From The Crowening to The Re-Deadening

Remember Angels with Filthy Souls and its sequel Angels with Even Filthier Souls from the first two Home Alone films, the faux gangster films that had thousands believing they were real movies? They are just two examples of films within films and TV, a trope that typically is used for comedic effect and/or as a deus ex machina to move a plot forward. These films do not exist outside the project they are in (with Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun, fake film trailers in 2007’s Grindhouse, two prominent exceptions, and Thanksgiving soon to be joining them), but wouldn’t it be sweet if they did? Not the Filthy Souls films, though – gangster films are so last century. The movies within movies/TV we want to see made are the horror movies. Meta moments that are murderously magnificent must be made. So, Hollywood, the ball is in your court. Let’s see what movies within movies would make great movies outside of movies.

RELATED: The Best Part of ‘Grindhouse’ Is the Fake Trailers

A remake of the 1958 classic, The Blob didn’t take itself too seriously, as evidenced by the film playing in the movie theater (you know, just before the gelatin from Hell goes wild): Garden Tool Massacre. To paraphrase how Eddie (Douglas Emerson) explained the film to his mom, it’s your basic slice and dice, with this guy in a hockey mask who chops up a few teenagers (but there’s no sex or anything bad). Best line: “Wait a minute. Hockey season ended months ago!”

Mant! from Matinee (1993)

It’s 1962, and in Key West, Florida, the theater is ready to preview the latest B-movie from producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman). With the town up in arms over the Cuban Missile Crisis, Woolsey goes all-in on the premiere, with film effects, stage props, and actors in rubber suits mingling with the audience. Woolsey’s film is monster movie Mant!, about a mutant half-man/half-ant creature. It’s a wonderful send up of 50s horror films like The Fly and Them!, while Matinee itself is a loving tribute to the spectacle of film.

Joelho-Alto Prejuizo Moral from Community (“Lawnmower Maintenance & Postnatal Care,” Season 6, Episode 2)

Joelho-Alto Prejuizo Moral, or Knee High Hijinks, is a 1985 low-budget Portuguese horror film that is a personal favorite of Abed (Danny Pudi). It’s a blatant, hysterical send-up of Gremlins, with different colored monsters (blue were good, green evil, and red ones were indifferent), and a set of seven rules, including salt will make them multiply, holy water makes them good, and rainbows make them more evil than the first time.

Jaws 19 from Back to the Future Part II (1989)

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) travel to 2015 (the future that’s now the past – don’t overthink it) in an effort to stop Marty McFly Jr. (Fox) from doing something illegal that would irreparably harm his family. Marty strolls around the town square, taking in the advancements that have taken place over thirty years, when a gigantic holographic shark appears and “swallows” Marty. It turns out to be a promotion for the film playing at the Hill Valley Holomax Theatre, Max Spielberg’s Jaws 19. And this time? It’s really, really personal.

Werewolf Women of the S.S. from Grindhouse (2007)

The second faux trailer, directed by Rob Zombie, of five featured in Grindhouse, Werewolf Women of the S.S. is an over-the-top parody of Nazi/women-in-prison exploitation films, specifically the cult classic Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS. In it, commandant of Death Camp 13 Franz Hess (Udo Kier) and scientist Dr. Von Strasser (Bill Mosely) work together to create bloodthirsty werewolf women, super-weapons for the Nazis.

The ‘Stab’ Franchise from the ‘Scream’ Franchise (1997-)

The first Stab film was introduced in Scream 2 (1997), a slasher film based on Gale Weathers’ (Courteney Cox) book The Woodsboro Murders. What began as a meta joke grew into its own in-franchise Stab franchise, a series of horror movie tropes with eight films to date. The first three films were based on heroine Sidney Prescott’s (Neve Campbell) story, and from there the films grew increasingly exaggerated, not unlike the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Speaking of, Stab 7 pays homage to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, a meta, self-aware movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie.

The Re-Deadening from The Simpsons (“The Ziff Who Came to Dinner”, Season 15, Episode 14)

Homer (Dan Castellaneta) is left to babysit Rod (Pamela Hayden) and Todd (Nancy Cartwright) Flanders, so he decides to take them, Bart (Cartwright) and Lisa (Yeardley Smith) to the Springfield Googolplex Theaters. Unfortunately, every kid-friendly movie is sold out, and Teenage Sex Wager is banned by the church’s movie guide What Would Jesus View?. The Re-Deadening it is, a film about a possessed killer doll called Baby Button Eyes (because those button eyes came from a psychotic killer’s pants), who begins the movie by talking a little girl into killing her mummy. The doll then goes on a murderous rampage, killing anyone that crosses her path. The film builds up to the family finding Artie Ziff (Jon Lovitz) in their attic, and is promptly never discussed again.

The Case from Super 8 (2011)

Charles (Riley Griffiths) is making a zombie movie for a Super 8 film competition, and enlists his friends to help. While filming a pivotal scene at a train depot, a train approaches and is hit head-on by a pickup truck. The train derails and destroys the depot, but luckily the kids all manage to escape before the depot goes down. There’s an alien, people go missing, the military attacks, the alien gets away on a spaceship, fin. Ah, but not quite – the end credit scene is the short film Charles was making: The Case. It’s wonderfully amateurish and fun, a short zombie film that actually seems like it was made by kids (fun fact, it is – the young actors wrote and directed the film themselves on a Super 8 camera).

