Movie Night
"I can't even finish this," Casey said as he picked up the remote and shut off the movie.
"Amen," Kelly agreed in a tone that insinuated Casey should've reached that same conclusion a long time ago.
Casey grunted and groaned as he pushed himself further back against the couch and stared at the off-kilter pile of DVDs on the coffee table that for some reason reminded him of a Jenga tower that had all the good blocks taken out and was just one or two moves from the whole thing toppling over.
"Were there always this many bad horror movies?" Casey asked.
"Maybe, who knows?" Kelly asked. "There's good, and so bad they're good..."
"And so cheap they can be shown 20 times in one month on the same channel," Casey added.
"And then there's a whole other genre," Kelly said, "so bad the only good thing is the poster art."
Casey snorted, "Let me guess, you collected every one with a half naked woman on it."
"Well what else are they for?" Kelly shrugged. "If nothing else, you always had a cool cover to look at, the movies they put out today don't even have that."
"They don't seem to have much of anything," Casey responded as he nudged the pile with his foot.
"You were the one that said 'Let's go check out the new dollar store'," Kelly reminded him.
"Well," Casey shrugged, "for that price you figure you don't get hurt much if the movies suck."
"Well I disagree," Kelly said, "10 bucks, fifteen hours of painfully bad horror movies."
"They're not all from the dollar store," Casey pointed out, "Some of them came from Walmart for $10 a pop."
"Which ones?" Kelly turned to him.
Casey looked at the pile of only half visible titles based on which way the DVD cases were turned. "I don't even remember...it doesn't seem to make much difference, does it? They all look about the same."
"They all have very similar crappy covers," Kelly added.
"Very similar plots," Casey said.
"Hell, even similar titles...how many things can you slap 'Amityville' on that have nothing to do with that house?" Kelly wanted to know.
"How many killer scarecrow movies got put out in the same year?" Casey added.
"And why is everybody in every single movie so painfully stupid, or unlikable, that you're actually hoping they all die?" Kelly asked. "It would actually be scary if we wanted them to live."
"Kind of a dead giveaway, isn't it?" Casey asked.
Kelly smirked. "That a joke?"
"Maybe," Matt shrugged. "But remember when there were only one or two people in a movie you downright hated, and you knew it was because before the movie was over, they would be killed?"
Kelly chuckled. "Oh yeah, those were the days, like Cooper in Night of the Living Dead."
"Or that dad in Silver Bullet."
"And now the whole cast is even worse than that," Kelly said. "Whole family, whole town, you don't like anybody anymore."
"Why is that?" Casey asked with a groan.
"Who knows?" Kelly shrugged his shoulders. "I guess they want movies to be more 'realistic' these days."
Casey had closed his eyes for a second, upon hearing that he pressed the tips of his fingers into the skin under his eye and slowly raked them down as he looked at Kelly. "That's not realistic either."
"I don't know, we've encountered a few people on calls like those SOBs in the movies," Kelly replied.
"A few, not everybody," Casey pointed out. "That is not realistic."
"Maybe they think it's more realistic than the older movies," Kelly said.
"Maybe it is, but people don't watch movies for realism," Casey responded. "They want fiction that feels real but isn't real."
Kelly chuckled, "Better watch it, you might wind up a philosopher."
"Well think about it, what's your favorite movie?" Casey asked.
"Horror movie, or..."
"Just any," Matt answered.
Kelly shrugged. "Space Jam."
"Uh huh, what's realistic about that?" Casey asked.
"Fair point."
Casey rubbed his eyes and told Kelly, "You know, the past week I thought maybe I was coming down with a bug, because I just feel so lousy all the time...I'm starting to think these movies are actually making me depressed."
"I've seen them all with you, I wouldn't overlook that possibility," Kelly said.
"I mean I don't try to read a lot of stuff into this, but...it can't possibly be good for someone to watch so much mind numbing, depressing, infuriating crap," Casey commented.
"I agree," Severide responded, "older horror movies are at least fun."
"Some anyway," Casey said.
"Yeah, some, once you know what happens they're not shocking anymore, and without the shock it's not really scary, but you go back to them because they're fun to watch, exciting," Kelly said. "You know something, I actually think Otis could make a better movie than all of these people combined."
Casey's eyes bugged out for a second before he remarked, "We agree on something."
They both leaned back against the cushions.
"I don't get it," Casey said. "When I was growing up I loved horror movies."
"Me too," Kelly replied.
Casey turned to him and asked, "Do you think it's just because we got old?"
"We're not old," Kelly said.
"We're not young."
"Maybe you're not," Kelly said with a smirk, earning him a sharp elbow in the side, "well we're not old anyway."
"Okay, not old, too grown up maybe?" Casey asked.
"We're men, that's biologically impossible," Kelly answered. "We're going to be immature until the day we die. The movies just suck."
"But how's that possible? All of them?" Casey asked.
"Because more people are making movies now than before, so there's going to be a lot of cheap ones that suck," Kelly said.
"Yeah, but why?" Casey asked.
Kelly shrugged. "If it bombs, they can write it off their taxes."
"Doesn't that only count if it's actually a box office movie?" Casey asked.
"Who knows?"
"I mean a lot of these were never in any theater, just put straight on video," Casey said.
"Yeah well," Kelly cleared his throat, "so are a lot of porn movies, but you know they all turn a profit."
