DON'T GO IN THE BASEMENT - "Greatest Lines"

This will deal with the greatest lines in horror movie history.

Now I’m not saying great lines as in Troll 2’s “They’re eating her, and then they’re gonna eat me. Oh my God!”


That’s a great line if your idea of a promising career is watching YouTube videos and desperately trying to find reasons that your friends should hang out with you.

When I say “Great Lines,” I’m talking about lines that are so unexpected or so grand that they become your favorite part of the movie.

These are lines that, if the producers had any kind of forward thinking, would’ve decided “Hey, we should really put that on a t-shirt.”



“Look what your brother did to the door!” 


This movie is about a family of cannibals who live in rural Texas, with the key member of the family being a giant, mentally disabled man who wears human skin to represent his emotions. And they’re worried about the broken door. It’s this kind of morbid detail that makes the entire movie great. “Yeah. In no way is the girl who we’re about to torture and devour the biggest thing in our lives. Nope. Our door has some decent-sized cuts in it and we might have more neighbors that need their faces removed. We have to keep a clean house. We need to know our priorities here.”

 “Game over, man! Game over!” 


There’s something so nerdy and so oddly human about this line.

Three-fourths of this movie’s cast are so tough that they can’t high five without their pets sensing an earthquake and running away. The fact that, when faced by the extraterrestrial menace of xenomorphs, Hudson, someone who can’t flush toilets properly because he shits so many bullets says this, is monumental.

Having a character use the phrase, “Game over, man” is like saying “Yeah, none of these guys got laid in high school either. No worries, movie goers. Mario still rules.”

“It’s Halloween. Everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”
For this scene to work, one has to obviously ignore the weird, sexual tension that permeates it.

Sheriff Brackett looks at Laurie Strode in the way that I stare at a Wendy’s value menu, with intense, hungry purpose. It works so well, because of the irony that comes before and after it. Laurie Strode gets scared about 1500 times in this movie, (screams x minutes spent running/”help me’s”x stab attempts) and it’s a wonder that Halloween 2 wasn’t just a one long phone call, with Laurie asking Brackett if he was being sarcastic.

“Just a little torture.”


At the time of this line, the person being tortured is suspended by hooks through his skin, has had a large needle shoved into his face, and has had hot oil poured onto his back and head.

Calling this “a little torture” is like calling The Great Depression “that time when a few people couldn’t have breakfast. Kinda sucked.”

As with the previous quote, irony is huge in Ichi The Killer. I’m not trying to call the average man “boring,” but usually people act sort of strange whenever the topic of psychosexual masochism is brought up. In Ichi The Killer, the characters take the subject in stride, treating it with the same amount of normality that regular people treat petting a dog with. I wouldn’t be surprised if the deleted scenes included Kakihara doing a soliloquy about how much he likes getting punched in the face.

Oh wait, there is one of those. Kick ass, Ichi.

Then again, this film was directed by Takashi Miike, who’s been documented to have an alarm clock that just emits sounds of people pleading for their lives whenever it’s set off.

“Hey Ted, where’s the corkscrew?” 


Anyone who’s ever met me knows that if I exploded, the room would be covered in Taco Bell, Whiskey sours and Friday The 13th Special Edition DVD’s.

My love for this series knows no bounds, and if I had to choose between a hot woman and my Friday The 13th collection for a desert island, the rescue boat would find me sun burnt and desperately trying to carve a vagina into a coconut, beside a big stack of movies.

This line perfectly describes the tone of this series of movies and the brilliant sense of humor that they often have, and by brilliant, I mean don’t judge me.

Jimmy has just gotten laid by one-half of a pair of hot twins (tends to happen when you go to a cabin by the lake. Hot twins on bikes show up, and one is lame and the other wants YOU), and now he’s looking for a corkscrew to open a wine bottle. He calls out to his friend and boom, Jason stabs Jimmy’s hand to the counter with the aforementioned corkscrew. It’s poetry in motion when the meat cleaver comes down on Jimmy’s head a second later.

Every line, in King Kong (1976)


If you ask most people what their favorite iteration of King Kong is, you’ll probably receive the answer of the 1933 version or the 2005 version.

I disagree with all of these people and their stupid life decisions. King Kong ’76 is the most quotable film of all time because half the time, I’m not even sure that the screenwriters knew what “dialogue” meant, or had ever talked to another person in their lives. Characters say lines simply because it feels like they need to fill time. I’ve seen this movie dozens of times, and still, as soon as it switches away from a giant ape turning a prehistoric snake into a sandwich party tray, I have no idea what the hell is going on anymore.

Here’s a few quotes to give you an example of just how mind-bogglingly insane the actors sound.


“I know the day, the hour you completed your toilet training.” 
“You know we're going to be great friends. I'm a Libra. What sign are you? I bet you're an Aries. Aren't you? Of course you are." I knew it. That's just wonderful.” 
“Radio your computer and ask them if you don't believe me.“ 

“Damn it! I'm tired of you trying to confuse this girl's mind! This is her big chance and yours too! You know there are stars in Princeton the same way there are in Hollywood Jack. You want out, you want me to cable Harvard or Yale and get Kong another keeper?” 

I’m not a huge believer in witchcraft, but if you play the audio track to King Kong ’76 backwards, you’re sure to summon at least three demons and a hell hound. I haven’t been able to piece it all together yet, but I’m certain that “Fred Wilson” is an anagram for the name of some Norse trickster god.

Also, if you don’t ask your girlfriend to “radio her computer” at least once today, I’d be ashamed to have even brought it up.