Shocktober

Last night a group of us got together at our hizouse for the reinstitution of an old D-town tradition: movie night. For October, the plan is to watch only horror movies. The cast of characters read like something out of Young Dayton Socialite Magazine, if such a publication existed: The Belanger Family (Jamie, Amy, and AC), Kim "Liquor? I Don't Even Know 'Er" Byrum, Casey "Hold The" Mayo, Holt "The Mayo" Hedrick, "NaviKate" Rohrer, and Jenn "Rookie" Weisgerber. After a delightful mix of tacos and German beer, we watched the original "Amityville Horror" (not 2005's madcap, comedic remake starring Van Wilder himself, Ryan Reynolds), a true story (see picture of real house to the right) of a family that moves into a haunted house on Long Island where a kid murdered his family a year before. Note to GMYH readers: don't become enamored by a house's extremely discounted sale price when mass murders that have taken place there. If a house ever tells you to "get out," listen to the house. If your house ever causes a priest to go blind, go ahead and sell it. If you ever wake up at 3:15am, resist the urge to get out of bed and explore your haunted house. And if you've ever had a 1982 Camaro on cinder blocks in your front yard, you might be a redneck.

I was particularly impressed by the performance of Margot Kidder, playing Kathy Lutz, at one point nearly exposing her bosom before getting railed by James Brolin on the bedroom floor. The role of a confused, freaked-out, bosom-exposing woman who mistakenly thought her husband was trying to kill her seemed to suit this temptress from Yellowknife (yes, THE Yellowknife). You may recall several years ago when a paranoid Margot faked her own death after somehow convincing herself that her first husband was trying to kill her. No one actually noticed that Margot was missing until someone found her naked and babbling incoherently to herself while hiding behind a big rock on someone else's property. I guess those royalty checks for "Superman IV: Quest for Peace" weren't enough to cover the cost of psychotherapy sessions.

There were also some interesting movie connections made. Jamie noticed that Meeno Peluce, who played Kathy Lutz's fun-loving, always-up-to-something son, Matt, starred in the short-lived time-traveling TV show, "Voyagers!" in the early '80s. How Jamie even remembered that this show existed is explainable only by the fact that he grew up in Canada, so it was probably very popular both originally and in reruns on account of the fact that it was one of 4 non-hockey-related shows airing on the CBC. In addition to Mr. Peluce (as he's now called by his history students at Hollywood High--thank you imdb.com), KC Martel, who played the mischievous yet affable Greg Lutz, went on to star as Kirk Cameron's crony Eddie in "Growing Pains." I can only hope and assume that KC had a small hand in driving Tracey Gold to anorexia.

An even more interesting connection made only through the useful knowledge propounded on imdb.com is that two actors in the movie went on to do behind-the-scenes work in the soft porn "Body Chemistry" series. Meeno Peluce worked as a camera intern on "Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure," and Marc Vahanian, who played Jimmy in "Amityville Horror," was a trainer in "Body Chemistry 3: Point of Seduction." I'm not sure what a trainer in a soft porn does, but I know that I'd enjoy it.

There was also talk amongst the movie viewers of making a stag flick called "The Amityville Whore." It will be a fairly easy transition. The last name Lutz is easily changed to Slutz. And instead of a family living in a haunted house, it's a group of horny coeds who form a bordello to try to make ends meet. A lion-maned, bearded James Brolin would still be the leading man. The house would still be haunted, except instead of telling people to "get out," the house would tell people to "get off." Instead of the ghost of Jody DeFeo telling Amy to lock her babysitter in the closet, the ghost will tell Amy and the babysitter to get naked for a paranormal lesbo three-way. Instead of the basement housing the portal to hell, it will house the portal to Eddie's Erotic Emporium. It practically writes itself.

How 'bout them White Sox? I understand that it's only one game, but I'm still excited about the 14-2 shellacking they laid upon the Red Sox yesterday. Now if we can only keep that up for the rest of the month.