Is Anything Really New?

Once again, this week’s editorial was inspired by a thread from our forum. The aforementioned thread discusses the writer’s dislike for the overuse of the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre plotline.” I can understand that seeing the same thing over and over (not unlike countless remakes) can get monotonous. I have used the line myself “eh it was okay but I liked it better the first time when it was called…(insert iconic film title here).” But is comparison in this case really fair? It would be simple for anyone to argue that there have only been a handful of original horror films. Doesn’t every subgenre borrow from it’s predecessors? Could it be avoided if they tried?

Take Jaws for instance. It wasn’t the first film to portray rogue animals as the harbinger of death, but it certainly defined the animals amok subgenre. How many times have you watched a film where the story was exactly the same? Substitute a snake/rats/spiders (whatever) for the shark and BAM! We have a horror flick. There is always a sheriff, an expert and an ornery mayor who refuses to close the beaches or the summer camp or put a halt to the annual celebration at hand. Invariably it starts the same. Arbitrary people get mauled, the sheriff gets wind and the rampage begins. They call in an expert (usually from the local university) and some more people die while the mayor sits on his hands complaining about the budget. Of course the sheriff and/or the expert successfully take out the offending creature(s) and happiness returns to the quaint little burg…until the sequel when the son of the whatever comes back for revenge.

Don’t like that one? I got plenty. Let’s try zombies. Everyone loves zombies, right? RIGHT? Excluding the Haitian style voodoo zombies and heading straight for the walking dead, we hit upon the master himself, George Romero. Who doesn’t think of the Dead series when gut-munching comes up in everyday conversation? He taught us how to recognize them, how to kill them and how NOT to become one. Zombie films continue to roll out in droves and we all scramble to see them. But we know what will happen. Suddenly dead Uncle Fred ain’t dead and we take off his head. It starts with a few protagonists who eventually hole up in a safe house to battle the carnivorous corpses until the end of the film when we find the survivor numbers have dwindled and the window boards have taken a beating. The zombies always get in to the used-to-be impenetrable fortress just as the final survivor finds a way to either escape or take them all out at once in an explosion Michael Bay would be proud of.

We can even discuss the film that started this discussion. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Let’s see. Start with some annoying and over-sexed teens, mix in some wandering where they don’t belong, add one inbred nut-job family and stir. You can mix up the ingredients however you wish, but the result is the same. Those teens end up in somebody’s freezer for the next Sunday dinner.

Want some possession? I give you The Exorcist. Want a demon spawn? Watch The Omen or Rosemary‘s Baby. Werewolves, vampires, slashers, aliens…the list goes on. The point is that someone had to start it. Perhaps that first film will be an icon or maybe just inspiration for the next batch of film makers, but there is always a first. As long as there are fans, these films will be made. Correction. As long as there is money to be collected, these films will be made. Sometimes they are poor, true enough, but sometimes a little piece of gold gets filtered out through the iron sulfide. Without the influence of The Wolf Man, there might be no An American Werewolf in London or Dog Soldiers.

Of course there are those examples of blatant rip-offery that have you leaving the theater wishing you had your two hours back or at least your ten bucks. That is just a hazard we face as fans. Horror lovers put up with lots of crap to get to the good stuff. We have no choice if we want our fix. We just have to keep telling ourselves that for every Anaconda, there is a Lake Placid waiting to make us feel better. And when you find yourself face to face with something like The Descent, all those wasted hours watching the likes of House of the Dead and Dollman VS Demonic Toys seem like seconds.

As far back as The Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes states “…there is no new thing under the Sun.” See? They knew even then that we would be hit with a barrage of Choppy-Walking-Long-Haired Asian girls. Well, maybe it’s not that precise, but it says it all. Every idea is inspired by something that has already been. The challenge is to bring something new. And as long as someone out there is willing to put forth the effort to change it up a bit, I’ll put forth the effort to watch. If you get tired of the same old thing, watch something else…until that gets boring. Then move on again. For now, I say bring on the wacked out cannibals. It saves me the trip to the next family reunion.