Line #53 Headscratchers/MonsterHouse


1	'''As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
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3	* Why does Constance in the flashback have speech bordering on HulkSpeak? Is she intended to have some sort of psycholocgical trauma perhaps? Maybe she has a mental disability?
4	** There is probably supposed to be an implication that she had an uneducated background--well-educated people don't typically end up being held prisoner in circuses, for one. But Constance wasn't using HulkSpeak during the flashbacks. She was speaking in complete sentences whenever she did talk, aside from the ecstatic 'Yes!!" and "Darling!", which were exclamations and don't constitute HulkSpeak.
5	** If she had some sort of mental disability, it would explain why she was treated as a freak back in the days. It's possible that the circus owner targeted her because of this.
6	*** As said on the character page, Constance speaks with something of a "vaguely European" accent assuming she was a foreigner, maybe English wasn't her first language?
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8	* With all the activity going on, why hasn't anyone - especially the neighbours - noticed the house is... alive? Also, wouldn't people press charges against Nebbercracker for threatening and stealing from their children?
9	** The children are too scared to complain to their parents perhaps?
10	** About the house, the film show that the house does it best trying not to show it's alive while there are adults around. Nebbercracker's actions also contribute to that. And nobody believes the children saying the house is alive because, well, let's be honest, people don't believe that houses are alive and just write it off.
11	** The issue with parents not reporting Nebbercracker stealing from children is an issue inherent in the FunHatingConfiscatingAdult trope itself.
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13	* What did Nebbercracker do after the house was destroyed? He literally has no place to live now. And if you look closely, after DJ and Chowder leave, Nebbercracker is nowhere to be seen. Did he... go somewhere? If so, then where?
14	** Probably...to a hotel? He had to have had some source of money or he'd have starved years before. No doubt he got a hotel room for the night, and then claimed insurance on the house if he had it (likely), made plans to sell the property and then spent the rest of his life doing whatever always wanted to but couldn't while trapped in the house. Occasional postcards mailed to the kids are optional.
15	** Also, who says he didn't have any living relatives? He could go to live with any of them until he can buy a new house. We can assume that he didn't invite them nor visited them for years due fearing that Constance could harm them, but now that she is gone, he can.
16	** He could have also gone to an old peoples home under care.
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18	* When the house uproots itself during the climax, it's clearly shown destroying a few street lamps and fences (including several in the backyards of some houses. Yet, at the end, nobody seemed to have noticed it and people are trick-or-treating as if nothing happened. Also, nobody seemed to question the fact that there is now a giant hole where Nebbercracker's house used to be. And some adults are with the kids that trick-or-treat.
19	** Nebbercracker could probably explain it away as an explosion; for his hurried escape from the hospital and "borrowing" of an ambulance, he can say that he realized the danger that the kids were in and had rushed home to warn them, in case any tried to go inside to retrieve their belongings. He arrived there just in time to stop the kids and then the whole house blew up, its debris landing conveniently in the lake bed, allowing the entire incident to be written off as a massive freak accident. Maybe not the most ''believable'' of stories, but given the entire premise of the movie its still more believable than the actual story.
20	** That would be quite easy to cover up, actually. He could've easily explained that the fireplace in his house burned some of the place down and then the fire got to his explosives. He wouldn't even be lying (technically), either.
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22	* How is it possible that Constance was held in a cage at the circus where she worked? I know circus freaks are constantly mocked and mistreated, but as far I know, they have their own tents or wagons if they work for a traveling circus. Forcing Constance to sleep there is denigrating and must be a violation of human rights, so why wasn't the circus manager arrested for that?
23	** He would have only gotten arrested if he got caught. Considering circuses by nature move from place to place, and the old-timey look of the photos and flashbacks imply this is a time period when such things slipped through the cracks a lot more often, it's possible he just got away with it because no one cared enough to report what was going on and the authorities didn't catch it in time when someone did. It's also possible Constance was tricked into signing a contract where she would have to be okay with being locked up.
