While You Had The Smurfs, I Had The Shining
When I tell my friend over coffee that the first movie I remember seeing was The Shining (age 5), my friend laughs, clasps her hands and exclaims: This explains so much!! We laugh because I’m known for my predilection for the depraved, the sadistic, and the horrifying.
My mother, a complicated woman that I’ve written about in great length, had a penchant for the paranormal. And while most mothers toted their young children to movies with talking dogs, rainbow dreams, and a world where all of one’s problems were resolved by song, my mother found those movies infinitely more disturbing than the ones she took me to. I had to learn that the world was a cruel place and what better way to start my sentimental education than in an air-conditioned movie theater in Brooklyn, New York.
But maybe this isn’t you. Maybe you were hugged as a child, repeatedly reminded of your snowflake specialness. Maybe your first movie involved a cartoon character and synchronized squealing - well, good for you. Good for you!!! Because that wasn’t my childhood. I was a psychological/horror movie connoisseur by age ten. Rear Window, The Birds, Carrie, The Body Snatcher, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (believe me when I say that it is perfectly valid to qualify this movie as horror for how far those egomaniacs fell) - while I didn’t understand the narrative undertones of these movies, I knew people were frightened, many more people were suffering, and my taste for horror was whetted. And while my mother created her own real-life horror film of self-medication, which tried to suppress her own demons, I pressed on, and rented and analyzed scary movies at an abnormal rate.
Now we’re not talking about the predictable or the ridiculous, say like, Audition, a poor excuse for a horror movie with a sensationalistic torture scene (yawn inducing, if you ask me) where women fall into three predicatable categories: whore, psycho & servant. Oh, don’t piss off those women. They’ll put skewers in your eyes and chop off your feet! Rather, we’re considering the off-kilter, the unhinged, the disquiet. We’re intrigued by the complicated characters and what ripples just below the surface. We like the charming sociopaths who go helter-skelter, and we feel slightly apologetic for sympathizing for the vampire. Because any two-bit film maker with software can create blood, gore and animation with pyrotechnics (yawn), however, the real artisans create the characters that we find ourselves cozying up to, and we watch as our newfound friends turn against us (or maybe act out our ID?) and hatchet everyone in sight.
Alfred Hitchcock once said that what makes a thriller is not murder but it’s the anticipation of murder. We wait for the jump.
Click here to discover my favorite bone-chillers of all time.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Great post, Felicia.
I’m a horror movie nut, too.
Ted won’t go with me, so I either recruit (and convert) friends or go by myself.
I love that in your article you mention “Devil Dog Hound of Hell”– there are numerous 70s horror flicks that scared the bejeebus out of me, too, though when I look back at them– oof. (i.e. “Race With The Devil”).
September 1st, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Oh! We must trade favorite movies when I’m in town. xoxox, f.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I saw the Shining at the drive-in (I was 6). My mother hates horror movies, but my dad made her go (he also made her go see the Exorcist while she was pregnant with me even though there was some big stir about it being so scary to induce miscarriages, she says she spent the whole movie with her sweater over her eyes….) He was always renting them and apparently no one ever thought it might not be good to let the 7 year old watch Friday the 13th. I was never all that scared of them, maybe because of them being par for the course. When I was 10 my dad used to take me and my sister, 6, to the video store, and we take home things like Nightmare on Elm Street and Sleepway camp..
The only thing that ever gave my mother pause was when Poltergeist cam out on cable, she had heard it was so, so scary that she wanted to watch it first in order for us not to be traumatized. Considering that movie is rather tame compared to others…she decided to let us watch it..I think it traumatized her more than us..
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:20 am
We have so many favourite horror movies in common! Yay! I was a big horror movie junkie when I was younger. I’d spend literally hours, poring over the shelves trying to select the perfect weekend horror flick. It was a very considered process. It also drove my mom crazy because she had to sign them out for me, because I wasn’t of age. I also obsessively catalogued them. I don’t know why. I wore the amount of horror movies I’d seen like a badge of honour. Have you ever seen Black Christmas (not the horrible remake–but the original with Olivia Hussey) or The Changeling (with George C. Scott)? When people ask me what my favourite horror movie is, I don’t hesitate before saying it’s a toss up between these two. I still can’t watch The Changeling with the lights out…
Great entry.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Love Horror movies. My grandfather owned a movie theatre and it became my babysitter/friend/parent for most of my childhood. I wasn’t suppose to watch the horror movies, but like whose gonna watch me while I twiddle my thumbs in the lounge? Love the smell of popcorn, loved the old lumpy seats, loved the thrill of pitch dark, loved the movies way way to mature and scary for a little lonely girl like me. Loved it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Kristy - Ah! The Shining in a drive-in. Boy do I miss the drive-in; they were practically extinct when I was a teenager.
Courtney - I LOVE LOVE LOVE The Changeling. Isn’t there a remake forthcoming? I must see Black Christmas, although I’ve seen Bloody Christmas.
Michelle - WOW!! That is so amazing. I sometimes dream of having a theater in my home.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
The Shining may have been the last scary movie I ever saw…..I decided that I was terrified enough in life that I didn’t need extra fuel to get my adrenaline going .
My kids love scary movies though (which they watch alone….or with their father…..just not me). I just asked what the scariest movies ever were, and was told:
The Omen
The Exorcist
The Shining
Good to know that the scariest movies of all time came out when I was a kid.
Turns out that the best music is from my day too (according to my 12 year old): “The Clash & The Who…..They’re my two favorites ever. They’re my inspirations.”
September 4th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Oddly enough, I just heard a story on This American Life about a guy who saw The Shining at about that age and had all these awful nightmares, haunted for years, etc. The best part is he called his uncle who he watched the movie with, and the uncle had no recollection of this happening - this pivotal moment that messed this guy up so badly for years was for him just “no, don’t recall that”.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:35 am
I actually question whether you had the better preparation for life. Those rainbow, sunshine and happiness, hero and heroine movies are terribly misleading, it seems!!