Top Ten Horror/Sci-Fi Movie Quotes Blogfest

I came across this fun blogfest through Alex J. Cavanaugh.  Some really cool guys, iZombieLover and Ellie Garratt came up with the topic.  The top ten horror/sci-fi movie quotes. 

In all honesty, I haven't thought about this much since I signed up for it a while back, and now I'm a bit worried that I'll come up with enough.  Let's see how it goes:

(In no particular order. And I know, my definition of the genres are a little looser than others.)

Shaun of the Dead
Liz: It's just with Ed here, it's no wonder I always bring my flat-mates out and then that only exacerbates things.
Shaun: What do you mean?
Liz: Well you guys hardly get on, do you?
Shaun: No, what does "exacerbate" mean?
Liz: It means um, to make things worse.

Great zombie rom-com.  The first, the best, and an instant classic.

Let the Right One In
Oskar: How old are you?
Eli: Twelve... more or less.


A haunting movie, up for lots of slightly different interpretations.  As much about society's outcasts as it is a vampire movie.  For a really intense ride, try out the book (which has one of the scariest scenes I've ever read).

A Tale of Two Sisters
Eun-ju: Do know what's really scary? You want to forget something. Totally wipe it off your mind. But you never can. It can't go away, you see. And... and it follows you around like a ghost.

A beautiful and complicated film that does well under repeated viewing. Stick with the movie through the deliberately slow pacing, and feel the hairs on your arms stand up as the tension mounts.

Psycho
Norman Bates: It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes.

By now, most people know the twist of this film even if they haven't seen it.  But it's still worth watching for the absolutely amazing job by Anthony Perkins.  It's no wonder he got type cast after this movie, the above line still gives me chills.

Audition
Asami Yamazaki: Kiri kiri kiri kiri kiri kiri!

This quote will mean nothing to you if you haven't watched this movie.  If you have, you're probably shivering now.  Another complex and confusing Asian horror that will haunt you for years to come.

Serenity
Jayne Cobb: She is startin' to damage my calm.

Unless your big fans of the series, this movie is just so-so.  But, it was great to see the story come to a conclusion (of sorts) and to see the characters' send off.

PS-Jayne's my favorite.

The Shining
Grady daughters: Come play with us, Danny.

The movie that single-handedly made me terrified of small British children. A great horror classic, even if King hated it and it really has nothing to do with the novel.

The Jacket
Jack Starks: I was 27 years old the first time I died.

A movie that didn't do well in the theaters and hasn't really gotten the notice it deserves.  A great time-travel, medical experimentation movie that manages to keep you intrigued and interested in the characters.  The first film I saw Adrien Brody in, and in my mind, still one of his best.

Being John Malkovich
John Malkovich: This portal is mine and must be sealed up forever. For the love of God.
Craig Schwartz: With all respect, sir, I discovered that portal. Its my livelihood.
John Malkovich: It's my head, Schwartz, and I'll see you in court!
Craig Schwartz: And who's to say I won't be seeing what you're seeing... in court? 

A bizarre, but brilliant film that will make you love/appreciate John Malkovich even more.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Blanche: You wouldn't be able to do these awful things to me if I weren't still in this chair.
Jane: But you are, Blanche! You are in that chair!

A great dark comedy thriller that stars two Hollywood classics at the end of their career.  Not one to miss, but be sure you can embrace the camp.

Review of To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

First let me the you the rundown of how I came to read To Your Scattered Bodies Go.  Based on previous ratings and genres you like, Netflix gives you suggestions.  Well, it was being really insistent that I would love this movie called Riverworld.  I read the premise and it sounded interesting enough, so I gave it a go.

I only gave it about 30 minutes, and then gave up.  I read a couple of reviews and saw that it was based on the third book of the Riverworld series.  So I hunted down a copy at the library and gave it a go.

I think I should have learned my lesson from the movie version.

