What's in a name?

It was recently pointed out to me that I'm working on a film project which currently goes by the title of "Untitled." I don't know about you, but I think it's kinda sorta a lame ass name.

My last film's title was an anagram of what the film was about. It's obscure and no one will ever pick up on it if I don't point it out to them. I'm also immensely self entertaining and kinda don't care if people don't pick up on it cause I know it's there. Still I'm compelled to point it out to those who might appreciate it, or answer if asked what it means.

So then I started looking at film names I like. I love relevant but not point blankly so names. "Lost in Translation," for example, is a perfectly lovely name to me. "Grosse Pointe Blank" also speaks to me. They're seemingly vague in how they describe the film, or several aspects of the film. It's a nifty trick if you ask me.

But this is a horror flick.

I also like short names, that don't take three lines to run across the poster or DVD packaging. And there's a fine history of horror movies with great short names. "Saw," "The Grudge," "The Ring," and other more recent horror movies have fantastic names regardless of my feelings on the actual film. Some older films like "The Fog," "The Thing," and even "Halloween" have titles that aren't all that long (thank you John Carpenter).

I loved "Nightmare on Elm Street," and the name totally fits the film, but it's kinda sorta pushing being too long. When I was in High School I think we just called it "Nightmare" 'cause teenagers are lazy. Ok, that's a vast generalization. I was a lazy teenager. Better?

This has been a bit of a sticking point for us, but maybe we've fixed that now. Maybe.

I was thinking it'd be nifty to have the title be obscure, and an anagram for kinda what the film is about, again. We have a killer named Roderick, and so I was looking at anagrams of "Roderick Kills," which leads to understandably mixed results. That's kinda the charm of anagrams, I gotta tell you.

Looking at my mixed results Girl-Morgan pointed out that she kinda likes "Roderick Kills" itself. I think we have ourselves a working title.