Scaring the Child Within: My Thoughts on the Halloween Season and the Horror Genre of Film.

For those of you who do not know, I am a very big fan of Halloween and horror in general.  This comes as a shock even to me since when I was younger I avoided such things like they were the plague.  My father loved to scare people, especially me and my older brother.  As a child I hated being scared, and I went to great lengths to ensure that no such thing would happen to me.  I used to dread the month of October, as it was the month of Halloween, so any time you turned on your television you would be subjected to a myriad of spooks and specters making their way from the screen to your dreams.  Needless to say I lost a lot of sleep as a child.  Or actually, looking back now, I gained a lot of sleep.  You see, like I said my father was really into scaring us, so he really enjoyed watching and experiencing scary things.  Any time he would come home from the video store with a scary movie in hand, I knew that I had to do anything I could not to watch it.  The movie would start, I’d be snuggled up on the couch, and I would close my eyes, forcing myself to fall asleep.  I would sleep through the whole movie and wake up with the joy of knowing that I would have no trouble sleeping later on.

As I got older a peculiar thing happened to me:  I started to love being scared.  It got to a point where I would seek it out, spending many nights driving to far off ghost towns with my friends in the hopes of seeing something we couldn’t explain.  And as this obsession grew I started to get back into the Halloween spirit.  Now I’m twenty five years old, and I’ve been able to successfully stretch the holiday to encompass the whole year, so I’m never without my scares and childhood memories.  I love looking through pictures of creepy cemeteries, laboratories perched on cliff sides with lightning dressing above.  I love to walk through old buildings now disguised as haunted houses with masked employees jumping out and scaring me.  I get a feeling of childish wonder when I drive down the road and see old condemned houses forgotten by time, resting on dead grass that whistles in the wind.  The rest of what I feel when the season is near is impossible for me to explain.  Looking at everything now, all I can say without a single shred of doubt is that I absolutely love the Halloween season.  So I’m going to discuss what horror means to me, and I’m going to do it by going down the list of major milestones in scary entertainment.  Maybe this will be something that gets you in the Halloween spirit as well.

We start in the early 1900’s.  Silent films and early talkies give us a brief glimpse into what goes bump in the night with films such as Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and of course, the Universal Golden Age films: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and The Wolf Man among many others.  As a young boy I never saw any of these movies.  Not because I was afraid of them, but just because back then I didn’t have easy access to them.  Now I can jump on any number of websites, order these films on DVD, and pick them up in my mailbox a couple days later.  Once I got back into being scared, I sought these films out. To my surprise they have stood the test of time.  Frankenstein has even acquired a spot on my top ten favorite movies list.  In my opinion these are still some of the best horror movies we’ve seen in the history of celluloid. 

Now for me, what stands out the most in horror is atmosphere.  In a lot of the scariest movies I’ve seen it’s what you don’t see that scares you the most.  Add in some truly creepy scenery and you’ve got a hit.  When I watch The Wolf Man it’s not the werewolf itself that gives me the creeps, it’s the foggy cobblestone streets, and haunting night skies with a full moon hanging ominously from its cloudy grasp.  And for anyone who is a film buff and says, “Well there is no shot of the full moon in The Wolf Man.” Yeah, I know there isn’t.  But there is more than one wolf man film and the others show plenty of full moon for me to include it in this paragraph.  So in my opinion the old horror movies are the best.  Not because they are the scariest, or the most well produced, or even the most realistic.  But purely because they stand alone in creating a world that provides a truly creepy and foreboding environment filled with incredibly complex, and at times, terrifying characters.

Note: After these films made their marks another era of horror arose.  During the atomic age of movies, all the monsters were either alien invaders, or lab experiments gone wrong.  I don’t really consider these movies to be horror and see them as more science fiction, so I’m not going to include them here.

Now as these movies became more famous they started making sequels.  When they were done with sequels they started making mash ups, which gave birth to the Monster Mash.  Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man were all huge hits so Universal decided to take them and throw them in movies together.  I haven’t seen any of these movies yet, as my love for the oldies is young, but they are most certainly on my list of things to see.  Towards the end of this run the old monsters started fading away.  That is until a British company called Hammer decided to try their hand at showing us what’s truly horrifying. 

