before showing him alive and well at the very end. What the fuck? It lived, right? What’s the problem? But no, now it’s all about the dog’s owners were killed in the movie and who will take care of it now?
I gave up my side of this argument a long time ago.
What’s even worse is she has her favorite horror movies of all time that actually contradict this whole attitude toward critter deaths in movies. Like John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” Holy fuck, Michael Myers fucking strangles a dog on screen, and the characters even talk about him eating dogs! But it’s not a problem, because, “They’re just showing what an embodiment of evil he is,” she says. That’s why she has no problem watching it every Halloween. And “Jaws” is another favorite of hers. We just watched the 40th anniversary screening at the theater, and I remind her every time that there’s a dog that goes missing in it, and we can easily assume the shark at it. But nope, not an issue. It’s insinuated but never shown. Wow, kind of like you insinuate these ownerless pets in movies will never find anyone to care for them and die alone?
And forget seeing any movie where the animal is the bad guy (besides “Jaws” of course). You couldn’t pay her to sit through “Cujo” or “Prophecy.” She played with the idea of watching “Jurassic World” with me, but dropped it altogether once I warned her how they feed the dinosaurs. We can watch people get chomped in half by CGI dino teeth all day long, but we draw the line at off screen goat feedings.
To bring an end to this rant, this is just something personal your host deals with when watching horror movies and most of my friends think it’s hilarious. Now, this is obviously a long running gag (for me, not so much Mandy) that’s been going on for years now, but I have come to respect Mandy’s feelings on the subject despite my annoyance at some of her viewpoints. Maybe she’s right, and horror could maybe lay off the deaths of poor innocent varmints and just give us more human deaths with depth and character that do a better job of driving the story. We can still have our killer animal movies of course, like giant alligators or rabid rabbits needing to be blown out of their damned existence, but let’s take a proactive step back from our monsters and killers slaughtering an animal for the sake of doing it. But at the same time, remember . . . it’s just a movie! It’s all fake with animal owners getting fat checks off professionally trained critters and special effects guys playing with make-up and pixels. Except “Cannibal Holocaust.” Those were real animal deaths. And so was “The Giant Gila Monster.” The star actually told me they blew that critter up for the film, because it was the days before animal rights. Damn.
By the way, did you ever see “The Beyond”? Remember that great scene when the blind woman is hunkered down next to her seeing eye dog and trying to find the evil force in the room with her just before her dog is possessed and shockingly eats out her throat! That was cool.
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That’s pretty much it for now, so I’ll see ya’ later Scream Freaks!
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