"Halloween and Scary Movies"
by John Wilder
"Happy Halloween. The origins of Halloween are older and murkier than what can be teased out of history. Is it a Christian holiday tossed over the top of an old pagan one? Is it a purely Christian holiday? Is it a floor wax? Is it a dessert topping? Why not all of the above?
Regardless, Halloween happens at my favorite time of the year. One of the things that we lose in the frenetic pace of modern society is a loss of connection to the cycles of life. There are long cycles: Infancy, Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood, and Maturity. Technology certainly has changed those cycles – children play on tablets seeing things they ought not, and Madonna© pretends she’s sixteen rather than sixteen minutes short of eighty.
The shorter cycles are changed, as well. A typical day had time when we were fully engaged at work, and time when we weren’t. Now? Technology has made it so we’re partially engaged at work, and partially engaged with family. At least we don’t have to be engaged with Madonna.
But the year, that’s something that technology can only partially mess with. We can be warm in winter, and cool in summer, but unless we stay inside all year sealed in Tupperware™ (like Madonna) we are exposed to the changing lights and temperatures of the season.
That is good. We are humans. Or at least I assume we’re all humans, since we all enjoy ingesting nutrients and drinking fluids that hydrate us while listening to sounds of non-random frequencies arranged in a mathematical progression juxtaposed with potentially emotionally triggering lyrics about mildly iconoclastic behavior. Correct?
But all of that aside, I love that we’re still connected to the world via the changing of the seasons. I’m not particularly a fan of summer. But I love the other nine months. And October is the sign that another damn summer is gone. And Halloween is when the weather turns, and in October there is one particular day when I can know that every day for the next five months will be colder than that day. And I love that.
October is also the month when the harvest is done. The time has come when the cycle is done. Planting in spring, growing in summer, harvesting in fall. Winter then comes, and the season has a pause. This is the time humans need for reflection, for learning, for being together, for planning. In short, none of the things that Madonna™ does.
For this cycle, at least, technology hasn’t stopped us entirely from getting to our roots. Autumn is when the die is cast: we have either done what we need to do to make it through the winter, or we haven’t. I think that’s why horror movies are part of the season – harvest reminds us that we’re mortal, and for this part of the year we also, historically, had time to reflect on life and death and the cycle.
So, thinking about death is natural – it is certainly part of the cycle. And that’s my guess as to why horror movies seem to fit so well with Halloween. And I like horror movies.
Many countries do horror movies really, really badly.
The Germans, for instance, make horror movies that are these weird psychological horror movies that probably only make sense if you wear rubber suits to go to the bank.
The Italian horror movies are nearly incomprehensible as German horror films, but the people in the movies look absolutely fantastic and change sides halfway through the movie.
English horror movies are generally as scary as the discussion of tax rates in the House of Commons. I guess that might be scary if you make enough money.
The three or four horror movies I’ve seen from Spain look like shoddy copies of Italian horror movies, but starring some American star like John Saxon. Why John Saxon? Why not – he can fight green goo as well as anyone else.
Japanese horror films started as clumsy metaphors for being bombed with nuclear weapons, but then morphed into clumsy metaphors for being overworked by evil corporations after being bombed by nuclear weapons.
Nope, for me? It’s American horror films. I think we do this particularly well. My favorites are (in no particular order):
The Thing.
Alien.
In the Mouth of Madness.
Reanimator.
From Beyond.
Salem’s Lot.
Scanners.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973 only).
Event Horizon.
Night of the Living Dead.
Ravenous.
The Exorcist.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Phantasm.
Prince of Darkness.
I didn’t rank this list on purpose. If you’ve seen some of these, you’ll know right from the start if this matches up with what you like. But I’ll add this part, too. A horror movie doesn’t have emotional impact in a vacuum. "Night of the Living Dead?" To me, it was scary only because I saw it when I was five. Watching it now, it might be one of the tamest movies on the list, so, your mileage may vary.
With minor exceptions on the list, most of those have a fairly intense paranormal component. I think that’s scarier than just people, otherwise numerous other classic movies like "Silence of the Lambs" would have been on the list. Sadly, their newest movie on the list was done before the year 2000. Have there been scary movies made since then?
Yeah. And I’ve seen bushel baskets of them. They’re just not nearly as good as what came before. Except for that one horror star. She’s scary. Oh, wait. That’s Madonna."
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