Why Horror?
Imagine if you will: You're a musician, say a lead guitarist in a band. You sing a bit too. You even compose some of the songs. Music is your passion! You have talent and ambition. You spend a lot of your free time persuing your dreams and have even had some accomplishments under your belt. At the moment, you're at work with the band composing new music. You talk to people about what you do and the conversation goes something like this: You: "I'm really excited about this new album we're putting together! It's gonna be great!" Acquaintance: "Oh isn't that nice? I like music! What kind of music is it?" You: "We play country!" Your acquaintance's face morphs into a disdainful contemptuous sneer. She (it's always a woman who is callous enough to do this) looks at you like you spit in her socks and spits back, "I don't like country." You stand there dumbfounded and ridiculed as your bigoted, narrow-minded antagonist relishes the last word of the now-dead conversation. You want to say, "Well I don't like those shoes you're wearing today, you ugly hag!" but you decide to take the high road and walk away. This exchange (minus the fantasy last quote) has happened at least three times to me in recent months except that the above is an analogy and I was talking about editing and directing 2nd unit for the horror movie, FLOWERS. A couple of weeks ago one of these women commented, "Why is a horror movie called 'FLOWERS?'" with the same mocking expression. I swear, the next time someone throws "I don't like horror movies" in my face, I'm gonna throw the music metaphor back at them and ask directly if they're the least bit aware of how insensitive and shallow their kneejerk rebuke is. Let's get philosophical. Why horror? I'll explore that with another question: Why religion? Both delve into humanity's innate fear of death. Both exploit the same. For half a century, I used to pretend to be a christian. Terrifying horror stories of hell and damnation were pounded into my psyche from religious tyrants during my childhood. Adults taught me that god and the devil and angels and demons were all real and waiting to claim my soul when I died! One misdeed or mistake would send me to eternal torture and anguish. Back in the olden days, there wasn't the simplified silly notion of Pascal's Wager or this bewildering fixation modern theists have with John 3:16 to comfort my troubled mind. It was sin and burn. Burn, damned in hell forever and ever! I had nightmares. I had an intense fear of death because I didn't think that I'd make it through life without straying from the narrow path of piety and rightousness a few times. Somehow, maybe it was those Universal monsters, I dared to contemplate the nature of evil in an imaginative light. Along with religious superstitions, other tales of afterlife entities and experiences were asserted. Hauntings and ghosts were proclaimed to have a measure of validity. Yet to pay a little too much attention to these accounts was frowned upon by my elders. It was very difficult to reconcile the paradox. The "holy ghost" and other religious-themed supernatural apparitions like Dickens Christmas ghosts were approved and encouraged. An occasional spooky Halloween story was okay. But there was a line somewhere that sent the matriarchs and patriarchs into belligerent combat. Why? I'll never understand it. My rebellious nature couldn't resist the compulsion to dig deeper, darker in order to thoroughly ruminate on fear and horror. Thoughout history, art and literature has been rife with well-regarded, highly esteemed horror classics. In modern times, movies and comic books freely explored the dark domain fluently and emphatically. So I voraciously devoured as much of it as I could. Not only was I trying to overcome my own personal fears while growing up, I was simultaneously feeding my passion for movies! This was happening at a time when contemporary pop culture was becoming more accepting of horror fiction. THE EXORCIST and TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE et.al. were thrusting horror into the mainstream. Hell, even JAWS is still regarded as a monster movie. Pretty soon, Stephen King became a household name. Then with HALLOWEEN and DAWN OF THE DEAD spearheading the dam-burst of low-budget horror films into big box-office success, the genie was out of the bottle forever. So it seemed.. Horror is where my heart is. I've excavated into the darkest cavities of so much horror terrain. From WEREWOLF BY NIGHT comics to True Crime paperbacks. From NOSFERATU to FACES OF DEATH. From domestic violence to terrorism. In other words, horror fiction and horror fact. I find it all so fascinating, despite my being repelled by the cruelties of authentic real-world atrocities and political evil. It all springs from the same ultimate source: fear of death. Everyone has a propensity for morbid curiosity. Few will admit it. Fewer still will ever allow themselves, from an aversion of social scorn, to indulge in it. I'm not saying that I indulge in evil acts, on the contrary! There's been a lot said and written about the roller-coaster escapist thrill of horror entertainment. I agree with it all. To fully comprehend goodness, one should attempt to distinguish and expose evil and all that jazz.. It's all come back, full-circle now. We live in a world fueled by fear and hatred. It's everywhere! Fear the terrorists, fear the democrats, fear the republicans, fear the rich, fear the racists, feed the hatred, fuel the violence.. I say horsefeathers! I'm sick of it and I'm done being afraid. Have been for quite a while. But it's still very very appealing to have the lurking potential to be the one doing the scaring, spinning the web, telling the tale, sawing the pretty girl in half.. Cinematically, that is.. That bitch with the bad shoes can go pound sand all the way to church and back home with her 24-hour TV news station. Damn hypocrite!