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Opinion

A Critique Of Horror Film Scenes

Since Halloween is only a few days away, I decided to give my thoughts on a couple of scenes from horror films.

The first scene is from the movie Urban Legend.  At the beginning of the movie, a female college student is getting gas at a gas station when the creepy gas station attendant asks her to come inside because there is a problem with her credit card and the credit card company is on the phone and she needs to talk to them.  As it turns out, the attendant is trying to lure her inside because he noticed someone in the backseat (hence the killer in the backseat story).  However, due to his aggressive nature (or lack of social skills), she runs back to her vehicle and drives off.  While driving away, the individual in the back seat pops up and upon being noticed, chops the woman’s head off with an ax.

There are a couple of flaws with this scene.  First, could an individual (who as it turns is not a supernatural being in this film) have the strength or enough space in the backseat of a vehicle to decapitate the driver with one strike?  Second, once the deed is done, the killer would either have to jump out of the vehicle or get in the front seat, push the decapitated body aside, and gain control of the vehicle in order to avoid a wreck.  Either way, the killer would be risking severe injury or death (whether it be a rough landing if the killer chooses to jump out of the vehicle or remaining in the vehicle when it crashed).

The second scene is from Friday the 13th Part 2, during which a woman is running from Jason, and winds up hiding under a bed in a cabin.  Jason comes in, looks around, and is about to leave.  However, a rat comes along and wanders underneath the bed where the woman is hiding.  The presence of the rat causes the woman to pee her pants, and the flow of urine makes its way out from underneath the bed, thus attracting Jason’s attention.  The woman (upon hearing the door close) emerges from underneath the bed, and is attacked by Jason, who is standing on a chair while trying to stab her with a pitchfork.  But the chair collapses, causing Jason to fall down and allowing the woman to subsequently subdue Jason and escape the cabin.

The flaws in this scene are as follows:

  • It appears that the bed of which the woman is hiding underneath is directly facing the door (i.e. anyone entering from that doorway can see underneath, especially since one had to walk up a few steps in order to enter the cabin), so how did Jason not see her when he came inside?
  • Since the woman was lying on her stomach while hiding under the bed, then how was it possible for the flow of urine to make it way out from underneath the bed? Considering she was wearing jeans, it is more likely that the urine could be confined to the seat of her pants and her pant legs (with perhaps a small amount on the floor under the bed) and therefore Jason would not have taken notice.
  • After seeing the urine come from underneath the bed, Jason pretends to trick the woman in thinking that he left by letting the door close. However, since he decided to try and kill her by standing on a chair with a pitchfork, he would have to be extremely quiet in order to do so (i.e. moving the chair, getting on top of it).  Of course, why even bother standing on a chair?  And wouldn’t the woman have noticed him a little sooner when she crawled out from under the bed?  In addition, there appears to no indication of urine stains on her jeans.

Films have their share of goofs, and horror films are no exception.

Andrew Linn

Andrew Linn is a member of the Owensboro Tea Party and a former Field Representative for the Media Research Center. An ex-Democrat, he became a Republican one week after the 2008 Presidential Election. He has an M.A. in history from the University of Louisville, where he became a member of the Phi Alpha Theta historical honors society. He has also contributed to examiner.com and Right Impulse Media.

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