You Don't Scare Me
While everyone is writing about things that scare them (me included) let me break form for a moment and talk about some things that don't scare me. Because you can't really begin to understand a person until you know what makes them tick. Or in this case, not tick at all.
1. Vampires don't scare me. While the look of a vampire might scare me in Murnau's Nosferatu, the idea of an immortal man or woman that feeds on blood does not scare me. I think the best treatment of a vampire is in Hooper's Salem's Lot - which of course is a tribute to Nosferatu. He is not a charmer, he is not a playboy, he is a monster that is seldom seen. I think most of the fear of vampires has been replaced with sexuality and while I may find that exciting, I don't find it scary.
2. Werewolves don't scare me. The transformation is fascinating and I like how An American Werewolf In London explored the horrors of losing complete control of yourself, but I have never found a wolf on two legs or four to be something that I loose any kind of sleep over. But don't get me wrong, The Howling and Dog Soldiers are among some of my favorite horror moves, they just don't scare me.
3. Mummies don't scare me. Being mummified does however scare the bejesus out of me.
4. Torture does not scare me. I cringe because I think torture is an awful thing, not because I am scared by it. Only Marathon Man has come close to capturing the terror associated with torture. Torture is not in the act, it is in the wondering what will happen and how it will feel. Sorry Eli, you missed the boat on that one.
5. Tentacles don't scare me. Because of this, I may have a problem with The Mist.
6. Ghosts don't scare me. Unseen spirits make for good stories around the campfire, but if you truly want to scare me, I need flesh and blood. Unless of course we are talking possession, then that's a completely different story.
7. Severed body parts acting alone don't scare me. A hand terrorizing people is stupid, but connect that hand to a big scary guy and then you've got something.
8. The Devil does not scare me. He/she might be the largest backer in this big scary corporation, but he/she personally does not scare me. The Devil is just a figure head and it's his/her minions that scare me. But I haven't met the guy/gal just yet so I could be wrong.
9. Rabid dogs don't scare me. There comes a time when you have to step back to see where humans are located on the evolutionary chain. You will find them a few clicks ahead of a dog. Rabies or not, no dog will ever take me down.
10. Giant insects don't scare me. Nor do giant frogs. But if there were such a thing as giant insects, I would want giant frogs around so they could eat them.
11. Over-sized crocodiles don't scare me. The same goes for over-sized fish. But the idea of giant fish/bear hybrid a la The Prophecy scares the living hell out of me.
12. Slugs don't scare me. They are slimy and fast and could leap into my mouth within seconds and possess me and turn me into a killing machine, but they do not scare me.
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21 comments:
No dog will ever take you down, eh? That made me laugh.
How can you say that a giant fish cannot scare you? "Jaws" didn't scare you at all?
It's funny that you should write this article ... me and the boys were just talking about this very topic last week. Our conclusion was that the world has become so terrifying in itself that nothing onscreen is scary.
www.therecshow.com
Ray,
I knew the second I published this that there would be loopholes and that's one of them. Jaws scares me.
I used to think nothing scared me ... then I saw a National Geographic special on hippos. Let me tell you, hippos are the scariest things on Earth -- they're nature's Terminator.
Here's something that scares me - the American Welfare System. The "people" it churns out would be better off as Soylent Green.
www.therecshow.com
I'm completely with you on a lot of these. For me to be scared I need to be able to picture myself in the situation. Thus, I am rarely scared by vampires, zombies, werewolves, mutated creatures and the like because - however good a lot of the movies/tv involving them are - I can't imagine being in a situation where I'm being chased by vampires or zombies. Night of the Living Dead terrifies me because it felt so real.
Something like Arachnophobia scares the bejesus outta me because I can't stand spiders and the spiders in that movie are realistic and not these 20-foot jumbo spiders that could never exist.
And even though I don't particularly believe there are chainsaw wielding maniacs in Texas or aliens in space I am more inclined to be scared by those movies because I can put myself in the place of them and realise "i'd be scared shitless" whereas if I was suddenly surrounded by vampires I'd think "why are so many people wearing vampire costumes?"
I hope that all made sense.
Kamikaze,
You're right that it's the costumes that don't make them scary. I used to be scared of spiders and then I moved into an old house that had somewhat of an infestation of brown recluse spiders and seeing them all the time kinda got me over my fear, but I still fear them crawling in my mouth when I sleep.
Piper, have you seen Kairo, the original Pulse? What struck me watching that film was it was one of the few times the manifestation of a straight-forward ghost had ever scared me on film. I say "straight-forward" because, as much as the little girl from Ringu is actually a ghost she never so much looked like one, or what we picture ghosts to look like cinematically - she wasn't see-through and filmy, she was solid (She scared me too, though). But the ghosts in Kairo are the usual opaque white things but I think director Kiyoshi Kurosawa really succeeded in making that semi-invisible threat somehow creepy. I'm usually with you, though, esp. in this day-and-age of ridiculous CG ghosts that just look completely silly.
I haven't seen Kairo, but it's a safe bet that it would scare me because all Asian horror movies no matter how dumb they are scare me.
Ghosts and werewolves, as I said of zombies in the tortoise v. hare post below, aren't best when they're about the fact of them.
Werewolves fascinate me most because they're the one with the strongest thread in which the fear is not about being attacked by the monster but in fact becoming the monster. On a literal level, it's not very scary in the face of it, because, of course, it's nonsense, but the underpinnings of, when done properly, is something very real and, to me, terrifying within the human psyche.
Neil,
I agree. An American Werewolf in London does a good job of capturing that. While I like The Howling very much, it takes too much glee in the transformation and takes too much time in the spectacle of it. As a result, I'm scared by it.
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