[SultanOfSuede]

A slightly fringe author whom I like made the case that the movie Alien -- one of my all time favorites -- was about oral sex. The fear of a man getting snipped during the act of love which dare not speak its name.

I've pondered the question of horror for sometime. I like Poe, Lovecraft, King and consider the latter to be one of the funniest writers I've ever read when he's describing grisly acts of violence. I believe Poe to be a prophet of the cruelty of the 20th century.

I watched Quarantine the other night and found myself genuinely thrilled by its clausterphobia, it's use of a camera from the perspective of someone being hunted by feral animals. I thought the ending was simply unsettling. I won't spoil it here for those who've yet to see it.

All this by way of introducing the question: What makes horror interesing, intriguing, engrossing? Does it have an evolutionary, psychological or cathartic role or does it, as I believe, reflect back to ourselves the anomie, the chaos, the disorientation and anxiety of modern life? Related to this: does watching or reading works of horror harm us morally?

[lamplighter]

I always thought it was just an adrenaline outlet for the average person. Whose life is relatively fear free in comparison to when our ancestors first swung out of the trees. I think the feeling of being scared or hunted more specifically is a thrilling process that has become void in the average persons life, and horror movies/books provide a safe outlet for this need to experience the feeling of being scared.

[zibber]

I think the value of horror is an entertainment value. It's exciting to let yourself be thrilled by works of horror; be they movies, books or even
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. There are, of course, some works so blatantly (or perhaps self-indulgently (coughcouchrobzombiecough)) vile and gory that there isn't so much of a thrill factor as a cathartic effect, much like playing an hour of GTA and shooting random people for hitting your car, blowing off steam
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I had a conversation with someone about the possible harmful effects of horror last night. We've both "babysat" the same autistic boy (17 years old), and he has a real preference for some of the nastiest gore. He adores movies like the Saw series, and will replay particularly graphic bits over and over. I honestly don't see the harm, even though he's autistic, but the other person thinks he can't set his own limits, doesn't know the line between real and fake, etc. This is a good kid who I don't see harming anyone. It gives him nightmares now and then, apparently, but he just loves the movies. I even recognize some of myself in him, being a bit of a horror fan (or at least having been so), which the other person, who hates horror anyway, cannot. Anyway, my point: if horror has no adverse moral effects on an autistic kid, I don't see it "negatively" influencing someone of sound mind.

ps. Anyone else stoked for the new Sam Raimi flick?

[Iggy Hazard]

To me, horror is about the will to survive in circumstances where it doesn't seem very likely. It's about finding courage that the survivor(s) didn't know they had. It's also about the savviness it takes to strategize -- as seen in Aliens.

Note: Not sure it's been mentioned yet, but Ellen Ripley is said to be an INTJ.
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[SultanOfSuede]

	Note: Not sure it's been mentioned yet, but Ellen Ripley is said to be an INTJ.

I could see that. In the second movie, she's living alone in a small apartment that reeks of introversion. She's self-sufficient in all the films, doesn't easily bond, but shows great loyalty to Newt and a few others who are worthy of it. She's clearly bright and able to improvise, something I associate at least with INTJ.

[The Psyentist]

I've often wondered the significance of horror in entertainment; I still haven't decided why people like it. Is it because they enjoy being scared? But some say it doesn't scare them. So, what IS the element/effect that makes some people enjoy it?

I don't really like graphic horror much, but I like some gothic literature. Poe is one of my favourite authors. I like how internal much of his works are, psychological horror.

[larkin]

I used to watch a lot of horror movies. When I was a kid, I was too scared to watch them, and I have this thing where if I'm scared of something I have to do it. It's like a compulsion. So when the top 50 horror movies of all time list came out I watched one a week with a friend.

I'm guessing something similar drives a lot of people to horror. Fear is a pretty basic emotion, so like zib said, experiencing it can be as cathartic as laughter. Also, the movies themselves, like the older fairy tales, have a morality tale aspect to them that's taken as a whole is pretty good at putting its finger on the deep-seated cultural concerns of the day. When the conformity was on everyone's mind there were zombie movies; when the cold war was foremost there were alien movies; when the sexual revolution was underway you see more serial killer movies; lately the trend has been toward torture horror movies like Saw or Hostel. That last trend is the only one I truly don't enjoy watching (although the slasher flicks can get very boring).

