What Goes Bump In the Night…….?

Recently, my co-contributor Karl Hungus posted a great piece on what turns the screws of his fears. I could not help myself, and have decided to return the favor.

My earliest fears - that is, the first movie to really scare the bejeezuz out of me – was a mixture of The Hand with Michael Cane, and Sasquatch. I can recall these movies being on a television when I was very young, and I was not able to understand them. They may have been playing on what would by now be an antique movie player, either an early VHS or maybe some sort of laserdisc system (anyone recall “Selectivision??”). In fact, for a long time (whatever a long time is to a 4 year old) I conflated these two movies together. But what was it that scared me? The autonomous hand? The concept of some monster named ‘Sasquatch’ roaming the dark woods? I think that it was just that these movies were scary, and therefore I was scared by them.

Not too long after the Hand/Sasquatch caper there was a television showing of the first true fear I would experience on film. This was different than the abstract experience from above. Rather, this was something I perceived could happen to me, and it continues to affect me. The movie was Spielberg’s “Jaws” and I am still afraid to swim in any body of water alone, much less swim in any body of water, alone or otherwise, at night. This includes shallow, above ground swimming pools.

What was it about Jaws? Well, it did have the advantage of at least being essentially plausible – people had really been attacked and eaten by sharks, most gruesomely by the infamous white shark. That both the robot shark and the real life versions are so awesomely built to inspire human fear they border on a parody of the form – huge mouths in a dreadful smiley-face, with mandibles that can diabolically disengage for larger bites, filled with row about row of symmetrically triangular razors – it is almost too much, like a child’s drawing. Further, it was not unusual for me and mine to spend a good deal of time in the water, as we loved swimming and beaches (still do).

Well, I can chalk a lot of the fear about Jaws, in addition to the plausiblilty, up to that there was a) the prospect of being eaten alive – which has got to be painful in the extreme, and b) that it came from nowhere. That is, you never saw it coming until it wanted you to see it coming. While the shark does reveal itself at times by the fin, whenever it went in for a kill, it came from underneath. I think that the two most terrifying “kills” are the opening scene, where the shark essentially comes out of nowhere to take the skinny-dipping girl, and the later scene, when the boy on the raft is killed.

The first – the girl killed at night, gets to me because she cannot possibly see the shark, and was trusting of the ocean to not send something wicked her way. And there she is, a fragile human full of the belief nothing can go wrong, until suddenly she is without a leg. Oh, the horror. And you pretty much don’t see the shark, either. In the end there is barely enough of her left to fill a bedpan.

In the second scene, where the boy is killed in broad daylight, you again don’t really see the shark, except as it completes a “death roll” as the rest of the swimmers run for it. Now, this scene got to me young because that could have been me on that raft. But, as I have gotten older, it has turned more into the instinctual “protect the young" fear. While I am not a parent yet, I am the oldest in my family, and have a very developed protective streak, and the idea of being unable to prevent a child in my charge from harm, much less becoming a snack for a giant fish, is unconscionable. When the camera closes in on the poor mother in her sun hat searching the surf for her son, it is almost unwatchable for me now.

Finally, there is a third scene, which is the death of the character of Quint. He is an implacable foe of the shark, bent on vengeance, clearly cast as a latter day Ahab. But in his final scene, when the shark has breached the transom and all but sunk his Orca, he is kicking and squealing like a baby, all for naught. Even the toughest succumb to the Leviathan is the unspoken moral.

Notwithstanding that I was already damaged goods from Jaws, my good ol’ Uncle Pat decided it would be a great idea to take me and my cousin, Jenn, to see the brand new adventure film at the local drive-in in New Jersey. We had gone to this drive-in before, having seen both The Muppet Movie and The Empire Strikes Back there. This time, though, with Raiders of the Lost Ark, we were in for fare a little more suited for adults. Frankly, the only scene that got to me was the melting faces. It didn’t get to me at the time, only later, when I tried to go to sleep after an extremely satisfying movie going experience. I closed my eyes and all I saw was the wire rimmed spectacles falling from the disintegrating face of Major Arnold Toht, over and over again. As for Jenn, to this day she never got over the chamber of the serpents.

