My First Horror Flicks...

I was listening to the audio commentary on GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (with Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski talking about historical and cultural and pop-cultural significances) and they shared the first time they saw the movie and how and why it scared them.

And that got me thinking.

I saw GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS just a few years ago, so it didn't scare me at all. (Though I did appreciate it a great deal, because as a teen I had seen some of the 1960s/70s Godzilla flicks -- where he's sumo wrestling other giant monsters for the amusement of children and the mildly retarded -- and was stright-up DISGUSTED that this clown was dubbed the greatest MONSTER of all time! This was no monster that I saw in those flicks, it was frickin' Bozo the Clown! So when I saw that the first Godzilla movie REALLY WAS a horror film, I was very pleasantly shocked and impressed!!!)

And how we feel about movies and genres of movies seems to have A LOT to do with when we experience them! I know of grown men who saw the original KING KONG and were terrified. But I didn't see it in the 1930s or 40s or 50s so I couldn't possibly imagine being frightened by it.

But I DO remember being terrified of Jason Voorhees!

It's true!

In 1981 or 1982 I was spending the night with a friend from school and we watched FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2. Very traumatic and wonderful! But NOTHING compaired to being 13 years old and seeing FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER opening weekend... ON a Friday the 13th!!! THAT was BLISS!!! I somehow actually talked Mom into taking me to see it! And I jumped! And I screamed!

And... I'll bet my 16-year-old daughter could watch it and go "You thought THIS was scary?"

But see, I was 13! And I had been hearing and reading about FRIDAY THE 13TH since I was 9! I actually got a sweet, sweet taste when I was 10 or 11, but that was in the safety of my friend's home and not nearly the same thing as the raw experience of seeing it in the theater!!!

I HAD experienced all of 3 or 5 minutes of FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D in the theater... Brian and I had gone to see YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE in 3-D (or one of those bad 1980s 3-D Sci-Fi stinkers) and we sneaked from our theater to the Ft13 theater. I only saw a few minutes because I was terrified of being caught; Brian had the balls (little bastard alwasy had balls as big as church bells!) to actually watch most of the movie!

But here, on Friday the 13th, 1984 I was ACTUALLY ABLE to experience the mighty Jason in all his crimson glory!!! I was a happy 13-year-old!!!

But that wasn't my first Horror flick in the theaters.

The year before, my mom took me to see PSYCHO II!!! She had been a fan of the original, and so she took me to see the sequel!

That was great, too! I didn't jump as much as I would do in Ft13TFC, but it was creepy and mildly disturbing!

But thinking about these formative experiences with the horror genre is curious, because I was developed in an odd way. The first 7 years of my life almost don't count becuase we were living with our abusive biological parents. It was a very oppressive atmosphere and we didn't get to explore and learn the way other kids did. I didn't really get to start discovering who I was until I was 9. I wasn't allowed an opinion before that.

So I started casting back in my memory, trying to remember the first horror movies I had ever seen. Would people younger than I have considered them scary?

I remember seeing DUEL on TV at some point when I was really young. It must have been a rerun, though, because it originally aired before I was a year old.

One blessed Halloween in 1981-- I would probably have just turned 11 -- my parents dragged Brian and me to some friends' of theirs and let me and Brian plop down in front of a TV where we were treated to a Disney Halloween special that ended with an abridged version of THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW (which was wonderful for me, because I remember seeing the ads for it on TV but never got to go to the movie theaters to see it; undoubtedly a re-release as ir originally hit theaters in 1949). But then, after the Disney special I got to see a made-for-TV Movie of the Week called DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW!!! This was GREAT! I've obtained a VHS copy of the very rare flick and re-watched it the past 2 Halloweens and it still holds up as a classic ghost story, if not particularly scary, per se.

I can also remember watching VAMPIRE CIRCUS on TV when I was 8 or 9. It was cool.

But what was the FIRST horror movie I saw?

Then I remembered that I had actually seen the remake of KING KONG on the Big Screen when I was still with my biological parents! It was at a drive-in movie theater, no less!!! How cool is THAT?!! I'm guessing I was 5 years old. And I don't specifically remember being scared, but I DISTINCTLY remember Kong wrasslin' with a gigantic boa constrictor (and Kong tearing it in half!!) and SURELY that scared a 5-year-old version of me, lol!

I also seem to remember watching at least part of GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA on my bio-family's tiny black-and-white TV, but I doubt that scared me. I was probably merely thrilled to see the giant monster battling the giant robot version of himself. So I wouldn't really call that a horror flick. (For me, anyway.)

Then it came to me... The FIRST horror movie I must have ever seen.