And yes, I think desensitization is a concern for certain people, but as with almost everyone who rejects censorship out of hand don't think there's going to be anything we can do about it.

[Shifter]

I once read an interesting essay that proposed that zombie movies are an outlet for Americans fears and paranoia about foreign powers threatening their culture/way of life, and that the recent resurgence of zombie flicks is a result of September 11 and the resulting change in world-view. I'll see if I can find it again.

EDIT: Read it
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Thoughts?

[SultanOfSuede]

Larkin raises a good point -- sub-genres within horror usually reflect some contemporary concern. Dracula took off in the early 20th century, right when syphilis was killing so many (some think Friederich Nietzsche was a victim of this disease; it's been disputed however). Some have, through a close reading of Dracula lore, concluded that vampirism is a euphemism for syphilis.

The Psyentist mentions the joy of being scared but not really being in danger. I think this is one level of horror -- what I would call "porch" horror. Some people are fine outside. But... it seems to me the best horror movies are not always about gore and blood and usually involve going inside the lodge. (Invariably, slashers involve graphic sex scenes, usually with the couple getting impaled by a serial killer, etc. while having sex. I don't have a high opinion of this sort of movie for moral reasons. Saw and Michael Bay's Friday the 13th are nothing more than soft core porn and violence.)

Event Horizon remains one my all time favorite films. Not esp. well-received among critics, but it does have a following. The film works off dread and anxiety, but not the kind caused by something like a crazy serial killer living by a lake. The dread is existential and timeless and only is revealed well into the film. Good people, likable, solid people are undone by evil. To me, this is about the moral dimension of human life and therefore it is more interesting. This is also why Quarantine is so good -- people are turned into monsters by desiring that which is morally repellant: The end of the world by human hands





SultanOfSuede added to this post, 1 minutes and 49 seconds later...

@Shifter -- I'll read the essay tomorrow. Thanks for posting it!

[Jinxu]

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I used to watch a lot of horror movies. When I was a kid, I was too scared to watch them, and I have this thing where if I'm scared of something I have to do it. It's like a compulsion. So when the top 50 horror movies of all time list came out I watched one a week with a friend.

There is a study that show horror movie correlates well with the stock market. It found that when stocks falls, horror movies become more popular and less popular when the stock market rises. If you look at the last 100 years, there have been three main periods when horror movies were popular: the 1930s, the 1970s, and today (the 2000s). All three of these period coincided with a bear market in stocks. If you take a look at this graph, you can see clearly that the majority of the ground breaking horror movies released since the 1960s, were all made during the 1970s bear market:


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Note: what isn't shown is the classic b&w horror flicks (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, etc) which were released during the stock market crash in the early 1930s.

[PeterIMC]

I don't like horror movies at all. It's the worse kind of entertainment as far as I'm concerned. It's all about the unexpected. The whole point of horror is to create an expectation and then crush it through something fearfull.

It's horrible. When I watch a movie I get into it completely. Constantly making predictions on what's going to happen next. When the whole purpose of a movie is to crush that, then the whole movie literally is a horror to watch. Besides that, unrealistic things are by definition lousy to watch.

I think people that aren't able to predict so well (underdevelopped iNtuition) like horror much better as they take things as they are, living just in the "now". Often a horror movie tries to build tention to the point where I'm like: "Oh come on, get to the F#(&!%$ point." (I'm talking individual scenes here.) People that like horror seem to enjoy that tention building a lot more.

[Shifter]

	Originally Posted by Jinxu To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	( Show Spoiler ) To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

This graph is a bit misleading, it conveniently leaves out a lot of significant 80's and 90's horror movies, Children of the Corn, Scream, Aliens, Candyman, I know What You Did Last Summer, to name a few.

[Jinxu]

	Originally Posted by Shifter To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	This graph is a bit misleading, it conveniently leaves out a lot of significant 80's and 90's horror movies, Children of the Corn, Scream, Aliens, Candyman, I know What You Did Last Summer, to name a few.

Read again:

	Originally Posted by Jinxu To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If you take a look at this graph, you can see clearly that the majority of the ground breaking horror movies released since the 1960s, were all made during the 1970s bear market:

The Scream trilogy and I Know What You Did Last Summer are copies of the 1970s slasher horror genre. Furthermore, they were released near the top of the stock market (ie near the beginning of the bear market) and their popularity fits well with the correlation. Compared to the 1970s, in the 1980s and 1990s the horror genre wasn't as popular. Most were just copies. Very few were any good.

