Dead and proud of it
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Anyone living (or non-living) in Pennsylvania is no stranger to all the things that make our state awesome.
The Declaration of Independence was signed here, Pennsylvania is home of the chocolate capital of the U.S. in Hershey, Uniontown is the birthplace of the Big Mac, and Pennsylvania has the most covered bridges than any other state in the country (take that, Vermont!).
Vermont always brags about having more covered bridges per square mile than any other state, but we have almost double the number of covered bridges than those maple-syrup-loving Vermonters!
Sorry, when I start to talk about covered bridges, I get a little high strung.
Anyway, Pennsylvanians have taken another No. 1 spot: We’re the state with the most horror movie deaths.
Turns out the folks at CableTV.com took the list of the 200 best horror films from the website Rotten Tomatoes, narrowed the list down to horror movies by state, and calculated the body count for each state.
In Pennsylvania, they found six horror films on the list that had a body count of 615 compared to the No. 2 state of New York, which had seven films and 254 kills. California took third place with a whopping 17 movies, but a kill count of only 138.
Vermont, by the way, didn’t even make the 23-state list. Just wanted to throw that out there.
Now, I know what you’re saying because you talk in your sleep while I stand above you wearing a fire-singed clown mask and wielding a butcher knife. You’re saying, “Mark, how is that something I should be proud of, and why would I brag about it?”
Well, Halloween is upon us and when you’re with your hip friends and talking about the new ways the pumpkin-spice flavor has infiltrated our daily lives or what costumes are now considered culturally inappropriate, you can casually mention the commonwealth having the most horror movie deaths in the country.
Your friends will look at you in a different light with your bit of trivia and say something like, “What the heck is the matter with you – saying something like that during the church trunk-or-treat?”
That aside, you’re probably wondering why and how Pennsylvania, with so few films on the list, racked up such a high body count.
One word: zombies.
CableTV.com stated that movies based in the Keystone State like “Night of the Living Dead,” “Dawn of the Dead” and “Land of the Dead” were responsible for 594 cinematic deaths alone. It’s fitting because the state is home to the modern zombie model for horror films.
There, you now have a second nugget of knowledge about this state and its contribution to cinema. It’s a perfect conversation starter when you and your significant other are stranded on a dark country roadway on a foggy night.
Now, I know what else you’re saying because you also talk in the shower, and I’m standing right outside the curtain, wearing a blood-stained hockey mask and holding an idling chainsaw (but you can’t hear the chainsaw because you talk pretty loud in the shower).
Anyway, you’re saying, “Mark, beyond using the information you just provided for contributions to conversations, what else can this information be used for and why should it cause a sense of pride?”
Well, first, it goes back to my theory that everyone should be sci-fi/horror ready, meaning when something in your daily life seems out of whack or off somehow, always expect some science-fiction or horror element to be the cause. That way, if it turns out to be something like that, you’ll be better prepared to accept and deal with it than the non-sci-fi/horror-ready person.
As for the sense of state pride, well, let’s just say Pennsylvanians know from cinematic experience what to do in case of a zombie outbreak and can better survive the apocalypse unlike other states that would be too, let’s say, preoccupied tapping maple trees and inflating statistics on their covered bridges.
Mark Hofmann is a Herald-Standard staff writer. His books, “Good Mourning! A Guide to Biting the Big One … and Dying, Too” and “Stupid Brain,” are available on Amazon.com.