Neural networks are a kind of machine learning algorithm that learn to imitate the examples I give them. They’re pretty good at picking up on the feel of craftbeer names vs guinea pig names, or metal bands vs my little ponies. So they should be pretty good at thinking of new names for horror movies, right? Right?
Ummm
The Baby Bunny Pretty Day 3 Little Clock Train The Sea Bothers No Curse Great Apartment The Funny Bear Missing Bun Noice Fish Christmas
The above titles were generated by a neural network trained on over 78,000 horror movie titles extracted from IMDB by Twitter user @enkiv2. It turns out that not every horror title is Slashy This or Murdled That. Titles in the original dataset include “PigDog”, “Princess Baby”, “King Dinosaur,” and “Sasquatch! A Love Story”. The neural net learned a bunch of interesting vocabulary from them.
And the neural net DID manage to pick up on the vocabulary of horror film titles. It just also managed to make them sound somehow more like the Halloween special of a kid’s cartoon show.
Halloween Bear Case of the Big Monster Dracula’s Holiday The Creepy Clock The Interbother The Haunting Song The Scream Fish Tapes Monster Interviews Monster of Mystery The Devil’s Cool World of the Band Zombies The Lucky Dracula The Christmas Man Werewolf
Other times, it was just plain weird. I know horror is supposed to make the mundane scary, but I somewhat question its methods.
Haunted Boss Final Hair The Cord Thing Day in the Room Attack of the Cleaning Day The Stall Satan The Return of Bob The Date of Horror The Snape Unknown Carp Halloween Special Planet Boot Cook The Tooth Things Stanning the Damned Halloween: Realm Wars Part 1 American Star Horror Stories: The Creature of the Santa
With other titles, the neural net avoided sounding cute, but also avoided sounding convincingly human.
A Not Meat of the Wild Fright & Trap of the Woods The Man in My Dangers I Call Zombies The Night Night Fright Footage The Bad Side of the Dead The Boobley of the Dead Please Alive Lost Blood Horror Story The Haunting of Flesh Show The Will the American Horror Stories – What the Green Horrors
I really like these titles with made-up words.
The Blunge The Crooping Tomb The Moonmanic Sands My Boblop Trap Clownfull Missing The Contains of Halloween Trailer’s Comman Reaper Trailer 2000 Scarecrowning Strangler Secret + the Basament in the Children
It also generated a few that were a bit more along the lines of, um, erotic horror. To go with those, I also decided to see what would happen if I mixed the horror titles with ice cream flavors. Here’s a taste (ahem):
Honey & Darkness Passion Owl Caramel Horror Spice
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