Wednesday 20 July 2011

5 More Horror Films To Drop The TARDIS Into

Five more, eh, Siskoid? Challenge accepted!

The trick here is finding things that could make an interesting Who spin and which haven't been spun that way already. For example, that rules out pretty much the entire zombie apocalypse subgenre. And the Doctor adding the prefix "Space" to a monster's title is rather easy.


The Birds
(Or, if you prefer, The Long Weekend. Or Birdemic, but, well, no.)
Nature turns on humanity, animals attacking people with no apparent provocation. It probably has been done, but what the hey. The original film (and Daphne Du Maurier's story) offered no real explanations, but a Who version would have to. Aliens would be obvious. How about a human experiment, in a research facility nearby so the effect is currently local but as it moves into the final phase it's about to go global?
(And since we're in Britain, we just have to affect the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, as seen in one of the early-build-up-Earth-goes-mad scenes in The Core.)


Cat People
Most admired for its horror noir style, Val Lewton's film also has a great plot hook to snag someone with. A werewolf (well, werepanther) story where the trigger isn't the full moon, but anger, desire and especially their combination in envy. Someone cursed with a terrible power which she can control if she can keep her emotions in check... pushed into a situation where she can't. Becoming a monster for the most human of reasons.


Scanners
An experiment accidentally produces telepathic and more dangerously telekinetic subjects, some in control, some very much not so, and the most powerful deciding that non-psionic humanity can bow to its new master or go the way of the dinosaur. Add people involved with the experiment trying to take the psychics down, others wanting to use them as weapons, a beneficial conspiracy of telepaths, and more... although you probably can't get away with the exploding head at 7pm on BBC One.


Dead Of Night
This one could be an entry all by itself, being a portmanteau collection of shorts, but I'm here for just one. And not the ventriloquist's dummy, either. No, the one I'm thinking of is the evil mirror. An object that fascinates its victim, drawing him out of everyday reality, showing him another world... another time. The room the mirror first hung in, when its first owner went mad and killed his wife. Is its new owner going mad as well, or is the mirror really showing him something that should not be there?


Darkness Falls
An obscurity which I only know because it stars Emma Caulfield and has a Stan Winston monster, but it contains two perfect Moffat-style episode hooks. Not only does she prefer to attack at night like the vast majority of horror monsters, she has to because, even more than a vampire with sunlight, any light harms her. And she only attacks people who have seen her, so if you know she's coming, can you keep your eyes shut?

2 comments:

  1. Brrr... Scanners... that thing freaked me out as a kid.

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  2. I haven't actually included any that really creeped me out, now I think about it. Night Of The Living Dead would be up there, seeing Alien at twelve...

    And I suppose I'd been inured against exploding heads by Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

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