I am unsure why, beyond the obvious, this got to me. I suppose it had a lot to do with the idea of the pain of a melting face, coupled with the idea of being so bad that God is that mad at you. It’s worse than the Devil being mad at you, I guess.

I appreciated Mr. Hungus’ inclusion of the film “Pet Semetary” in his piece. Being a precocious child, as well as always trying to prove myself to the adults in my family, I read the novel as a 3rd grader (it took me a long time to get through, though – most of a year, if I recall). I was blessed with the type of parents that would permit me to read just about anything, including Stephen King, and this one looked good. Well, let me tell you…………

Pet Semetary might be the all around scariest King book, and was by far the scariest King I ever read. As a kid it was mind-bendingly terrifying. It had it all – reanimated zombie cats, ghosts coming without warnings, children’s deaths, reanimated zombie children, and a twisted sister locked in the attic. There was a blackness in the horror of Pet Semetary that most horror books lack. And somehow this blackness translated into the film.

I suppose, at the outset, Pet Semetary has an advantage of being scary as it threatened the well being of children. As can be seen by what I related above, in addition to my own safety, as I got older there developed in me the fear of harm to the helpless. To be unable to save Gage from the truck is unimaginable; the fear of being a parent and losing a child is only moreso.

In addition to this, though, is that the dead return to life rather surly. They aren’t slothful, moaning zombies, but actually motivated agents of great evil. Churchill the cat was not pleasant after his stint in the Micmac burial ground, and Gage literally brings the voices of Hell. Mr. Hungus had it nailed with his analysis of the showdown between Gage and the old man, Jud. It was scary in the book, and this was faithfully translated into the film version. And while the Achilles severing was awful, the part that got me was when Gage swipes the corners of Jud’s mouth with the scalpel. (Fans of Asian cinema might see shades of this in the character Kakihara from the incredible Ichii the Killer.)

To be continued.....................

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An exploration of fear, what disturbs me.

Greetings once again Vault dwellers, it is Karl Hungus of karlhungus.com here, so do not adjust your set, I am now in control of the transmission. It's amazing how much excitement can be derived from exploring our own anxieties in this way, with a good Horror film, we come face to face with so many negative emotions, and come out thrilled at the end. The genre itself is a multi-headed beast, and there are so many different feelings it can stir, many films have to many different ways to scare, disturb, unsettle, sicken, repulse or otherwise tap in to our subconscious. I'd like to talk to you about my own fears and what strikes a nerve with me when I'm deep in the experience. For me, it's not always the things that go bump in the night.

One thing that's always sure to creep the bejesus out of me is Body Horror. Films like The Fly or Tetsuo will always unsettle me deeply, no matter how many times I've seen them, the physical transformation that the main characters go through set my skin crawling every single time. I don't quite know why, perhaps it's an innate or subconscious fear of disease, of something malignant that's going on beneath the surface, the notion of helplessness that our own bodies could betray us. Whatever it is, this frightens and sickens me very deeply.

Maybe it's not something innate though, maybe this is a fear that was set in early? In which case, Ron Howard has a lot to answer for, because the scene in Willow where the evil Bavmorda turned everyone into pigs was pretty horrific for a kid's film. Or it could be earlier than that, I remember watching re-runs of The Incredible Hulk as a child and hiding behind the couch whenever Dr. Banner turned into a green Lou Ferrigno.

I suppose that also has to do with why I find there are very few good Werewolf movies. An American Werewolf in London was the pinnacle merely because of the chilling and amazing shapeshifting scene, and I've never seen another that has effected me so much. I feel kind of cheated sometimes when a film depicts someone turning into a werewolf as a quick change, or where it will happen offscreen. AAWiL set the standard, and if it's not a horrifying change, it just isn't a proper Werewolf movie.

Now, I don't really believe in desensitization, at least not to a huge degree. What's scared me for many years before still scares me now. I don't mean that I'd watch Willow and be as freaked out as I was when I was just a wee nipper, but that Body Horror still effects me as it always has. British Sci-Fi series Doctor Who has had some pretty creepy moments, the episode Blink was one of the most genuinely terrifying things I've seen on TV in a long time ("Don't blink, blink and you're dead!"), it was creepy stuff. But it wasn't that episode that freaked me out the most, it was a later episode called Planet of the Ood, and towards the end, one of the characters was turned into a grotesque cthulhu-like alien lifeform. True to form, I was utterly creeped out and the scene left me with a knot in my stomach. I'd say the old fears just don't leave us.

