Last night I couldn?t sleep so I started watching a really bad (but pretty good B-Horror level movie) called House of the Dead. As movies go, it was terrible acting, over the top cinematography, stupid plot, good looking but bad acting young cast, strange ?I know that guy? appearances by a couple of people, and stupid mingle of long drawn out scenes and a video game. Basically it was about a group of young people who use an island to have a party and get killed by the walking dead who inhabit the island. It was full of topless women which made it more awful because the scenes were so misplaced it was gratuitous. But I love, really love, movies about the living dead so of course I watched it until I fell asleep after midnight.
This morning I woke up really early, around 4:30, and while I was trying hard to get back to sleep and of course getting farther and farther away from actually getting to sleep, I heard something on the roof. It was probably a squirrel or something running around but it got me thinking about a pretty cool horror movie concept.
Here it is.
A young family...
<div align="left"> <img src="http://www.moveyourasana.com/David/pictures/Blog/VSICD-purple-gargoyle.jpg" width="100" height="100" border="0"</a>
A young family, parents in their mid to late thirties, three kids all under the age of 10 or 12, live in a nice but rather small house in a fairly upscale suburb. They are fairly typical of middle class with two cars in the driveway, a fence around the place, clean and tidy rooms, hard wood floors, earth tone paint, well manicured lawn, cleaned kitchen before going upstairs for the night. One night the mother gets up really early (or really late, depending on your age) to check on the youngest child who still sleeps in a crib. She thought she heard something in his bedroom and since she is a light sleeper, she gets up to check. While walking down the hall, she hears something scamper on the roof. It sounds more like small, scratchy feet and not thumps, which would indicate an animal or something and not a person. She wasn?t really worried or scared, just a little concerned if it was in the attic.
A couple of hours later her husband and her get up and started their day. It was a work day so her husband gets dressed. She mentioned the noise while he was getting ready to head downstairs. He said he will take a look on the roof before he leaves to make sure nothing seemed out of place. The time of year is the summer so he cannot tell if there are footprints on something, like with snow, but he thought he would check anyway.
A short time later the husband walks out of the house with his briefcase in one hand and a coffee cup and keys in the other hand. He puts the stuff on top of the car and looks up at the roof. The house is pretty high up so he cannot see over the side of the house, so he starts to walk away from the house to the street to see the roof. While he slowly moves away from the house and the roof comes into view, he catches the glimpse of something moving to the other side of the roof, where he cannot see. Thinking it was just a cat or something, he leaves for work. He and his wife forget about it and don?t mention it when they talk later in the day.
Late that day the husband is driving down the street coming home from work and from a distance sees something on his roof, near the chimney. He squints and as he gets closer realizes it is something fairly big, larger than a cat or bird. He pulls into his driveway and gets out of the car. Across the street, an older neighbor waves to him and asks him when he got the roof ornament. ?I didn?t know you were into gargoyles?? the neighbor says. ?I?m not? replies the husband.
<div align="left"> <img src="http://www.moveyourasana.com/David/pictures/Blog/gargoyle.jpg" width="100" height="140" border="0"</a>
As he crosses the street and looks back at his house, he sees a grotesquely and horrific looking gargoyle perched on the ridge of the roof. It is squatting with its feet supporting its weight and its knees and shoulders at the same level. He has no idea who put it up there. Since it will be light out for a couple of more hours, he decides to get changed, take out his ladder, and with what will be a group of neighbors watching, get on the roof to check out the ?statue?.
Here is where a good director can make things interesting. Slow camera shots. The camera coming up the ladder. Maybe a scene of the guy changing in his bedroom and he hears the scamper again, looking at the ceiling perplexed.
As the husband climbs the ladder, he gets to the point where he can see over the top and stares at the ugly and demonic looking thing. He starts to climb higher on the ladder to get on the roof and the statue quickly moves its head and with green and yellow eyes, glares at the husband. Startled, he losses his grip and almost falls, moving a few rungs down the ladder. He then looks up over the lip of the roof and the gargoyle has moved into a more menacing position, seemingly ready to strike, like a cross between a lion and a monkey. He decides to get off the ladder and calls the cops.
Not sure what happens after this. Maybe the cops come, maybe its animal control. Either way the thing stays there and gets menacing looking when anyone approaches. That night, with it still there, the family decides to sleep in the house. This is obviously a stupid idea, but good horror flicks are made up of stupid ideas.
When the woman is getting changed, she goes to close the blinds and the gargoyle suddenly hangs upside down from the gutter and looks into the window. The woman freaks out and they decide to stay at a hotel.
The next morning it is gone. One of the kids does some research at school and finds some history about gargoyles. They were created to drain water from buildings but she could not find out where the concept came from. Through additional research, maybe the movie introduces an eccentric old lunatic from the neighborhood who heard about it, some additional information is gathered. It turns out gargoyles come from a satanic something or other involving taking life from humans to feed something or other and they are really bad.
But since the thing has not been seen for a day or two, they are not too worried.
What we didn?t know, but will certainly find out in the movie, is that the gargoyle got on the roof by jumping from a large spruce tree that is close to the chimney. What we also don?t know but will learn from the movie, is that the house is next to a stream, which is next to a large area of woods that borders undeveloped federal land. The land, also undeveloped woods area, has some deep and dark mysteries that the family didn?t know about when they bought the house a couple of years ago. One mystery is that there is a rumor that an old church, built by separatists from England who settled in the land to avoid religious prosecution in the 1600s, is in the woods somewhere. Additional stuff is found that the church burned with hundreds of people trapped inside. The only thing to survive was a few gargoyles that were built on top. The ?living? gargoyles lived in the woods, came across the stream, up the spruce, and onto the roof to seek revenge or get a living baby or something because it was the 400 year anniversary of the killing of the parishioners.
So there, that is my movie. I am not sure what to call it. ?Gargoyle? seems too obvious, but maybe obvious is good with this type of flick. I would make it a blend of ?Stepford Wives? type neighborhood with trimmed lawns and nice houses and good looking people who dress nice even on weekends, with a dark and sinister ?The Crow? type dark and gloomy type atmosphere. Something to give people who live in nice towns and live comfortable lives something to keep them up at night and give them something to think about when they hear something scamper on their roof while trying to fall back asleep at 4:30 on a work night.
Comments