One blogger asks, "Do you like horror movies? I don't. It surprises me that people would want to watch something that makes themselves feel scared" ("Horror Movies" from Don't Convert Me).
I love horror films because they once epitomized my childhood fears. I hold my dad somewhat responsible for instigating this fear. He was never a fan of horror films, but he did force me to go to haunted houses each Halloween, a yearly tradition that filled me with dread each October. My dad also loved to tell wild tales to horrify my brother and me, and more often than not, the veracity of these tales was left up in the air. To this day, my dad has never told me that he was only joking about that tractor beam pulling him into a UFO ship late one night in Chauvin, LA--which, incidentally, occurred within a week after a night of quality family programming--i.e. a "documentary" about alien encounters. When I was in first grade, I remember watching JAWS III with my dad, and I also remember bolting from the room after some dude's severed head floated across the screen. Another reason I associate childhood fears with my father is because of a night in second grade. I remember lying on the couch with him as he flipped through the channels (an exhaustive number since we had just bought a satellite dish). He stopped flipping on a backyard scene. A teenaged girl was walking through her yard wearing a white nightgown. A hatted silhouette appeared on a boarded fence. Suddenly, a monstrous, disfigured face filled the screen; he then chopped off one of his own fingers! That was all I could handle. My dad laughed a little as I struggled to escape his grip and the grip of the scary man wearing the fedora. Another vivid experience I remember was hearing the voices of my neighbors crying for help during a sleepless night after watching Stephen King's CAT'S EYE. In fourth grade, the first scene of King's CHILDREN OF THE CORN caused me to flee to my room, and two years later, I spent another sleepless night mulling over scenes from King's PET SEMATARY. These moments with the "painted devils" of the screen etched the names of both Freddy Krueger and Stephen King into my mind.
It wasn't until the summer after my parents' divorce that I found the strength to face my fears and watch some of the horror movies that I had, for years, cowered from. Before the divorce, I remember peeking at the grotesque VHS boxes in the video store horror section, from a safe distance, hoping my dad wouldn't see me. I was afraid he would rent one and make me watch it, just like he made me go to haunted houses for all those years. But now, I was ready. That summer my brother and I watched the NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST series (five films had been released by that time), all eight FRIDAY THE 13th films, both FRIGHT NIGHT films, several PUPPET MASTER movies, and countless others. I checked out my first adult book at the local library--Stephen King's NIGHT SHIFT--and within the next few years I had consumed IT, NEEDFUL THINGS, PET SEMATARY, and THE STAND. So, I spent the following years watching and reading horror. I even gained a friend in the deal: I noticed a guy on my bus reading one of the books in King's DARK TOWER series, and eventually he became my best friend, and for the next decade we watched and read horror together, making it through some of the worst (most of the Full Moon pantheon, BOARDINGHOUSE, etc.) and the best (HALLOWEEN, EVENT HORIZON, SCREAM, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, etc.).
To this day, I try to watch the major horror releases or buzz films, and I'm still working on reading the entire Stephen King library (32 down and 35 to go). Since my wife hates horror, I don't get to watch as many as I would like (married guys might be able to understand this predicament). Furthermore, few adults in my social circle watch horror (I've counted one in the last five years of living in B.R.). Horror films, in addition to countless other pubescent fixations, let me know that I belong where I'm at--in a high school. It's the only place where I can have a good conversation about this genre. Nowadays, I've grown desensitized, not only to the gore and terror, but to the victory over fear that these films once represented. My adolescent obsession and pride has become an intellectual pursuit lately (as have most subjects of interest since studying literature in college)--I'm fascinated with finding the inciting force of societal fears reflected in popular horror--but, after reading the blog of a random person who commented on my previous post, I guess I just felt the need to explain why I would want to watch something of this nature.
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