Scary Saturday.

[smokingboot]

Dr Who: This is how I liked to be frightened when I was a kid. Metal pepperpots and monsters I could hide from never did it for me. Give me nightmares of shadows and gas masks, lost children who never quite leave, radios that switch on by themselves, and little hands through letterboxes; Yes, scare me the way I like to be scared.

Gothika: This is what never scared me as a child; lots of blood, loonies, screaming ghosts and stupid psycopaths. Made me laugh from the age of 6 up. Now, it just bores me.

The FA cup final: Scare me with the raddled face of Alex 'Where's me nag?' Ferguson as Nemesis laughs once more and Man Utd lose a game they really deserved to win. Oh, my innocent joy when Shrek, Donkey and Fiona got to walk right past the cup without touching it. How could Rooney possibly be Man of the Match? surely the man of the match was the Arsenal goalkeeper, Lehman, who kept Man U off the goal-line.

Eurovision Song Contest: Way too scary. Roll on Sunday.

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Saturday's Dr. Who reminded me of Sapphire and Steel in so many ways, and that was the series that gave me nightmares as a child / teenager.

Real horror isn't about gore, because you desensitise to ketchup really quickly, and it isn't horror anyway, it's shock. That's why I haven't seen a lot of the zombie films that everyone else seems to have; at their core, they're no more sophisticated than a child jumping out from behind a bush and shouting boo.

Real horror needs to be subtle, and needs to be familiar - the known being twisted just a few degrees; too many, and it slips over into parody, too few, and it's too recognisable.

It wasn't the fact that the gas masks were fused to the faces that was horrible; it was the fact that there were no eyes ....

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Real horror needs to be subtle, and needs to be familiar - the known being twisted just a few degrees

Exactly right.