Scary movies… Part 1

I know I’m running late.  I know I promised I’d stay on top of it.  I am trying.  That is why I’m writing this up at 3:30am but back-dating it to yesterday.  That way I’ll try to post something later today as well.

With Halloween coming up, I have been thinking about scary movies recently.  True horror, not just things that made you shudder.  I just watched “The Boys From Brazil” last week and it made me cringe the whole time.  Gregory Peck as Josef Mengele?  Steve Gutenberg on the same screen with Laurence Oliver?  Really?  Wow.  So there is a difference between horror and horrific.  Getting back on target…

It seems that horror/scary movies are very subjective.  Not only from person to person but within one person, year to year, moment to moment.  I remember watching the big “scare” movies when I was younger (Nightmare on Elm St., Friday the 13th, Halloween etc…) and being a little spooked but never scared.  Cheap “jack-in-the-box” moments don’t count.  Those movies seemed to be the modern Aesop’s Fables.  There are rules that apply to horror movies.  the big two are: if you smoke pot or have sex, you’re first on the kill list.  It’s like Nancy Reagan hired Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers as “Just Say No” PR guys.  Although, Poltergeist broke these rules, they smoked pot and had sex and lived through the end…  But they were married so maybe the sex rule doesn’t count.

Cautionary tales were boring to me.  If you sneak away from the group to get high or get laid, you’re going to die.  If you wander alone in the woods, you’re going to die.  If you ignore the warnings about staying out of the (attic, basement, closet, whatever..) you’re going to die.  I preferred the stories that came out of nowhere.  Nice little girl, well adjusted maybe a little bit lonely but handling it well, BAM! Possessed by a demon!  Normalcy turned on its ass.  That’s what spooks me.  I know if I’m alone in the woods that I might die.  But something about suburban people minding their own business having to deal with horror.  That’s what works for me.  Marion Crane might have stolen that money, but that hotel was normal enough that you or I might have stayed there.

And from there we have to define “horror”.  Do we break it down into thriller, horror, suspense…  Too many divisions.  What spooks you?  What do you like to watch when you want to be scared.  I used to watch a lot of the Italian gore-horror movies.  That’s not really horror so much as special effects.  And NZ’s Dead Alive and Driller Killer can’t really be counted as horror can they?  On the same shelf as Lugosi?  There such a wide spectrum of what we define as “horror”.  We can all get something out of it.

Let’s list some of the “best” scenes in horror movies and I’ll bet that a lot of people will disagree.  Not everything goes for everyone…

Poltergeist: the clown appearing behind the kid AFTER he looks under the bed.

The Exorcist: The crabwalk/carpet peeing incident while telling the astronaut, “You’re going to die up there”

Halloween: Michael Myers tilting his head and admiring his work after knifing the guy to the door.

There’s a lot more, comment on them.  I’m going to bed.  See ya!