Imagine
a young bespectacled child, no older than five. Imagine how excited he is to be
watching Raiders of the Ark with his
mother, completely in awe at all the action at scenery. You got that? Now
imagine the child horror-struck face when Nazis open the Arc of the Covenant and
get their faces melted. I don’t even remember my mother reacting to it, but I
was petrified of what I was seeing.
And
yet, I kept watching. I don’t specifically recall what enthralled me so much
about people’s faces melting off, but I think it boiled down to me thinking “Wow…They
got away with putting this in the movie?!” I almost never think that in a
positive light anymore (exhibit A).
Shortly
after that, my father got me started on actual horror movies. He was a huge fan
of Stephen King, and I became one as well thanks to the movie versions of Carrie (excellent movie) and It (just…read the book). The next great
horror film I remember watching was Ridley Scott’s Alien. To this day, it’s been the only movie to make me puke
(Sorry, Human Centipede). However, it
still served as a bridge between my love for science fiction as a kid and the
horror movies I watch today. A few short years later, and I discovered Clive
Barker’s Hellraiser series, and
absolutely weird and awesome series that’s recently fallen upon hard times.
Today,
most of the horror movies I watch today are of the zombie variety. Also, it
takes a lot more than gore to win me over these days. Whether or not the movie
I’m watching is good or bad, however, is irrelevant. Horror is a genre that
will always interest me, and I have my mother and Indiana Jones to thank for
that.
Indiana Jones movies have a thing for death scenes....
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