"They serve a general public interest," Casey pointed out, "but how many people do you think actually watch movies like this?"
"Well they suckered you into it, didn't they?" Kelly asked.
"Yeah, but come on," Casey said, "it's not like we're actually going to recommend these to anybody, nobody else is going to buy it based on our opinion."
"Not like in Benny's day," Kelly said. "He told me once when he went to see Jaws in the theater, as soon as he got home he called up all his buddies telling them they had to go see it." He thought for a minute and added, awed, "Wow...can you imagine being that pumped about a movie?"
"Pre-internet, no spoilers," Casey pointed out. "If you wanted to know how a movie ended, what the big reveal was, you had to go see it. Now you can look up everything practically before the movie's even out. Takes a lot of fun out of it."
"Kills a lot of profits too," Kelly replied. "Man...can you imagine being alive and at the movies back then? Not knowing Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father, or not knowing who Norman Bates' mother was."
"Oh, I'll tell you one I always wondered about," Casey said. "that old Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney."
"Yeah?" Kelly asked.
Casey looked at him and explained, "There were no movie trailers back then. Nobody had any expectations of what he was going to look like."
"So how'd they get people to see it?" Kelly asked.
"Movies were new, people probably went to see anything," Casey said. "Still, can you imagine seeing that face for the first time in history?"
Kelly laughed. "People back then must've really freaked out."
Casey sucked in a sharp inhale that came back out as a tired sigh.
"You know what I think?" Kelly asked.
Casey balled one hand up and propped it under his jaw. "What?"
Kelly inched forward where he sat, reached over, picked up the pile of DVDs from the coffee table, and chucked them in the wastebasket next to it, they landed with a pronounced rattle, clatter and bang.
"I've had enough dumbass stoner kids, perverted cops and teachers, moronic parents, plots that don't make any sense, 'superhuman' masked killers that are just one mere mortal, and evil spirits that never die, and every movie only ends for the whole thing to start all over again, to last the rest of my life. You get us some beers, I'll make some popcorn, and we'll break out a classic."
"Classic, huh?" Casey asked as they sat in the dark and watched the black and white movie House on Haunted Hill.
Kelly shrugged one shoulder as he popped a handful of popcorn into his mouth, "Well, cult classic maybe."
"Did this movie really scare you as a kid?" Casey asked.
"Mmm, not really," Kelly answered, "but it was really creepy, and fun. I liked it."
"Hm," Casey folded his arms and leaned back against the couch. "Kelly, what's your favorite horror movie?"
Kelly swallowed his popcorn. "Seriously? We've been friends 20 years and you're asking me that?"
"Well?" Casey asked.
Kelly paused for a moment, "I don't know, I don't think it's possible to pick one. What about you?"
"Well...I guess I have a few favorites too," Matt said. "Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Alien."
"Uh huh," Kelly nodded.
"But...I always liked Silver Bullet too, you see that one?" Casey asked.
"The one with the kid in the wheelchair and the werewolf? Yeah, a couple times."
Casey smirked tiredly. "I was always partial to it...you know how a lot of the old Universal monsters, they weren't really evil, they just couldn't help what they were?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, the Wolfman, it wasn't his fault he got bitten and turned into a werewolf, he had no control over it...Frankenstein's monster, he didn't even know what he was, he had a child's mindset, he didn't know he was doing anything wrong. The Invisible Man, he didn't know when he started his experiment that it would turn him into a murderous lunatic."
"There's still Dracula," Kelly pointed out. "He knew what he was doing, he was evil."
"Yeah, he's different."
"What about the Mummy?" Kelly asked.
"The original...or all the others that kept their bandages on and they reused the same footage every time?" Casey asked.
"The original, he shed his bandages, he knew what he was doing," Kelly said.
"Yeah...but did he have a choice? He didn't ask to be awakened," Matt pointed out.
"When are people ever going to learn? Never read an ancient scroll out loud," Kelly chuckled.
"But in most of those movies, people were scared of the monsters, but their circumstances were actually pretty tragic."
"Yeah, I guess you got a point," Kelly said.
"Well...I'm not actually sure where I was going with that," Casey said, resulting in a shared laugh between the two firefighters, "But I liked Silver Bullet, it kind of reminded me of me and Christie. She was older and...before she left for college, we didn't always get along..." Casey was silent for a few seconds, and there was a poignancy in his voice as he added, "I always wondered if we were in a situation like that, if she would have my back."
Kelly said nothing in response, just looked at his friend.
"It was nice to dream anyway," Casey said dismissively.
The last syllable was hardly out of his mouth before he jolted back against the couch in time with a loud scream coming from the TV.
Kelly sat there chewing a handful of popcorn and asked with a knowing smirk, "You scared yet?"
When the volume on the TV went back down, Casey let out a garbled exclamation as he tried to put into words what was going through his mind.
"I've seen this movie before," Casey said, "I forgot about that."
"Yeah," Kelly said with a small chuckle, "Over 50 years later and that scene can still scare the hell out of people, and it's really amazing because as far as jump scares go, it's kind of lame, but it still works."
"Just goes to show people actually knew how to make horror movies back then," Casey said as he pulled himself forward so he wasn't plastered against the back of the couch.
"Sure, what's not to like? Good creepy atmosphere, good creepy music," Kelly said.
"And a half naked woman on the cover art being chased by a skeleton," Casey added as he picked up the DVD case.
Kelly shrugged. "He's dead but he's not that dead."