The Ghostest With the Mostest

In our discussions of the awesomeness of werewolves, people have said "hey Brando, you mention werewolves, zombies and vampires--what, no love for Frankensteins, mummies or ghosts?" I shall address these in turn.

First, mummies are basically zombies covered in toilet paper. Undead, slow moving, yep--zombies basically. And let's face it--much like Nile crocodiles and Moses, you only really have to worry about them if you're in Egypt. And anyone encountering one only has to put a foot on one of their wrappings and watch it unravel, making the now naked mummy very embarrassed.

Frankensteins (yes, I know it's actually Frankenstein's monster, as Frankenstein was the scientist, but I'm assuming the monster took the name as well. It just wouldn't be as scary if we were talking about "Floyd, who happens to be the monster made by Dr. Frankenstein)--well, they had a run most recently in the 1970s, with the blaxsploitation film "Blackenstein" (that monster was one bone-crushing soul brother!) and the lesser-known jewsploitation film "Frankensteinberg" (that mensch had some serious heartburn! Oy vey!), but they haven't caught on in the modern era. This is partly because the monster himself was actually quite sympathetic--a dumb, unthinking beast that just never learned to love. Sort of like Rosie O'Donnell, but where you actually felt bad about trying to kill it with fire.

As for ghosts? Well that's an omission on my part--ghosts are just plain scary, especially in the Japanese horror (or "J-horror" as they call it) era of the last ten years. "The Ring" and "The Grudge" (as well as lesser known retreads) got a whole generation of viewers scared of petite Japanese women! Confession--I had a Japanese-American girlfriend about a year ago (who doesn't read this blog far as I know) who once snuck up on me and I nearly shat myself. Of course, anyone startling me like that could have given me such a reaction, but let's just say if she had crawled out of a television set that would have sent me right to the grave.

As for Japanese ghost-women, seriously what's with the TV set crawling? They never really explained why the ghost used TV as a medium. And to think, the only people safe from such a ghost would have been those intellectual snobs who brag about not having a TV set.