Vague Movie Memories - Horror

Ghostbusters (I & II)

In the dark of the living room I was up well past my bed time, and glowing on the TV screen was a ghostly ship run aground. Ghosts poured out of it. It was simply terrifying.

To this day I am unable to distinguish I and II form each other in the first ten minutes of the movie. This is mostly due to the fact that everything I see on TV is usually in fragments, and that II was played much more often than I.

Before I saw the end of the movie Ma came home and made us go to bed.

(possibly) Romero Zombie flicks

A girl walks into her parents' bedroom in the early morning. She is wearing rollerskates? Then it is clear she is dead... her head is bloody. The movie starts, but I have no recollection of it.

A boy crawls into a large drain by a scum pond. The video itself is poor-- washes of green. In there is a body covered in scum and weeds that stirs. Also, no recollection of the ensuing film.

Alien/Alien series

For years I closed my eyes when the hapless crew member started to cough. But I would always watch Bishop's severed head, leaking milk, in its halo of spaghetti, tripe, and fibre optics, trying to speak, explaining its motivations. I also remember the ship well. The dinginess of it, open spaces hanging with chains, and pipes all along the walls. The bridge, low and with little light, claustrophobic. The events of the film are jumbled, and some crew members never made any impression in my memory. Everything is a haze until Ripley and Jonesy make their escape.

Of the second film I remember only that there is a dog that is torn apart by its guest organism.

Of the third film, a wall of dead people, a massive morgue of gray doors. A chase through a chasm, or a trench, that is all yellow. That an alien is finally killed.

Something I cannot attribute to any particular Alien film is the scene of an ugly birth and an even uglier offspring.

The Thing

I have never seen this movie all the way through. Like most things I've seen all of it but in fragments. Everything in this movie is red, white, and black. Outside is white, inside is lurid, the corners and crevices are black. Kurt Russel moves through it all, deathly pale and determined to live through what is happening. Blood flees, severed heads sprout legs a scuttle. Fire and violence and paranoia. Like Alien I am unable to think of many specific events, save for the terrifying column of gore that manifests itself.