1000 Maneras de Morir

#629: A man is having an x-ray of his head taken when the doctor and nurse begin having sex in the control room. They accidentally hit the exposure button repeatedly while having sex, eventually giving the patient a lethal dose of radiation. This is one of the brutal and odd deaths explored in this episode. The way it plays out on the show, however, is hilarious.

One of the networks that I try to avoid is Spike TV. They never seem to have anything that's worth watching. Wrestling and obstacle courses aren't my idea of entertainment. I gave this show a chance while I was channel surfing, watched one death and much to my surprise I was hooked.

This show is immensely entertaining and have since changed my opinion about Spike. They did what would seem impossible by taking a real life horrific situation and gave it the feel of an old school slasher flick.

1000 Ways to Die recreates these stories with an abundance of gore and prosthetics giving it the feel of a horror film. It really makes the show a lot of fun, and almost makes you forget that this actually happened.

What I love most about the show is the intentionally bad acting on display here. Everyone's reactions and line delivery are just so bad that they're hilarious.

In short, horror fans will love this show.

This is a reality show that people are dying to appear on.

Actually, no one really wants to be on 1000 Ways To Die. But some people are just either too stupid or too unlucky not to.

If you can imagine the people who do the "Darwin Awards" website writing a horror movie, this is probably close to what they would come up with. Each death is horrific, but you find yourself feeling a little better afterward, because in most (not all) cases, you realize the gene pool just improved a little bit.

The best deaths are those that fit the way the deceased lived. There are so many of these that it is impossible to list them all. (See every show. There's at least one example in each episode).

1000 Ways to Die is a gruesome little guilty pleasure focusing on all the grotesque ways people can be killed. The show largely does a good job of making it fun and not too offensive, but at times it stumbles.

The writers took a few episodes to find the right formula. The first episode poked fun at people who died, often at work, for things that weren't really their fault. One sketch made a pun about the death of a laundry worker who died because his idiot co-worker didn't bother to unplug the dryer he was cleaning. Another cracked jokes about a girl who only died because she took her high heels off and then stepped in a puddle which unbeknownst to her had a wire in it. These early episodes were just cringe inducing.

Later episodes dealt with this issue by making certain the victims were too stupid or mean to be sympathetic. Even so, a certain feeling remains that it's wrong to be enjoying this show, especially when you hear that many of the stories actually did happen in real life, but to little children rather than the jerks you're watching.

1000 Ways to Die...the show your conscience will hate you for loving.

This show is not for the faint of heart. It re-enacts some really gruesome deaths and these are deaths that have happened to real people. I can't believe some of them actually happened because they are so crazy, like one about a purse snatcher who ran into a car wash to get away from the police, slipped on water, fell back on a pressure hose that turned on and shot high pressure water into his skull until his head blew up. Some are a one in a million chance to happen, like a guy who gets killed by a stray bullet shot into the air from a mile away. It comes down dead on into his heart. Some make me think, I hope to God I don't die like that, like the guy who presented the brazen bull to an emperor who put the presenter into it to test it. If you've got a fascination for death and the macabre, you will enjoy this, the narrator makes some rye jokes to keep the mood a little lighter. It's not really meant to be a grim depressing show, just a show that makes you go, whoa that is messed up.

Let's first get this out of the way - 1000 Ways to Die is like a slasher film. Except it's actually a TV series. And the deaths portrayed actually happened. Sort of.

1000 Ways to Die is exactly what the title suggests - a barrage of odd and unbelievable ways to die. These are claimed to be dramatizations of actual deaths. What they really are are loose interpretations of rumored deaths, sort of what would happen if Mythbusters cut out the mythbusting part of their show. The deaths here aren't really to be taken seriously, just enjoyed.

And boy are they enjoyable. You get some really entertaining special effects in this show. These deaths look like they were taken straight out of a campy horror flick, between the decapitated heads and severed intestines. Yes, decapitated heads and severed intestines. On prime time cable. Pretty rad, huh? And what would decapitated heads and severed intestines be without retarded men, sexy women, and flat-out neo-Con inspired racism? And boy, if you like all of the above, you'll love this show.

As for me, I'm a little appalled at what this show gets away with, and how dumb it is. But entertainment is entertainment, and I find myself oddly entranced by increasing amounts of blood and brains as this show continues (as one 'expert' put it, 7 gallons of blood, to be precise). As much as this show epitomizes the mindlessness of American television as of late, it also epitomizes the rough, tough, masculine culture that Spike claimed to embody but hadn't yet delivered. Well, this show delivers testosterone-pumped entertainment in its purist form. Sex, drugs, and guts. And really, how could you argue against THAT?