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http://www.mania.com/dances-undead-kim- ... 23033.html

Somebody at the above thread asked a question about films where the story has a horror fan who knows the "rules of the monster" due to watching horror films. That got me thinking-has anyone done a film where some familiar menace such as a werewolf, vampire, etc. exists but they seem to explicitly indicate that novels, films, etc. about these monsters do not exist?

This seems to resemble the celebrity paradox.

I'd say it happens regularly with the zombie genre. About half of them include the idea of "What are those...things?" from the walking bait.

Well, "zombie" films rarely follow Carribean folklore anyway, and often involve mass violence and outbreaks that do not present an easy opportunity for cover-up. Of course, some people would have problems naming one particularly well-known specific example of the "species".

Well, in this day and age, the word "zombie" tends to mean the undead flesh-eater more than pufferfish-toxin-addled plantation worker, yet most zombie flicks today tend to have characters that have no idea what they are. Diary of the Dead did a clever thing with the conceit; the central characters are making a no-budget horror film, which in the real world equals the incredibly cheap idea of the zombie flick. However, as they don't exist in this film's world, apparently the go to cheap monster is the mummy genre.

If I understand your question correctly, you are wondering if there are movies in existence about well known monsters that don't make pop culture references to pre-existing properties.

In which case, damn near any horror movie that is not a sequel from the 20s through the 70s would probably qualify.

I don't recall it being hip or even intellectually valid to litter horror movies with "sly" references to previous novel or filmed incarnations of their subject until the 80s. I hate that a lot, actually, because it mistakes laziness for cleverness.

That is if I understood your question.

My favorite example of it actually being clever instead of lazy is from There's Nothing Out There, where the hero, trapped on a kitchen table or a chair or somesuch and menaced by the alien creature, reaches above his head, grabs the boom mike, and swings out the window while the Indiana Jones music plays.

Still lazy for anything other than a one-shot comedy though-more effort would have to go into thinking of a way for the person to flee without doing that. (This may explain why the formal detective story has disappeared from film. Traditionally, it forced one to come up with a solution to a crime without resorting to a paranormal.)

So very true. Now we must have a twist that renders one character a figment of the others subconscious, if not an outright supernatural explanation.

funny, the way I read the topic was cases where we have a monster that's become a part of pop-culture, such as say, vampires. Yet in the movie, the regular people don't know what the monster is-i.e. have no knowledge of what vampires are. As I said, outside of zombies, the practice is limited to period pieces, and even then is a crap shoot. The opposite effect would be cases such as in Fright Night where the central characters know all sorts of facts about vamps.

I'd like to see a movie where the hero empties a 17-round clip into the heads of 17 zombies, and then looks up at the sky and says, "Thank you, Lucio Fulci." That would also work in a mystery/thriller where the hero holds onto a crackpot theory that the culprit is the most nonsensical choice one could think of, only to be right and then look at the screen and give an hearty "thank you" to Dario Argento for inspiring him.

part of this is that if yr going to make a vampire film, for inst, you have every other vampire story as part of the culture, so to make a film where no-one's ever heard of a vampire, it becomes an alternate world by virtue of the fact that no-one knows what a vampire is.

you could avoid the alternate world by creating a new monster, but even then, you still set it in a world where horror films exist. so you still tend to strain yr suspension of disbelief over an alternate world where no horror films exist.

IOW, making a film* where no-one knows the rules from watching horror films is probably way harder than setting in in the real world. & unless yr trying to get post-modern about it, i'm not sure there'd be much point to it.

*edit: about vampires, werewolves, &c~ a 'new' monster dodges the problem in most cases.

Neil Simon kinda sorta did that in Murder By Death where Lionel Twain (Truman Capote) berates the parodies of the mystery/thriller characters for all the red herrings, deus ex machina characters, and other nonsense that makes it impossible for mystery reader fans to guess the culprit.

Look, if someone wants to have the characters reference other stories, books, movies, folk beliefs, etc., and you have those ideas turn out wrong, right, or whatever, fine. Same with the horror movies. But I don't think you "HAVE" to address any of this. Only hardcore movie nerds with too much time on their hands think about these issues, especially if you made a film that stands on its own two feet (i.e. isn't just an "okay" example of X or Y genre). I'm equally happy with Brewster and Vincent discovering what does and doesn't work of the vampire tropes they know as I am with having everyone find out that, yes, vampires really do exist, and only Dr. Van Helsing knows a lot about their "rules". As far as having to reference the "rules" of horror I'm as happy with Scream's playing with them as I am with The Descent's not mentioning them at all, as I am with a film just quietly subverting them without fanfare.

I am backtracking a little on my thinking as far as the lazy stuff go. In some instances, and I think Fright Night is a clear example, paying homage to the past can be both smart and entertaining. One of my favorite moments in Fright Night is having the vampire rise straight upright in his coffin, a clear nod of respect to Murnau's Nosferatu etc. That movie was smart all the way around. Anotherterrific example is the way O'Bannon made Return of the Living Dead using Romero's landmark as a leaping off point.

Other times, though, I see filmmakers steal ideas and plot points to build their movies and then try and pass off their lack of creativity or originality as homage-making.