If you are a grad student or museum security guard, don’t work the night shift when the lab or museum has just recieved an unknown biological speciman from the Antarctic / new species of insect from the Amazon / strange tribal statue from Africa.
If you are an avuncular older security guard who is working on such a night and you startle a beautiful grad student working late, walk out of the building immediately and go on vacation, otherwise she’s just going to stumble upon your gruesomely mutilated body later.
If you’re staying with a creepy old count, be CAREFUL not to cut your thumb with the knife at dinner.
(I actually don’t remember how the events play out in that movie, but I think he would have been better off had he not cut his thumb.)
If you find a forgotten box under the stairs or buried in a field, and the box is chained tight and locked with a hundred-year-old sign saying DO NOT OPEN THIS BOX, the people who wrote the sign probably knew what they were writing about. This goes for walled-up doors and windows as well.
If your mate/family member/co-worker/friend/frat buddy/lab partner/graduate assistant returns from a long trip to an unusual destination, and exhibits different personality traits, take him or her to a professional for a thorough mental and physical checkup. It could be a brain tumor, it could be toxoplasmosis… or it could be pod people plotting.
If your car goes off the road in a snowstorm and you are rescued by a homely yet oddly-enthusiastic nurse who claims to be a fan, make sure that you file a trip plan with relatives/your agent/friends/police/rangers, and that your cellphone is charged and has good signal reception, then hide it. You will need an unmonitored method of communication.
Always explore caves and unknown ruins just behind another party who are either extremely greedy or of the currently-recognised enemy tribe. They will be attacked first.
Oh, I’ve enjoyed some of the worst slasher flicks in history. I have learned:
If you run out of gas, and your boyfriend has to walk to the next service station, it is NOT a good time to take off your clothes and go for a walk in the woods.
If you are a prety girl in a location where a terrible atrocity occurred years ago, do not take off your clothes for any reason. Even an innocent shower will get you hacked up.
He’s not dead yet.
If you’re a pretty OK guy, but also smoke pot and have sex, you’ll be the last to die. Your geeky friend who does neither will survive, along with that girl who has not taken off her clothes since she hit puberty. Just remember: you will die. Try to be noble about it and die saving your friend.
He’s not dead yet.
If you’re raped by a mantis from outer space, you should really consider abortion as an option. Pope Benedict himself won’t hold it against you.
He’s not dead yet.
If you’re going to go through the trouble of replacing your hand with a chainsaw, try to hang on to it.
If your girlfriend falls and is inexplicably unable to get up, you will not live if you leave her there. You may not live anyway, but if you leave her there you’re definitely going to wind up with something sharp in you. And then you will die a little more slowly than everyone else did.
Always push around, mock and disperage the timid, nervous little guy who doesn’t look like he’ll ever fight back. I mean, who cares about him? It’s not like anything bad’ll come back to you or anything you ever loved or cared about. [Note: this also applies to sci-fi, comics, and anime.]
The local guy who seems to be the most sympathetic and helpful is usually in cahoots with the killer/monster/ghosts/cultists.
Don’t open a vampire’s grave a night. (Think about it.)
If you’re a mad scientist, chain the experiment to the table. I don’t care if it’s your own five year old daughter. I don’t care if you already have the strap restraints that came with the hospital bed you bought. It’s not enough. Get something that could hold a grizzly down, and make sure the locks can’t be undone by some well-meaning doofus who only sees a poor cuddly animal or their best friend being imprisoned in a lab, not UberSoldat Prototype #499.
Slow, shambling serial killers can teleport. So if you think you’ve lost one back in an ally, he’ll be waiting in the nearest darkened doorway when you stop to catch your breath after sprinting two blocks away from him.
If one day the world seems strange and people aren’t interacting with you how they once were,… YOU are the ghost.
Just relax and follow the little blonde girl towards “the light”.
2) If needed, find a black woman from Louisiana. It doesn’t matter what line of work she’s in she’ll be well versed in Voodoo spells and can mix you up a potion lickity-split.
If you never see his mother and only hear her, that’s because she’s dead. He’s keeping her body in the bedroom and mimicing her voice.