Also, the first movie I had ever seen in a movie theater, because all the rest of the flicks I saw with by bio-parents were at the drive-in.

And THIS movie explains A LOT about me, hehe.

I don't remember if this was the original release or a re-release, but I remember seeing it in the theater.

My biological father took my sister and me to see THE EXORCIST.

I didn't make it past the shaking bed part. When the mom goes into Regan's room and the bed starts bucking back and forth I LOST IT and spent the rest of the movie in the lobby!

And I don't feel any shame about that because I was maybe 5 years old, and adults TODAY are still pissing themselves the first time they see that flick. (Besides, I've seen is many, many times since then, lol.)

I wanna say that this must have been a 1976 re-release of the movie because I remember that my bio-logical mom took Brian to see THE SHOOTIST with John Wayne, and that came out ib '76.

The reason I believe this memory explains so much about me is because the two sub-genres of horror that I'm obsessed with writing are demonic possession and zombies. I think the reason for both is because of the terror that I knew watching THE EXORCIST as a 5-year-old. The demon-thing is obvious -- the movie was about a girl who became possessed -- and the zombie-thing I believe may have come from the frightening way regan looked after the demon had had control of her for a while -- green-ish/grey-ish skin with open tears in the flesh and those white/yellow eyes. I think my zombie obsession may have come from seeing DAWN OF THE DEAD as a young teen (maybe 15 or 16) and subconsciously flashing back to Possessed-Regan and how scary she was.

But remembering now that THE EXORCIST was my seminal, most traumatic Horror movie experience explains to me -- finally -- why only supernatural horror does it for me. For some reason a really visious guy killing folks just isn't completely fulfilling... unless he himself has been killed several times already and keeps coming back from the dead, or he was murdered and kills kids in their dreams! There has to be some supernatural component for me to thoroughly enjoy a Horror story, and now I think I understand why.

Ironically, my initial horror over seeing that film at such a young age didn't put me off horror movies forever... In fact, if I've got my timing right I saw KONG that year or the next. (But KONG isn't strictly a horror movie, really. It's more of a Fantasy Adventure.)

I think the movie that hooked me on Horror, though, was JAWS 2. I hadn't been able to see the original JAWS by the summer of 1979 (I think) when HBO re-ran JAWS 2 again and again. It scared me so much that I hesitated going into the swimming pool of the apartment complex we lived in. (This is significant, because I am an aquatic mamal -- I LOVE being in the water! Still do!) I think the repeated excitement of watching those kids terrorized by that shark and watching Roy Scheider lure that shark to that electric cable again and again and again and STILL feeling the excitement every time started me jonesin', for the first time, for those darker reaches of story-telling. (And that's a little curious, really, because if you watch JAWS you'll see it's not a Horror movie at all... It's an Adventure movie, very clearly and undisputeably. But watch JAWS 2 and it is DEFINITELY a Horror movie. I think the fact that the sequel jumped genres may have created a bit of confusion that lead to the second and third sequels being as bad as they are. If they had been developed in the Adventure genre JAWS 3-D and JAWS: THE REVENGE might have been better movies. Just a thought.)

Ooh! Another great horror flick I saw as a kid on TV was Tobe Hooper's forray into Stephen King's universe with SALEM'S LOT!!! Mr. Barlow's blue skin and white eyes, the kid who was obsessed with monster models and posters (just like I was!!!) and his dead friend scratching on the window, "Mark, let me in"!!!

I'll bet that's the movie that put Stephen King on my radar screen, too.

I haven't had cable for 3 or 4 years, so I may be speaking out of ignorance, but why aren't there more great made-for-TV horror movies? I thought Stephen King's ROSE RED was really, really good, but we don't seem to have any GREAT made-for-TV horror flicks.

Blah.

Okay, thank you for joining me on my little trip down Memory Lane, lol.

I fell asleep listening to the audio commentary for GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS and so I suppose my subconscious was just really influenced by questions about my formative Horror movie experiences, and so I kind of HAD TO write this entry and explore it for myself.

OOH!

Sometime in the near future I should explore my formative Sci-Fi film experiences! That's bound to be interesting! (For me, anyway, lol.) I remember Sci-Fi and Horror being sort of the ONLY genres that interested me until I got into Theatre and started actively expanding my artistic horizons.

Weird, that.

Anyway, if you were born somewhere around 1970 I hope my memories jog some of your own and bring a nostalgic smile to your face.

If you're of a different generation, I encourage you to ask yourself what your first horror movie was and what, specifically, scared you about it. I think you'll find that the more details you get into the more memories you'll unlock. :)