Jeepers creepers, good grief

 

  I woke up with the "jeepers creepers" scene from The Day of the Locust stuck in my head. Not the murder part or the angry mob part - Just Adore's annoying voice antics as he antagonizes Homer Simpson.

Not that Homer Simpson.

The whole movie is unsettling. I'm not going to review it here. Suffice to say, I wasn't supposed to see it when I was a child, but I did. My parents were out of town and the drive-in was playing a double feature. So Colleen the babysitter packed up tons of stuff and I got to watch an R-rated movie I didn't understand.

It's somewhat important to note that this was the same year Jaws came out. And The Omen. And Carrie. I watched them from the back seat as well. I don't remember much from The Omen, but I still think the supposed scary parts of Carrie and Jaws are hilariously bad FX.

It's equally important to note that Colleen wasn't my babysitter by the time 1976 rolled around.

Back to locusts:

I thought Adore was a mean little boy. (Looking back now, he was an asshole.) But, to my young eyes, he was some kid with a pitch-perfect voice that deserved a spanking regardless of how well he sang. I thought he would get one when Homer got up and chased him. 

And then the shrieking started - both Adore's and my own - and Colleen realized I was still awake in the back seat. 

 Stomp, stomp, stomp. 

Never seen the scene? I won't post the link here. Suffice to say, this movie was a drama and not a horror flick. Nobody expected Adore's brutal death. Certainly, Colleen didn't.

Yet it never became nightmare fuel for me. Unlike John Carpenter's The Thing, I couldn't care less about any the characters or their predicaments. They caused their own torment. They chose to stare into the abyss.

As for the song? I actually it. Louis Armstrong's original is just as welcomed as Siouxsie and the Banshees's hat tip to it.