20 Things We'd Never Do Thanks To Horror Movies

6. Upset A Gypsy

Romanies seem to have remained an acceptable xenophobic target long after the stereotyped depictions of other ethnic groups has become frowned upon. While the traditional gypsy curse has been more common in literature and on television than in feature films, it's been enjoying a popular resurgence lately following the release of Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi's archetypal gypsy curse movie. Depicted as outsiders and outcasts in everything from The Hunchback Of Notre Dame to The Wolf Man, Romanies make easy targets as horror villains whose cartoonish evil can be justified by cultural differences and whose esoteric traditions provide ample opportunities for enacting vicious and graphic curses. While Stephen King's Thinner exercised a moral lesson in taking responsibility for your actions (a greedy lawyer is cursed after killing an old gypsy woman in a hit-and-run accident), the recipient of the curse in Drag Me To Hell does nothing worse than refuse an elderly lady a mortgage extension, and her retribution seems somewhat extreme.
Contributor
Contributor

I'm a completist. I love platformers, indie games, bad horror movies and Joss Whedon. You can find me over on Twitter at @ejosully, where I talk about largely unrelated things.