Not QUITE OT, but this thread reminds me of an episode of Charmed where the girls are being chased by characters from cheezy horror films who have been brought to life by a spell gone wrong. Each sister is being chased by a different villian, one of them being chased by a guy with an axe. Whilst running, she ends up in the bathroom, then jumps into the shower and closes the curtain, after which she says…
“I’m running from an axe murderer and I hide in the SHOWER?!”
Hmm, we’re being chased by a homocidal axe/chainsaw/machete/razor-glove/etc-wielding maniac (those etc.-wielding maniacs are especially scary…), so what should we take to defend ourselves?
hmm
the shotgun?
the handgun?
the semiautomatic weapon?
explosives?
a big honkin’ sword/axe/mace/melee weapon?..
Aha!, i’ve got it, we’ll take…
the FLASHLIGHT, ready?, lets go!
For decades now, horror movies have been full of truly expendable chacters: one-dimensional idiots who only exist to be eliminated in an entertaining fashion. A subset of these idiots: the special kind of idiot who likes to play stupid pranks to scare people. Call him the Goofball. The amazing aspect of his character is that he’ll keep doing this – even after it’s clear that there’s a real killer/monster on the loose, and people have started dying. The Goofball, totally oblivious to real danger, will persist in trying to “scare” people – as if him jumping out of a closet is somehow going to top the nightmarish reality of a giant shambling mutant freak who’s already scewered six people and their pets with a diesel-powered industrial drill.
Hey, if it was a 6 D-Cell Maglite, it’d do the trick nicely! 
Tremors.
Now this movie was a spoof so they were trying to be funny and they did so brillantly with one line.
Pretty Young thing fleeing monster gets caught in barbed wire.
Hero says to PYT.
Quick! Take off you pants!
That had to be the cheepest excuse to get the pretty girl half nekid.
Ah, Tremors. Everyone loves Tremors. Especially the husband and wife with more guns than the Marine Corps.
Damn straight. I love the bit right after the worm is killed by running into the concrete; they unearth it, and a conversation something like this ensues:
Earl: “You ever seen anything like this before?”
Val: “Oh, hell yeah, Earl. We all knew about 'em. We just didn’t tell you!”
Obviously, you have never seen The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak starring the then-young redhead, Tawny Kitaen.
Lost in a jungle with no food or water: “Hey, it’s raining, we must take off our shirts to catch the rain for drinking water.”
Great movie.
Gosh, Bobby sure has been gone a long time looking for the monster, I hope he’s alright–Oh! He’s fine. I can see his <appendage> sticking out from behind that obstacle in a lifeless manner. I’ll just go over and see if he needs any OH MY GOD IT CAME OFF. HIS <APPENDAGE> CAME OFF! AAAAAAAA!!!
This darn old house sure is leaky in the rain. [drip] Gosh, a drop just landed on my hand. I’ll glance down in a totally casual manner. Hmm, that’s odd. The drop of water has a strange color. [drip] There comes another one. This place leaks like a sieve. Wait a minute…
[thinks]
If it’s dripping down on me, then it must be coming from up there. I’ll just slowly crane my neck upward to see what could be causing this. Hey, is that…? AAAAAAAAA!!!
Who would’ve thunk that a crazed killer who’s been chasing us all day could be killed with a simple conk on the head!
Yeah! Thank God we also out ran that monster demon thing. The way it dragged itself, it will take at least an hour for it to reach us.
We’ll look for a safe place to hide after we have sex. Besides, if it does show up, we’ll just call the police on this here phone.
Unless it’s done with a chainsaw.
Well, in the defense of Scream 3 (I obviously don’t know what I’m typing here), they did shoot/shoot at the villain repeatedly. In fact, that movie was a not-bad example of what to do if you’re being chased by a homicidal maniac. (Well, what’s-her-face, the main character was; the rest of them were just fodder.)
And back to the spirit of the OP:
“I think the killer is in this closet/shower/body bag/locker. I’ll open it very slowly with my doubtlessly crappy melee weapon held at an awkward, ineffectual angle. In doing so, I’ll ignore the equally, if not more likely hiding place directly behind me.”
Or, “Here, kitty, kitty. Stop running down dark hallways into dark rooms, kitty. Oh, there you are, kitty. Hey, why’d you run out of that dark room as if there were a bloodthirsty demon in it? Well, you’re okay, kitty, so I should probably investigate this dark room. Man, I wish I brought a flashlight…”
And in the vein of Japanese horror movies:
“Hm, the bathtub is full of water (which may or may not be solid black and tar-like). I’ll reach into the (possibly solid black) water and try to unplug the drain. I hope no ghosts of Japanese girls reach up and try to drown me.”
Also good are the movies in which the heroine calls the cops, a cop shows up and locks her in the police car for her own safety. He then investigates the house (or whatever), we here gunshots, and a few dramatic moments later, here comes the killer with the dead cop’s keys jingling in his hand…
Okay, the psycho who just killed my friends and tried to kill me is unconscious. Rather than kill him, I will tie him up.
Oh dear, he seems to have untied himself.
I know, and that particular bit was good. It was not checking to see that the SOB was really dead that PO’d me.
Well, there is that. But at the end end, she plugged him in the head. You gotta give her credit for that. 
Even hacking his limbs off doesn’t always do the trick. In The Mutilator, the crazy killer is lying on the ground with both legs cut off just below his hips. Defying the laws of physics, he manages to quickly and effortlessly sit up and lop off the nearest cop’s hand.