The Horror... The Horror

NOT GEEK

I think the first movie I really remember scaring the ever-loving bejeezus out of me was either "Superman II" or "The Muppet Movie."

In the former, our hero Superman goes through some sort of highly-stylized, Satan's-James-Bond-opening montage transformation in which he really does nothing more than lose his powers, but at the time I was rather on the young side and just saw a bunch of red lights and skulls and scary noises, with the upshot being, "There's a big scary light and all you can do is stand there until you're weaker than you were before." Certainly something to look forward to, when you're six.

In the latter, the climax involves a mad scientist putting Kermit into something akin to an electric chair and nearly pulling the switch, but thanks to some wacky hi-jinks, the evil, malicious scientist gets the metallic-looking upside-down bowl on his head instead, and then goes bye-bye (again, six years old here). I've of course seen both movies since, and of course quite obviously realize that a) Superman II, though groundbreaking, was really mostly silly, and b) that "mad scientist" was actually Mel Brooks. Though I still hold a grudge for "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."

I never really had a taste for scary movies much as I got older; not that they scared me away, I just didn't see the point of them. "Hey, let's go watch people get killed." (this was the 1980's, after all) ... so? You've seen one death, you've seen 'em all. Plus there's Ghostbusters and that's awesome.

The first time I really appreciated a horror movie, I was well into my 20's... I'd seen plenty as I got into high school, of course, but it was in my early 20's where I finally realized I'd never seen the original "Halloween," and one October night, decided to rectify that situation.

It was awesome.

What made it awesome was precisely the fact that I HAD seen many other slasher movies by that point. The body count of the original "Halloween" was only, as I recall, five, far and away dwarfing that of its successors (even its own sequels). But it was the scariest, tensest thing I'd ever watched to that point. It was about the mood, not about the kills. Why splatter someone if you can get a reaction just by having the killer stand across the street... unseen by the main character, but in full view of the audience?

Scary.

It was Hitchcock who posited something along the lines of, if you have two people talking over a table at a cafe, that scene can be very boring. But if you let the audience know there is a ticking bomb under that same table, all of a sudden their conversation becomes extremely tense and dramatic, without changing the interaction of the actors at all.

Of course, there are plenty of movie-goers these days who might see such a scene and complain in their blogs or facebook pages, "OMG this movie is SO boring... is the bomb gonna go off or not? Get to it!!" ... this is, of course, to miss the entire point of the scene in the previous example, but it's a natural by-product of the way modern movies are made... and the way the slasher (or rather, "horror") movie has evolved. I admit that the slasher movie is only an offshoot of the genre that is/was "horror," but certainly "slasher" is the only offshoot of it that continues to survive. But I think we can still safely assume that most people can immerse themselves in the world of a movie based on subtlety and cinematic convention, given that ten years ago "The Blair Witch Project" rang up $100 million in ticket sales, and movies like Saw, and Hostel, while doing well, have certainly never become the event-movie that BWP became all those years ago. Niche vs. Culture-as-a-whole. BSG vs. Lost. For example.

What do we have nowadays? Saw Seven? Hostel 3? (the latter is straight-to-DVD, by the way. Hilarious). Is it just the slasher movie that's dead, or is it horror altogether? "Scream" was really more a parody of the genre, once upon a time, though it did bring back the horror movie in a big way... for a little while. Now it's all remakes, reboots, and all the truly bloody movies are more about people being tortured than the good ol' classic "Teenagers running through the woods and getting splatted" classics. Good lord, man, how on earth are you supposed to get a girl to jump into your lap at the movie theater anymore?

It should be noted, though, that (a) I have not seen Paranormal Activity, and (b) That being true, the scariest movie I've seen in the last ten years was the American remake of "The Ring." And that was PG-13. (Not because it's not scary or because I'm a pussy, because it is and I'm not, but because there just wasn't any blood, and that's the kind of ignorant organization the MPAA is). Maybe I just need to watch more Japanese-horror. Or invent my own genre. Of horror. BOO!