24	** Could be that she normally ''did'' live in a cabin trailer, same as the other circus performers, and only occupied her "Giantess" cage when she was putting on her ferocious act for the crowds. But when she encountered an especially hostile, bullying audience, her facade cracked and she slumped down into depression, inert. The other circus members - no doubt aware she had a ''nasty'' temper - shut her up in her display-cage to give her time to settle down, rather than risk her going after the audience. She accepted Nebbercracker's proposition because she didn't want to put up with hecklers anymore, and he drove her away in the "Giantess" cage because she was too big to fit in his truck's passenger seat.
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26	* Shouldn't Nebbercracker have been arrested for stealing both the cage where Constance was held at the circus and the ambulance? I get that 1) He stole it to free Constance from the circus and 2) He stole it to return to the house and preclude her from devouring any children on Halloween, but both the cage and the ambulance were still property of both the circus and the hospital. Shouldn't the circus and the hospital have pressed charges against him?
27	** The circus probably wouldn't want the authorities to know that they were literally keeping a human being in a cage, so they'd have cut their losses and let Nebbercracker go. As for the ambulance, he's a harmless old man and it's unlikely that anyone would want to punish him that severely when no harm was done.
28	*** Doing the math (inasmuch as could be done [[note]] Nebbercracker says he's been trapped for 45 years and the movie supposedly takes place in the 1980s[[/note]]), Constance appears to have been a circus freak some time in the 1930s or 1940s as her clothing style would suggest, so, her going with Nebbercracker would mean that, essentially, she left on her own terms, as some of those sideshows weren't completely involuntary.
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30	* Why Nebbercracker and Constance even kept the cage where Constance was held at the circus? That cage was a reminder of Constance's unhappy life at the circus, so it doesn't seem that Constance wanted to keep it as a memento.
31	** Possibly it was a memento of her ''happy'' experience of being rescued by Nebbercracker?
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33	* What annoys me in the flashback sequence in which it's shown how Constance died, is that Constance is understandably angry that two kids are throwing rocks at their house. Maybe saying that they are hurting her at this point (before throwing three eggs at her) is exaggeration, but what they are doing is wrong. However, Nebbercracker just dismisses their actions by saying that they are just kids and it's Halloween. How is it okay for kids to throw rocks at houses? It's vandalism. Even if they hadn't still harassed Constance by throwing eggs at her, those rocks could have hurt her too! Was Nebbercracker so soft that he was actually okay with the kids throwing rocks at his house, unlike his wife?
34	** Nebbercracker really is that much of a softie. He looked at a growling woman in a freak show and felt hopelessly in love at first sight. He spent decades being married to a cannibalistic supernatural abomination and thanklessly protecting the neighborhood children, and showed little bitterness over everyone continuously making his life harder. He's just that much of a rose-coloring, gentle guy.
35	** Nebbercracker wasn't saying they were just kids because he was okay with them throwing eggs at Constance, he was saying it because he wanted to help her understand that even if what they were doing was upsetting, they didn't mean her real harm (they were just pranking them according to Halloween tradition via egging a house.) He could deal with the kids in a second, but he wanted to calm down his wife first as she was already talking about "tearing them to bits" over a couple of eggs. It's just that she flew off the handle again before he could do anything more.
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37	* Regarding the kids of the flashback sequence, why they threw three eggs at Constance if they had already seen that she didn't like what they were doing? What if perhaps Nebbercracker didn't approve that and joined his wife in chasing them off the property? Those kids didn't know if they maybe were a crazy couple who liked to beat up kids who annoyed them too much...
38	** Kids pick on people. That's what they do. The whole point of egging a house is to get on people's nerves. And kids don't think about the possibility that the adults they're picking on would beat them up for it because normal adults don't do that, since it's both taboo and ''extremely illegal''.
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40	* How did Skull manage to play in the game zone four days straight with one quarter, a gallon of chocolate milk and an adult diaper without anyone of the arcade asking him to leave? As far we know, arcades are like many businesses and these businesses must have a closing hour...
41	** There are such things as 24-hour businesses. If it's a very popular arcade for adults and children, it could indeed stay open past normal business closing hours.
42	** The fact that DJ knew about Skull's accomplishment suggests that Skull's marathon game-session may have been set up as a promotional gimmick by the arcade's operators.