One film that certainly left it's mark on me was Stephen King's Pet Sematary, it effected me two-fold. First of all, the scene with Rachel's sister Zelda, just looking at her had my senses screaming, it was horrific. I later found out that the character of Zelda was played by a man, because they couldn't find a woman skinny enough for it, and that made a lot of sense. I'd say it's because a man has a broader frame, this made the character look that bit more emaciated, the bony shoulders and elbows that bit more exaggerated than if it had been a woman playing the role. A recent horror film pulled the same trick (I won't mention which as it's a bit of a spoiler, but if you've seen it you'll know the film I mean) of having an extremely thin man playing a female character, and it still had the same unedging effect on my senses.

The other thing in Pet Sematary that effected me was the scene where Jud Crandall gets his achilles tendon cut. The very thought of it makes me wince, it really unsettles me, and no matter how many times I see a scene of tendon-trauma in various films, it's something that I have never gotten used to. That's another reason that I don't truly believe in the idea of desensitization, I just can't see myself ever getting used to violence to that particular area, it cuts through me and sets my teeth on edge. There's a scene in Hostel where one character's achilles tendons are cut, and we don't even see it happen, we see is a reaction shot and the aftermath, but to me that was by a vast margin the most disturbing scene of the entire film.

That's not to say that any old scene of body horror or scene of physical violence against the ankle area will make a good horror for me. I would say that to make a truly great horror film, it can't just contain something that will scare or unsettle you. Pet Sematary is a great film in its own right, even without the scenes I've mentioned, and I've seen elements of what scares me in other films and they've fallen completely flat. I think a film has to engage you first and foremost, and that's why The Fly or An American Werewolf in London are absolute classics. If it doesn't have interesting characters that you care what happens to, then the film will fail.

I know it's not exactly a popular choice, but Hostel: Part II was an absolute triumph for me, and I think Eli Roth is a far better director than people give him credit for. The whole bloodbath scene was something that left me absolutely shaken, it was one of the most downright horrific things I've seen in a film in recent years, and it worked so well because Roth starts off with the characters. It was because he wrote Lorna (played so sympathetically by Heather Matarazzo, who was by far the best actor in the film) to be someone we empathised with, not some cut-out cheerleader that nobody cared about. When the above scene finally comes, it has all the more impact because we're emotionally invested in the character. The gore itself was very disturbing, and just thinking about the sound of the blade against her skin sets my teeth on edge, but it's not why the scene has such impact, and seeing it again it doesn't get any less disturbing, simply because of the character of Lorna.

Violence and gore certainly isn't everyone's bag, but I think in the right context it can be extremely effective and provide for a truly powerful film experience. That's not to say I don't love the more traditional ghost story, because the likes of Don't Look Now and Ringu count as some of my all time favourites. There's simply nothing like a good horror that piles on the atmosphere and doesn't really on cheap shock-tactics to scare the audience. The Others and The Blair Witch Project were two films that built up the tension slowly, and they were truly fantastic horror films.

Atmosphere is one of the hardest things to put your finger on. David Lynch is one of my favorite directors by far, and you couldn't really call any of his film Horror exactly, yet some of them can be so wholly unnerving and disturbing, more so than many Horrors. Lost Highway (above) is a perfect example, so much of it can be greatly unsettling, and watching it can really set me on edge. A lot of the time I can easily see why something disturbs me, I can point it out and say it's that, but here I don't know quite what it is, whatever magic Lynch works just gets to me. It was the same with Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire, something just had me on edge. Roman Polanski's The Tenant is another film that had me very unsettled throughout, much in the same way that Lost Highway did, something I can't quite explain, but very potent none the less.

I hope this has been an interesting read. It's been fun for me trying to lay out my fears, to relate what disturbs me, and what makes a powerful Horror experience for me. I'm sure that just as everyone has their own preferences when it comes to the genre, we've all got different things that will scare and disturb us, things that we've never gotten used to in films and things that can still freak us out. I'd love to hear from you, what is it that effects you most in a Horror?

What scares you?

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