Nightmare Fuel cleanup and maintenance

Nuke it from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

Yeah, Vampire Reviews is pretty awful and shouldn't exist.

And plus, the first sub-bullet sounds like Natter to me.

I concur, delete that shit.

Kill it.

Cutlisted it.

Hey everybody. Just a quick request - when submitting a cut request, and linking to this thread, can you link to the specific post where the page in question was brought up? That will make it easier to verify the cited consensus.

Will do.

And I said "What about
NIGHTMARE FUEL LASAGNA CAT?"
She said "I know that
SOME EXAMPLES MAY APPLY."
And I said "Well, that
MAY BE TRUTHFUL."

Oh no, I'm reading the "scary" examples!

Now where could my frights be?

Koszmar Paliwo zrujnuje twoje lęki. Opuść jak najszybciej. Twój umysł zostanie połknięty, zwymiotowany i ponownie połknięty. Na zawsze. Chory żart, ale nikt się nie śmieje. Śmierć to nie koniec. Jestem w piekle. To jest piekło.

Cut it.

I also found another page- this one from an action movie parody.

NightmareFuel.Last Action Hero

It seems to be filled with examples that really are not scary.

Edited by MasterN on Sep 12th 2019 at 5:05:49 AM

Lasagna Cat is pretty dark and twisted, but I feel like only Sex Survey Results really count. I say we split up the example into multiple bullets and move it to YMMV.

I've seen Lasagna Cat, and some of them, particularly the later ones, are legitimately scary.

If Lasagna Cat really is scary, we should have no problem finding examples.

Fair. I mostly know it from Night Mind, so Sex Survey Results is all I'm really familiar with.

Personally, I watched most of their stuff before what I remember as a hiatus, where the scariest thing besides the costume was maybe a jumpscare from Garfield turning his head really quickly towards the audience with the music matching the movement. Then again, I saw that in 2009, 2010, somewhere around then.

The "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Bad Romance" parodies I remember being surreal to the point of disturbing, having been shown them since that initial burst.

That one with the baby in the toilet was genuinely nightmarish.

^ That's Sex Survey Results.

Well, it's on the YMMV page for the show.

This was re-added to YMMV.Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, with an edit reason of "I think the climax stuck with most people afterwards", after I previously removed it for not meeting the requirements.

• Nightmare Fuel: The few glimpses we get of Charles Manson and his "Family" are creepy as shit.
  • The second trailer shows a shot of three Manson cultists walking down Cielo Drive at night, knives in hand. It's incredibly unsettling, especially in contrast to the bright and cheerful "peppy Hollywood" mood from the rest of the trailer. Even worse is that Paul Revere and the Raiders' upbeat song "Good Thing" never stops playing over the scene. Trailers Always Lie. That is not how the scene plays out in the film, nor the music that plays during it (in fact, part of this scene is Played for Laughs, where they get yelled at by Rick and one "forgets" her knife, goes back to get it and drives off in their car).
  • Everything involving Spahn Ranch is just off in a very ominous way, even though we never actually see Charlie there. Probably the most unsettling is the way everybody clears out of George's shack as Cliff approaches it, then just stands there in the middle of the "street" sullenly watching him go up the steps. Creepy and ominous, sure, but tension is not Nightmare Fuel. And The Reveal that George Spahn is alive and well (if blind), like Squeaky said, would make it Nightmare Retardant.
  • The cinematography surrounding Squeaky is even more ominous. Until the scene at the shack she never has her face shown onscreen; when it is the camera lingers on her Death Glare, which she never takes off Cliff, while her identity is advertised by a live rat in a glue trap, squeaking futilely. The notoriously scary Screen Gems "S From Hell" logo can also be heard on her TV. Again, tension is not nightmare fuel. The scene also ends with Cliff driving away from the ranch unharmed. And this is the Screen Gems logo; at worst a Jump Scare.
  • So you're an innocent tourist who loves horses and old Hollywood Westerns. What could be more fun and relaxing than a trail ride through an oft-used location — guided by the Manson Family. Truth in Television, incidentally.... Fridge Horror.
  • The gruesome deaths of Tex, Susan and Patricia. Getting mauled by a dog is already horrific enough, but so is having your face smashed in on every nearby surface all across the room—apart from having a can of dog food embedded into your face, getting cut up by shards of glass as you crash through a glass back door, nearly drowning in a pool, and finally getting set ablaze. Couple of problems with this one. First is in-universe horror. Second, bloody and gruesome, sure, but they're also Manson Family cultists out to brutally murder people, so it's hard to feel sorry for them. Third, it's an R-rated Quentin Tarantino film, so this isn't out of the ordinary. Also, for what it's worth, this scene is listed on both Funny.Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and Awesome.Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

NightmareFuel.Castle Crashers:

• The Frost King's death is quite... jarring to say the least. ZCE, not scary.
  • Medusa you fought earlier suffers similar fate. ZCE, not scary.
• When the Necromancer resurrects the Groom Conehead and his Cyclops dad as zombies. Even more-so with the distorted music that plays when fighting them. What's more, the off-key piano chords when the Groom zombie chases you. Just to put the cherry on the cake, the skeletal corpse of the Dragon with the sock-puppet in the Lava world level can be seen in the background of the boss fight against the duo. Their relationship is never stated in-game, but TV Tropes is clinging to the "son" interpretation. This fight is not nightmare-inducing.
• Two words: Giant Troll. To elaborate: Its appearance is really just a Jump Scare, and the nightmare factor goes away quickly.
  • During the level you play, you hear loud footsteps and the ground starts quaking. Then the animals notice something behind you and start literally shitting themselves on the sight of it...spontaneously. It shows that something huge is coming after your blood...
  • The first time you meet it. After you slay Troll Mother, you enter the barn with deer innocently wandering around...and then those footsteps haunt you again...and then a giant black clawed hand crashes into the barn, trying to grab you! After it fails, Giant Troll itself shoves its face into the barn, crashing it, and then this beast starts chasing you as you are forced to escape riding aforementioned deer! And you can't even hurt it!
  • Its appearance. It's a huge, black, hairy monster with long hands, bloodshot eyes with Hellish Pupils and vertical slits, and massive Slasher Smile on its face with blood-soaked teeth. Its fur is also far more detailed than anything other in this game.
  • The kicker? You face this abomination again. Thankfully, you can hurt and finally kill it, but now it can fire Frickin' Laser Beams from its eyes! So that makes it not scary if you can kill it.
• Also, with the boss fight against the Painter, he has painted pictures of the orange princess... only dead with a knife in her back, which suggests the reason the princess turns out to be Tricky the Clown in disguise is that the real princess has already been murdered. FH.

I guess it is up to me then.

NightmareFuel.Last Action Hero

First off, the page image is not scary. It is a shot of two eyes, one of which is red.

• The flashback to the third Jack Slater movie, where the Ripper kills Jack's son. He later tries to do the same to Danny. Might work, but I only watched the Nostalgia Critic episode on the movie, so I cannot day for sure.
• Tom Noonan proves he can be scary outside of film context. Funny, because this example is also given outside context.
• Danny's encounter with the burglar, which later gives Danny and Jack an explanation for the latter's presence to his mom. Another Zero Context Example that does not sound that scary.
• When Danny and Slater enter the real world, they chase Benedict and his valet through New York in stolen cars, ending up in a back alley where they are challenged to a game of chicken. The scene is tense. Danny warns Slater he could die, but Slater drops off Danny and speeds off. However, neither vehicle manages to build much speed (unlike in the movie world). Compared to all the things Slater has survived up to this point, as well as what most action heroes survive, most viewers won't be expecting much of a crash, even if it is the real world. Cue the actual crash at around 40 k/Ph which causes the cars' rears to lift off the ground. It does not help that Slater's taillights go out and one of the car horns goes off. Benedict's valet is anticlimactically killed by the impact. Tense does not equal scary. Cut.
• The sheer horror and disbelief when Jack, in the real world, sees a poster for Jack Slater IV, realizing that Danny was right and he is just a character in a movie. He's later seen raging against the writers and Arnold Schwarzenegger, blaming them for ruining his life. In-Universe Tear Jerker, not scary.
  Jack: "Let us push his son off the building." "You will have eternal nightmares, but you are fictional, so who cares?"
• Benedict's glass eyes and him changing them onscreen; any little kid who went to see the film was probably terrified for years afterwards. Shoehorning based on what kids find scary, or rather what they probably find scary. Also the aforementioned page image. At worst a brief Jump Scare. Cut.
• In the real world, Benedict stumbles across two men snatching the sneakers of a victim they'd just mugged and most likely murdered. As a movie villain with grandiose aims to seize power, it puzzles him to see that real criminals don't always have such lofty goals and are willing to kill over something as trivial as a pair of shoes. What is scary about this? Sad fact of life, but not scary. Cut.
  • Soon after, he tests reality's lack of rules by shooting and killing an innocent man in cold blood, then standing in the street and loudly confessing the crime. All that happens is a distant voice yells for him to shut up. Same as above. Cut.
• Benedict's plan to recruit other movie villains and bring them into the real world where genre conventions wouldn't prevent them from winning, punctuated by him shooting Jack.
  Benedict: [to Jack and Danny] Gentlemen. Since you are about to die anyway, I may as well tell you the entire plot. Think of villains, Jack. You want Dracula? Dra-cool-la? Hang on, [takes out the ticket] I'll fetch him! Dracula? Huh. I can get King Kong! We'll have a nightmare with Freddy Krueger, have a surprise party for Adolf Hitler; Hannibal Lecter can do the catering. And then we'll have a christening for Rosemary's Baby! All I have to do is snap my fingers and they'll be here. They're lining up to get here. And do you know why, Jack? Should I tell you why? Hmm? Because here, in this world, the bad guys can win!

• The Grim Reaper coming out of his movie after the magical ticket falls near a theater that's playing said film. Worse, there's no indication that he went back into his movie (unless the magic ticket does so) after meeting with Danny and providing him with a hint as to how to help a dying Jack. Meaning, for all we know, he's still out there in the "real" world. Then again, death exists in the real world. Fridge Horror. Cut.
• Why is Danny a latchkey kid who keeps running to action movies? We get a few clues. His mother makes a remark about how she didn't plan to be a young widow raising a child alone, so we know his father died and did not divorce or run out on them. He's obsessed, not only with action movies, but with Jack Slater as a man who is always going to win and never going to die. Once back in the real world, Danny goes off on a tear about how this world sucks, because bad guys can win and good guys can lose or die. All of this strongly suggests that Danny's father died in a violent altercation, possibly while trying to prevent a crime. How can Danny trust Jack out in the real world? His first and greatest hero died. May double as a tearjerker. Again, Fridge Horror. Cut.

So yeah, this page is an easy cut right here.

Crap, I posted my Hate Sink Effort Post on the wrong thread. Sorry.

Edited by MasterN on Sep 16th 2019 at 5:44:54 AM

Agree. Chainsaw the whole page. There's nothing worth salvaging.

Edited by maxwellsilver on Sep 17th 2019 at 7:46:43 AM

Wait, which page? The Castle Crashers one or Last Action Hero? Or both?