Scary Movies

I have a love-hate relationship with horror movies.  In fact, as I've gotten older, it has become more of a hate-hate relationship.  When I was younger, though old enough by my parent's standards to watch them, I liked horror movies, but they always scared me.  My mother enjoyed watching them, and she sometimes let me say up to watch them with her.  It started with some of the movies that are deemed classic horror movies, such as PSYCHO, or JAWS.  To me, they ended up scaring me more by reputation than what actually appeared on the screen.  PSYCHO was scary just because it was a Hitchcock film.  I actually read the Peter Benchley novel before seeing JAWS, and the book was frightening, probably more than the movie, though the movie did keep me from wanting to go to the beach.

I was a funny kid, though.  I still wanted to watch these movies.  It was as if I wanted to be scared.  I was fascinated by the old 50s sci-fi movies, and loved watching them, but never really found them scary.  Horror movies were different, though.  I watched the AMITYVILLE HORROR and it about scared me out of a week's sleep.  ROSEMARY'S BABY was another that frightened me, particularly due to its satanic overtones.  TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, which I saw at a party, scared me more for its reputation, but it was scary, too.  All of the teens in the room watching the movie teased each other about being scared, and some pretended they weren't, but it scared them.

The scariest movie of all was THE EXORCIST.  I don't even know why I watched it, but it was the one that began turning me away from horror movies.  Again, the subject matter made it scarier to me, since demon possession seems a little more real like with the satanism is ROSEMARY'S BABY.  It got worse from there.  I saw POLTERGEIST with the whole family, and it scared me like nothing else I'd ever seen.  THE SHINING scared me, too.  It wasn't the slasher style movies that were scaring me.  It was the ghost stories, or anything dealing with demons or possession, that got to me.

You would think, as a Christ-follower, that I would know better than to let myself be scared by these stupid movies, and that I would just stop watching them.  But, no, I kept watching them, and it got worse as Hollywood perfected its craft.  THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE was spooky and atmospheric.  Then there was PET SEMETERY.  I had read Stephen King's novel, and it scared me like nothing else I've ever read, but the movie made it worse (since it wasn't a particularly good movie, either).  THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY scared me so much, I couldn't watch them alone, and they may be the ones that keep me from seeing any others.  I actually called my brother while I watched PARANORMAL ACTIVITY through to the end because I knew he had seen it and he talked me through it.  This was just a few years ago.

I didn't want my little girl to watch these kinds of movies, so I've kept her from watching them.  It's funny, though, how history will repeat itself.  My daughter has gravitated to scary shows on TV, like SLEEP HOLLOW, which is a pretty scary show, and I've caught her watching them without my permission.  She scares herself watching them, too, but that doesn't stop her.  She's just like me.

Have a great evening, everyone!