When you’ve knocked the bad guy down with a well-placed shovel to the face, keep hitting. Don’t stop hitting until the head is finely-ground hamburger. Use the blade of the shovel to separate the tenderized parts from the rest of the body, and then start working on the body.
Shoot the bad guy in the head, if you’ve got a gun. Don’t bother shooting them in any other part of the body, unless it’s too slow them down so you can then shoot them between the eyes. If they can get back up after a good shot to the head, the gun wouldn’t have done you any good, anyway. Now you know.
Speaking of guns, once you’ve shot the bad guy and he’s down on the ground and clearly dead- KEEP SHOOTING. Empty your gun into him, then reload and repeat. No court in the land would convict you for unnecessary roughness, if you’re in the situation in which this is necessary.
For Og’s sake, do not buy the following, no matter how persuasive the salesman or how cheap the object:
*Talking dolls
*Strange and unusual pets (especially if they’re the latest hot trend)
*Board games from the curio store (heck, anything from the curio store is bad news)
*Oddly shaped trinkets; the more convoluted the shape, the worse Horror From Beyond will be summoned
*Books not written in English
*Artifacts from ancient, extinct, and/or obscure cultures
*That one thing you’ve always wanted but never been able to afford
Don’t let me interrupt, but you just have to have seen Jack Bauer pull this very trick off in The Vanishing. It’s been on lately on cable. Keifer has that Jack Bauer glee on his face when he slams the shovel into The Dude’s mouth. Class!
Supernatural forces, like natural forces, appear to follow definite laws and rules. Do not, however, assume you can know what those laws are or how to turn them to your advantage. The action you take to put down the evil spirit might be the very thing that gives it even greater power. The unspeakable nighted grimoire you had the luck to find might be the equivalent of a book on chemistry written before the conception of the atomic theory. And remember that all laws of supernature are subject to revision at any time on the whim of the screenwriter.
If one is in the library at the University, and the librarian sees that you’ve just found a fascinating book that had been apparantly mis-filed and freaks out…
Do not argue about giving the book back.
Do not try to complain to the head librarian about the book that you want to read.
If your SO is a librarian’s assistant, do not ask him or her to sneak back into the reserved collection to bring the book back out to you. (Unless you were planning to dump him or her anyways. And I do mean dump as in, dumping the body.)
If you are a librarian’s assistant: Quit immediately. It’s the only that might keep you from being the first victim.
If after having found, and read, the forbidden book you’re invited to join an expedition to some fascinating locale, do not take up the University on this offer. It’s just a clever way to get rid of you without leaving a body on campus.
If the University in question is Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts…
commit suicide, now. It’ll be much less painful. Really.
If you get a real sweet job offer to act as custodian for an out-of-the-way luxury hotel in a remote region of The Rockies in the off-season, turn it down. Don’t take the gardener job either.
Monsters are class-conscious snobs: you will never see a blue-collar vampire, nor an aristocratic zombie. Werewolves are the middle-classes of monsterdom.
Ah…Keifer.
Kim Bauer (on the phone, after whacking Psychodad in the head): He’s still moving
Jack Bauer: I want you to take the gun, point it at his chest, and pull the trigger.
Kim Bauer (does it): He’s still breathing
Jack Bauer: Shoot him again!
Ah…good old Jack Bauer.
Of course, all that could have been avoided if Kim, while being chased by Psychodad, had just run up to the group of construction workers sixteen hours eariler…but what are you gonna do?
-Joe, would love to see Jack Bauer in a horror movie, suspects it would be a SHORT horror movie
Basements, trailer parks, and the floor underneath the bed make for bad hiding spots.
Never, never, never make a wish, even if you are granted three wishes by what looks like Father Christmas. The assumption in horror movies is that if you wish for anything, you’re automatically a greedy bastard, and the divine retribution visited upon you will reflect this, no matter what you actually ask for. For instance, if you wish for all the poor kids in town to be warm and snug, the local orphanage will burn down and then be swallowed in an earthquake.
When you start finding class rings and charm bracelets in the local diner’s chili, it’s time to do the math.
Anything can be used to impale someone. Anything.
They don’t call him “The Sorority Slasher” because he doesn’t chop up coeds with a chainsaw while wearing a Bozo The Clown mask.