For a change of pace, here’s The Sofa, a rather chilling little horror film made by a gentleman named Tony Cane-Honeysett in 2001. In a rather Chaplin-meets-Popeye style, the film recounts the Herculean efforts of a chubby Everyman to rid himself of a putrid country-style chesterfield, played with a menacing aplomb not seen since DeNiro in Cape Fear by a simply appalling brown plaid couch with one of those foul little skirts attached to the front. The film’s terrifying impact emerges from the universality of its subject matter: we’ve all encountered at least one couch so dreadfully tacky that it seemed capable of supernatural acts and unspeakable crimes, haven’t we?

STARTHA