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44	* Why does Chowder reunite with DJ at the construction site before they discover that the house is alive? I always got the impression that his father worked for a construction company, but according to Chowder, his father owns a pharmacy and his mother is an actress, so why does he go to the construction site and why does he have the keys of an excavator?
45	** Didn’t DJ and Chowder mention meeting up there? I always assumed it was their regular hangout before and after the construction began. As for the keys, that’s shown in the movie itself; the construction workers left the keys inside the excavator itself, as Chowder points out.
46	** Could be that Chowder has another relative who works there, like an uncle or an older sibling.
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48	* Regarding to the above question, shouldn't DJ, Jenny and Chowder get in trouble at the end for causing a massive explosion at the site and causing the loss of an excavator? Not only was that piece of machinery expensive and the zone may have been damaged, but it should be noted that the construction site was scheduled to house a skyscraper, a project which will likely get delayed or cancelled for using the construction site to destroy Constance, which means that a lot of money was for naught...
49	** Can anyone ''prove'' that DJ, Jenny and Chowder are at fault for this explosion in any legally culpable way?
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51	* Did DJ's parents ever discover that Zee mistreated him? Mrs. Walters should realize that something is wrong as one of her vases wasn't broken when she and her husband left, but was broken once they returned. Shouldn't DJ have told them that Zee broke it?
52	** From what's implied, Zee is like [[WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents Vicky]] and we all know Vicky lies all the time. Why DJ probably doesn't tell his parents is probably because he doesn't want to get someone worse.
53	** Zee knows full-well that she can get in trouble for what she's doing. She's just betting on DJ being ignorant enough to not tell his parents on her.
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55	* Why did DJ need to light the dynamite fuse if he was throwing it directly into an active furnace?
56	** Just for good measure, I guess.
57	** [[WhatCouldHaveBeen Chowder actually lampshaded this in the film's original script]].
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59	* When the house fills itself with water to vomit after Jenny messes with Constance's uvula, why doesn't the fire get extinguished? All that "vomit" filled all of the first floor.
60	** Presumably, like a real human body has the epiglottis to seal off the windpipe when eating, Constance's house body has something that shifts in the house, like the door to the furnace room or fireplace shuts tight when she has to throw up, or something to that effect.
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62	* When Nebbercracker arrives back at his house, Constance growls at him for trying to take a dynamite stick. How was Nebbercracker going to kill Constance in that position? Skull said that to destroy the house, they needed to destroy the heart, but from that position, Nebbercracker could have only thrown the dynamite stick into the house's mouth, which of course would not have destroyed it.
63	** Possibly his intention was to damage the mouth and the house enough with the first stick of dynamite, then finish it by going inside. That, or he hoped that that would light the house on fire enough to blow up any dynamite inside and destroy the house that way. Either way, Nebbercracker seemed to have been going for a less direct, but also less risky way of destroying the house with dynamite than what DJ ended up doing, since it would've been easy for him to miss the throw into the chimney, but either approach could work, just as long as the house was destroyed enough to compromise the furnace. That, or on a third possibility, Nebbercracker was trying/hoping to talk Constance into letting him blow her up, so either she would put the dynamite inside herself, or let him walk in with it.
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65	* Let's just say that if you're going to throw dynamite into a fireplace, you needn't worry about lighting the fuse first.
66	** First, you could counter-argue that with the supernatural being involved, it's better to be safe than sorry. But even if you agree that it was a dumb move, perhaps DJ as a kid might not have known better. More importantly, at that time he was busy [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever surviving against the house]] so in the heat of action such a mistake is more understandable.
67	** The Monster House demonstrates that it can control ''all'' parts of itself, including its floorboards and clearly knows what dynamite is based on how it reacted to Nebbercracker bringing out a bundle. It's entirely possible it could have used its interior to get the dynamite out the fireplace before it went off, so having it pre-ignited was the best way to get it to reliably go off. Possibility not, considering the intense heat of the fire, but as mentioned above, better safe than sorry.

Context Headscratchers / MonsterHouse