Thursday, September 27, 2007

Movie Rule: Garbage Disposals

Movie Rule #6639: Garbage disposals will always attempt to mangle people's hands.

It was actually my nephew who brought this one to my attention. He's ten years old and when he came over, he had never seen a garbage disposal in real life before. When he saw it, he asked, "Does it ever chop up people's hands?" At first, I was horrified, like "No, why would you think that?" Then he said, "In the movies, garbage disposals always chop up people's hands."

Which is true. Especially in horror movies. Someone scrapes something into the garbage disposal and hits the switch. It doesn't work, hmm. Or they drop something into the garbage disposal. So they reach down into the drain. Then the possessed house or the ghost or the computer virus or the blob hits the switch and then there's screaming or blood or all of the above. Or the disposal goes off a split-second after the person manages to pull his/her hand out. Which, of course, rarely happens in the real world. I personally am not stupid enough to reach into a garbage disposal, and even if I was, the odds of it coming on spontaneously are slim-to-none. But in movies, it happens every time. When was the last time you saw someone in a movie scrap some chicken bones into the sink, hit the switch, grind up the bones, and walk away? I'd like to see that.

Examples: Final Destination 2, Heroes

5 comments:

FunBox Comedy said...

It's really true. Also, if a bad guy calls you it's never to chat and just ask about your day.

Maurice Mitchell said...

Too true, and the person always stands there screaming for a minute for dramatic effect. I admit to a panic attack every time I reach in there. My vote for the freakiest garbage disposal attack was the one in "The Blob (1988)" where it literally pulled the guy into the drain.

glomgold said...

I'd pay $10 to see that.

glomgold said...

I think I actually have a slight fear of that specifically b/c I'd never seen a real garbage disposal until adulthood. The only representations I'd seen were in the movies where something bad always happened.

Dmonster said...

Whenever I move to a new place, the first thing I do is I try all the switches in the kitchen to figure out which one's the garbage disposal. When I was a kid, I always thought it was just a light switch my parents would never let me turn on.