We’re usually taught to respect our elders; but there have been plenty of characters in film who never quite got that memo. There’s been a long and proud tradition in movies of elderly abuse and bad doings being transgressed on the 4:30 dinner crowd. This is the generation that did things like survived the Great Depression, fought the Nazis and the Reds, raised our parents and all too often us. One would think they’d earned a bit of consideration for things like guaranteed Social Security, adult diapers that don’t leak and generally not getting the shit beat out of them or snuffed like some third rate extra. In this CHUD list, we’re going to take a look at 15 old-timers who, unfortunately, turned into having-a-really-bad-timers.
The Film: Hot Fuzz (2007)
Buy it from CHUD
The Director: Edgar Wright
The Elders: …all of them?
Yeah they're all organized and spooky now, but these bitches 'bout to get it.
You can draw all sorts of parallels between the elderly residents of Sandford and other cinematic…cabals, if you will. They’re organized, they’re well armed, they’re ruthless and they have quite the healthy amount of blood on their hands. And, as such, it’s hard to look at anything that happens to them as an atrocity.
But, at the same time, they’re all old as shit and even if they are hardened murderers, they do it with quaint, adorable, elderly goals in mind. I mean, it’s Village of the Year.
The Abuse: Again – all of it…
But also again, 90% of the time it’s self-defense as opposed to outright abuse. But because they’re ass-old, the visceral reaction is the same. Whether it’s a grey-haired old priest taking a shotgun to the shoulder, a wrinkled old barman taking a goddamn BEAR TRAP TO THE HEAD, poor Leslie Tiller getting garden-sheared in the throat or George Merchan getting exploded with his bacon and beans, Edgar Wright made certain than none of these old-timers met their makers peacefully in their sleep (and actually – most of them never met their maker at all, left alive to be arrested and booked by Sgt. Angel and his crew, which might have ended up being the worst abuse of all).
That said though, with all the gray hair and bullets on display, there was one moment of pure “What the fuck” that stands above the rest: when Angel makes his way back into town, he’s greeted by a couple of farmers, one of them a ridiculously old lady with a shotgun. She’s determined to use it, but her motor skills have degraded to the point where she’s not able to even get loaded properly before…
Lack Of Respect By: Nicholas Angel, Danny Butterman or the NWA – depending on the old
The fact is none of them gave a shit. Old, young, they were gonna fuck you up.
Did they see it coming? Oh definitely. “Look at his haaarse” indeed…
Could the AARP Have Helped? Probably not – they would have been shot too. Fact of the matter is, a little card in your wallet isn’t gonna do you much good when there’s a dude with 15 guns strapped to his ass looking for you. Hell, I suppose you could say the NRA couldn’t help either, what with all of those farmers and farmers’ mums packin’ ’round there.
If nature had taken its course? Sandford would have won Village of the Year, they’d no longer be up to their balls in jugglers and that living statue would be underground with the rest of the skellingtons. Maybe it was for the greater good after all.
Honestly? I don’t think he’d have much to say, it’d basically be this face:
Message Board Discussion
