Why Do People Love Horror Movies?

I rarely ever watch horror movies and just now remember going to see the movie 'Poltergeist' with my family when I was a kid - booster seat and all. Think the movie freaked me out enough that it turned me off from scary movies.

Now a movie like 'Evil Dead II' where the movie is meant to be a horror film and then turns out semi-comical, I can handle and kinda enjoy.
 
Mike said:
Now a movie like 'Evil Dead II' where the movie is meant to be a horror film and then turns out semi-comical, I can handle and kinda enjoy.
Click to expand...
While I didn't watch 'Evil Dead II,' I watched 'The Army of Darkness' which I believe is a sequel to that. This movie is kind of comical than being horror. A guy (Ash) going back in time and saves a castle from a evil version of himself. And, I noticed that he didn't grieve over the death of his girlfriend in the beginning of the film (not the new girl), osit.

Edit:

'Hills have eyes' is out-right scary. There's eyes everywhere!

'The Devil's Rejects' is very much gore and horror, but I think it involves psychopaths killing other people for the fun out of it. Most of my friends really love it, but I didn't know why. I didn't enjoy it.
 
I guess I ought to make it clear that, to me, a "horror movie" is like vampires, werewolves, mummies, godzilla and that sort of thing. I have never to this day watched any of that Freddy Krueger stuff, chainsaw massacres, or the blood and gore, high body count type of stuff. I don't read or watch Steven King, either, because he is just too freaky for me. I can't watch people getting cut up and stabbed and ripped to shreds and so on without my whole body just going into some kind of fidgets.

When I was a teenager, I watched "Dark Shadows" every afternoon after school. I have the series on DVD, now!
 
I stopped watching Horror Movies because I learned that there is a good possibility that such spooky, terrifying realms exist. So I became very careful in that respect, especially when I sit under hundrets of potentially hypnotized people in the cinema. I just don't know what happens in there. Horror movies might have purposes besides money.
Tigersoap said:
At the same time shunning it out won't protect you from it.
Click to expand...
I agree, but the idea that such things may be real absolutely gives me the creeps! I would like to take some time and slowly approximate the subject again.

Some years ago I watched "13 ghosts" in the cinema. The next day I naively went jogging in the evening, not thinking. As I ran into the forest, it slowly became dark. Then the "horror" began. I suddenly remembered the movie and all shocking scenes involuntarily appeared before my inner eye. Every bush I was running past seemed to be animated and alive... I had cold shudders. And I did not know that it is possible for the fine hair to stand up along the spine - from the neck to the tailbone. Like a back-arching cat! I was impressed by this primeval program in me. I never had it again. I quickly went home and that was my last Horror Movie experience! :o
 
Poltergeist is one of my all time faves. That one was really freaky! Candyman is another good old school horror. I remember that whole 'don't say his name in the mirror five times' craze.

Devil's Rejects wasn't that good, but the one before it, House of 1000 Corpses, now that is one the few scary movies of this decade that actually WAS scary and with some pretty heavy psychopathic characters as well. I noticed how the main bad guy looks a lot like Rob Zombie as well.
 
Yea Poltergeist was quite spooky, but I really loved the dwarf medium lady.


I was always a sucker for vampire movies ( no pun intended),
Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski is one of the all time favorites, then there is Interview with a vampire, and of course The Lost Boys.

Now after having read Unholy Hungers this fascination with vampirism got whole new dimension.

The movie that scared me the most is Dont look now
Saw it as a kid and couldn't sleep for days because of that little red ridding hood, great example of 'siren song of hungry ghosts'


And lets not forget
Close encounters of the third kind - this move created some of the worst nightmares from my childhood and I always hated Spielberg for it


One of the best accounts how real alien abduction might look like is
Fire in the sky - allegedly based on real life event,
but I am warning you this is not the movie for the fainthearted :)
 
I've never been interested in horror movies, and don't watch any of them anymore. Blood and guts just doesn't give me a good kind of thrill.

There is ONE movie (when I watched horrors) that to this day scares the living HECK out of me. It's kind of a mix of Sci-fi and horror.

"Lifeforce"


It's sort of a modern update to energy vampires involving aliens that visit Earth every one in a while to "collect" lifeforce energy from the inhabitants.

Once a being has been "drained", they absolutely have to drain someone else to live, so you can imagine the chaos. (I won't say anymore, it would be a spoiler).

Truly, truly, chilling.

The metaphor comes too close to home.
 
