The Countdown Continues... In Space! Day 4

There seemed to be an odd trend in the nineties, where horror franchises would inexplicably set their fourth entry in space. It at least made sense that the fourth Critters movie would be set in space; they were alien creatures and we'd already seen scenes at space prisons and in ships before the fourth film was spent entirely in space. And it at least fit the gimmicky, logic-free nature of the Leprechaun series to set an installment in space, though the idea was no less ridiculous for it. And then there's Hellraiser. A series known for it's grim, bloody aesthetic that grounds the fantastic in the grimy and mundane nature of our disgusting, blood-filled bodies suddenly sends it's main boogiemen to a futuristic space station to match wits with an ancestor of the toymaker that had designed the original gateway to hell.

It's that trend that had me rooting so badly for a fourth Scream film, if only so we could have had the tagline 'In space, no one can hear you... Scream 4!' Eventually we got a Scream 4 that was every bit as ludicrous as a spacebound slasher film would have been, but the moment had past. And all we had in consolation was the tenth Friday the 13th film, which broke the trend once and for all.

So, last night I tried to make up ground on my horror ingesting routine, but I was only able to squeeze in one Tales From The Crypt episode and one short story. Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone continues the strong run of episodes that make up the bulk of the short first season. Richard Donner's direction gets a bit hyperactive at times, but it's still a solidly written and acted piece, even on what must be the 6th or 7th time I've seen the episode.

The short story I read, once again from Joe Hill, was You Will Hear The Locust Sing, another riff on Kafka's Metamorphosis filtered through a slight atmosphere of 1950s atomic fear. It was well written, but the subject matter felt a little familiar and an atmosphere of unpleasantness hung over the entire story. It held none of the surprises that abounded in the previous stories, but I'm still excited to make it through the rest of the book.