• 24. Skeletons: Skeletons are supposed to be scary; you see them all over the place at Halloween. You see them come to life in cheesy action-adventure movies. But has there ever been a mainstream horror movie featuring living skeletons? I don’t think so. And before you object with “skeletons are the same as zombies”, let’s examine some important differences between skeletons and zombies:
  • Zombies can only be killed by destroying the brain. Skeletons have no brain.
  • Zombies eat brains and/or guts. Skeletons do not eat.
  • Zombies are the recently-dead come to life. Skeletons are the long-dead come to life.
  • Zombies moan. Skeletons creak and chatter.
  • It doesn’t matter what started the zombie apocalypse. Skeletons were probably brought to life with some ancient artifact, and finding that artifact is the key to defeating them.
  • Zombies rarely use weapons. Skeletons are proficient with the sword, the sai, the nunchuck, and the bo staff.
  • Zombies are a metaphor for deep social issues. Skeletons are a metaphor for your dead ancestors coming back to life and stabbing you in the face.

  So you see, skeletons are indeed quite scary. They’ve been dead for hundreds of years, and I believe they are due their 15 minutes of fame.

•25. Murderer’s Block: A serial killer has gone his whole life without getting caught. As he comes to the end of his career, he realizes that he has run out of ways to kill people. Every way to stop a human brain from functioning has already been done, either by himself or in movies. Drowning someone in liquified pig guts? Done. Slicing them up with a cookie cutter then eating the baked flesh? Passe. Running them over with a Zamboni? He’d done it 7 times in the last month. There’s just no more room for creativity in today’s post-modern world. Depressed by this fact, he sets out to kill himself in the most creative way possible. He sets up an elaborate Rube-Goldberg device within his own flesh, designed to slice open every piece of skin, sever every limb, puncture every membrane, and burst every internal organ, all at the same time, with the push of a button. Unfortunately, the button fizzles out, so he just takes a shotgun to his head. As he pulls the trigger, he realizes, hey, the old classics may have been done a million times before, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them. His life ends in the most realistic, creative, magnificent, glorious, and yes, mind-blowing, shotgun-to-the-head scene ever put to film.

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See also: One Hundred Original Ideas for Horror Movies, #22 – 23.