Getting my Christmas wish list out there early (Patreon)

I see in the news that the axe that so badly inconvenienced Scatman Crothers in The Shining recently sold for $175,000. After getting over the heartbreak of realizing I will never own it (my high bid was $35, which I thought would at least get me close), I promptly got wistful for other horror movie props that are likely stuck in undeserving hands. Hell, even the guy who cleans the gutters at my building owns a few original sheets of All-Work-And-No-Play-Makes-Jack-a-Dull-Boy.

I’d be interested to hear which tangible objects from horror movies everyone is most covetous of. Here are five that I want:

1. Kurt Russell’s flamethrower from The Thing. There comes a time in every young man’s life when he first becomes aware of what a flamethrower is, and from that moment on, he’s never really the same. When my friends come over and we jump into our usual weekly game of The Thing (you know, where we play all the parts and then randomly one of us throws on a bunch of blankets and spins around waving our arms to pretend we just became the monster), how great would it be if something actually, you know, burned up? I’m still kind of bitter that Mr. Welzmacher took away my flamethrower in the third grade after what happened to Beverly Bowman’s hair. If you ask me, she wasn’t doing herself any favors with those bangs anyway.

2. The tire iron from Night of the Living Dead. You can keep your Wifi-enabled shotguns and your cannon-mounted chainsaws; Duane Jones showed us that all someone really needs to fend off a horde of zombies is one of these and a hearty dose of late-sixties moxie. For some reason, I think it would be awesome to throw this tire iron in the trunk of my car, then get a flat tire sometime so I’d actually have to use it for its original intended purpose. I mean, it probably works just as well now as it did in 1968. (When it comes to horror movie props with actual day-to-day utility, I’d also like to own the Scrabble set from Rosemary’s Baby.)

P.S. I just did some research online, and I had not realized that tire irons are actually rated for zombie-killing ability by their manufacturers. FYI, when you’re shopping at AutoZone, the number printed before the “Z” on the price tag is the number of expected effective zombie kills before suggested replacement. Anything under 150 and you’re just throwing your money away.

3. The Wicker Man from The Wicker Man. True, fitting this four-story behemoth into my 440-square foot apartment will not be easy. But I would be willing to let it go on loan to a nearby park or something. Wouldn’t you like to picnic near it on a warm summer’s day? I’m thinking of charging $12.50 to go up and sit in the spot where Edward Woodward was, um, aggrieved. I could also see the big Wicker Man as a bird sanctuary in my own private nature preserve, one of the rare bird sanctuaries that would constantly play an LP of human shrieks.

4. The dining table from Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979). Not the one from Dracula’s castle—too easy. I want the table where the tragic last-supper people sit during the amazing set piece where Isabelle Adjani wanders the plague-ravaged city, maybe my favorite scene from any movie ever. I could tell everyone who comes over to my place that the table they’re enjoying their hot dogs 'n' beans on was once covered in real, scurrying rats. “Don’t worry,” I’ll assure them, “I shook these 43-year-old linens out really good on the sidewalk.”

5. The beacon from The Lighthouse. It’s a gigantic mysterious glowing high-wattage glass eyesore laden with impenetrable symbolism; do I need any more justification than that? For the mysterious locked room I’ve always wanted to build at the top of a mansion someday, I think either this prop has to be in the center of it or maybe the cardboard box that John Goodman gives to John Turturro in Barton Fink.

OK, time to get back to work—a concept for a new story just recently occurred to me, so it could be a couple of months before it’s turned into something real. The idea came when I noticed they’re finally demolishing the abandoned building across from where I live. I wondered, what might they have found in there when they did the final walkthrough? One day I hope to be able to stop wondering these things....

(Thanks to Beth Abdallah for showing me artist Hillary Coatney's work, above!)