Why Do People Love Horror Movies?

[Laura]

I'll tell ya, one of the scariest movies I ever watched was "The Ghost and the Darkness." It still gets me.

 

[Zadius Sky]

'House of 1000 Corpses' - I could NOT get through it. It was actually terrifying.

I always watched X-Files from the beginning to the end. This series first made me to question the government's action. Of course, I was 12 years old, lol.

There's a new movie coming out in December: "I Am Legend" with Will Smith. Supposedly, he played a character who is the last man on Earth, fighting the vampires. This is somewhat odd 'horror' movie; might be sci-fi, I don't know.

 

[Z...]

950101
(L) Well, let me ask, while we are on the subject of writing, is
Anne Rice channeling her concepts in her vampire books?
A: She also is influenced by the Grays.

It might explain the "fanatics" of Rice's work, and the infatuation we might have with vampires. We all have vampiric characteristics in that we all feed from one another in this 3D reality to one extent or the other, and perhaps Rice's work is designed to make it appear that:

"vampires are human too, with emotions and fantastic inner worlds! It's ok to be a vampire! Look, they are so cool, they are so beautiful, they are strong and immortal! we should all be like them! And Lestat is so cool with his no-regrets-to-be-feeding-on-humans!"

thus perpetuating the feeding cycle, from which benefits.... who?

Actually I never got to this part of transcripts.
But as I said after Barbara Hort's book Unholy Hungers all of the sudden most of the things about the role of vampire archetype in human condition became crystal clear.

Your point is very valid, Rice or whoever inspired her knows how to appeal to human psychee , and she indeed played big part in reinforcing this Sympathy for the devil kind of thing, no wonder film ends with this tune, its all there (as we already established beast's specialty are the details and cheeky- in your face- signatures, too blunt to raise any eyebrows), those who will read this as paranoid religious fanaticism, can replace the term beast with the term entropy.

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
Ive been around for a long, long year
Stole many a mans soul and faith
And I was round when jesus christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around st. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank
Held a generals rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
Im a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached bombay
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But whats confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me lucifer
cause Im in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or Ill lay your soul to waste, um yeah
Pleased to meet you

 

[Keit]

m the beginning to the end. This series first made me to question the government's action. Of course, I was 12 years old, lol.

Oh, X-files, what a great series (especially early seasons). Here in Israel they were airing it pretty late (23:00) so it was great to sit in a dark room and be scared :)
But there is one episode where I was absolutely spooked, and still can't brush off the feeling. It was an episode about "Tooms" - the liver guy.

 

[Johnno]

That's a question that has interested me, too. I really loved horror movies when I was growing up. I never missed the Saturday afternoon "Creature feature" on TV. This continued for a very long time until I began to get a really thorough knowledge of REAL evil, including psychopaths (which aren't moralistically "evil," they are more like a "force of nature.") Somehow, I've lost my taste for horror movies.

So, what I can observe is that, when I lived in a fantasy world where there really wasn't any "real life" evil evident (just mudane mistakes by normal people), I was fascinated by stories about evil that I simply could not comprehend. Then, once I learned about the real deal, moved my head into a more objective view of reality, my taste for the fantasy horror just evaporated. It was like there's just so much of the real stuff everywhere, I don't need to seek out any fake extra evil.

There are a few really campy, comedic, "horror" movies that I still have a fondness for, however.

So, I think people like such things because they want to inoculate themselves against any such thing actually manifesting in their lives.

I came across this rather good essay from a monster fansite yesterday. Freud's theory of course involves the parents whereas Jung sees it as a collective unconscious phenonema.

http://vampires.monstrous.com/psychoanalysis_vampire.htm

Freud and Jung, the major thinkers of our time, have based their work on the book from Stocker[sic] which was published in 1897. Count Dracula posed many threats to Victorian social, moral and political values: he changes virtuous women into beasts with ravenous sexual appetites; he is a foreigner who invades England and threatens English book and superiority; he is the embodiment of evil that can only be destroyed by reasserting the beliefs of traditional Christianity in an increasingly skeptical and secular age; he represents the fear of regression, a reversal of evolution, a return to our more primal animal state.

