Bad horror films help pass the time – PostBulletin.com

The magazine covered the Western Theatre of War with maps. The "Great War," what we now call World War I, would end in November of that year, but not before it killed an estimated 40 million people and created an ideal climate too produce another conflict.

The National Geographic made no mention of the "Spanish Flu," an outbreak that started in January 1918 and continued through December of the next year, which killed 675,000 Americans and reached one-third of the worlds population.

The publication, beyond 32 pages of color photographs of North American mammals, included advertisements for products that consumers could use to spend their increasing amount of disposable income. Canada Steamship Lines offered cruises from Niagara to the sea, the American Bankers Association advertised its checks and other ads hawked hearing aids, Bossert houses, and Pierce-Arrow automobiles.

The time was, to take an oft-stolen line from Charles Dickens, the best of times, and the worst of times. Most America wanted, as successful presidential candidate Warren G. Harding touted, A return to normalcy.

We seek the same in the current crisis.

In West Concord where residents number less than 1,000 the pace is slow. Partners walk in pairs, high-school boys move past while bouncing basketballs, children ride by on bright bikes.

Sarah calls to ask if I might recommend a horror movie for her son Elliot to watch that is less bloody and terrifying than what hed been watching.

Celluloid monsters should not be so threatening with a real one on the loose.

I suggested Night of the Lepus, a 1972 film that featured giant rampaging rabbits and starred DeForest Kelley of Star Trek fame and Janet Leigh, known as the "Scream Queen" for her horror film roles. The studio distributed rabbit foot-themed promotions to spike interest in the flick, but critics blasted it, because it was, as reviewer Vincent Canby put it, hard to convince the public that rabbits that look like Easter bunnies were killers and the acting was horrible. The movie has since become a cult classic.

Elliots mother called back to say that the movie was so bad that it was good, although Elliot felt bad when the Army killed the last giant rabbit. I who had watched the film at a dusk-to-dawn triple feature at a drive-in theater shared that opinion.

They and I will see each other when things are normal. Meantime, well connect as best we can.

Do you have other movies to recommend? she asked before as our conversation was about to end.

My only recommendation is that she call more often than she does.

Mychal Wilmes is the retired managing editor of Agri News, now known as Agweek, an agriculture-based newspaper published by Forum Communications Co.

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Bad horror films help pass the time - PostBulletin.com