In Texas, when friends depart from each other, it’s common to remind each other to be safe, careful, take care and such, even when the parties are simply going home. The truth is that even in our homes, dangers lurk around every corner.
Besides the accidental falls (like when your demonic toddler runs you down with his tricycle, tossing you off a balcony) or incidents in the kitchen (such as all the knives in the knife block flying across the room at you) or bathroom (a psychotic serial killer dressed in his mother’s clothes who stabs you with a nine-inch blade while you’re in the shower) there are the more subtle dangers.
“In fact, more than half of all injury-related deaths and 75 percent of all disabling injuries are occurring in our homes and communities,” as per a 2007 Article published by the National Safety Council.
How many times have you simply been relaxing, enjoying your favorite late-night TV show, when suddenly the lost souls from a forgotten graveyard suck your youngest child through the door to the netherworld in the back of her closet? If I had a nickel…
I mean, you might expect these types of things if you bought a fixer-upper in Amityville, but in Hometown, USA, it’s just a bit much.
It seems that the most frightening horror films, like The Omen, Carrie, Psycho, Poltergeist, and The Amityville Horror, are the ones that happen in familiar settings. Our homes are the one place where we should feel safe, and when terrible things happen—even the outlandishly unbelievable “movie-only” things—we begin to second-guess our surroundings. Maybe not to the extremes of moving away, but perhaps to the extent of closing all the closet doors before bedtime, or relocating the creepy painting of Aunt Marge to the garage. Better yet, re-gift it to Cousin Fred next Christmas.
Even the classic comedies of home renovation, like The Money Pit or Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, have plenty of nightmarish situations throughout. The simple idea that the very place where we live and love might want to turn on us and cause us harm, shows how much we love our homes. We give them human attributes and they become part of our families.
How wonderful and terrifying. Y’all be safe!
That’s a wrap for this Toast to Cinema. Thanks for reading.
To view or purchase any of the titles mentioned, just click on the picture and you’ll be linked directly to an amazon.com page.