Cautionary rules.

A friend of mine is putting together a project, and asked me for some input thereof. Here’s four of the first things that I came up with. Note: it would have been five, except that I got distracted by The Biology of B-Movie Monsters, which is an article made of awesome.

  • If my research requires me to understand rage before I can eliminate it, I will not infect chimpanzees with a virulently contagious virus that causes uncontrollable, murderous behavior just to have a reliable sample of same. Just being five minutes late with the little bastards’ bananas does it every time. (28 Days Later)
  • Rabbits have been domesticated for thousands of years. In all that time, nobody has thought to increase their size to that of a Buick. There is a reason for this. (Night of the Lepus)*
  • If I desire the services of an illiterate, odd-looking servant with strange religious views, instead of constructing one out of a wolf I will simply go to Whitechapel and hire a human. He’ll be happy to trade regular meals and almost clean underwear for keeping the house clean and promising not to eat the cook.(**)
  • When recreating dinosaur species from their DNA in order to create a theme park, remember this simple safety tip: no carnivores. (Jurassic Park)

Kind of fun to come up with, really.

Moe Lane

*And anybody who wants that probably wants this, too: Drive-In Movie Classics 50 Movie Pack.

**OK, this is a tough one. This The Island of Dr. Moreau has Burt Lancaster in it, which I seem to remember saves it from being really freaky; then again, you’d think that Marlon Brando being in this The Island of Dr. Moreau would have the same effect, but it didn’t. And then there’s this The Island of Dr. Moreau, which is part of a three-pack that has Dark City in it, which is a movie that you shouldn’t need me to tell you to watch.