chiller blog

Posted Aug 14, 08 03:17 PM

I Used to Hate Horror Movies

I was in fourth grade, ulcer-bound. Nuclear war. Tornados. Floods. Fires. Racism. Catholic guilt. This really weird concept older people got into called sex. Whenever I stopped playing, my innocence maelstrom-ed into Category 5 anxiety. Whoa. I was afraid of a LOT of things.

Irwin Allen films were bad enough. At 9pm CST, from behind my bedroom door, I morbidly eavesdropped the basement rec room TV: screams channeled from The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. Was I the only one who honestly believed that, if he rooted hard enough, every single cast member could actually crawl out alive? Little Mikey had to, had to know. That meant asking for two glasses of water I really didn't want followed by two restroom trips I ended up badly needing. The result: four quick sneak-peeks at tidal waves knocking over ballroom Christmas trees, and Robert Wagner thinking that a wet towel over his head was a plenty-good defense against a 160-floor hell blazer.

So much in the world-within-our-world. Lying, crying, sighing, vying, dying. I needed an escape from all of this escape…

Then I watched Halloween.

Never before and certainly not since has a film so successfully placed the viewer inside itself. John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece is a gut-check: a visceral, merciless experience that dared to be diabolically minimalist. (Indeed, it was a keen distributor who suggested the filmmaker and his producer, the late and awesome Debra Hill, set the action around a holiday. Previously, their project was called The Babysitter Murders.)
But perhaps Carpenter's biggest dare was that ending, an ending that forever changed the face of the genre. How so? Simply put, the killer got away.

The killer got away.

One out-of-the-box decision transformed a seminal work of cinema into film legend. A movie that shattered its way through and into our subconscious. Carpenter's late post-production concession to score the picture with what was essentially a variation on an old piano practice drill was lightning striking twice, captured in yet another bottle. How many pieces of orchestration not only stir, in our memories, images of a film… but also precisely how we felt watching it? How many of us would admit to, out of the corner of our eyes and very much alone in the dark, seeing… that faceless mask? (And to the slasher pics who drew from Halloween, I say, get your own damn ending.)

Something interesting has happened in the last few paragraphs. And it resembles exactly that point in childhood where – thanks to horror films - I stopped being afraid…

… because I enjoyed being scared.

All those fear points I spoke of? Wouldn't you know the best of the horror genre confronts them (and more to follow in future entries)? What's a therapy session compared to stepping out of an airplane into a few thousand feet of fresh air, or a 0-to-80 in 3 seconds 'coaster flattening your back to the seat cushion? It's good to feel that rush of feeling… good to be alive.

Even when it takes a nightmare to do it.

Send your questions to mike@chillertv.com