Are You Afraid Of The Dark?

What’s your favorite scary movie?

If you checked out this week’s podcast already, you may have been mulling that question over. The boys brought some solid choices, from the best horror series to the scariest horror villain to Rick Moranis. But there were a few movies that immediately leap to my mind when I think “scary movies” that were left out. And as horror flicks are wont to be, 4/5 of them are really, really bad.

The Midnight Meat Train
Now I don’t know how anyone could think this movie would be anything less than stellar, just from the name alone. But let me set you straight. It is not stellar.

The premise of this movie involves a mute butcher who secretly hangs people by giant meat hooks on subway trains at night. This in itself seems like it would make an excellent gorefest, doesn’t it? I suppose it does. There’s not much of a plot beyond this, which is why my friend and I wound up watching the last half of the movie on fast-forward—we didn’t miss anything. OR DID WE? There’s some super-weird supernatural twist at the end that made no sense even once we rewound. I couldn’t spoil it if I tried. Don’t bother seeing for yourself.

The Hitcher
Starring that girl from One Tree Hill (I don’t watch it, folks, I just know my teen soaps), this is your standard, makes-no-sense-why-that-dude’s-trying-to-kill-these-people movie that takes forever. Just when you think he’s caught—or dead, as the case may be—he’s not. Is it over yet?

I watched this with a couple of girlfriends back in college, all the lights out, intentionally trying to scare ourselves. It worked well enough—I mean, a dude stalking you and your boyfriend all over the desert (was it the desert? It’s been awhile, but I seem to remember an awful lot of sand) would be pretty creepy in real life. But the flying cockroach we discovered crawling across the wall after finishing the movie and turning the lights back on (there was much standing on couches and flailing about with a broom) was by far the scariest part of the evening.

Teeth
Teeth could never be omitted, and it actually wasn’t—but neither Mikey nor Mattie have seen this modern classic. I have had that privilege.

This one I can recommend, if only because it’s the self-aware kind of bad. This movie isn’t trying to be amazing. It’s so campy and ridiculous that it’s incredible—particularly when watched at midnight after a few drinks with friends, which is how it happened for my first time.

My first time watching Teeth.

And anyway, even if you don’t enjoy the movie, c’mon, isn’t “vagina dentata” fun to say? DENTATAAAAA.

Death Sentence
Everybody’s got their go-to answer when somebody brings up “worst movie of all time.” This is mine, only it’s so generically awful that I went years without remembering what it was called, beyond “that Kevin Bacon movie about revenge.” A podcast I listened to recently brought it back to my attention, and boy am I glad.

I thought Kevin Bacon had hit a new low when I saw Hollow Man at an ill-begotten birthday party in 9th grade, but no. He had this gem just waiting in the wings.

To be fair, this movie was billed as a thriller, not a horror movie. But I can’t help but bring it to mind when thinking about awful scary movies, so its atrociousness actually helps it escape a lifetime of obscurity. Any press is good press, right?

Don’t see this movie.

The Orphanage
Produced by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), this subtitled Spanish film isn’t a standard horror movie—you may not even be able to neatly lump it into that genre. But it doesn’t get much scarier than this, to me. There are images in this film that I can’t picture in the dark without needing to burrow underneath the covers or turn on all the lights in my house.

This is the slow burn kind of scary. The kind that creeps up on you. It’s easy to get absorbed in the story—an impossible feat for many movies hell-bent on making you scream. And maybe you won’t scream. But I’m pretty sure all the lights remained on in my bedroom the night that I saw this one.

The Orphanage aside, I'm not sure I'd wish those first four on anyone. But that being said, horror movies are one of the only film genres where sometimes, worse is better. So I don't regret seeing any of these.

Well. Maybe that Kevin Bacon one. Seriously guys? Don't do it.

Got A Number Of Irrational Fears That I'd Like To Share With You

In the most general sense of the word, I would call myself a pretty sensible person. I can’t bring myself to buy lottery tickets; my only concession to my desire to make foolish wishes is when I drive under yellow lights. Even my bad habit of always assuming the worst case scenario is about to come true stems from a mildly sensible place--at least when things do go my way, I’m pleasantly surprised.

But ever since I was a kid, I’ve had some pretty ridiculous irrational fears.

Like how I used to be afraid of stormtroopers. I’m not talking about the kind of fear where you think to yourself, “Hey, those dudes are kinda creepy.” I mean heart-pounding apprehension. I think it all began at the Star Tours ride at Disney World that featured lifesize models of stormtroopers and Vader, looming over my pint-sized self, threatening to harm me with their steely, expressionless masks.

I’m not afraid of stormtroopers anymore. I mean it; I watched all three Star Wars movies in a row with my family on Christmas Day. Any rise in my heart rate was completely unrelated to those armored white beasts.

But that fear was replaced by one that makes even less sense: feral children. I know, right—what? But somewhere along the way, I developed an actual fear of feral children, the raised-by-wolves, language-less, walk-on-all-fours kind. In my daily life I have little to no interaction with feral children--thank god. I’m not entirely sure from whence this irrational fear came, but if I had to venture a guess, it would bring me to my next unholy terror.

Anybody remember Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark? From around 3rd grade probably up through early middle school, these iconic black-and-white-and-red volumes were a staple of classroom bookshelves everywhere, and if they didn’t inspire sheer terror in the hearts of children, I’m not sure what would. It was Stephen Gammell's illustrations that did the trick, though. The stories were your typical urban legends--men with hooks for hands; dead people rising from freshly-dug graves; a girl raised by wolves (see?). But those detailed, gruesome images will haunt me forever. Incidentally, it seems the current editions of these tomes are illustrated by a different, tamer artist. Probably for the best. Nightmares about spiders hatching from a young girl’s cheek aren’t the most pleasant of dreams for a 9-year-old to have.

If the Scary Stories books weren’t your style, you might have gotten your spooky jollies with a little show called Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon. Once I was old enough to stay up late and catch this one, I loved the thrill of the fear. But oh, there was fear. A secret door that led to nothing; an old man with a shovel; a boyfriend who’s unknowingly dead--these stories don’t still fill my head with the terrifying imagery that the books did, but I remember burrowing under the covers once my 9:30 p.m. bedtime hit, hoping that the creepy clown from the magic shop stayed far, far away from my bedroom. For a kids’ show, they sure weren't kidding around.

None of these fears affect my daily life. I can watch Star Wars marathons with ease, read about the origins of the Roman empire without Remus and Romulus making me a little nervous. Occasionally a picture from the Scary Stories books will pop into my head and I’m not saying I like it, but I can keep calm. Are You Afraid of the Dark?, lacking a presence in my DVD collection, is but a distant memory. But you know that feeling you get when you stand atop something very high, that feeling in the pit of your stomach like you’re sure to fall in spite of the two thick layers of gates and glass protecting you from just that? These things can still inspire that jolt of adrenaline, that prickling of the spine, that dizzy certainty that doom is imminent.

I said I was sensible. I never claimed to be rational.