The dialogue in horror movies can range from outrageously humorous to super creepy. Here are just a few, all of the films prior to 1990.
“They’re coming to get you, Barbra.” The jerk who said this to his sister in the 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, would come to regret it after the zombie chowed down on him.
From the same film, when asked how to deal with the zombies, the sheriff replies, “If you have a gun, shoot ’em in the head. That’s a sure way to kill ’em. If you don’t, get yourself a club or a torch. Beat ’em or burn ’em. They go up pretty easy.”
“If this has been anything but a nightmare, and if we don’t wake up to find ourselves safe in our beds, it could come again. To the ships at sea who can hear my voice, look across the water, into the darkness. Look for the fog.” DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) issuing a warning in The Fog (1980) after a rather traumatic night in the small town of Antonio Bay.
“I met this six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes…the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply…evil.” Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) talking about his “patient,” Michael Myers, in the original Halloween (1978).
“My family’s always been in meat.” An understated line from the Hitchhiker, a member of the bizarre cannibal family in the 1974 gore-fest, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Shortly thereafter he tells the kids who are now sorry that they picked him up, “You could have dinner with us…my brother makes good head cheese! You like head cheese?”
“I had a hard-on this morning when I woke up, Tina… Had your name written all over it.” Rod Lane to his soon-to-be carved up girlfriend in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Tina’s response: “There’s four letters in my name, Rod. How can there be enough room on your joint for four letters?”
From the same film, on a creepier note, a jump-rope rhyme: “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you. / Three, four, better lock your door. / Five, six, grab your crucifix. / Seven, eight, gonna stay up late. / Nine, ten, never sleep again.”
“Your mother sucks cocks in Hell, Karras, you faithless slime.” Uttered by the Demon through Regan (Linda Blair) to Father Karras (Jason Miller) in The Exorcist (1973).
From the same film, a doctor asks Regan’s mother, “Have you ever heard of exorcism? It’s a stylized ritual in which rabbis or priests try to drive out the so-called invading spirit. It’s pretty much discarded these days, except by the Catholics who keep it in the closet as a sort of embarrassment.”
“She just moved through me. My God. I felt her. I can smell her. It’s her. It’s her. Smell my clothes. It’s her. She’s all over me. It’s her. She’s on me. It’s her. I felt her. It’s her. It is. It’s…it is…it’s my baby. It’s my baby. She went through my soul.” A frantic Diane Freeling (JoBeth Williams) in the original Poltergeist (1982).
“It has nothing to do with Satan, Mama. It’s me. Me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can move things.” Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) understating the obvious in the 1976 gem, Carrie.
“I’m at Jud’s, Daddy. Will you come over and play with me? First I played with Jud. Then mommy came, and I played with Mommy. We play, Daddy? We had an awful good time. Now I want to play with you.” Cute little (dead kid) Gage Creed, after he carved up old Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne) and his mother in Pet Sematary (1989). As Jud said earlier: “Sometimes, dead is better.”
“In my dream the Lord did come to me, and He was a shape. It was He Who Walks Behind the Rows. And I did fall on my knees in terror, and hide my eyes, lest the fierceness of His face strike me dead! He told me all that has since happened; He said, ‘Joseph has taken his things and fled this happy place, because the worship of Me is no more upon him. So take you his life, and spill his blood, like water upon the earth! But let not the flesh pollute the corn; cast him instead upon the road!’” A weird kid named Isaac, cult leader of equally weird kids in the small town of Gatlin, Nebraska in Stephen King’s 1984 creep-fest, Children of the Corn.
Well, there are about a million more, but we’ll save them for another time. Let’s raise a glass to old horror movies!