Critics often say there's nothing to be learned from horror movies, but we think they're pretty educational.

The only thing is, they teach you about very specific situations that you may think unlikely to happen. Anyway, here are five circumstances I am entirely prepared for.

Situation: Your new house slaps your priest and tells you to get out.
Movie: "Amityville Horror"
Logic: I don’t care how cheap the house is. I don’t care how perfect it seems. I don’t care how much room the kids have to run around now after all these years in a small house. I don’t care how it’s got that great boathouse for having affairs in. If your new house smacks your priest and tells you to get out, you leave that damn house behind.
Lesson: If it’s too good to be true, it’s haunted.

Situation: You hear about a tape that kills you seven days after you view it, it kills your niece, you decide to write a news story about it.
Movie: "The Ring" (from "Ringu," the Japanese movie [from "Ringu," the manga])
Logic: Look, you’re an investigative journalist. I know it seems like a great story to look into your niece’s death, but no editor's going to go for some shit about a killer VHS tape. Plus, more people you know will die the more you look into it. Also, shouldn’t you be looking into corruption in the government or that assisted living community that's stealing from old people?
Lesson: Do your job and stop looking for curses.

Situation: There are some really weird things going on after-hours at the European dance academy you just entered.
Movie: "Suspiria"
Logic: I could mention that a couple students died. I could mention how the students are locked in their bedrooms at night (among other weirdness that happens after bedtime). But all I really need to say is that the head mistress of the place is clearly a fucking maniac (and a witch, which is important enough to note).
Lesson: Look, America has got plenty of great schools. Don’t go overseas for what you can get in the U.S. of A., unless you're majoring in weird shit, in which case, go for it.

Situation: While investigating a missing girl on a secluded island, you continually stumble onto strange stuff.
Movie: "The Wicker Man" (The original one from the seventies. The Nicolas Cage remake only proves that Nicolas Cage is the most inadvertently hilarious actor working today.)
Logic: It isn’t hard to notice that you are literally surrounded by totally crazy people. But, you’re a good cop and you really care about that missing girl, so you stay. Then the whole town starts wearing animal masks in broad daylight in what is easily one of the most outright absurd and creepy things you have ever seen. Also that one chick when you first got there that sleeps in the room next to you? She got naked and sang some song about nature, FYI.
Lesson: Keep your gun in your hand at all times, bring plenty of ammunition, and shoot first and ask questions later, while in a boat leaving the island burning in your wake. Also, be on the lookout for naked singing chicks.

Situation: The dead are rising and attacking the living.
Movie: Every zombie movie ever made
Logic: It takes anywhere between one and forty-five minutes to have the sex that leads to a baby (or if you're me, many hours, ladies). Then nine months of the woman carrying (usually) a single living baby. During that time, the woman will get larger and slower and in need of more help and/or defense. Then, when the baby is born, it won’t be able defend itself for some ten to twelve years (a thirteen year old will wreck your shit, though). It takes something like fifteen minutes for a living person to be bitten by a zombie, die, and be back as a zombie. Basic math shows that regardless of your survival skills, if there is a zombie outbreak, the zombies will out number the living in a matter of weeks. But try not to panic.
Lesson: No matter how well you plan, the zombies always win. So prepare for the zombpocalypse.

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