Let us examine how the main school have analysed the emergence of the vampire as a central figure of human societies.

According to psychoanalysis and the Freudian school, any dreams about vampires or other forms of the undead, are a metaphor for the fascination and fear mankind has with the concepts of death and the dead

"All human experiences of morbid dread signify the presence of repressed sexual and aggressive wishes, and in vampirism we see these repressed wishes becoming plainly visible."

The first thing a Freudian will usually comment on in regards to a vampire story is how they are a metaphor for infantile and perverse sexuality.

For Freudian scholars, Dracula, is a combination of all the traditional myths of the vampire merged with what they consider to be the epitome of Freud's Oedipal complex concept. A Freudian will look at the sexuality combined with brutality of the feeding off of the living's blood and say it is suggestive a child's interpretation of watching his parents copulate for the first time.

Other topics of importance are how death coexists with the longing for immortality, showing man's love-hate relationship with both concepts, how greed, sadism, and aggression are intermingled with desire and a compulsion to possess and express said desire, and the consistent use of metaphor for virginity, innocence, and vulnerability and the overlapping of images of guilt.

For Jungians, the fact that the Vampire developed in nearly every culture in the world at the same time without contact amongst developing humans is both proof of the vampire as the archetype ("an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective experience"), but also proof of Jung's concept on the Unconscious Collective.

The concept of vampires and vampirism indicated that vampires are not mere stories or explanations created by personal experience or folk tales, but are in fact a species-wide psychological structure that all humans share in primitive thought

The Jungian interpretation of the vampire assumes that all humans have a vampire inside of them. What this means is that Jungian believe vampires are an intuitive concept to the human psyche. Something we understand in some way, shape or form, from the moment we exist into this world. Vampires reflect significant issues universal to all human life.

For Jung himself, the vampire was the representation of a psychological aspect he called, "the shadow." The Shadow is made of aspects of one's self that the conscious mind and ego were unable to recognize. The shadow was primarily negative concepts, such as repressed thoughts and desires, out anti-social impulses, morally questionable judgment, childlike fantasies, and other traits we normally feel shame for expressing or thinking.

Jung himself describes this shadow self as:

"The Shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real."

Jung interpreted the vampire as an unconscious complex that had the ability to taken over the conscious mind by means of "enchanting" the psyche or akin to what we might label a spell.

The vampire became a key fixture in society according to Jungians, because it became a mental scapegoat of sorts. It allowed humanity to project the negative aspects of ourselves onto something we could both openly revile and admire without actually acting out the desires and impulses ourselves. The vampire acts in the way humanity wishes it could, but can not due to social restraints.

Jung also added that there are other traits the vampire possesses, such as auto-erotic, and narcissistic traits, as well as a personality that is predatory, anti-social, and parasitic.

 

[Tigersoap]

There's a new movie coming out in December: "I Am Legend" with Will Smith. Supposedly, he played a character who is the last man on Earth, fighting the vampires. This is somewhat odd 'horror' movie; might be sci-fi, I don't know.

This movie is based on the book by Richard Matheson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Legend).
I am looking forward to seeing it. I hope it won't just be a lame adaptation.

On another note, All these horror stories made me think of all the very old children stories that had their good share of horrible things in them. Some of them could be quite violent.
I suppose there is an underlying thema in all these stories but it looks like with time, the substance was drained out, only to leave the form.

