geekyWe all have those movies that we saw as kids and were horribly scarred-slash-influenced by. They aren't always good movies. In fact, I'd say a lot of them are bad movies, which we love because hey, when you're a kid, men in rubber suits chasing girls in bikinis after inexplicable beachfront musical numbers are pure gold. These are the movies that make us the people we become as adults. For me, these movies were split just about fifty-fifty between "really bad horror movies" and "candy-colored cartoon wonderlands." This explains a great many things, if you stop and think about it for a moment. Or don't. It might be better for you.
One of my most formative films was a creepy little horror-comedy called The Night of the Creeps [Amazon]. It, along with The Monster Squad, Night of the Comet, and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, informed me on a very deep and meaningful level. And it has been totally unavailable for years now, due to rights issues and the fact that, let's face it, they needed to wait for those of us who remembered loving this movie were old enough to have disposable income.
Guess what came out on DVD today?
There is so much love.
October 21 2009, 10:03:08 UTC 7 years ago
My Mom was amazed that horror films did not faze me but that I would cry heartbrokenly when the comedian Harry Worth lost his umbrella in a sketch, or when Frank Spencer got his slipper stuck in the toilet bowl. It was the comedy shows that really, really, scarred me.
I guess as a child I was more scared of being embaressed than of being bit by vampires.
October 21 2009, 15:45:27 UTC 7 years ago
Whereas most of the 'horror' films of the time were sufficiently unrealistic that a child would mostly know that this was "pretend scary" (like in books) rather than "real scary" (like real people doing nasty things). A man who turns into a zombie and eats people's brains is scary but doesn't usually trigger the panic reflex, because we don't generally know anyone like that, whereas a man who beats up his wife is scary because that really does happen (and could easily be imagined to be someone we know).