Welcome October Horror Movies, Part II

What's the scariest movie you've ever seen? I started asking adults that question after reading The Scariest Stories You've Ever Heard book series in 5th or 6th grade (see my 10/16/08 post). My classmate's mom said it was The Changeling (1979), and she was speaking as someone who had read all of Stephen King's books and seen all the movie adaptations up to that point. A neighbor lady down my street went on and on about the ending of Halloween (1978). Another of my classmates told me that her mom had slept with a Bible on her chest every night since watching The Exorcist (1973). I asked some coworkers this question last week and one of them mentioned Alien (1979). which I wasn't expecting. My brother used to be scared of the cover art on the video case for The Company of Wolves (1984). I looked that title up on Netflix a few years ago and it was definitely creepy - children's fairy tales with trademark '80s makeup and special effects for gore. I've already given my definition of horror elsewhere on this blog (see my 9/29/08 post), but I want to expound here on two words I used in that last sentence, "creepy" and "gore," as they relate to horror and whether they're really synonymous with "scary."

What's your definition of "scary?" I realize the scariest movie you've ever seen may not even be a horror movie. Before I read The Scariest Stories You've Ever Heard, the scariest movie I'd seen was Never Cry Wolf (1983), a Disney-produced true story about being isolated in the Arctic. I thought having your hair fall out like in The Peanut Butter Solution (1985) was scary, and that was just a children's fantasy. Neither of those movies were creepy nor was there any gore in them. They didn't have any jump scenes. They weren't intended as horror movies or ever as thrillers. Webster's defines "scary" as "frightening" so you have to look up the word "fright" to find out that means something "alarming," like danger, or "unsightly," like gore. Webster's also defines "creepy" as causing "disgust." Evidently most people consider gore to be the scariest thing out there, but not me. What's disturbing about Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) for example, isn't the massacre part but the inexplicable dinner table scene with the girl screaming nearly nonstop. What's scary to me is the unknown (to paraphrase FDR), what I can't account for or just explain away (which I CAN do for what's creepy and gore), but I'm interested in differing points of view.

Trick 'r Treat (three stars total) Why do I welcome October horror movies? Because once a year I gives me another chance to feel the way I did when I first read The Scariest Stories You've Ever Heard. I watched The Changeling, The Exorcist and Halloween based on the recommendations above and they were mostly boring. I've yet to see a movie I thought was scary through and through. I've never left a movie feeling out of control but I'll admit I've seen some pretty scary trailers. The scariest was for Trick 'r Treat (2007, but finally being on DVD next Tuesday). Some people hate it when a movie trailer doesn't give any of the story. I love it. What I hate is when the first 3/4 of a plotline are compressed into a three to four minute summary of clips. If that's truly possible to do with a movie, how good could that story possibly be? The original, pre-festival circuit trailer for Trick 'r Treat started off with a faux 1950s B&W educational film strip on Halloween safety, then cut to the scariest cello stabs you've ever heard and man, was I excited. I finally saw a screening at San Diego Comic-Con this year and unfortunately it didn't match my hype. The music from the trailer was gone and even though the movie was only an hour and fifteen minutes, it still felt stretched. I'm not a fan of Anna Paquin or Brian Cox (both from the X-Men movie series, along with the writer and director), but if you like anthology horror like Creepshow (1982) and Tales from the Darkside (1990), you'll love the Cryptkeeper-style comedy and surprise plot twists of Trick 'r Treat.