3x Holiday Horror: Easter

When he refused to reveal the
location of the hidden Easter Eggs,
the kids stepped up their interrogation
techniques.

With Easter drawing in, I was thinking. Easter is not so commercialized as, say, Christmas (thank God, some would say). Come to think of it, it's kind of odd how a holiday in such a cold and harsh season gets to be so big, while one in a more pleasant season hardly gets any attention. I can see it now, singing songs around the budding linden tree, searching for presents around a spring garden, getting a swim suit instead of winter socks... But, why get into that...

This probably is also the reason why there are not so many EASTER HORROR MOVIES as there are Christmas ones. Commercial succes and BLOOD seem to go hand in hand. I tried to come with an Easter horror list and decided on these three.

1) Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit - I watched this half-dozing on a long flight from Amsterdam to Miami and it seemed even more unreal that way. Of course it's an ANIMATED COMEDY with the lovable clay characters from Aardvark, but it borrows heavily from WEREWOLF movies both obscure and well-known. Wallace and his dog are called in to deal with the mysterious disappearance of some of the PRICE VEGETABLES in the village, only days before the great vegetable-growing contest. HILARITY ENSUES!

2) Donnie Darko - Okay, okay, technically not a horror movie, although I couldn't name you any genre that this movie fits into. It deals with the mind of young Donnie Darko ('sounds like a superhero') who has a SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT VIEW of the world around him. Add to that his tendency to sleepwalk, overall adolescent angst and his obsession with TIME-TRAVEL, and you've got one weird movie. And don't tell me for a second you weren't freaked out by that bunny with the SKULL FOR A FACE.

3) Critters 2 - The Main Course - I think the DADDY of all Easter horror movies (judging by the hits I got on Google). A small town is UNDER SIEGE from the NASTY LITTLE BEASTIES just around the Easter celebration. Many hilarious scenes follow, among which one of the critters being deep-fried, the EASTER BUNNY GETTING KILLED AND EATEN, an alien turning into a PLAYBOY CENTERFOLD (complete with staples) and so on. For lovers of NON-SENSICAL, violent spoofs, a modern classic!

So, gather around your television screens (or these days, maybe your home entertainment center) and plug one of these in. Maybe you'll laugh, maybe you'll cry, maybe you'll never look at your BUNNY SUIT the same way again. But it's sure to kill a couple of hours (and maybe make your in-laws leave).

HAPPY EASTER!