Plot 5/10 (With a mercy point for premise) 6/10
Sir Richard Francis Burton, a famous nineteenth century explorer, awakens after his death to find himself an a strange new world.  It is similar to Earth except for a few things: the entire planet seems to be covered in one giant river, he is years younger and in perfect health, and the entire history of humanity (including neanderthals) has been resurrected.

Burton quickly gathers a motley crew around him to try and find the origin of the river and the reason why everyone has been given a second chance.

Sounds like a great premise, huh?  I know, it had me hooked, too.  The problem is, there's not really much of a plot.  It's a short book (216 pages), but it covers seven years.  In that seven years, there's really only a bare minimum of plot.  Most of it is simply Burton and his crew traveling from place to place.  It's not until about halfway through the book that we get a character that could be seen as a solid antagonist or even an understanding of where the plot might be going.

The plot feels like a long boring road trip, even though they are randomly attacked, so there should be some suspense. 


Characters 4/10
There's really only one character in the whole novel: Burton.  Everyone else is simply a placeholder.  We have a history buff to fill us in on all the real-life characters we meet.  There's a Holocaust survivor to add drama when we meet Herman Goring and allow Burton to explain his real-life Antisemitism. (Although the author does a little bit of Antisemitic stereotyping in the novel himself.  Did you know that all Jewish women are shrews?) There's a string of beautiful women that Burton sleeps with (who are all resurrected as virgins), and one that he loves for no reason other than she's beautiful and snubs him.  There's even a small girl to help show that Burton isn't as hard as he seems, he has a softer, protective side.

Even the Neanderthal and an Alien that died on Earth are bland and boring.  There's so much potential here for great characters.  I mean, you have EVERY SINGLE PERSON THAT"S EVER LIVED at your fingertips! You could actually have Ghandi get into a fistfight, a duet between Hendrix and Joplin, and finally get to see if Anne Boleyn is the slut she's always portrayed as.  Instead we're stuck with stuffy boring characters that never come to life.


Writing Style 3/10
My main issue with the writing style was that it was too detailed on issues that didn't matter.

We get way too much detail about physical characteristics and settings.  For example, here's the description the first time we see Tau Ceti (the alien from the future):

"The creature, it, he--it undoubtedly was a male--was a biped about six feel eight inches tall.  The pink-skinned body was very thin; there were three fingers and a thumb on each hand and four very long and thin toes on each foot.  There were two dark red spots below the male nipples on the chest.  The face was semi-human.  Thick black eyebrows swept down to the protruding cheekbones and flared out to cover them with a brownish down.  The sides of this nostrils were fringed with a thin membrane about a sixteenth of an inch long.  The thick pad of cartilage on the end of his nose was deeply cleft.  The lips were thin, leathery, and black.  The ears were lobeless and the convolutions within were nonhuman.  His scrotum looked as if it contained many small testes."

I get the point that he's like nothing Burton's ever seen.  But we don't get a shocked "Holy Crap, What is that?" from Burton.  Instead we get a calm cataloging of his physical description.  Down to the scrotum.  Do we really need to know what alien balls look like?

We also get a data dump on every real-life character we meet. In one scene, several characters, including Goring, are debating if they are still who they were when they were on Earth, or if they are copies (the word clone is never mentioned, but that's what they're batting around).  One character is trying to explain this to Goring.

"You are living. But you are not the Hermann Goring who was born in Marienbad Sanatorium at Rosenheim in Bavaria on January 12, 1893..."

I was going to type out the whole speech, but realized it goes on for 12 lines.  And you get the point from that one sentence.


Overall: Thumbs down
The premise was very interesting.  Interesting enough that I read summaries of the rest of the books in the series. But not interesting enough to read them myself.

However, the lack of overarching plot, character development, or emotional attachment to ANY of the characters made this book feel like a chore to read.

This book has made me question the selectivity of the Hugo Awards.  Really, this was the best they could find?




Sorry this turned into a bit of a rant.  If you love the book, I apologize for offending you.  If you have any other suggestions that will restore my faith in the genre of sci-fi, please feel free to leave them in the comments.