The One I Might Have Saved...

While I've always wanted to contribute to Arbogast's "The One You Might Have Saved", I never got around to it because of the sheer volume of the ones I wanted to save.

See, I walk into pretty much every horror film and immediately put my money on the dark horse. Not because I'm fool enough to think that any one of these brunettes will actually make it to the final frames, but because they're the ones I'd like to. They're the ones with moxie, but... sigh.

FWIW, I'd love to see the redhead make it to sunrise, but she is probably more likely to get it first than the brother. There's fool betting, and then there's damn-fool betting.

But for some reason, as a rule the makers of horror films like to play safe and make as the obligatory final girl your bubble-headed-bleach-blonde. One look at that feathered hair and you see a bedroom replete with teddy bears and unicorns and plenty of pink slathering all over her bedroom walls to indicate just who she is.

"Keep your hands off, Buster, and keep the conversation light."

Y'know, the kind of bedroom that the average horror fan wouldn't be allowed in to in the first place (even if they wanted). Well, back in the Eighties. Now, that twinkie probably has Rotten.com bookmarked on her iPad.

What?

Um... yeah. Where were we? Oh..."The One I Might Have Saved."

Let's go in blind (trust me), with what is easily my favorite moment in an otherwise forgettable horror film:


Okay, then.

I'll cop here... my two favorite movies have always been It's a Wonderful Life and Night of the Living Dead. Seriously. The two kill me every time, in entirely different ways. They're like bookends to what I love about film. Really... it's a race between the two as to which one is darker.

So, back in '92 when I caught Jim Wynorski's 976-EVIL 2... let's just say that the above bit just killed me just as well. But it was sort of a bummer, also.

Poor, poor Paula (Leslie Ryan). Who after a lot of thought is The One I Might Have Saved.

As a horror film fan back in the day when meeting a nice girl with similar un-nice interests was nigh impossible, Paula getting whacked was insult to injury while watching an otherwise interminable slasher film. Not to mention that she was way hotter than the vanilla final girl. So to hell with that popcorn-wielding Barbie, let's shake things up and have this brunette make it to the final stretch!

Oh.

*Tears up ticket*

But, hey... it would have made the film more interesting.