True Horror Flicks- Are There Any Made Any More?
I remember when I saw The Shining in 1980 by Stephen King it was about Frustrated writer Jack Torrance who took a job as the winter caretaker at the ominous, mountain-locked Overlook Hotel so that he could write in peace. When he arrives there with his wife and son, they learn that the previous caretaker had gone mad. Slowly Jack became possessed by the evil, demonic presence in the hotel. It scared me to death and still today is my all-time favorite scary movie.
The Exorcist made my heart race to, the first one not the second. In 1973 this was a deeply horrifying masterpiece that led to religious boycotts, fainting and nauseous audiences, and a commercial success that forever changed Hollywood. Linda Blair played Regan, a 12-year-old girl possessed by the devil.
After exhausting all the options of science, psychology, and medicine, Regan’s mother realizes the supernatural nature of her daughter’s condition and resorts to a religious solution, turning to Father Karras for an exorcism. Aided by the mysterious Jesuit exorcist Father Merrin, Karras must confront not only supernatural phenomena but also his own inadequate faith and displaced guilt over his mother’s recent death, a personal torment Regan uses to manipulate him, but with disturbing results.
When I was about twenty I went to the drive-in to see a double feature with friends. I don’t remember what the first movie was I fell asleep in the back seat (obviously I wasn’t interested), but the second film I will never forget I awoke during it with a terrifying start. The sounds I heard scared me to death the screaming and yells for help were ear-piercing. The movie was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Inspired by 1950s mass murderer Ed Gein, Tobe Hooper’s debut feature opens with five unsuspecting teenagers driving in a van through sun-scorched rural Texas.
After a terrifying exchange with a demented hitchhiker, the group ends up at an old farmhouse. At first, the house appears to be abandoned, but soon, the evil residents begin to wreak havoc on the youngsters’ lives. With her friends and wheelchair-bound brother Franklin disappearing one by one, the terrified Sally Hardesty must summon the strength to escape from the ghoulish family of mass murderers, who are led by the gruesome, chainsaw-wielding Leatherface.
I watched the movie and was scared to be outside in the dark for a long time afterwards and you could have never gotten me to go anywhere near a old ran down shack. But the second Chainsaw Massacre wasn’t what I was hoping for it didn’t compare to the first at all.
I remember the Friday the 13th movies and they scared me They were about Jason Vorhees and Camp Crystal Lake, which closed after a series of bizarre and unexplained deaths. Now someone is lurking in the woods, spying on the happy campers, and plotting a gory, grisly revenge on those who would disturb the camp’s slumber. No matter how often Jason was killed he always came back to plot revenge on more unsuspecting people.
The Nightmare on Elm Street Movies scared me to. By Wes Craven a hellish, razor-fingered monster enters the dreams of the teenage residents of a bucolic town and systematically slaughters them in their sleep.
So when I heard about Freddy verses Jason coming out I was very excited this movie was about A group of teenagers finding themselves stuck in the middle of a battle between two forces of evil: silent stalker Jason Voorhees and gabby dream master Freddy Krueger as the battle wages from Elm Street to a climactic finale fought at Camp Crystal Lake.
When I saw it even though there were a few jumps in my heart I ended up rooting for Jason to win. Ummm since when do horror movies cause you to want a villain to win? I remember my kid’s arguing over who would win and then cheering when I considered Jason the winner.
There has been a couple that scared me in recent years such as Scream which was about the sleepy little town of Woodsboro who woke up screaming. There’s a killer in their midst who’s seen a few too many scary movies. Suddenly, nobody is safe, as the psychopath stalks victims, taunts them with trivia questions, then rips them to bloody shreds.
Final Destination is a another scary one about Alex Browning, who is embarking on a trip to Paris with his high school French class. In the plane’s cabin, buckled-in and ready for take-off, Alex experiences a powerful premonition. He sees the plane explode in a fiery blaze moments after leaving the ground.
Alex panics and insists that everyone get off the plane. In the melee than ensues, seven people including Alex, are forced to disembark the ill-fated aircraft. Back in the departure lounge, Alex and his friends Billy and Todd; Clear a young woman who instinctively heeded Alex’s warning; Carter, whose derision of Alex’s paranoia had him and his girlfriend Terry thrown off the plane; and Ms. Lewton, the teacher who volunteers to stay with the disembarking students, all watch as Alex’s horrific premonition proves tragically accurate when the plane explodes in a catastrophic fireball. Ironically, even though Alex’s intuition saves lives, after the crash he is plagued by both guilt and suspicion.
Ominous portents of doom as well as the FBI, dog his every step. Alex comes to believe that somehow, he and the other survivors have briefly cheated death, but will not be able to evade their fate for very long. Clear befriends Alex, but no one, not even she, really believes his macabre theory – not even as one by one, these fugitives from fate fall victim to the grim reaper.
But in most recent years the scariest I have seen weren’t even considered actual Horror movies. The ones that scare me the most now are movies like,
Sum of all fears starring Ben Affleck in the role made famous by Harrison Ford. In this installment, European neo-Nazi terrorists acquire a nuclear device and plan to use it at the Super Bowl, blaming the attack on Russia in the hopes of rekindling the Cold War. Luckily, CIA analyst Jack Ryan is on the case. This one has exceptional effects.
And The Left Behind series, Left Behind: The Movie (2001)
In an instant, dozens of passengers on an international airline flight disappear into thin air. Pilot Rayford Steele discovers, to his horror, that millions worldwide vanished at the same instant including his own wife and son. While the world reels from the cataclysmic event, Steele bands with others who have been “left behind” to discover who or what is responsible for the disappearances.
Then there was Left Behind II: Tribulation Force
Second in the ongoing series of Christian films based on best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, TRIBULATION FORCE follows up where the enormously popular LEFT BEHIND left off. Confusion and chaos ensue after the mysterious vanishings of millions of people, and U.N. Secretary General Nicolae Carpathia seeks to pacify the world with a new temporal ideology, one in which religion would be made obsolete.
A group of rebels, cognizant of the nefarious Carpathia’s true identity, form the Tribulation Force to combat his foretold rule of darkness and to save as many souls as they can. As prophesied in the Bible, witnesses of God have descended to Earth in Jerusalem, and Carpathia refuses them a public audience.
The reporter Buck Williams, played by Kirk Cameron (TV’s GROWING PAINS), and pilot Ray Steele infiltrate Carpathia’s tight circle of power to inform the world of God’s message – via live television. Interwoven throughout the film is the budding love story between Buck and Chloe Steele, Ray Steele’s daughter, although the two exchange no more than a kiss on the cheek. A science-fiction story at its core, TRIBULATION FORCE offers a vision of the future as according to Revelations, perhaps most resonant with viewers of Christian faith.
Maybe these movies sacre as horror movies because these movies show things that can and will happen some time in the future if the world keeps on the path were on.
I do like this type of movies to but they leave you wondering what is going to happen in the future and how it will affect your life and those life’s of the ones you love. This is good we all need to think about the future and the way we live life. But I want to see a truly good scary movie that I know can’t happen but still scares the wits out of me.
