Attack of the Killer Lunchbox (and Other Novelty Items)

This week I would like to welcome a guest blogger, my good friend and author J. Travis Grundon.

Attack of the Killer Lunchbox (and Other Novelty Items)

by J. Travis Grundon

We all remember the first horror movie that freaked us out and gave us nightmares. For some people it was the original Night of the Living Dead, for others it was Alfred Hitchcock's classic Psycho or the tide thrashing terror of Jaws. For me it was probably A Nightmare on Elm Street.

As a kid I was afraid of the dark and I had a very overactive imagination so most scary movies kept me awake at night and made me pull the covers over my head. I was sure Freddy was going to kill me in my sleep, but as I hid under a blanket I thought about Michael Myers walking into my bedroom, Gremlins or Chucky popping out of my toy box or some hideous monster creeping out of my closet.

Nowadays I think back on those sleepless nights and laugh at myself. I also laugh at the people who still find Freddy, Jason and other movie maniacs scary. In all honesty they've all become jokes.

Everyone has seen how Wes Craven's dream stalking slasher, Freddy Krueger, has devolved from a horror icon, into a wisecracking, broom riding bitch. don't see how that's Scary, but more importantly I don't understand when it became so cool.

I thought Freddy, Jason, Chucky and these other freaks were the bad guys. Why are we rooting for them?

I personally don't understand how a accused pedophile/serial killer is the sort of thing people would wear or want their children to wear on t-shirts, hats and lunchboxes. At some point it becomes ridiculous, then it becomes pointless. Freddy and other “scary movie” icons have stopped being scary. I know I can't take the character seriously when I see a kid in hockey mask, and Freddy glove every Halloween. Now adults and kids have action figures of these same characters. It's lame and it's destroying the horror movie genre.

This gorror trip Horrorwood is on has been credited to the moral decline of the human race and other stupid shit, but really it seems to me that “filmmakers” have to raise the bar with gore and shock factor, because they can't scare us anymore. If they did our society would only embrace it and put it on a t shirt or make the monster into a Halloween costume too.

Maybe we have let our morals slip. I for one find films like Silence of the Lambs and American Psycho to be the last of the scary movies, because nothing behaves and consistently and rigidly as a human on the path of destruction. I think, humans are the last monsters left. Nothing a person can do in a movie will shock me, but it will keep me awake at night, because it could really happen!

Put that on your t-shirt or lunchbox and sell!!!

J. Travis Grundon's Top Five Horror Films

1.Session 9

2. American Psycho

3. Attic Expeditions

4.Silence of the Lambs

5. I Spit on Your Grave (original)

J. Travis Grundon has served as an editor and contributor on Forrest J Ackerman's Anthology of the Living Dead and Call of Lovecraft. His book Eclectic Collection is a feast of fiction, that illustrates his love, and craft of short stories.

His other work can found in the Silven Trumpeter, the Tecumseh Review, Scars, Paracinema, Twisted Dreams and The Monsters Next Door magazine. Other works include stories for Help - An Anthology To Benefit Preditors and Editors, Concrete Blood: Dark Tales of the City, and Toe Tags 2.