Hammer was a small company that made movies overseas.  They were a relative success and eventually made the leap to horror with a film called ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’.  The result was an explosion of interest and legacy.  The two most popular of their series were Frankenstein and Dracula.  In Frankenstein, the doctor is played by Peter Cushing, one of the great horror actors of all time and one of my personal favorites.  They made quite a few of these films, and in them Dr. Frankenstein is the focus while he creates a new monster in every film.  Peter Cushing plays him as a malevolent, sadistic, and truly mad scientist willing to do whatever it takes to make sure his creations see the light of day. 

The Dracula series stars Christopher Lee as the Count and these movies are what made him the second best Dracula ever, following Bela Lugosi, of course.  Hammer made other horror movies as well, some being more Universal remakes like the Mummy, and others being completely original films.  What made Hammer stand alone was the return to form in the atmosphere department, and of course, the acting talents of Cushing and Lee.  These movies went back to the cobblestone streets of London, with the fog and the dim street lights casting shadows on the world.  But these films were also shot in color, and because of the time they were made the color was vibrant, and they added great gore, sex appeal, and lots of bright red blood.  It was a fresh take on an old classic and they did it splendidly.

Bonus Note: Hammer has recently come back (from the dead, so to speak) and started to make horror movies again.  The first that I saw is a vampire film based on a best selling novel called Let Me In.  Coincidentally it is my number one favorite vampire movie of all time.  I have also recently seen a trailer for a movie called The Woman in Black, and I must say it looks absolutely incredible.  After seeing the old school look the movie had I decided to do a little research on it.  I was delighted to see that it is another Hammer movie.  Needless to say, I will be seeing it in theaters opening day.

The Hammer era horror films are my favorite to date.  The gothic look of everything brings me back to seeing the dark silhouettes of far off castles on Halloween cards and treats that filled my backpack on October evenings.  Once again, Peter Cushing is astounding as Victor Frankenstein and he plays an equally impressive Van Helsing in the Dracula series.  What I would love to see today would be another remake of a classic such as Frankenstein but set in Victorian England like the classics.  The difference would be the production value and acting talents of today.  I think it could prove to be most effective. 

So now let’s jump ahead a decade or so, as director Tobe Hooper changes the face of horror with the groundbreaking film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  This started a change in the dynamic of the scary movie.  It moved the setting to contemporary America, the characters became road tripping teenagers, and the villain became anything but supernatural.  Instead he was a misunderstood, cannibalistic, chainsaw wielding madman who wasn’t immune to bullets, sunlight, or anything else.  Well to be fair, TCM is really the only one where the killer was flesh and blood.  Most of the movies to follow it had villains who appeared human but ended up being something else entirely.

Soon after John Carpenter made his record breaking independent film Halloween, about a knife wielding psychopath preying on unsuspecting babysitters in a small town on Halloween night.  This movie would also lump into the category of not scaring me since the antagonist is a human being, but the magic comes at the end when the movie shows that this killer is anything but human.  Unfortunately they had to screw it all up with about 5 terrible sequels, 2 kind of good ones, and 2 HORRIBLE remakes.  Coincidentally Halloween is my favorite horror movie of all time, due to the atmosphere, lack of gore, and sheer focus on scaring the viewer.

Bonus Note:  Singer/Songwriter Rob Zombie (whom I love) decided to remake Halloween in 2007.  To this day his remake takes my number one spot on the ‘Worst Movies of All Time’ list.  But that’s a story for a whole other review.

An antagonist like Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw could be killed by any conventional means that could be found by his would be victims.  For me that took a lot of the fear out of it.  If it’s just a man chasing me, I can defend myself.  I might survive.  If it’s a supernatural entity like a ghost, or poltergeist, I have virtually no chance of living, and that is much scarier to me.  I will say that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great movie, and certainly deserves a spot in the history of horror, but it took us in a new direction that I liked, and at the same time hated. 

So anyway, these movies saw a new kind of horror born for our viewing pleasure.  The Slasher Genre.  Now many of these movies still stuck to the supernatural elements that made earlier movies scary, but they also brought with them an overabundance of gore, sex, and campy comic relief.  I remember being a kid and being absolutely terrified of these movies.  I’ve gone back and watched some of them now that I’m older, and they aren’t just NOT scary, they are complete mockeries of film, and make me laugh more than make me frightened.  In my opinion this is the time that tainted horror movies the most, and has lasted even to this day.  Of course these decades weren’t without their honorable mentions such as the above Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween.  We also saw milestones like The Exorcist, Jaws, The Omen, and Poltergeist to name a few, but we never really went back to the foundation that horror movies were built on.

