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Summer Vacation Cinema Therapy:Ten Movies That Make You Happy To Stay Home This Summer

How was your vacation this summer? If you answered anything besides "What vacation?" then stop reading now and go away. Return to your fabulous life and finish posting your fabulous vay-cay photos on your fabulous Facebook page. Everyone else, gather 'round.

If this summer has found you too broke, brokenhearted, busy, buried at work, bummed or burned out to take a vacation, don't fret. Turn that frown upside down. With one quick dose of cinema therapy, you'll realize that vacations -- especially summer vacations -- are dangerous endeavors. Road trips are risky business. It doesn't matter if you take a nature hike, head off to summer camp, travel cross-country with your family or go backpacking. It won't end well. So cheer up, fellow homebodies, and remember that it's a good thing that we're stuck at home this summer, because bad things happen on vacation. Really bad things.

As proof, I offer -- in no particular order -- TEN MOVIES THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY TO STAY HOME THIS SUMMER:


1. Jeepers Creepers -- While on a break from school, a brother and sister are headed home for some rest and relaxation. What they get instead is Duel with a demonic creature.

2. Friday the 13th -- The bad vacation vibe is so strong at the newly-reopened Camp Crystal Lake that the killing starts before the campers even arrive. Arrow through the throat. Axe in the face. Knife across the neck. Pretty sure that wasn’t in the brochure.

3. The River Wild -- An unhappily-married couple takes their son whitewater rafting, hoping to re-connect with each other and strengthen their family ties. It certainly worked, ‘cause nothing bonds you faster than having to outsmart some bad guys and fight for your life while roaring down a river.

4. Day of the Animals -- The tour group is having a wonderful time on their mountain hike, but then that pesky ozone layer had to go and deteriorate and make all the animals cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. If the snakes hiding inside the truck don’t kill ya, the vicious dogs sure will. Birds, rats, bears...the animals finally have their day and dammed if they aren’t going to make good use of it.

5. The Hills Have Eyes -- While making their way across the Nevada desert on a camping trip, the Carter clan gets stuck in the middle of nowhere when their station wagon breaks down (a.k.a. is damaged by a hillbilly booby-trap). Then it's one hell of a family feud. Carter family, meet the insane, inbred, crazy, cannibalistic Papa Jupiter family! Survey says? Arson, rape, kidnapping and murder.

6. Jaws -- Amity Island is a great summer resort town and the perfect place to spend the Fourth of July. There are so many fun things to do -- boating, fishing, swimming, relaxing on the beach, shopping, enjoying the local cuisine, catching the July 4th fireworks show. There is absolutely no danger to tourists and there most certainly is not a big-ass shark cruising around chomping on people. Enjoy the water, folks!

7. Wolf Creek -- While on vacation in Australia, two British women befriend an Australian man and decide to hang out together, hiking over to the Wolf Creek crater to go exploring. Making new friends while on vacation? Check. Exploring another country's natural wonders? Check. Being drugged, tortured, turned into a human "shrimp on the barbie" and killed by a sadistic madman? Sigh...check.

8. Sleepaway Camp -- Camp Arawak offers swimming, arts and crafts, canoeing ... and drowning, bee stings, stabbing, hacking, smothering and a cruelly creative way to use a curling iron. Damn, that Angela was a bitch. (Or was she??)

9. Hostel -- What could be better than backpacking across Europe on vacation with your college buddies? Meeting gorgeous women who are eager to have sex with you, that's what. But there's a catch, and it's a doozy. Worst vacation hook-up ever.

10. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- Sally, her wheelchair-bound brother and three of their friends were enjoying a nice-enough road trip through the back roads of Texas one hot summer day while on their way to visit an old family estate. Then they picked up a crazy hitchhiker and things went downhill from there. After their search for gas for their van led them to walk uninvited into someone's house, they got a big dose of stranger danger, Texas-chainsaw style.


See, having a stay-cation this summer really isn’t so bad. Let others have their exciting-but-deadly vacations. I’m content to sit at home, where it’s safe. ‘Cause nothing bad ever happens to people at home, right? Right??