 

[dant]

Things that scared me:

Horror:
---------
1) Phantasm
2) (Cannot recall title, but has to do with Aborigines or a race that are
very mobile, very dark and preys on humans, a certain race of Nomads
and has a very creepy soundtrack) Maybe that was the title: "Nomads"?
3) Predator
4) Aliens
5) Damien (The anti-christ?)
6) Poltergeist
7) American Werewolf

Semi-horror:
---------------
1) "The Dead Zone" movie with Christopher Waiken

TV:
-----------
1) The Outer Limits
2) Twilight Zone (To Serve man, many others.)
3) X-Files (Tooms, "Green Bugs", "Black Oil", and others)

What really gets me:
------------------------
1) Things that go "bang" or "sudden surprises" where you least expect it.
2) Things "behind the door" waiting for you to open it.
3) Being alone in a back alley, in a field at night, or in a dream, where the "monster"
is waiting for you to make a mistake (much like the maze and the minotaur)

Things I wish to avoid:
--------------------------
1) Outright gore, eating of or ripping flesh, blood everywhere in full color and graphics

I think why we watch horror is simply the mysterious, the unknown, the dark, "out there"
and much like the "curious cat with 9 lives".

OSIT

 

[Zadius Sky]

'Predator' and 'Aliens' movies didn't actually scare me to the point of chilling bones and vomitting. I've viewed these creatures at the time as natural creatures with their own hunger for self. Predator is all about warriors and honors, and Aliens is all about foods and increasing their race. What I have learned from these movies...is to get out of their way and stay away from them.

 

[dant]

ZS: Yes, but the thought of something that might be a reality, might possibly
manifest itself into reality, is what "gets me" and this thought shook me up.

The thing about Predator and Aliens is the idea of efficient killing machines
and being alive while watching yourself being eaten. Very much outright gore.

There are vivid images in my mind of people being gutted alive, such as people
who tie you up to a post and slice your belly open and leave you to die in suffering.
This is very real and by human hands and I saw this image I think from Laos or
Vietnam (on TV I think). Pretty gruesome if you ask me. You'd have to ask yourself
of the person doing this sort of killing in this way and certainly seems to me to be
nothing short of a psychopath.

As for vomiting, that would be something akin to gore, or the idea of extreme
pain that never stops, which is why I wish to avoid these because I never could
shake these from my mind and it haunts me. Erm, no, I do not wish to have these
thoughts lurking around in my mind as I wish not to have these embedded fears
programmed into me. Sheesh. Thinking about it really creeps me out.

Muuuuuhhaahahahahahahaaaaaaaa..... ;)

 

[Locksmith]

I have a conundrum with blood and gore in horror movies as well as any other film genre. What I mean is that I prefer not to see any of it, the same as I would rather not be subjected to blatant profanity. But, I also realize that isn’t the reality of violence.

I was 11 in 1951 when "The Thing From Another World" came out. It scared the wits out of me and there was basically no blood or gore, and there was no profanity. Fast forward 30 years to Carpenter’s remake (sort of), "The Thing," and there is lots of blood, gore and profanity. I took my children, who were about the same age as I was when I viewed the original, to see the remake in 1982 or 83 and was disgusted with the how the mores had changed. I specifically mean gore and profanity had become accepted.

I no longer use television and rely on a DVD collection for my viewing diversion. The quality is infinitely better than TV. I have both of the above movies and still get a real charge from the original right down to the electrifying conclusion [puns intended]. The remake still leaves me somewhat cold but I tolerate it a lot better now than when I saw it with my children. I suppose this is due to the conditioning I’ve received since the 1970s.

There are many similar examples that I could site where the blood and gore actually turn me away. And, some of these movies do have decent to good writing. I know movie makers have increasingly relied on special effect and more recently CGI to the detriment of writing. Writing, and delivery of it, can often invoke a terror that the viewer determines as opposed to having it slammed into their minds with graphics. I think this will even out in time and actually see some signs of that now.

As a quick aside into the genre of action-adventure to further make my observation about gore, I do enjoy quite a few movies with almost non-stop bullets, but they are all in the Schwarzenegger vein where it is usually only trained combatants who are experiencing the violence. The point is that there are basically no innocent women, children or non-combatant men getting abused, hurt or killed; something I detest to view and avoid. And, the combatants who are getting blasted are more fantasy-like as that’s not really the way violence happens. So, I disassociate these movies from the realities of actual violence when viewing them and do enjoy them for reasons I can't explain even though they are mindless and ridiculous.

