Who is killing the great horror icons of cinema?

I was gonna post these photos on the Facebook page, but I changed my mind. The post I originally wanted to write wasn't coming along the way I liked, and I feel like doing something different here anyway. And what better time to do so than for my 700th post?

So I was in Ozone Park the other day - a normally quiet, pleasant part of southern Queens, not unlike, say, Haddonfield, Illinois - and I passed by a most unusual graveyard on a street not unlike, say, Elm Street. It appears that someone has targeted a number of cinematic creeps and gone on a killing spree.

As you can see, our mystery monster hunter has been quite busy. Michael Myers, for example, has survived ten movies. (I'm making allowances for misspellings on all the tombstones. You and I both know which characters are being referenced here.) I was never sure what exactly kept him going; he's not particularly fast or versatile, so I imagine taking him out couldn't have been too hard, as long as our anonymous assassin was not a babysitter. As for Jekyll & Hyde, all you have to do is wait for the latter to turn back into the former, and BLAM! Put a bullet in his head. If I recall correctly, the tombstone in the back with red lettering is for Freddy Kruger. I don't even wanna imagine what it took to put him down.

I'm unsure what to make of the tombstone with "Dead Zone" on it. Are we talking about Christopher Walken's character Johnny Smith from the movie, or perhaps Anthony Michael Hall's version of the same character from the TV show? Why would someone kill him? Wasn't he a good guy? Or does "Dead Zone" refer to something... else?

Maybe it has to do with whoever - or whatever - it was that escaped from that turned-over coffin embedded in the turf. Maybe it's not worth dwelling on too much. Let's move on...

Okay, people, how many times do we have to say it: Frankenstein was the scientist who created the monster, not the monster itself. But then again, maybe that is the scientist in that grave. We already know he didn't stop with just one monster, after all. The 1602 date on the headstone confuses me, however. Mary Shelley wasn't even born until 1797. Was there some time travel involved in this execution, perhaps?

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it, so I'm more than glad to see Leatherface put down. As for Jack the Ripper, well, if Johnny Depp couldn't catch him, I don't know how anyone else could. (That movie was crap, by the way. Read the original graphic novel instead.) This killer of killers must have some serious inside information. Maybe he knows who killed JFK too!

The original Child's Play was also very scary to me as a kid. I wouldn't wanna get within a hundred feet of Chucky, so kudos once again to our mystery hunter for capping the killer doll. Once again we see an anachronism, though, this time with Lizzie Borden's gravestone. She was born in 1860, so why does it say 1801? More time travel? Still, since Borden was acquitted of the charges of murder, I can easily imagine somebody going after her in an attempt to carry out justice. (By the way, did you know that Elizabeth Montgomery played Borden in a TV movie?)

Look, I understand that some purists still can't get over the fact that they rebooted Halloween, but honestly, is that any reason to kill director Rob Zombie over it? He's always been a big horror movie fan, and his band White Zombie was pretty awesome too - hell, their videos were practically mini-horror movies in themselves. Methinks our mystery killer has a serious grudge - but I'm willing to bet Zombie won't let a little thing like death stop him. That's his handprint on the tombstone because HE OBVIOUSLY CRAWLED OUT OF HIS OWN GRAVE.

I don't recall whose grave that is behind Zombie's, but the one in the back behind the coffin says "Hannibal." Well, The Silence of the Lambs has been talked about to death, so let me lead you instead to this recent piece about the movie Hannibal for a further examination of everyone's favorite long pig connoisseur. Frankly, I'd kill Mr. Lecter for that TV show. [UPDATE 10.21: I went back to this street. That grave in the middle: Norman Bates!]

So there you have it, folks. Looks like we can all rest a little easier this Halloween knowing that these cinematic ghouls have been given the big dirt nap, but as all good horror movies have taught us, you can't ever be sure the killer's dead until the very last frame... 

...and sometimes not even then.