So it turns out that I live about 2 hours away from the town that partiallhy inspired the film adaptation for Silent Hill, Centralia, PA.

An underground mine fire has been burning there for the past 40 years, forcing entire sections of the highway to have cracked and fissured. Most of the town has been demolished, and almost everyone moved out. Natural gasses pour from the earth, charring trees and creating a haze of sulphur that drifts through the dead town and woods. The temperature is around 1000 degrees Farenheit not too far below the surface. And random sinkholes apparently open up without warning and in the 80's almost swallowed a kid alive.

I MUST GO.

I'm thinking of buying/renting a dirtbike and motoring around the broken-down highway (hopefully my tires don't melt). Depending on how things look when I scope the location out, I think it would be awesome to film some sort of post-apocalyptic "Road Warrior" film here...

I'm not really sure why I'm drawn to these unusual-type places. Next weekend I'm making a "pilgrimage" to Holy Land USA. Maybe I'll post pictures.

that's totally awesome. i wish I could go.

(why don't they knock the fire out somehow?)

The fire hit an anthracite coal vein that's at least 8 miles long. Coal fires are really, really hard to put out.

Mines are kind of in my family. One relative and mine supervisor in the early 1900s went in to help some of his men evacuate a burning mine, but while he was down there, someone had the bright idea to flood affected parts of the mine. Everyone was boiled alive by the steam.

If you see two questionably butch-lesbian pedophile women; one wearing a uniform; yelling out for a little girl while carrying pistols, kill them. They're making one of the stupidest films of the 21st century.

"S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Centralia" just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it.

This kind of extreme dislike for what can, at worst, be considered a mediocre movie is always unfounded.

Did you HEAR the dialog? Did you see the absolutely nonsensical events that require 3 games to be played for it to make sense? Did you understand the plotholed-setup-for-a-cheap-plot-twist-ending storyline? Did you see the barbed wires rip a woman's vagina open? Did you catch the absolutely cheesified "kind of sort of creepy" comments from the little girl? Did you wait for an hour in order to see 10 minutes of interesting footage? Did you ENJOY the underwhelming acting jobs?

I enjoyed the touch of Trevalyn looking up a geocities-esque website and going OH MY LAWD DAT PLACE BE BAD NEWS. It was all downhill from there. When we watched it in the theater there was lots of laughing and groaning.

I haven't played any of the Silent Hill games and the movie made perfect sense to me. So much sense I loved every last bit of it.

Which events in the movie require anyone to have played the video games? Wouldn't you have had to of played the games to be making that statement in the first place?

What about the ending was "plotholed"?

What's your point about the barbed wire? (it was revenge against Christabella because Alessa was molested/raped by a janitor and Christabella blamed Alessa for it. and also because it was wicked nasty)

Which 10 minutes did you consider to be the interesting footage?

I think you're over-exaggerating their performances. I've seen better, but I've seen much, much, much worse. Much worse. Really.

Thank you for saying what I was trying to say, Jin.

The theater I was in laughed through the entire movie. Minnesotans, mind you. Not that majority should dictate; but goddamn, how do you take the entire introduction to the cop lady seriously. Her acting is like a parody of a movie :-/

And I didn't play the games. I had to wikipedia to get half the movie. I am not a daft moviegoer who has to ask a lot of stupid questions; they just assumed you'd put some things together that were a stretch.

But you totally just legitimized the barbed wire thing to me. ++

I find it amusing that Kuat refers to Sean Bean as Trevelyan. I always think of that first whenever I see him (Patriot Games second).

I'm less than an hour and a half from there. I think I've seen that place, from a distance of course, many years ago. Or at least heard about it at one of the far too many anthracite coal mine museums in this area of the country.

Block up the entrances? Shouldn't be too hard, at least if they had done it before all the sinkholes had open up.

For Silent Hill, Pyramid Head?

No... for me!

it ignited the coal vein, so not just the coal in the mine is buring, it's traveling underground along the path of vein and burning underground and it's suppose to have enough coal to fuel it for a really long time. it's burning in places that you can't put it out.

Well you wouldn't have to put it out if you sealed it off and let all the oxygen die out.

IMO, the Silent Hill games are proof that video games can be considered art.

The film however was kinda OK. Although I still wouldn't mind checking out where they filmed it. A photo collection of the place would be amazing, just like that Chernobyl photo collection. Breathtaking.

Having the statue of Prometheus giving man fire after stealing it from Zeus in front of the power plant is so freaking symbolic and moving, I almost cried.

:downs:

i herd u like zombies

There's way too many places for air to get to it, even back then.

Ah so that's why you came out here to CA.

Just be sure to tell someone where your going so if you don't come back they know where to look.

TRUF

The part I find most interesting is that the fire is expected to burn for at least the next 200 years. That is one big coal vein it ignited.

YES please do that. It makes the job easier for search and rescue type people like me to find you

Also, wear Orange.