If you're looking for any really deep thoughts, then you've come to the wrong place. However, if you're looking for simple opinions on ordinary, mundane things, then you've come to the right place.
It's usually fairly easy to distinguish comedy from tragedy, and drama from documentary. There are times when the border blurs, but for the most part there are specific characteristics that allow us to distinguish one from the other. A comedy, for example, might have one tragic moment here or there, but the greater part of it revolves around humor. A tragedy might have one or two high points where the audience can't help but smile, but for the most part it is a sober, somber thing. Well, that's all good and well for those genres, but it's becoming difficult to distinguish between science fiction and horror films nowadays. Or at least, with regards to a particular subgenre of them. You don't believe me? Well, let me explain.
First off, what is horror and what is science fiction? Well, my definitions probably won't work, so I'll try to go with a more general, popular perspective here. Horror movies usually heighten the adrenaline levels of watchers by targeting their fears and playing on them. Most often this involves the unknown or the unthinkable in an integral fashion, but one side of this is the unthinkable thought that people could actually go around with chainsaws or boat hooks and kill people with them (in other words, high body count, blood and gore everywhere, you get the picture). Science fiction usually takes some device or area of science and develops it far beyond the level it might be at now. Space travel and colonization, for example, aren't possible now, but many sci-fi movies revolve around it.
So what's the problem? Well, how are you going to classify a movie where there is a high body count with blood and gore flying all over the place, and the root of it all is deeply involved in some sort of scientific advancement? Is that going to be horror or sci-fi? Well?
If you think I'm kidding, I'm not. As I recall, the movie Jaws appears in my newspaper listings as a horror movie. Well, that's all right. There is a fairly high body count, a lot of blood, and it plainly deals with the unknown and unthinkable: that there could be a shark of tha magnitude terrorizing a coastal community, one that's able to lurch into and sink a tolerably large vessel. There isn't a whole lot of science involved, except in whatever Richard Dreyfus' character explains or utilizes to stop the shark, and that wasn't really very advanced. So all in all this seems to be a horror movie. Fine.
On the other end, we have something like Outbreak. Here, too, we have a fairly high body count, and the symptoms of the diseae's victims were rather horrific to behold, but the movie is credited as a sci-fi movie because at its root is the scientific creation of the disease itself. There's a lot of science involved in this movie as the doctors analyze the virus and search desperately for a cure. A sci-fi movie? Sure. I can accept that.
But if these are examples of horror and sci-fi movies, then why are we labelling some movies as one when they seem to be the other, and labelling some movies as the other when they seem to be the one?
Anaconda, unless I'm mistaken, is a horror movie. That's what my newspaper lists it as, and I'm inclined to agree. It's very much like Jaws. Science level is fairly low, with the whole thing becoming a fight for survival rather than a reliance upon high tech devices. Peter Benchley's The Beast, on the other hand, is credited as a sci-fi movie, yet the science level in that is similarly low. Why is a giant squid credited as a sci-fi movie when it is just as likely to exist as a titanic South American snake or a marauding great white shark? And yet, there it is. When you think about it, it seems that almost anything involving things coming out of the ocean is a sci-fi topic. Almost, because Jaws and its companions and the movie Orca are listed as horror. It Came From Beneath the Sea and Tentacles, among others, all list as sci-fi, yet there is nothing in them to indicate a relationship between their exaggerated size and the science of the day.
Then, you have movies like The Relic and Peter Benchley's Creature, where science is definitely involved in a fairly immediate, intricate way, yet the movies are credited as being horror. Sure, there's a high body count involved, along with a lot of blood and gore, but none of that would have been possible without the science that resulted in something like Mr. Benchley's man-like shark thing. And while the Mbwun creature of the Chicago Museum of Natural History might have arisen from something entirely natural--thereby making it a candidate for horror--Doctor Margo Green relied heavily upon science to decipher the origins and identity of the creature. And looking back, how do we account for movies like Ants and Them! and Night of the Lepus, where science--in the form of radioactive waste entering the ecosystem--is responsible for these giant bugs and rabbits? These, too, are listed as horror movies--and the bodies seem to bear them out--yet it is science that is responsible for their growth, isn't it?
Maybe it doesn't bother you, but it bothers me. I mean, if I were to go into a video store in search of, say, a good horror movie in hopes of finding a great spine-tingler, I might have to weed through hordes of science-involved movies to find a good one that doesn't involve any. Not that I would do that, but do you get my point? Say I'm looking for a fairly Gothic horror movie that doesn't involve mutated creatures on the rampage or murderous killers with bloody axes who just happen to be the results of scientific experiments. Do you have any idea how hard that is? I don't want something like Species or Critters, nor a movie like Watchers. But these movies count as horror and they're in the same area on the shelves.
Or maybe I'm looking for a good sci-fi movie. I'm looking for something that deals with new discoveries and advances in science and the risks that go hand-in-hand with such explorations. I don't want something with an especially high body count--like Leviathan or Deep Star Six--or an ordinary creature appearing in an unlikely region as in Tentacles or It Came From Beneath the Sea. I'd be looking for something more like Star Trek: Generations or The Last Starfighter or The Black Hole. Yet I'd be searching for these among The Blob and The Stand.
I guess video stores have trouble deciding where such movies should go, because I've noticed them bunched together under the heading "Sci-fi/Horror" or something similar. As a result, I'll find vampire movies like Blade and Bram Stoker's Dracula next to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and It! The Terror from Beyond Space, not to mention titles like Gargantua and Reptilicus. Unfortunately, I've also seen The Odyssey and Legend and Krull in the same area. These all seem to be fantasy movies, not sci-fi or horror, yet there they are!
So what indicates whether a movie is science fiction of horror? Is it the degree of science involved in the plot, like gene splicing or radiation mutation? Is it the amount of special effects that goes into it all? Is it the body count at the end of the movie? Somebody please TELL ME!
I guess I've ranted enough. But really, what happens when we're asked to review movies for school, the assignment calls for a science fiction flick, but we choose a horror movie that nevertheless has definite ties to science? Yeah, like that's really going to happen, but I hope you get my point!
I don't know if this has prompted any deep or interesting thoughts in you, but if you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to send me an e-mail. I'm generally up for any debate and maybe--just maybe--we can start some sort of regular exchange of thoughts.
Comments? Suggestions? E-mail me with your words of wisdom. I'm up for a hearty e-mail debate if you are!
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