2005-02-23 - 7:57 a.m.
More horrors...
Yes, Tristan, I did leave "the Exorcist" off my abbreviated list. I also didn't include "Dawn of the Dead", Resident Evil (I and II)", "House of Wax", "The Abominable Dr. Phibes", "Dr. Phibes Rises Again", "Carnival of Souls", "House on Haunted Hill" (both versions), "The Amityville Horror", "Repulsion", "The Ring", "The Grudge", "Squirm", "Cabin Fever", and a whole host of other movies I saw and liked. Most of the movies I've seen haven't given me nightmares (except for "Bambi", natch), but a few of them have made me uneasy about walking into dark rooms: "Dawn of the Dead (2004)": Just the bit at the beginning when the couple is sleeping and the door opens, slowly, revealing the little girl from next door (who is now a zombie) - that one plays on how vulnerable we are when we're sleeping. "The Grudge" played on that same fear - the scene where the girl realizes the ghost is in her apartment and crawling up her bed under the sheets is pretty nasty. "Exorcist III" had only one bit that haunted me for weeks - the hospital scene where a nurse checks on a sleeping patient, and walks out, suddenly followed by a sheet-draped figure holding massive autopsy shears. It's a sudden and jarring scene, and I was shutting doors behind me very fast for a few weeks. I occasionally walk out to my car and wonder what I would do if zombies started shambling out of the bushes towards me. I'd be fine if they were old-school, but the new breed of fast-running zombies (and/or the "infected" from "28 Days Later") would probably make short work of me. ...And I'm glad the Miata is a two-door - I never have to worry about the killer lurking in the back seat. A vivid imagination is a wonderful thing - most of the time. The problem is that you can't just shut it off when it starts to roam down darker paths. I can't sleep during thunderstorms, and I have to have the lights on the whole time - the intermittent flashes of light might reveal some shambling thing in the corner of the bedroom. Thunder bothers me, too - I physically twitch when it booms loudly, and I can't be outside on my own, even in daylight when there's a storm going. If Bob is with me, I'm fine, but otherwise... ...When I was very young, I used to have nightmares about running through the woods with something right behind me trying to claw out my spine. The sensation was so real that I used to wake up with my back in spasms. From approximately age 4 to age 11, I had those dreams at least once a month. I still can't stand people I don't trust touching my back. ...Though the need for physical therapy and massage has allowed me to get better about having my back touched. Good thing, too. I need those massages. I don't know whether I got into horror movies because I have always had a darker side to my imagination - I do know that for as long as I can remember, I had to *run* up the stairs from the bottom floor in my mother's house so that the monsters wouldn't get me. Closet and cupboard doors *need* to be closed before I can sleep, and my feet stay on the bed and under the sheets. Perhaps horror books and movies allow me to exercise my mental demons for a bit, then put them away again. All I know is that what I imagine is far more terrifying than anything I've ever read or seen. ...And if I hear a rattling noise in my bed, I'm whacking that moving lump with a frying pan until the ghost decides it's not worth it.
Dorsal - Ventral
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