Likewise, I bet the eponymous diabolical infant of Rosemary’s Baby was a beautiful miracle of fresh life despite his mother’s howls of horror. What I’m getting to is a couple of key issues that I feel need addressing. Firstly, nappy companies need to push for equality and cast some hellspawn in their commercials so that the Children Of The Damned don’t grow up feeling like fourth class citizens. The crucial point: most often the object of abject revulsion in the classic horror movie isn’t actually as bad as the on-screen characters hype it up to be. In fact, it’s frequently the case that they or it are cute and lovable. These aren’t abominations! These are sorrowful souls who need a bit of sympathy and affection! And they’re not even ugly. Regardless of your sexuality, cast your eyes across the ‘monstrous’ leads of Carrie, An American Werewolf In London and The Creature From The Black Lagoon and after a bit of time you might begin to find them weirdly attractive. Even in their goriest guises, the nasties of the silver screen are always likable creatures (I’d still shake hands with an Alien xenomorph and tickle the thing from The Thing). No one likes to go to the cinema to look at something that leaves them so disgusted they want to tear their eyes out and erase their memory banks. If I wanted to experience true unbearable horror, I’d put my head in a public toilet. That might be why I get cold shivers every time I think of Trainspotting and visualise Ewan McGregor taking a dip in a U-bend. Curse those sick-minded moviemakers, then, that want to push things to extremes and make horrible villains that are actually really ‘orrible. I mean, so horrible that I have no desire to see the film because I fear that I’m going to be so repulsed by what’s on screen that I’ll want to drink bleach afterwards. In my movie viewing experience, only a couple of sights have prompted this kind of adverse reaction, and they were the baked bean-stuffed man in Se7en and Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace. Having squirmed through its trailer, I’ve come to the conclusion that, if I went to see Splice, then my personal sick list would grow a little longer. It scares the crap out of me, which makes me reluctant to pay £8 for a cinema ticket and has me hiding beneath the covers and watching The Wolf Man to try and comfort myself. Why? Why upset us so? Why have your created this creepy thing that will make babies cry and encourage further resistance to advancement and innovation in gene science? We might be close to a cure for diabetes, but Splice‘s performance at the box office could ultimately end up holding stem cell research back for centuries. I can’t cope with seeing this poor man in pain. The family strife and soul searching of The Darjeeling Limited was bearable and I just about managed to make it through Peter Jackson’s King Kong as poor Adrien had his date nicked by an oversized monkey with feelings. This summer’s Brody flicks might be too much, however. I’ve got to watch him flee the hunter aliens of Predators, tormented by cloaked terrors with mandibles and high tech weaponry. It’s The Pianist all over again, except this Holocaust takes place on an extraterrestrial game reserve and Brody is armed with a rifle instead of a tin of pickles. I also don’t want to see Adrien Brody going through more torment. The Oscar he got for his performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman was pretty poor consolation when you reflect on how the musician was reduced to a completely traumatised, emaciated shell of a person. See, real monsters don’t sprout fur and fangs in the full moon light. They condemn their fellow humans to ghettos and concentration camps. James’ previous column can be found here.