[Shifter]

	Originally Posted by Jinxu To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The Scream trilogy and I Know What You Did Last Summer are copies of the 1970s slasher horror genre.

You could argue most horror films are formulaic (secluded, inescapable location + unstoppable monster)

	Originally Posted by Jinxu To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Furthermore, they were released near the top of the stock market (ie near the beginning of the bear market) and their popularity fits well with the correlation.

Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer were released in 1996 and 1997 respectively, right in the middle of the upward trend.

	Originally Posted by Jinxu To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Compared to the 1970s, in the 1980s and 1990s the horror genre wasn't as popular. Most were just copies. Very few were any good.

I agree with the conclusions, it's the misrepresentation of the information in the graph I have a problem with, a better comparison of horror moive popularity would be to graph the box office gross of horror movies (adjusted for inflation and normalised against total box office gross of all moives of course).

[larkin]

	Originally Posted by Shifter To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	a better comparison of horror moive popularity would be to graph the box office gross of horror movies (adjusted for inflation and normalised against total box office gross of all moives of course).

The graph is interesting, and maybe fits with the idea of horror films being basically morality tales, which are always more popular in bear markets. (People feel the need to explain a bear market/public health scare/existential threat of any kind as punishment for their immoral behavior.) But tend to agree about it being more valuable if it were total box office. And I'm not sure I would call Scream a repeat of slasher flicks, rather an ironic take on them. It's a different movie experience - not the least of which because the dramatic irony offers one more chance for the audience to feel removed from danger.

Along those lines, and a follow-up to what the Psyentist and Sultan have pointed out - definitely the so-called fourth wall in theater, separating the audience from the action, is an important part to any theater or film experience, since it allows the audience the psychological distance they need. For me, the absolute scariest movie that I saw during my list-watching was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A lot of people speculated that part of the reason that this film was particularly scary was because the combined effect of it being "based on a true story" and shot rather poorly on 16mm film stock made it feel like you were watching something that actually happened, like a snuff film. An effect they tried to repeat with some success in the Blair Witch Project. If the filmmakers can do that the psychological distance disappears and the film is a more intense experience.

That said, some filmmakers/playwrights go in the opposite direction, the "epic" or "dialectical" theater of Brecht and The Threepenny Opera, where the audience is made particularly aware the work is fictional - sometimes through comedy, sometimes with irony, sometimes by breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience directly. You could make the argument this is the category Scream falls under. Most recent, best example is Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke's Funny Games (the American remake also by Haneke has Michael Pitt, Naomi Watts and Tim Roth), where Pitt frequently addresses the audience. Good quote from Haneke about the film I found when I looked it up:

"My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus."

In keeping with that quote, Funny Games wasn't so much scary as deeply disturbing. Even though most of the torture happens off-screen, and it's relatively light on gore. Not sure I would watch it again.

Ha, I've rambled, as I often do when reflecting on horror. The experience of watching all of the movies in one long chunk made me reflect on it more than most, I think. And I'm particularly interested in the psychology of dealing with transgressive elements in our culture, i.e., how does the audience process it? How do they put it in context? I think looking at in fiction is helpful for understanding their methods in real life.

[Ither]

An interesting thread.

Unlike most of the posters, I hate horror films and have all my life. I've quite enough angst, thank you. The world and people are horrific as it is. Nervous as I am, I've never understood the need for adrenalin rushes.

[Jinxu]

Originally Posted by Shifter To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer were released in 1996 and 1997 respectively, right in the middle of the upward trend. I agree with the conclusions, it's the misrepresentation of the information in the graph I have a problem with, a better comparison of horror moive popularity would be to graph the box office gross of horror movies (adjusted for inflation and normalised against total box office gross of all moives of course).

You don't need total box office gross and it can misleading if one big hit made up most of the box office gross. What you can graph is the frequency being made. Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer along with The Blair Witch Project were released at the beginning of the trend. So it would make sense why at the time when they were released, few horror movies were being made. They were the first wave in the trend. Today (and nine years into the bear market), there have been a surge in the number of horror movies being made each year.

