A Day Well Spent

I spent almost the entire day, yesterday, sitting on my butt. This is only partially unusual. That first part, the "almost the entire day," is the unusual part. Although I frequently spend mornings at the keyboard, most afternoons will find me more or less upright. The usual part is that "sitting on my butt" part. If you have ever tried sitting on a body part other than your butt, you know what I'm talking about. I could have, therefore, said I spent the entire day sitting, but then what would I have written? I mean one thing follows another as surely as the day follows the night...or is it the night follows the day. Seriously, which one came first?

And speaking of that, let's talk about werewolf movies. (If you are looking for the segue, you will have to read between the lines where I have imparted all the wisdom of the universe including the run-up to "Silver Bullet" the movie I am going to talk about.) Last night while sitting on my elbow, I watched the film "Silver Bullet" whose story was taken from a Stephen King novel of the same name. Although werewolves lack the sex and box office appeal of vampires, they do provide a greater fright factor per frame than the blood suckers. This is, perhaps, because most audience members would prefer to have their blood drained through small puncture wounds on their necks than to be torn to shreds by fang and claw. Anyway...well not maybe any way, but some way, I found this picture as entertaining a werewolf flick as I have seen to date, even as I note that the metamorphosis of the werewolf in "Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein" scared me more than anything, well, pretty much ever. Of course, I was only seven at the time. (Writer's note: I'm talking vicarious fears here. In real life I've had things like children, mortgages, and Republican presidents that would have most people screaming in panic.) I have noted somewhere, possibly only in the padded room that is my mind, that in order for a horror/terror movie to be successful, it must establish characters the audience really cares for and then, and only then, put them in peril. Monsters running about doing in great mobs of people early in the flick numb viewers rather than heighten their fear. A small, enclosed setting helps, which is to say that a monster loose in New York where random prey is available is not as terrifying as the one on a small island where only the people the audience cares about reside. (Think "Alien" on the space ship, Nostromo, vs. Godzilla stomping about Tokyo.) Music and sound effects are critical too. I will remember the soundtrack from "The Thing" (1951 version) and Carpenter's "Halloween" for the rest of my life and, who knows, maybe in the beyond where I will need their familiar strains to blot out that insipid harp noise. Gratuitous loud noises that startle the audience are another big no no. Cheezy flicks use them at the end of a scene when cutting to the next. This gets really annoying. If the music and noise level rise, something important better be happening on the screen. What I'm getting at... finally, you say, is that "Silver Bullet" met all of my criteria for a good fright flick and is worth the watch if you come across it. I give it five dismembered corpses out of five.