The Horror of It All
Right now, horror has a name.
My laundry pile.
More precisely not MY laundry pile but the pile of laundry collected, Communist-style from the "collective" that is my family of six. It makes me shudder.
But that's the brilliance of the horror genre. Finding the frightening in the mundane. To that end, BAMBI was named, by Time Magazine as one of the top-25 horror films of all time. Brilliant. Heck, it scared the crap out of me when I was 6 or 7. So did Disney's Snow White. Stepmom wanting the HEART of Snow White? How cannibalish! And yet all wrapped up in technicolor sweetness.
Of course, the movie that terrified me more than anything? Those damn flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.
But, like all horror, I can find good scares in the mundane. Like my laundry. However, CLOWNS top my list. Along with cockroaches (but not spiders), rats (but not mice--unless they are very large mice), the dark (don't like it), enclosed spaces (am claustrophobic, though I recently conquered a big fear and rode the subway in NYC after not having done so for 20 years thanks to panic attacks as I would descend the stairs into the bowels of Manhattan), and people who stand too close to me--I find that creepy . . . gimme my "space."
So how about you?
18 comments:
Dust bunnies so big they take on a life of their own and you creep around the house to avoid them.
Bambi is very scary with the mother being killed. Why do Disney movies have so many motherless protagonists? I guess that's instant sympathy. It worked for Harry Potter too.
Dirt. I hate touching dirty dishes, dirty ... anything. Which, instead of being a neat freak like my mother, turned me into a person kinda afraid of cleaning. *shudder*
Bambi was so scary and heartbreaking, that I've never watched it since.
Bambi... sounds of snuffling...
Balloons freak me out.
edie:
I was just talking with my best friend/writer pal about how we kill off the parents in YAs so often . . . big themes of abandonment and instant sympathy.
E
spy:
Dirty dishes? You'd last two minutes in my house. :-)
E
tena:
Balloons? That's a new one . . . . interesting! But I can't say anything because I have the whole clown thing going on.
E
OMG! CLOWNS!!! I'm not alone in my phobia!
I've always, always refused to go the circus, even as a little kid, because they FREAKED me out.
Oh, but get this...when I worked retail, I worked in this mall called North County Fair in Escondido (it's reeeally close to where all those people just lost their homes in the San Diego fires). And during Christmas, they put up wreaths in front of each store that had a life-sized clown perched in the center of each one. But the wreath in front of my store was missing its clown...and all my fellow employees relished telling me over and over that it was because the clown was out to get me. ::shudder::
Clowns are Evil.
I also remember watching Bambi for the first time when I was a child and just bawling for hours after the movie over: in the parking lot, in the car, in the front yard...
I'd never thought of it as a Horror movie!
Watching "The Wizard of Oz" was a traumatic experience.
My daughter was terrified of department store Santas.
Personal space for me too! Preferably arm's reach. When we meet, Erica, we'll just wave to each other from opposite sides of the street.
OK, so I absolutely refuse to watch any part of a horror film or read any horror books.
It just ain't happenin'. No way, no how. Tried it once and I couldn't be alone at night for months. And that was only the Blair Witch Project... if it had been a 'real' horror film, well lets just not go there.
Outside of that what scares the pants off of me is any thought of harm coming to my wife or children. I have finally gotten rid if the nightmares that had been plaguing my for years.
I'm OK with snakes, clowns, spiders, balloons, and just about anything else. Graveyards (even in daylight) creep me out a little, but it is not a full blown panic with sweaty palms and jumping at every noise.
I don't blame you about the clowns. They freak me out so much that I'd be the first person to get arrested for smacking Ronald McDonald if he so much as looked in my direction.
Okay, Brian inspired me to admit that "The Exorcist" (in its day) and "The Sixth Sense" (any day!) scares the living fucking shit out of me.
michele:
The clowns are out to get us!!!!
E
Steve;
WAVING from my corner of the world, my friend!
E
ewoh:
I went with my dad to Blair Witch. He hid his eyes for 90% of it. :-)
E
ewoh:
As a P.S., my dad isn't afraid of ANYTHING but horror flicks.
E
marcia:
All right, smack down the clown!
:-)
E
Don't be afraid.
I have candy.
I'm your friend.
deer hunter:
That's what Jack the Ripper said.
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