Making Movies: Making Love: The Same Thing

If you made love right, you feel satisfied. If moviemakers make a horror movie right, we should be satisfied after the climax and not still wanting.

So, my advice to moviemakers is learn from lovemaking lessons 101:

Lovemakers: Do not play a woman's most tender parts like you're digging for loose change in the sofa cushions. You must treat her most gentle folds as if the slightest ridges of your fingerprints can strum songs upon them.

Moviemakers: If you throw too much nonstop in-your-face action at us, we become numb like the female parts when played too hard. You want to stroke viewers gently with tension and teasing, just keeping that elusive thing from reach. Was there anything more tense than Eleanor curled up on the bed listening to the ghost in the hallway in "The Haunting?" Was there anything more numbing than "Saw"?

Lesson: Stroke gently, make us beg for more and THEN give it to us.

Lovemakers: Set the mood, the ambiance. It needs to look like the kind of place women want to make love in; soft music, wine, candlelight (or for some of us edgier gals, perhaps a nice dark cemetery or with mannequins standing around watching. Oh hell, you get the idea. I'm not giving away all my secrets)...

Moviemakers: "Scream 2" A college campus. Could there be a less horror movie location? It'd be like doing a slasher in a grocery store. No! No! No! Icy cliffs in the Pacific Northwest. An abandoned cabin in the woods. A long dark alley. Come on, what sets the mood for us to be uneasy just looking at it and imaging being there???

Lesson: Show us what we're in for this evening, set the mood, say it with lighting, music and atmosphere. We will get the message before there is even a plot laid out.

Lovemakers: Don't assume you know us or what we want. One night, we're fine with the face to face cuddle and another night, we might want a nice little smack on the butt. Hey, don't expect to give or get the same lovemaking each time and that unsettling feeling will keep us excited and not asleep at the wheel. You don't want us to think we know your routine until we could sleep through it.

Moviemakers: Could a horror movie be more routine than "Friday the 13th"? We got one twist with the first movie and henceforth it was Jason and one smart female. Everyone we meet earlier, they will all be dead (yawn). We sat through further episodes just staring blankly, knowing just what it would be like. There were no moments of novelty. We could let our guards down and just endure it. You want to tease to little climaxes before you give us the big one.

Lesson: Make us feel a bit edgy about what might come next, never complacent, never routine, always waiting for that next surprise we didn't see coming.

Best lover in the horror genre? I'd give it to "Dead Silence" It did a good job of teasing us, turning us, making us tense, then laugh, then relax, then worry, then freak out, then freak out more. There was mood and atmosphere up the wazoo. We thought we knew it, but then it did things we didn't expect, giving us "oh wow!" moments. When it got us tense enough, it gave us a bit more and a bit more until we begged it to give it to us--NOW!

Ironically, if they moviemaker did his job right, you should be feel a warmth in your groins, sweat in your palms, heart skipping wildly, breathing kind of shallow, and a long breath escaping your lips when it's over.

Yeah, now that's a wild ride!