Movin' on with Nellie

Scary movies make us think about fear, fumbling research and family



This week is Oktoberfest at Trinidad State Junior College — Valley Campus. Krystle Cantu has worked with others on campus to make the event enticing for high schoolers visiting the campus this week.

I was thinking of putting on a costume to scare the visiting students and to scare my own students — but I realized they would just laugh. Instead I showed a clip from the 1959 Screamorama movie called The Tingler. It is listed as a Raspberry award for the funniest scary movie.

I am looking forward to the feedback from this class on this movie. The synopsis is about a death row doctor who is researching fear. Vincent Price plays this doctor who discovers a parasite that is called The Tingler. This is a G rated horror movie.

Like all sci-fi movies, there is a message from the director/writer buried in the movie. I’m still trying to find it in this one. Maybe it is “Laughter is the cure for fear.” Or maybe, “Don’t scare yourself otherwise you’ll grow a parasite in your spine.”

In another class, I’m showing clips from the movie: The Devil Doll. I asked my students to find a message. This is also a sci-fi movie about a scientist who escapes prison with a cohort.

Once home he reinstitutes his research on shrinking the living to help compensate for over population, hunger and in today’s terms- Global Warming. First the scientist shrinks several live dogs to the size of one’s hands; by concentrating on the toy-like object, the scientist is able to transfer his brain waves to the animals; they are thus stirred and moving and alive.

Then he reduces his maid. From there the plot thickens with the unexpected death of the scientist. His cohort is a framed man played by Lionel Barrymore — Drew’s great uncle. Barrymore as La Font takes over the business and plots to get back those who framed him.

So the message might well be: Don’t be small-minded or you’ll be reduced in stature.

Or maybe the message is, “All’s small that thinks small.” The Devil Doll movie seems to have influenced the movie “Honey, I shrunk the kids.”

In another class, students voted to see excerpts from The Thaw. The premise of this sci-fi thriller starring Val Kilmer is that a scientist is researching the effects of global warming including arctic thaw.

A discovery of a wooly mammoth brings with it the discovery of a thawing parasite; the fear takes off from there. The movie directed by Howard Hawkes in 1953 called — The Thing — seems to be an inspiration for this movie. The Thing is set in Anchorage — as arctic as one can get in 1953. A spaceship crashes; and a being of some sort is found in the frozen space ship.

The scientists bring the frozen creature into thaw and then the fear begins. It attacks and kills but it is made of all vegetable material. In some respects The Thaw reminds me of the The Blob — another 50’s movie.

Other students wanted to watch Wolverine — which is based on a comic strip about X-Men which began in 1960. One of the messages of this movie seems to be non-violence, and remaking of the French classic: Beauty and the Beast. However, violence is a main character in this movie. Forgiveness also runs through the movie; and the question of what is family comes to mind when the brothers are sparring.

Oktoberfest is about discovering new adventures through education; Halloween is about finding the message in the plethora of sci-fi thrillers of the 50’s-that is, in my opinion.

The messages will amuse the viewer, educate the viewer about the ramifications of unbridled progress, and possibly make the viewer jump out of their seat — as in the screamorama version of The Tingler.

Rent one today. Watch it with your family.