Yeah That’s Just What I Would Do

If you were sitting in the living room of my apartment Saturday night, you might have heard me thinking out loud to the following effect:

After a major life trauma like your wife kills herself or is murdered, the very thing to do is move out of New York City with your alienated child and into a big old spooky house with creepy neighbors in a small town several hours away where you don’t know a single soul.

And yes, when the murderer is stalking about all over the house with a blood-smeared butcher knife, looking for me and I finally get outside (after trying places like the Scary Basement I won’t run to the neighbor’s house but I’ll run and hide in a cave with a big pool of nasty water in it.

When the butcher knife started appearing in horror movies in the late 1970s I remember thinking at the time that it was because they were appearing in people’s kitchens. A big style shift occurred right about then, it seems to me, in consumer habits. Something happened with the style of gourmet cooking, and the need for kitchen gadgetry. So now I think of every horror movie maker wandering into the kitchen in about 1980 and having the same thought.

What possessed Robert DeNiro to take the lead in this dog of a movie? It’s the acting equivalent of “Kindergarten Cop.” I wouldn’t be watching it but that he’s in it. At least, I prefer to think so.