D - Don't
The 1970s and 1980s were a time when horror films got a bit dictatorial with us, screaming at us: Don't Go Near the Park! Don't Open the Window! Don't Go in the House! Don't Go in the Basement! Don't Go in the Woods Alone! Don't Answer the Phone! It was getting a little silly, soon it would be Don't Drink Your Cup of Tea! Don't Touch The Remote Control! The use of the word Don't was a command - it challenged us not to do these acts whilst titillating us with the advertising, trailers and video box blurb. We knew bad things were going to happen and they were going to be outrageous - that's why the title urged us Don't wasn't it? Of course the use of the word Don't was a pure come on for horror fans. The Don't films range from really scraping the barrel - Don't Go Near The Park and Don't Go in the Woods Alone - to the actually quite good - Don't Go in the House and Don't Look in the Basement. I have watched the American trailer for Don't Open the Window which is another name for The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue. It is a travesty of a trailer that makes this wonderful film look like exploitation trash. Grrr.
E - Eating Animal Entrails
A key piece of both zombie and cannibal films, animal innards are used as a stand in for real human guts. Presumably somewhere along the way in the early 1980s, some idiots in the media or a politician watched a Video Nasty entrail scene and thought it was real - hence all the 'these are a bunch of snuff movies' hysteria. and lest we forget, some people at the time really did think that some Video Nasties were snuff films, but more on that later. The most entrail laden film in my mind is possibly Zombie Flesh Eaters which features crumbly, maggoty, rotten zombies feasting down on entrails like they are precious Beluga caviar. The special effects are amazing and the actors look like they are really enjoying themselves. The crappiest entrail munching scene among the Video Nasties appears in Don't Go Near the Park. Worst Special Effects ever. The abdomen looks like it is made out of the lamest, most malleable rubber in the world. It opens with minimal force - parting like the Red Sea ,and the entrails look like pieces of lamb's kidney covered in ketchup.