Trespass Agin Us

We thought we'd finished the job. Ten of us, all from town, got liquored up one night and headed out to the Donnelly farm, while the wind bayed like a pack of coonhounds and covered for our graceless staggerings. 

We took out the two elder Donnellys easily, with quick machete flurries in their foul bed, but in that ruckus we alerted the eldest of their brood after Ma wouldn't stop gurgling like a butchered hog while she drowned in her own blood, and Pa managed to squawk out something akin to a "help" 'fore I cleaved his malformed skull once and for all, sending them squinty eyes even further apart.

The rest was a scarlet mist, some kinda abstract rendition of blood, stink, shrieks, and motion. The pursuit of the doomed under filthy ceilings and cast-iron skies. We almost literally chased them across hell's half acre. We lost Jody but put an end to those hellbound twins, Danny and Donnie; their half-faced freak of a sister, Janey-Jean; and at least two more of that infernal spawn. Yeah, not much more than toddlers, those last two, but in any war mercy's for chuckleheads.

The screams of the damned still echoing, we buried their pieces in crates within graves we dug ourselves in the soft earth of their own field, under a waning moon oft cloaked by fast rags of cloud, and we brought Jody home.

You no doubt judge us as monsters at this point. But wait a goddamn second. Y'all seen them chainsaw massacre films, slashers and the like? Well, these folks was long overdue. More'n rumors told how they'd been doin' hellacious things to mostly strangers but also some townsfolk—burying them who still breathed, tearing out pieces of their bodies while keeping 'em alive for weeks, and worse. For too long we'd lived with their predacious ways. 

Anyways. After the dust settled, we waited to hear if some bigger shoe would drop, but nothing. Local law knew already, but not a peep from out of town. Certainly no feds, but not even state police. We felt we might could breathe again.

Then one night soon after, my wife went missing. Sweet Willa Jane was gentle as they come; she'd even tried to talk us out of our fool scheme in the first place. I knew right away I'd never hear that voice again, the one that sang like a spring crick. Somehow the Donnelly's had gotten to her. I never stopped to wonder how, just jumped in my truck and hightailed it back to that wretched place like green grass through a goose.

I pulled up beside the field, fixing to cut across it. Before I reached the house, I stumbled on a patch of softer ground. One of the makeshift graves we'd dug. Under the earth were muffled cries, the strident music of suffering. I coulda dug away that dirt with my bare hands—it were loose enough and I were batshit enough—but bawling like an abandoned child, flingin' ropes of snot and the good lord's best curse words in his ongoing brawl with the devil his ownself, I returned to my truck and grabbed a shovel.

"Hold up there, Willa, my love! I'm here now!" I repeated, crazier than an outhouse fly. I dug like a demon and soon exposed the lid of a crate. "Gonna git you out!"

Using the blade of the shovel, I jimmied the lid, ready to embrace my love, ready to spit one final curse at the ill-starred farmstead that loomed like some massive indulged simpleton over us. Something small and female leaped from the hole and tore the shovel from out my hands. Before I could even blink in surprise, she swung that thing and I felt the blade bite deep through my damn fool skull. 

"You missed one!" she screamed and laughed like a coyote. She swung again. 

It was only then that I recalled they'd had not one but two sets of twins: two boys and two girls. Not Janey-Jean, but Janey and Jean. My ma always said I was so dumb I could throw myself on the ground and miss. Chalk one up for Ma. 

On my knees, bits of my head falling like frosting from a busted cake, my vision wavering like a TV dream, I looked up at the house, and the last thing I saw was my dear wife at the window, bleeding dark heart's blood from her shoulder stumps, screaming silently through the ruined hole of her throat.

28. to 25. Flapping Jaws to Buzzing Saws

25. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 

Ha, I can feel the hardcore horror fans starting to lighten up a little now (while mainstream fans balk). Just you wait. ;) But yeah, Tobe Hooper's low budget slasher film was a benchmark of massive proportions. As with Psycho, it was inspired by the repulsive exploits of real-life killer Ed Gein, although it took that inspiration in a whole different direction, but another predecessor deserving of a nod would be Deliverance, made just two years earlier. And since, there have been hundreds of TCM wannabes, most of them pale shadows. There's a scene where Leatherface slams shut a sliding steel door that still gives me inexplicable nightmares. And it's odd: the reputation of this film doesn't prepare you for its reality. It's not particularly gory, for one thing—plenty of smart misdirection and suggestion precludes the need for it. It's just kind of insane, creepy, and frightening. (And yes, I know the image is from one of a kazillion remakes, but I like its feel; for me it captures some of the dread of the original, and I like minimalist road shots. Whatever.)

26. Se7en  

Ditto. You could flip this and the last entry around. Both are doing a very similar thing: demonstrating the bleak, nihilistic heart at the centre of the police procedural/ forensic psychology subgenre (without these films, we may never have arrived at a CSI, a Dexter, or now, of course, a Hannibal). Crime, horror? The distinction melts away, along with any sense of justice, redemption or hope, with the now-infamous ending. But before we even get there, we've tripped over a series of gruesomely tormented corpses and witnessed some of the worst things humans are capable of. This is some dark and frankly terrifying shit. Casting and performances, as with the previous entry, were nigh on perfect.

27. The Silence of the Lambs  

This is the point where people get upset with me and say Silence is not a horror film. Well, its my list, dammit, and you can go make your own (aw, sounds meaner than I meant it to), and if you think this is a stretch, wait till you see what I have even higher up the list! But I say if this isn't horror, then what is? It's not just Lecter and his taste for both intrigue and human flesh, it's Clarice's courageous yet aching vulnerability throughout, it's the liberal use of real life serial killer awfulness to "flesh out" the backstory, it's creepy as hell from start to finish and finally, how can a movie featuring a man who is trying to fashion a woman suit from the skin of his victims not be deemed a horror film? Every bit as sharp as Thomas Harris's source material with an added feminist sensibility. A film balanced perfectly on its moment in time.

28. Night of the Living Dead  

Without Romero's classic film, we almost certainly wouldn't have had the relentless zombie mania of the last few years. And it always makes me smile that such a bleak, violent, and even subversive film made its debut between the so-called Summer of Love and Woodstock. Ha. Schizophrenic much, America? But like the Body Snatcher movies, Living Dead was read by more thoughtful critics as social commentary, in this case critiquing anything from the '60s counterculture, Vietnam and the Cold War, to American racism. And in terms of its reception, the critical arc went from "junk film" to the Library of Congress adding it to its National Film Registry. (This trailer is funny, yet the film really isn't.)