the 23rd day...
Now don’t blame my parents for this; they’re good parents, but I grew up in a different time before the whole protect the children issues came up.
Years ago when I was a pre-teen or even younger, my parents would take me to R rated movies. Most of these were either slasher flicks or ultraviolet movies. I still have vivid memories of seeing “Scarface” in the movie theaters and remembering the final gun fight in the film. I’ve seen Friday the 13ths, Poltergeists, the remake of The Thing, countless Stephen King films, and other assorted horror flicks.
Has this left an impression on me? Hell yes! There are still films that freak me out when I see them and my heart beats faster and I get an adrenaline rush. It’s a blast of real fear, but with my vast intelligence, I’ve been able to analyze the thing that scars me.
Case and point, last winter I was able to see the film “poltergeist 2” for the first time in a long time on AMC. Now the movie to me in its entirety isn’t all that scary, but there is one scene that got to me as a child. The scene involves the middle child, a boy, who now has braces in the movie, and as such the poltergeist uses that to its advantage. The child’s wires in the braces begin to envelop him and turns him into a writhing mass of wires on the ceiling, a cocoon in which only one of his eyes is visible, and the child is locked in the bathroom with the wires heading towards the nearest outlet. Of course the kid is saved as the parents break open the door and pull the kid away from the outlet.
Now I just had my braces installed when this movie came out, so this scene was the things of nightmares for a while. When I watched the scene years later, I was able to see the masterful-ness of the whole moment. You only see the very beginnings of the child being wrapped up, then the scene cuts to the parents downstairs, then running up the stairs, then trying to break down the door. This is about a 30-45 seconds of footage, until when the break down the door, and see the full effect of the wire cocoon. In that time, your imagination gets to run wild as you try to figure out what’s going on to the boy behind the door. Also, the mom stands there and just screams the whole time why the dad is trying to save the boy. I forget the name of the actress but boy could she scream.
After that analysis, I’m not afraid of that scene anymore, and now I deal with any other scene that creeps me out with the same amount of analysis.
But I still love horror films, and wait until I give you my “Saw” predictions and theories later.
MK
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