Groundhog Day: Part 12 from The Monster Squad (1987)

A group of pre-teens form a club, The Monster Squad, sharing an affinity for classic monster movies, so imagine their delight at the diary of monster hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Jack Gwillim) coming into their possession. Except it’s in German. But they know a guy, and he tells them that the diary speaks of an amulet of concentrated good, which happens to be nearby. If Count Dracula (Duncan Regehr) gets it, he can plunge the world into darkness. If the Monster Squad get it first, they can send Dracula and his cohorts to their grave: a mummy, a gill-man, a wolf-man and Frankenstein’s monster (Tom Noonan). Where’s Groundhog Day: Part 12? That’s way near the beginning, a film about a guy with an axe who comes back from the dead every Groundhog Day to kill, that Sean Crenshaw (Andre Gower) is forced to watch on a drive-in screen, through binoculars, from the roof of his house. It’s a brief glimpse of the 12th in a series of 17 films, according to a fictitious account of the franchise.

La Fin Absolue Du Monde (The Absolute End of the World) from Masters of Horror (“Cigarette Burns”, Season 1, Episode 8)

“Cigarette Burns” is director John Carpenter‘s contribution to the horror anthology series Masters of Horror, and it’s a mind-trip. A rare-films dealer, Kirby Sweetman (Norman Reedus) is hired to find the sole remaining print of a rare 30-year-old film, La Fin Absolue Du Monde, with a dark history. Purportedly, the film shows the sacrifice of an angel, and the evil of that act affects all who see it. As he investigates the film’s whereabouts, Sweetman discovers that horrible things do indeed befall any who have seen, or had any association with, the film. This now includes himself, fraught with hallucinations after hearing an audiotape interview with the director of the film. And it goes downhill from there.

Coed Frenzy from Blow Out (1981)

A sorority house, where a security guard creepily looks at a window where two scantily-clad girls are dancing. Suddenly a knife appears, and from the audience’s point of view the guard is stabbed in the back. The killer is now inside the house, strolling the halls, evading more young women with next to nothing on, before entering a shower stall. The nude girl turns to see the killer, screams, the knife comes out and… cut to sound designer Jack Terry (John Travolta), who is watching the same footage from Coed Frenzy in a screening room. And so starts Blow Out, director Brian De Palma‘s 1981 mystery thriller about a movie sound recordist in danger for inadvertently recording a murder.

The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening from Schitt’s Creek (“Maid of Honour,” Season 6, Episode 4)

Moira Rose (Catherine O’Hara), the “unsung hero of afternoon television”, is disappointed that the second sequel to her cult-classic The Crows Have Eyes, may never be released, having been postponed indefinitely. But it’s Interflex to the rescue, as the streaming service picks up the rights to The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening. It means that Moira’s performance as Dr. Clara Mandrake in her return to the franchise will indeed be released, with her terrifying transformation from ornithologist to crow practically a no-brainer come awards season.

Chubby Rain from Bowfinger (1999)

How do you make a B-grade alien-invasion film with an A-list celebrity? You don’t tell him and film anyway. Such is the premise of the film industry-skewering Bowfinger, a hilarious comedy which sees movie producer Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) covertly filming action star Kit Ramsey’s (Eddie Murphy) unscripted reactions to the real actors and actresses doing scenes for his newest film, Chubby Rain. The rain is chubby because the aliens come down to earth inside raindrops, therefore Chubby Rain!

Mosquito/The Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man/The Stench from Popcorn (1991)

A group of film students puts on a horror movie marathon in an old movie theater, but are stalked by a killer who’s a master of disguise. Fun fact: people’s faces make great masks. Anyway, the horror-thon features not one, not two, but three great 1950s B-movie parody/homages (and to famed filmmaker/showman William Castle): Mosquito, a 3-D spectacular with a giant, nuclear-mutated mosquito (and a giant mosquito that flies over the audience); The Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man, about a death-row inmate transformed into an electric terror (with electronic buzzers in the movie seats); and The Stench, a badly-dubbed Japanese horror film in marvelous Odor-ama.

Serial Ape-ist from The Big Bang Theory (“The Hofstadter Insufficiency”, Season 7, Episode 1)

Fans of The Big Bang Theory are aware that Penny’s (Kaley Cuoco) acting career never really took off – an understatement if there ever was one – but she did make her mark in the industry. Not just a tampon commercial, either. Penny appeared in the low-budget horror films Serial Ape-ist, as a topless sorority sister killed by a sex-crazed killer gorilla while in the shower, and in Serial Ape-ist 2: Monkey See, Monkey Kill, where mad scientist Wil Wheaton tries to clone Penny, but when her DNA mixes with the killer gorilla DNA, she goes on a killing spree as she turns into a killer gorilla herself. Say what you will, but at least it got her into the Van Nuys Comic Con.

Don’t from Grindhouse (2007)

Another of the faux trailers in 2007’s Grindhouse, Don’t is director Edgar Wright‘s contribution, a very funny send-up of 70s British chillers. It has a demonic, murderous bride; a mad, murderous cannibal; and a manacled man-baby, surrounded by baby dolls (presumably murderous as well). It’s a minute-plus trailer for a film that would be totally insane, if it existed, and it has frequent Wright collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to boot.

Frankenstein’s Mummy from Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988)

Poor Chad Finletter (Anthony Starke). The mysterious girl he’s fallen in love with, Tara (Karen Mistal) has been turned back into a tomato. As Torn struggles with how to turn her back into a human, the old film classic Frankenstein’s Mummy starts playing on the TV. Return of the Killer Tomatoes is a woefully underrated satire, and this scene is the pitch-perfect shot at the trope of critical plot information at convenient times as the mad scientist in Mummy goes on about the “machine in his secret lab that can transform his creation into human form,” frustratingly repeating the phrase, even spelling out ‘laboratory’ at one point, until Chad finally connects the dots.