I suspect quite a few movies across the genre spectrum are conditioning tools specifically aimed at making us less sensitive to violence, etc., for whatever psychotic rationale.

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

I suspect quite a few movies across the genre spectrum are conditioning tools specifically aimed at making us less sensitive to violence, etc., for whatever psychotic rationale.

I think that is part of the reason, to desensitize the viewer to violence, so we shrug it off and accept it as "just the way things are" instead of feeling any horror or shock or disgust. Similarly, I think violent video games have the same effect. Seeing a gun nowadays could make kids think "oh, cool!!" instead of feeling any sort of aversion or dislike of weapons etc. That is why the army advertises itself on videogame websites like crazy, and inside videogames too. They want kids to think it's "cool" and "fun", has all the same "cool weapons" just like their games.

But movies like "Saw" and other bodypart-removal/mutilation movies I wouldn't even call horror movies. They don't invoke fear, they just make me cringe and wanna turn around. Not due to fear, due to simply being very uncomfortable watching something like that. I think they are trying to make up for their lack of ability to truly terrify the viewer by grossing the viewer out instead. It takes a good psychological understanding and talent to truly scare an audience, not just make them jump from a loud noise or cringe at mutilation, but really feel fear and horror when a movie taps into their psychological and deep-seated fears.

War is a good example. There is a lot to war besides just spectacular bomb explosions and lots of blood. Some movies about war are all about the latter. But some war movies might have little or no actual combat footage, but can terrify you to the bone, or show you an aspect of tyrrany and war that is not present during intense explosive action. A good movie about oppression and war is "The Pianist". The lies, the manipulation, the constant living in fear, being taken from your loved ones or having your loved ones taken from you, the hate, etc. All this and so much more are all elements of war.

 

[Bo]

I'm kinda surprised that you guys didn't mention The Exorcist, that is imo one of the scariest movies out there , I seriously could not sleep for 3 freaking days.

 

[Beau]

I didn't see The Exorcist until I was an adult. I thought it was good, but I wasn't scared.

The power of Christ compels you!!

 

[Tigersoap]

I'm kinda surprised that you guys didn't mention The Exorcist, that is imo one of the scariest movies out there , I seriously could not sleep for 3 freaking days.

It made me scared to go to bed for a while as well.
Well, at least now you know what's going to happen if use a oui-ja board :D

 

[Ryan]

That's a question that has interested me, too. I really loved horror movies when I was growing up. I never missed the Saturday afternoon "Creature feature" on TV. This continued for a very long time until I began to get a really thorough knowledge of REAL evil, including psychopaths (which aren't moralistically "evil," they are more like a "force of nature.") Somehow, I've lost my taste for horror movies.

So, what I can observe is that, when I lived in a fantasy world where there really wasn't any "real life" evil evident (just mudane mistakes by normal people), I was fascinated by stories about evil that I simply could not comprehend. Then, once I learned about the real deal, moved my head into a more objective view of reality, my taste for the fantasy horror just evaporated. It was like there's just so much of the real stuff everywhere, I don't need to seek out any fake extra evil.

There are a few really campy, comedic, "horror" movies that I still have a fondness for, however.

Funny... that's almost exactly how I feel about it as well. I used to really love the B-grade, cheesy horror movies with buckets 'o blood, but the more I realise how crappy life is for the majority of the people in this world, the more these sorts of movies seem kind of distasteful - especially the new wave of "horror" movies that seem to be more like simulated snuff movies than traditional horror.

The last "horror" movie I watched was "Pulse", which was an interesting concept (other-dimensional lifeforms that live in the EM fields produced by Wi-Fi and mobile phones and eat people's will to live), but could have been implemented better. Plus the horrible blue filter over the footage got kind of tiresome by the end.