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	And I'm not sure I would call Scream a repeat of slasher flicks, rather an ironic take on them. It's a different movie experience - not the least of which because the dramatic irony offers one more chance for the audience to feel removed from danger.

It's good that you pointed that out. Furthermore, it's been nine year in the bear market and horror movies not only became more popular, but also have more gore and more scares compared to Scream. The graph shows the release dates of ground breaking horror movies meaning it pushes the boundary in the horror genre in some way.

[nowt]

Most horror, isn't. Very little does what horror purports to do, unless you're six-- Vehicles that are slowed [dumbed down] for safety's sake and God bless America, and oh another multi-million dollar weekend for 'groundbreaking' cinema.

Try August Underground. Figure out what horror might be good for, from that.

[pip]

	Originally Posted by Ither To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	An interesting thread. Unlike most of the posters, I hate horror films and have all my life. I've quite enough angst, thank you. The world and people are horrific as it is. Nervous as I am, I've never understood the need for adrenalin rushes.

Another one here.
I put horror flics in the same category as rollercoasters and such: Something that makes you feel vaguely uncomfortable but serves no real purpose nor has any attractive qualities, and that you usually have to pay to experience.
A waste of time.

[SultanOfSuede]

	Something that makes you feel vaguely uncomfortable but serves no real purpose nor has any attractive qualities...

A similar claim can be made regarding comedies and stories of romance. I certainly feel that the latter has absolutely nothing to do with the realities of dating; they also make me feel uncomfortable. The discomfort experienced by a horror-show watcher and a me watching a romance are of different kinds and for different reasons.

Others have pointed out that there's horror that doesn't really succeed, but again, this is true of any genre. There are some comedies which just aren't funny. There are sci-fi books which are formulaic and uninteresting. If we accept that not every specimen for a genre is the *best* of its kind and recognized that when we say horror, we mean those few books and/or movies which are widely heralded as being the exemplars of a style, then we can look at why they are so well loved. I agree that many horror films are not worth one's time.

Pip: Are you saying you've never ever watched a scary movie and been genuinely fearful, anxious or thrilled? Not even one?

[Kris]

Horror movies are great for getting a girl to jump into your lap/curl up into you!

On a personal level, I like horror movies for a wide array of reasons. Firstly I find some unexplainable and primitive enjoyment out the predictable slasher/murder films, which I watch purely for light entertainment. I also find myself constantly drawn to films that have very strong elements of suspense and particularly dread. I find it to be one of those situations where I just cannot look away or stop watching, I have to watch the entire thing. Also, I have a very dark sense of humor so am always strongly drawn towards horror movies with comedy or black comedies such as The Evil Dead, The Toxic Avenger, Very Bad Things, etc.

[Iggy Hazard]

	Originally Posted by PeterIMC To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	It's all about the unexpected. The whole point of horror is to create an expectation and then crush it....

Sam Raimi does that all the time. Take the original The Evil Dead for example. Ash is a doofy goof (and that's okay by me) while Scott is the assertive one. Ash is a lot like Shaggy and has some Jar Jar-ish tendencies (which are part of Bruce Campbell's trademark style of what Roger Ebert calls "splatstick"). The audience wants to identify with Scott because he's the assertive one. But later, when he abandons Ash and Linda (after they've locked up the possessed Cheryl and dismembered the possessed Shelly), we no long want to identify with him because he reveals that he's really a jerk. Then he gets torn up (and possibly gang-raped) by trees and comes back to the cabin nearly dead to death...with his wrist bone protruding from his flesh and a stick stuck in his gut.
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	Originally Posted by Kris To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Horror movies are great for getting a girl to jump into your lap/curl up into you!

I once made a girl watch Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn with me. It was great.
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I also made her watch Falling Down with me. She didn't like that movie at all!
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That would have been circa 1998-99.

[LPM]

Every time I see this thread title pop up on the front page I think of the original title of that famous Russian novel...

War...What is it good for?

[Iggy Hazard]

	Originally Posted by LPM To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	War...What is it good for?

Absolutely nuthin'
Say it again now...
Good God, y'all!

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[LPM]

	Originally Posted by Iggy Hazard To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Absolutely nuthin' Say it again now... Good God, y'all! To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Yes but I was thinking Seinfeld.


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