GEEK

Pussssssssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

By your own admission, the scariest movie you ever saw was "The Blair Witch Project," because it creates that tension that people with imagination adore and people without imagination are confused by. Kind of like how only people without imagination could actually vote for Sarah Palin. Gravitas is its own reward, but if you don't see it, no one can explain it to you. Rather like the appeal of "Lost." Or Doctor Who.

For the record, I dislike Lost and could never get into it, but that's an entirely different entry. Back to the point:

The slasher genre is indeed a sub-set of the horror genre, and the horror genre is nothing new. From Dracula to Frankenstein to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, people like seeing scary movies because they are freaking scary. Sneaking up behind someone in the dark and going "boo!", going on a roller coaster, having sex in a public place... we all get our thrills somehow, and we've all tried at least one of those things. It's the shock, the moment of surprise... it's impossible to tell what the primal attraction is, maybe it's just the endorphins in the moment after your friend or sibling shouts "Boo!" and you realize you're perfectly safe... or if you're the Boo-er, maybe just that power to make someone jump. In any event, it's awesome.

And so in the early 1970's we get the book "Jaws," which Spielberg turned into a movie (see previous blog), which was essentially a symbol for its time, and a slasher movie all at once. Scary, unseen monster, preying on the unsuspecting, one at a time.....

Halloween did it again, 3 years later. In that movie, Michael Myers was punishing his "evil" sister over and over again, having killed his actual sister for being all slutty at the beginning of the film (when he was still five years old), then killing others whom he perceived to be either her, or the boy she was with, for the remainder of the movie. That, not Jaws, was the birth of the slasher movie.

We can see it right through the sequels to Halloween, the sequels to Friday the 13th, and most of the sequels to "A Nightmare on Elm Street" -- it's even explained, point-blank, in 1996's "Scream." If you are having sex, you are a target. If you are doing drugs, you are a target. If you're doing pretty much any of the behavior your adult-peers wouldn't approve of, LOOK OUT. OR THE BOOGEY-MAN WILL GET YOU.

And yet, the Boogey-Man never kills adults. Only teenagers who are up to the kind of shenanigans our ultra-conservative overseer, Ronald Reagan, would not approve of. Does this mean no adults were doing drugs, or having sex outside marriage? Well, apparently it did. Cuz there sure were a lot of teenagers dying in these movies, and the virginal "good girl" always seemed to survive until the end. Be good kids, and the killer will spare you.

But that was a 1980's thing. Times changed and politics mellowed, Bill Clinton coming into office and taboos relaxing (particularly ones involving cigars), the budget was balanced, and America was by and large a much happier, less-repressed place. The boogey-man was no longer coming to get anyone.

And yet teenagers were still dying... in movies. What was killing them?

As we learned from the original "Scream" .... themselves. The killers in the first movie just wanted to be famous, after all; the original reality TV wanna-bes. Scream 2 just turned out to be a petty revenge story (the boogey man again.... er, woman), but she was only doing it BECAUSE some teenagers had killed her teenager in the first place. Never mind that he'd been a psychotic killer. An eye for an eye, as they say.

The killer in the third film was a teenager again, or at least had been, when he got the idea... and by the time we get to Saw and Hostel, there's no in-the-shadows Boogey-man at all. The very subjects of the movie are forced to hurt themselves, and hurt others... in order to survive. Because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or because someone else is expressing their urges to make themselves happy... at the expense of others. In "Hostel," some rich foreigners cut up Americans cuz they're bored, or something... not really sure what's going on there, but the original made an awful lot of money for torture-porn... amusing, considering the premise used for ACTUAL porn would've been way more fun. "Hello, I'm Inga. I have paid the top dollar to have the secks with yuu pretty America boy...."

Saw has 6 movies in the franchise and counting, and in each some innocent bystander must commit some horrible atrocity against some fellow human being in order to go on with their lifestyle.

Thank goodness most of us just buy a Prius instead.