Horror

[smokingboot]

You bored?

I'm doing research on horror stories. If anyone wants to help me by answering the questions below (no need to email me privately, just bung them in the comments section) that would be fantastic, bearing in mind that if you give me great ideas, don't be mortified if I use them! If your list includes trigger events, can you add a warning to the title of your comment, so that people know to scroll past if necessary?

1)What personally frightens you?
2)The most frightening thing you can imagine happening to you in real life?
3)The most frightening nightmare/unreal scenario you can imagine?
4)What feels as though it should frighten you but just doesn't?
5)What is the most frightening book/story you ever read or were told and why?
6)What's the most frightening film you ever saw and why
7)What's the least frightening thriller/horror movie you ever saw and why?
8)What is the physical environment most likely to scare you and why?
9)Creepiest city/town and why?

Thanks for any input you can give xxx

Comments

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Well now, that is very interesting. What is it that makes the torture scene in Casino Royale watchable?

Is it cos we know he's going to win, cos he's Bond? is it cos it doesn't last long? I don't know.

The gorefesters always worry me, though comedy gorefests like the Evil Dead series made me laugh until I knew it too well ('This is my boomstick' remains a favourite line of mine) and Ash's duel with Evil Hand always made me laugh. But then ED was never meant to be taken seriously. Things like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre bored me as concepts so I never bothered watching.

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

Maybe. It also doesn't seem very extreme to me though - it feels like acting. Also the method used is one that is something we know would hurt, but we cant really 'see' as something drawn out and painful. It is brutal rather cruel. It is the sort of thing we might see in a fight anyway.
Now-if he was restrained and then we saw a scalpel being slowly and repeatedly dragged through his skin, the blood welling up like little tears on his body, or his flesh being peeled away-that would make more of us turn away and wince.
Plus I think you are right in that we know he wont be permanently harmed and that he will escape-so that lessens its effect.

I think there is a fine line between visceral horror that is effective, too effective, or just downright funny. Often its in the way its done, but also its something to do with the way individuals respond to it as well. I saw the first Robocop film in the cinema and found the part where they blow his arms and legs off with a shotgun really unpleasant (not horrific mind-just nasty), while others in the audience found it really funny.

My own take on horror is that visceral horror is always fallible and prone to be a bit cheap. Any hack can write or film visceral horror. Its one of my big problems with Clive Barker - he is, to me anyway, a deeply flawed writer. He has a brilliant imagination and I love some of his concepts, but in executing them he often sinks to the lowest point to create horror and the second half of everything of his I have read (and since I do like his concepts I have read a fair number of his books) tends to just fall apart and become remarkably clunky and dull, never rising to the promise of the earlier premises.