Deckard said:
I was always a sucker for vampire movies ( no pun intended),
Click to expand...
Hmm...before Buffy and Angel I didn't bother to cover my neck ;)

I am a hard core sci-fi (apparently), so somehow HAL 9000 is much more creepy in my opinion than some vampire.
Though I have to admit that I've fast forwarded through most of the "2001: A Space Odyssey" movie. Made it look pretty good actually.
 
I was a horror, blood & gore movie fan, but not anymore. I suppose I used to watch them for the shock of it all, but now, I just read the Wave for a little shock or two OR ten. I tried to watch Hannibal Rising and couldn't get through it. Those blood and gore movies seemed to desensitize me to violence over time, or at least contribute to it.

The closest I get to a horror movie is Young Frankenstein, er, Frankensteeen:)
 
I loved scifi/horror movies when I was growing up. A local theatre would run a new one every two weeks. I could hardly wait for the newspaper to see what they would have next. These were films like "the Day the World Ended", Beast with a Million Eyes, Attack of the Crab Monsters." (Oh, yeah and Godzilla.) Hammer productions movies were a step up in quaility. Horror of Dracula, Brides of Dracula, Curse of Frankenstien. etc
We sure had a lot of fun going them.
Of course I enjoyed the real oldies like early Frankenstein and Dracula movies.
The Day the World Ended particularly scared me (I was nine) since the threat of nuclear war seemed so real.

I dislike slasher movies. Just because someone can make an movie with much explict gore doesn't mean that it is the right thing to do or that I have to watch it.

In the current SciFi/Horror the special effects are almost to good. Too much gore put in place of a quality story.

Just my opinions.

Thomas
 
Deckard said:
I was always a sucker for vampire movies ( no pun intended),
Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski is one of the all time favorites, then there is Interview with a vampire, and of course The Lost Boys.

Now after having read Unholy Hungers this fascination with vampirism got whole new dimension.
Click to expand...
Yeap, same here. I never cared about vampires, until i watched Interview with the vampire. Then i read all Vampire Chronicles Anne Rice books. It was late teen years, and i remember my infatuation with all vampire related stuff then.

Regarding scary movies, did any of you watch Twin Peaks, the series? I was in elementary school and all kids were watching it. I wonder why our parents ever allowed us! We were trying to explain to each other what we were watching, to make sense of it. But few of us were really scared of it :o
 
I remember the first time I was introduced to a horror movie was when I was probably four or so and at a family friends house - they were watching "Little Shop of Horrors" - after watching a couple of minutes, I went and cried to my mom. So I never really liked horror movies - the dark humor mixed w/ blood and gore kind. Kids in my class would talk about Freddie Krueger and Jason and just the stories scared me enough to not want to see them. I remember once my older sister told me she had seen Carrie at an early age, and I think she was traumatized by it.

But as for the werewolf/ vampire/ UFO stuff - loved them. Remember Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf? Harry and the Henersons? I was older when I saw 'Fire in the Sky' but it still scared the pants off me. I've always loved the X-files too.

I also remember feeling a similar feeling of horror (as when I thought about those blood and gore movies) when I first came across Laura's experiences - particularly when I read about the face in the window. As I continued to read the material for the next weeks or even months, I would always be nervous reading at night next to the window.
 
Since you mentioned it Irini I have to admit that I use to love Anne Rice too.
Even more then vampire chronicles which after third book became repetitive I just couldn't put down the Witching hour and its sequels.

I am aware that many would label Rice as trash literature, but it is my understanding that most of the fiction is nothing but trash at the end of the day because it perpetuates the sleep we are in,
still I d like to give credit to Rice for her amazingly rich imagination and great way with words
 
Deckard said:
I am aware that many would label Rice as trash literature, but it is my understanding that most of the fiction is nothing but trash at the end of the day because it perpetuates the sleep we are in,
still I d like to give credit to Rice for her amazingly rich imagination and great way with words
Click to expand...
Were you also worried to read this? :)

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.
Click to expand...
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? :mad:
 
i've been asking myself the same question.
why are disgusting violence-orgies like 'hostel' so popular?!

not that i mind violence on film, if it is cartoonish enough, like 'From Dusk til Dawn', one of the few 'horror' movies in my collection.

but movies that are made with the purpose of scaring the bejeesus out of you, are not my cup of tea at all.

and i truly hate 'jump scenes' - you know when everything is quiet and *BAMMM!* a cat jumps into frame... such a cheap and lame directing trick...

the only horror movie i really want to see (for some time now), but haven't got the guts to actually watch is 'Jacob's Ladder' with tim robbins.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Trending content

Back
Top Bottom