“Get away from me; you’re dead! You’re dead!” This is what
David Collins says to the dead version of Carolyn Stoddard in House of Dark Shadows, a movie version
of the Dark Shadows TV series shown
on TCM tonight (that’s really great, by the way!). Well, no wonder she tried to bite his neck!
This is the kind of intolerance of dead people we need to
see an end to in this country. This kind of dead-phobic sentiment exploited by
horror movies for their filthy lucre is why the dead never visit us from their
graves: because they know we’ll just be mean to them. And it’s why the dead
always attack people in horror movies: because they’re offended at what we say
about them and how we feel about them.
But in the age where The Walking Dead is the most popular
show on television, surely we must come to accept the dead as just another aggrieved
group. After all, is it their fault that they’re dead? No. So then, who are we
to judge them as scary?
Plus, if we’re nice to the dead, then we can assemble them
into an army of the living dead, just like all those heavy metal songs like to
sing about, and we can conquer the world! (<Which is the only reason to ever
do anything, as far as the old horror and science fiction movies preached.)
This is obviously why kids these days like to dress up as
superheroes and Ninja Turtles and such for Halloween: they understand about not
hurting people’s feelings, especially if they’re dead.
BTW: Here’s one of the metal songs I’m referring to:
And here’s another:
