If some cosmic entity trapped you
in a nightmarish h*llscape where you had to survive twenty six brutal death
scenarios or die trying, what would you do?
Unless you’re Stephen King and erupted from the
pupated sac of a bog witch in the bowels of some fetid, putrefied lower rung of h*ll, you had to
discover your love for horror like the rest of us mere mortals—by realizing all that wholesome,
earnest content out there was missing something. A touch of unbridled chaos, perhaps.
The Greats working in horror today ALSO had to start somewhere. Usually with a
no-budget, bite sized nugget of terror, a short film intended to show off just
how sharp and wicked their mind could be.
Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, but
WE don’t have that luxury. If we want to escape this marathon of violent delights, we’re going to
need think like a horror director, accelerate our reaction times, and probably kill a few people.
We’re going to keep a tally too – let’s see which deaths are escapable and which are not.
I’m going to break down the mistakes made, what you should do, and how to beat
HORROR ITSELF in THE ABCS OF DEATH.
A IS FOR APOCALYPSE
Somewhere in Spain, a bed-ridden husband is dry-swallowing the world’s worst breakfast
in bed—a single stale bread roll—when his wife enters wielding a kitchen knife. She hesitates
for half a second before announcing her attack and…well…attacking. The husband puts up a decent
fight for someone without the use of their legs, pushing and shoving her away, until she slices
through his hand, almost cutting it in half, and slowly plunges the knife into his neck.
Then, she retreats from the room and returns with a sizzling frying pan full of oil, which
she dumps on his face before delivering half a dozen cast-iron blows to the top of his head.
Suddenly, sounds of utter chaos and destruction filter in through the windows. She sits
down beside him and explains that she’s been poisoning him for months hoping she’d avoid
murder charges that way, but the sudden arrival of the apocalypse has forced her to speed up her
plans. As a rocket barrels toward their apartment, they share their last few seconds together.
How sweet…I mean stupid. What defeatist attitude is this? At least go die in the streets
with the other headless chickens. Just fyi, the apocalypse ain’t over until we’re
wearing our enemy’s skull as a hardhat.
More immediately, however, we’re handling
this marital squabble from both sides. This World’s Worst Wife is a moron. If
you know it’s the end of the world, be the stone cold beeotch you already are and
just leave him to die. Get to shelter, you idiot.
But if you really have your icy heart set on
killing him first, DON’T announce your goddang attack. Do you know how easy it would’ve been to
just point at something in the corner and slide that knife into his neck while he wasn’t looking?
And you, the guy who was probably too proud to go to a doctor to find out why you’ve been
sick for months…you showed some solid defensive maneuvering, at first, but you
didn’t even reach for the table lamp or phone RIGHT BESIDE YOU. Whip your blanket off
and toss it over her when you shove her away, then deliver repeated blows to her head before
she can recover. Don’t go down like a chump.
This initial attack is totally survivable
and frankly only a few apocalypses are truly inescapable, so I’m marking this down as a win.
B IS FOR BIGFOOT
In Mexico, these two are going to town on each
other when they remember they’re babysitting a kid who doesn’t want to go to sleep at eight o’clock.
So he and his girlfriend improvise a cryptid origin story for the Abominable Snowman…even
though they live in Mexico City, which is located about three feet away from Satan’s ball sack.
They warn the girl that this part of the city once suffered a catastrophic 40-day-long snowstorm,
during which the Snowman feasted on the hearts of dozens of children. Mexico waged an unsuccessful
war against the Snowman, ending in a truce which says he’s allowed to eat any kid that isn’t
in bed, under the covers, by eight o’clock.
The girl beds down…just as there’s an ominous
knock on the door. It’s the garbage man, who rips the guy apart when he opens the door,
before slicing out the woman’s still-beating heart with…a rusted pizza cutter.
The little girl hides under the covers just like she was told to…the killer lets
her live and wanders off into the night.
Yeah. Not all of these are going to be winners.
How about we just say the obvious – if someone comes to your house at an unreasonable hour,
don’t open the door. Force them to reveal their intentions—if they want in, they’ll have to
break the door down, giving us time to stack and wedge items against the door so it can only
open enough for them to reach in with a hand…when they do, hack it off with a meat cleaver.
C IS FOR CYCLE
In Chile, we meet Bruno, the anti-Sherlock
Holmes, who discovers a puddle of blood and actual brain matter in his back garden and
just…forgets about it. In the middle of the night, his pregnant girlfriend Alice sends
him to investigate the sound of someone entering their home…and half-arses that too.
The next day, he finds a dark void has taken up residence in the corner of the back yard, and
like the great thinker he is, he just shoves his head right into it, and gets dragged away.
He wakes after dark and enters the house to find he’s traveled back in time to the night
before. He finds his useless past-self asleep in bed and hides in the apartment as
Alice tells past-him to go investigate.
The next day, he watches past-him approach
the void and disappear inside. He steps out to investigate and gets ambushed from
behind by another version of himself, who wraps a garden hose apparently made
from guillotine blades around his neck.
Anyway, he hoists the body to the void and hurls
it in, taking advantage of that cosmic garbage disposal while it’s still in their backyard.
Great, now how about you board up the universe’s naughty hole so it can’t
regurgitate your next replacement…
Fighting your doppelganger is a mindfeck
in more ways than one. To win this fight, you have to outthink yourself—a seemingly
impossible task. But it really isn’t. Ask yourself what the last thing you’d do in this situation
is. Then step it back—what’s the second last thing you’d do. Do that. Put on a disguise to prevent
ambushes—a hat and shades should do. And fall back to a third location where you can regroup
and return once you understand what’s going on.
If you find yourself already at your own mercy,
think about your own weaknesses and use them against yourself. He’s got us on our back pressed
against him. Pull to the side and elbow him in the gut or groin, then turn and dribble his head
against the ground until it pops. Then go put on that disguise so this won’t happen again.
D IS FOR DOGFIGHT
In the United States, the world’s worst
people—including a dirty toddler to complete the aesthetic—gather for a fight to the death
between a man…and a fricken yellow labrador. Yeah, that’s right – the most professionally
shot short here forces us to sit through John Wick’s worst nightmare. And I am owed
damages for even having to think about this.
The fight is a no-holds barred punch and bite
fest, with the dog taking him to the ground almost immediately, latching on his arm…then his
leg. The irony is that this gritty gruesome fight in real life would end right here with this
dog ripping out this guy’s femoral artery and leaving him to bleed to death.
The fighter takes a chunk out of the dog’s head instead…
…then narrowly keeps the dog back as he lunges again and again. The fighter
regains his feet and punches several times, but it barely phases the pooch. The dog quickly slams
him back onto the ground and goes for the throat.
In a fight to the death with a dog, even the
experts tell you to use literally anything at your disposal – a rock, stick, backpack—to hit it
across the face to stun it so you can run away.
REMAIN ON YOUR FEET, whatever happens, and aim
for its most vital areas. If it leaps for you, kick it square in its chest if you’re able. And
if it latches onto you DO NOT pull the body part away. It will only tear you a literal new one.
While it’s attached, use your thumbs to attack its eyes, strike its throat or choke it, or
grab it tightly by the scruff of the neck in an attempt to trigger its carry response. And
of course use a gun or knife if you have one.
Just when it looks like the fight is over, the
fighter says a single word – Buddy – and the dog releases his throat. We see the fighter’s
wearing a dog tag that says “Buddy, if found please call the Los Angeles Men’s Shelter”. Turns
out this dog – the FIGHTER’S dog – was stolen from him and he’s been looking for him ever since.
The tide of the fight shifts, and dog and man turn on his handler, killing him in a brutal
onslaught of bitten eyes and smashed skulls.
At least this one has a happy ending.
BUT…because I love to be THAT guy…
If this dog is ours, we’re using our secret
cheat code the second the fight begins. I don’t need to take a bite to the arm, leg, and
neck before exacting bloody revenge against my dog’s captor. Because, as I mentioned,
in a real fight, this dog ain’t nibbling our skin. He’s tearing out chunks of flesh.
Also, this is way too many witnesses for this. We’re taking this guy out behind a dive bar in the
middle of nowhere and burying him in the desert where no one will ever find him.
E IS FOR EXTERMINATE
In this one, a guy loses a fight with
a spider. That’s…that’s the short. He tries to kill a black and red spider, misses,
and gets a bite on the neck for his effort. Since this North American spider is basically
harmless, he walks away with an itchy zit.
Oh, did I say harmless? I meant when you
don’t trigger its revenge response. This eight-legged freak takes the fight to
its enemy, crawling on him while he’s sleeping and biting him repeatedly.
The next day, the man finally corners his tiny prey in the bathroom and crushes
it, flushing it down the toilet. He won the battle…but he’s lost the war. He suddenly writhes
in pain…as thousands of spider babies erupt from his ear to finish what their mother started.
That’s definitely somebody’s nightmare. My advice, buy a spider trap or a cat and leave
your bug-eating spider-bro alone.
F IS FOR FART
We move on from someone’s nightmare to the burgeoning exploration of someone’s
stinky fantasy. A Japanese school girl on a fieldtrip farts, embarrassing herself in from
of Miss Yumi, the teacher she has a crush on.
The ground suddenly begins to tremble, and a
black gas emerges, killing anyone in its path. The schoolgirl and Miss Yumi run to a nearby gymnasium
where the girl admits that if she’s going to die, she wants to die smelling Miss Yumi’s farts.
To her surprise, Miss Yumi’s into that shit.
She crop-dusts her student with mustard gas,
killing and absorbing her into her butthole, where they journey into the
cosmos together, stinky and free.
This is my job, folks. You’re welcome. My
advice here? Uh…do the RIGHT kind of drugs.
G IS FOR GRAVITY
As all tonally jarring movies must, we transition from booty
heaven to the heaviest shit imaginable.
A guy unalives himself by loading up
a bag full of bricks, surfing into ten feet of water, and drowning himself.
And I thought the spider short was a write-in. If you or someone you know needs
help, check out my link in the description below for hotlines to call in your country. Also,
drowning hurts—don’t ask me how I know that.
H IS FOR HYDRO-ELECTRIC DIFFUSION
More like H is for Why is the internet so HORNY?! Seriously, someone dug around in
the bottom of their kink closet for this.
A British war dog is sitting in a
bar when a s*xy fox lures him to the stage with her feminine wiles and furry tatas.
Suddenly, a small box rolls across the stage as she reveals she’s working for Hitler and crushes
his doggy balls up through his body out through his throat, wraps them around an electrocution
machine and opens a water pit, sending bear traps on wheels to push him into the spikes below.
Suddenly, he hears the words of Winston Churchill telling him to never surrender and he leaps into
action, riding the bear traps to punch her into the machine before sending her sailing into
the water where the fur melts off her body.
Maybe I don’t understand art. Moral of the
story—if the call girl seems too into you, she probably has ulterior motives. Use your big head.
I IS FOR INGROWN
Annnnd it’s back to the depressing shit.
In Mexico, a cruel, selfish husband has his wife bound and gagged in their bathtub. He
lurches toward her and injects her with motor oil, which causes her to vomit and claw
at herself violently until she dies.
This one’s quick, brutal, and ultimately
pointless for the sake of being artistic.
Motor oil is poison to the human body. If it’s
ingested, it can cause diarrhea and vomiting, and death if some of it is aspirated into the lungs.
If it’s injected, however, it can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and blood poisoning.
That’s all to say…we’re getting out of this toxic relationship BEFORE it gets this far. Call
a friend. Or family. Or a women’s shelter. Better yet, leave the house, contact a lawyer through
your national domestic violence non-profits, and have them serve him so you never have to be
alone with him again. If that isn’t an option, walk to a train station and never come
back. Start a gmail account for free, set up a social profile so you can contact
people you trust without alerting your spouse, and find someone willing to take you in.
If we find ourselves at our spouse’s mercy like this, use the time while he’s away to even your
odds. We’re only partially tied up here. Remove the looser restraint, then the others. Before he
returns, unscrew the lotion bottles and prepare to douse him in the eyes with them. Turn on the
water and aim it at the floor outside the tub. When he arrives, blind him, then shove him back.
Reach for the toilet tank lid and obliterate him.
And if he kills you…I say turn into a poltergeist
and drive him insane. This doesn’t end with our death; it ends with him straightjacketed in a
padded cell, unable to escape our righteous fury.
She’s…she’s dead from the start, though.
J IS FOR JIDAI-GEKI
And just like that, we swing wide again to
something bloodier but more lighthearted.
In Japan, an executioner prepares to take the life
of a kneeling man, but he can’t do it. His mind spirals, trapping him in wild hallucinations.
Until we pull back and discover, the kneeling man is already dying, halfway
through committing seppuku.
The executioner finally mans up and lops
off the guy’s head, laughing at the head’s strange expression.
Bro, you just need a new job and you’ll be all good.
K IS FOR KLUTZ
We’re treated to another fever dream as
a Danish woman takes a dump at a party, only to discover she’s delivered
Mr. Hankey’s more agile cousin.
No matter what she does—flushing the piece of
crap, capturing it in her bra—she can’t seem to get rid of the thing. Until it ultimately
reveals its true desire is to swan dive back into the hole from whence it came, impaling her
body from the inside out before emerging from her dead mouth as blood pools around them both.
D*mned parasite didn’t realize it can’t live without its host. Anyway—if you drop a deuce at
a party and it won’t go down, remember the tried and true solution. Scoop it out with paper,
or a trash can, and lob the whole thing out the window. Not only will it save you from this
gruesome death, it’ll also baffle your enemies, which is a win-win!
L IS FOR LIBIDO
Annnd we’re back to raiding
someone’s internet search history.
In Indonesia, two men awaken strapped to
chairs, surrounded by a party of masked perverts. A naked woman appears before them
and one of them begins to shake. The second realizes what the game is just in time—they
have to masturbate furiously to completion for their viewing audience. The loser…well…
The winner is forced into another round…and another…and another, watching competitor after
competitor die by impaling by his side…until finally they wheel out an amputee who begins
to…pleasure herself with her own prosthetic.
Exhausted near to death, our winner
loses his mind, discovering an eye in the undercarriage of his abductor that
keeps him alive through one more round.
Unfortunately, his secret weapon is
accidentally impaled when the mechanism breaks.
In the end, our winner loses his streak when a
child is brought out to be used and he vomits in disgust. He meets his end underneath a
party guest who uses him as a riding post while chain sawing him to pieces.
Yeah…I know we don’t kink shame around here…but maybe just this once.
This is probably inescapable without more information—how many guards, how many
guests, how many exits, etc—but if you’re going to die anyway, try fighting first.
The first thing we’re doing is saving our reserves. Use both hands to do the deed, then keep
a little white sticky stuff in one hand after your first major blow. This is your emergency reserve
in case they throw something nasty your way.
It also gives you time to figure out
if the buckles on your straps are reachable from your position.
Then, read the room. This is a twisted s*x party. Try seducing someone. I’m
serious. Point at a masked woman and get her all hot and bothered. They might release you
to have s*x with her, at which point you can attempt an escape or take a hostage.
Unless you wanna die by snu-snu. Once you’re too exhausted like this shmuck you’re
literally and figuratively screwed. Yeah, this one’s probably inescapable.
M IS FOR MISCARRIAGE
Yes, this title gives everything away…and
we’re not going to dwell on this one. A woman’s toilet clogs, she runs down to grab
a plunger, and returns to reveal that she’s trying to flush a dead fetus down the drain.
Considering the times in which we’re living, I’m not gonna judge. I’ll just say maybe—maybe—a
trash can fire or a grave covered in lye is the better option here.
Moving on.
N IS FOR NUPTIALS
This one’s a shorty too. A man brings a talking parrot home to meet his
girlfriend and uses it to propose to her. She’s thrilled…until the bird begins to repeat all
the things he’s said to…his other girlfriend. Turns out this bird-bro is the opposite of
a wing-man…and this chick has heard enough.
Super survivable, guys. Not just because we’re
not dumb enough to pull this shit…but also ladies remember…he’s not worth the felony charges. You
really wanna go to jail for this walking thumb? I don’t think so.
O IS FOR ORGASM
This is another one of those “spoiled in
the title” shorts. Two people trapped in the torture dimension from Event Horizon have s*x,
burying cigarettes into each other’s stomachs and removing the literal eyes from their body to
shove up their cooters. Talk about first-person perspective. Finally as they climax, the
dude chokes her to death with his belt.
Since this one’s easy to beat, I’m just
gonna turn this into a s*x education PSA. Autoerotic asphyxiation has a mortality rate
of 250-1000 deaths per year in the United States, and if it’s that many in our repressed
country, just imagine globally. Some are from actual human error, but many of these deaths are
from straight-up equipment malfunction, so…check your toys and safety releases next time.
P IS FOR PRESSURE
The United Kingdom brings us a downer, as a
single mother and street walker desperate to take care of her children ups her rotation of
paying johns, only to lose all the money she’s saved to her deadbeat baby daddy, who steals the
cash right in front of his hungry, scared kids.
Now completely out of money, she’s
forced to accept a job working for a real sicko – a man who pays her to crush
a kitten to death with her stiletto.
WHAT. THE. FREAK. Where’s John Wick’s
cat-crusading sister when you need her?
Time to take that money he just gave you, head to
your local drug dealer for some night night pills, dose your baby daddy and sell his organs on
the black market for some REAL cash. Then come back here and cut off this guy’s
arms and legs and leave him to bleed out while kittens drink his blood.
What starts with animals today will escalate to kids OR your work colleagues
tomorrow. Seriously, screw that guy.
This is definitely survivable for us, but
I’d be plotting a quadruple kidney donation after the fact.
Q IS FOR QUACK
We’re going meta with this one. The short’s
directors are angry they were assigned the letter Q and decide to help their short stand out
by killing an animal related to that letter – a duck. Do you get it – because it quacks.
You guys…”quail” was RIGHT THERE and vice presidents shoot those for sport every day.
They drive a caged duck into the desert…but neither wants or knows how to work a gun, and
in the process of trying to kill their prey, they shoot each other instead, winning
their first and only Darwin awards.
The sound guy runs away into the
desert as the duck is left to die a far worse death from dehydration.
You nerds have been with me long enough, I shouldn’t have to tell you not to jerk around
with guns. I will spank every single one of your arsses if I have to tell you again.
rvivable / 2 unsurvivable – so survivable it’s sinful.
R IS FOR REMOVED
This one is from Serbia, so gird your loins
now. An imprisoned patient is forced to undergo excruciating skin removal operations because the
skin can produce full-length rolls of 35 mm film.
He’s also paraded around in an actual cage
to be worshiped and manhandled by fans…
…until he finally has enough and strangles
his doctor, snapping his neck with a length of his own chain, processes a piece of
his own skin to make a single bullet, steals one of the guard’s guns, and escapes,
tearing through all of his captors.
Save one – his nurse. A rookie move – we’re not
leaving ANYONE here alive. Why? Because we need time to recover before finding our way to safety.
With these parasites dead, we can use the surgical supplies to patch ourselves up, then steal one
of their cars, and drive ourselves to safety, rested and ready for our next fight.
Instead, this guy wanders out to a train, shoves it about ten feet and dies
from overexertion in a ditch.
I’m not saying I’d WANT to survive horribly
mutilated, but it’s definitely possible if all these a-holes die first.
S IS FOR SPEED
Somewhere in the desert, a woman takes another
woman hostage and runs from a hooded mutant, landing several solid shots with a revolver that
barely faze him before setting him on fire with a flamethrower…which also barely fazes him.
She speeds off with her human cargo and outruns the mutant for a while before she runs out of
gas, and the hooded figure—Death himself—comes to collect her, congratulating her for running
as far as she did. She begs for more time, but he won’t give it. She takes his
hand and we cut to a drug den where she’s seizing on the floor from an overdose.
Her idiot friend notices her OD and steals her bad powder for herself, dying the same way.
Almost 100,000 people die from ODs in the US annually. You and I would survive this because
we aim for a…higher form of entertainment…but they were both dead almost from the start, so I’m
declaring this one unsurvivable. Death does indeed come for us all.
T IS FOR TOILET
In England, a kid with a crippling eye
defect, where they bulge from his skull, is forced to face his fears when his parents
throw away his potty training toilet to force him to use a real one. There’s just one problem
– their toilet is a blood-thirsty mimic.
At least in his nightmares.
When he finally can’t wait any longer, he overcomes his fears…but tragically
falls, getting trapped in the seat, where his father finds him and ridicules
him for the accident, right before they both learn that sometimes fears are warnings.
Remember, humans have been crapping outside for thousands of years. Trust your instincts
and handle your business in the woods.
U IS FOR UNEARTHED
In the dead of night, we’re awoken from our deadly slumbers by grave robbers
and their priest, who have come to kiss our vampire arss goodbye. We pummel two of them and
shove the priest away, sprinting into the dark, where we discover a random, unprepared woman—the
perfect midnight snack to recharge our batteries.
We run a few dozen yards away as the search
intensifies for us, avoiding the flames of their flares and narrowly dodging flaming
arrows until one spears our arm and we’re finally taken down. A local lad pulls out our
fangs with a pair of pliers, a priest stakes us, and a nerdy firefighter lops off our head.
Tragic mistakes were made. As vampires, we ARE the night, carved from the darkness itself.
We’re too powerful and prepared to be destroyed by a handful of Edgar Wright’s extras.
To start, we’re luring them all in different directions by moving stealthily
around the perimeter of their search area, calling out and moving on. We’ll pick off the
first, then don their clothing as a disguise, then use their weapons to finish off the rest
from within, draining as much blood as we can for added strength and stealth. Once they’re
dead, we’ll wait for their families to come looking…and pick them off as well to send the
right message – don’t start none, won’t be none.
V IS FOR VAGITUS
In 2035, the world has been reduced to rubble by a biological apocalypse. Not
only has pregnancy been outlawed unless permitted, cops now hunt people called mentals—humans
who have developed telekinetic powers.
As a cop and her robo-partner gun down a hidden
group of rebel mentals, a baby is decapitated, providing the future’s Dr.Mengele with fresh
brain matter to siphon off and consume.
But…the baby turns out to be the most
powerful mental of them all, tackling and killing adults with its headless body…
And exploding brains with its body-less head.
It’s…a lot. Also, leave it to humanity to fail
at life with robotics AND superpowers at their disposal. Unsurvivable is an understatement—with
half-cocked, trigger happy idiots like this, death would be a blessing.
W IS FOR WTF!
This one is so full of random bullshit, you guys,
that it not only lost the plot…it barely had one to begin with. To survive this one, we just
have to avoid the drugs these people took.
Or take ‘em…I’m not your parole officer.
X IS FOR XXL
In Paris, a plus sized woman minding her own
business is harassed literally every step of the way home, where she proceeds to eat her
feelings…in the grossest way possible. Still, nothing a good therapist won’t fix…
…until, tormented by an obnoxious weight loss infomercial, she takes a kitchen knife to her
stomach fat, hacking away at herself like she’s auditioning for the Requiem for a Dream sequel.
She gets in the shower and hacks herself to pieces with an electric handsaw until she’s
finally the shape society wants her to be.
This whole short is begging to be an earbud ad…and
that’s the immediate solution here. Crank up those tunes, block those f*ckers out, and get to a
therapist ASAP. Survival is absolutely possible without resorting to these drastic measures.
Yeah no, but she’s toast…well, not TOAST, because carbs, but…you get me.
Y IS FOR YOUNGBUCK
At a Canadian middle school, a kid and his
creepy dad kill a deer in the hours before school begins. I cannot stress to you how
creepy this man is. I can only show you.
The creepy dad works as a janitor at the
school where he likes to watch boys sweat on the gym bleachers. This time,
though, there’s someone watching.
Doesn’t stop the world’s grossest dude from
heading in after the kids have gone to slurp up all the boy juice they left behind.
The buck is watching…but he turns out to be the man’s own son, so traumatized by
all the horrors his father has shown him that he ends his torment once and for all…and
scores a three-pointer while he’s at it.
Let’s add another W-T-F to our list and
call this one a draw. We’re surviving this and so is the kid, so that’s a win.
Z IS FOR ZETSUMETSU (EXTINCTION)
We finish our foray into the weirdest shit
imaginable with another nearly-entirely nude acid trip. And this time, it’s almost coherent.
In a bit of revisionist history, radioactivity from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
spread across Japan, dosing everyone with radiation, changing their DNA and mutating many.
Some are killed for entertainment…
…Others die during run-ins with monsters.
And some use their ginormous X-men wolverine penises to skewer naked maidens before
their members are chopped off to make soup for rocket men to enjoy.
Which ultimately inspires the most Japanese man alive to walk again.
And that rounds out our survivable insanity, bringing our final tally to:
22 survivable / 4 unsurvivable
For so many reasons, I think
the ABCS OF DEATH were Beaten.
I had to watch these with my own
eyes. Somebody grab me some bleach.