Gore is not scary.  Gore is gross at best, and especially now that gore is being created by CG (computer graphics) rather than physical on screen makeup effects, gore is looking more and more fake.  Another thought of mine is that comic relief in horror movies is stupid.  A little bit of it can be organic and realistic but most of these movies take the hilarity too far and cross the boundaries into being just plain dumb.  Some of these films even base the whole story around humor.  If people say horror is dead I believe the movies that use these techniques are the killer.

Bonus Note: If you want to see an amazing comparison of CG versus physical effects, watch the werewolf transformation scene in 2009’s The Wolf Man (which is good in its own right) and then watch the werewolf transformation scene in An American Werewolf In London.

So where are we now?  Well now we seem to be living in the world of the Hollywood remake.  It seems that almost one hundred years of horror movies have sapped our creative minds and now all Hollywood can spit out are remakes of old “good” horror movies.  First of all a lot of these movies weren’t good in the first place, and the ones that were good have been remade into some of the worst movies to ever pierce my retinas.  (See the aforementioned Halloween remake.) 

When I look back at the last decade of horror I can seriously count the good ones on two hands.  It’s almost like Hollywood has forgotten what makes us scared, and instead focuses on what scares them:  not making money.  Every other day I get on the internet and check out the latest news in the horror biz and read, with utter disappointment, that we’re either going to see another remake that’s probably going to fall flat, or Rob Zombie is taking another interesting idea and crapping all over it.  I’m sure this makes me sound personally upset about this ordeal but, in my defense, horror is a genre that I hold very dear, and unfortunately since I’m not in the business of making movies (yet?) I have to rely on other filmmakers to give me what I want and that is a seldom occurrence. 

Bring back the subtlety.  The thing that made the classics great is that they didn’t rely on state of the art flashy special effects because they had strong stories, and powerful actors to bring it to life.  Sure they still had some FX here and there but not nearly as much, and as in your face as the movies today.  In some movies, even the blood is CG.  Why do you have CG blood?  Is it too taxing to make fake blood now?  And why does everything have to be rooted in the present?  I just read a story about how they want to remake ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ but it’s going to be set in contemporary New York.  Why?  What’s wrong with the old school cobblestone streets of London?  I think that is one of the best settings for horror movies, and for some reason modern filmmakers refuse to go back there.  (The 2009 Wolf Man remake is an exception.  Not a great movie by any means but a great journey back to classic atmosphere.)  With all the remakes we get, people once again are saying horror is dead.  Well I wouldn’t go that far.  What I would say is that originality is dead.

So in conclusion I will come around again and state that horror is universal.  Everyone in their life time has been afraid, and these films prey upon that scared inner child in all of us.  But if these stories bring out that childish fear in us, doesn’t it then bring out the child in us altogether?  Isn’t it good to feel like a kid again?  Well, for me it’s wonderful and one of the strongest points I can make for the genre.  But of course I would love for anyone reading this to think for themselves.  With October rapidly approaching maybe set aside some time to sit down in the dark and watch some scary movies.  Maybe offer to take a loved one trick or treating or even dress up yourself and go to a costume party.  Whatever your preference may be don’t let this Halloween pass by without making the most of it and enjoy a few good scares.  It might surprise you just how much you like it.

The following is a list of notable horror movies I recommend to add some fright to any Halloween night. 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Nosferatu (1922)

Dracula (1931)

Frankenstein (1931)

The Mummy (1932)

Freaks (1932)

The Old Dark House (1932)

The Invisible Man (1933)

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Son of Frankenstein (1939)

The Phantom Creeps (1939)

Hammer Films (1950’s to 1970’s)

-The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

-Horror of Dracula (1958)

Psycho (1960)

The Haunting (1963)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

The Exorcist (1971)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

The Omen (1976)

Halloween (1978)

The Amityville Horror (1979)

The Shining (1980)

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

The Entity (1981)

Ghost Story (1981)

The Thing (1982)

Creepshow (1982)

Poltergeist (1982)

Fright Night (1982)

Children of the Corn (1984)

Silver Bullet (1985)

Monster Squad (1987)

The Lost Boys (1987)

The Blob (1988)

Lady in White (1988)

Flatliners (1990)

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Event Horizon (1997)

John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998)

The Blair Witch Project(1999)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

What Lies Beneath (2000)

The Ring (2002)

28 Days Later (2002)

Trick ‘r Treat (2007)

The Orphanage (2007)

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Let Me In (2010)

Insidious (2011)

Happy Halloween!