How do you like to be FRIGHTENED?
October 24th 2006 03:34
Good afternoon sir, good day madam, and how would you like your cinematic scares perpared? Would you care to have them delivered at periodic intervals? Or to be sudden and forceful instead? Maybe you’d like to wait until you’re almost done, and then have an almighty shock to the system? Or perhaps you’d prefer to have a few “Boo!”s from time to time, just enough to keep you on the edge …?
Horror films have all manner of different ways to scare an audience. There can be the simple black cat darting out of an alleyway, to the heroine in extended jeopardy with the audience on the edge of their seat, gripping their partner’s arm in antici …… pation, then everything settles, audience relaxes, and suddenly a dark figure lurches out from the shadows and all hell screeches out!
Years ago a movie critic described John Carpenter’s seminal scarefest Halloween (1978) as “the perfect Boo! machine”. I’d definitely agree. It is one brilliantly constructed, engineered and executed frightmare. Why does it work so well? For a start there’s Carpenter’s electronic score with the high staccato repetition and the low brooding chords. It works a wicked charm (or threat to be more precise). Then there’s the almost mythological setup; the prologue where a very young Michael Myers has murdered his own sister. Jump to modern day and we have psychiatrist Loomis (a superbly paranoid Donald Pleasance) inform the police that Myers has escaped the asylum and stolen a car. The police question how did Myers know how to drive since he’s been incarcerated since the age of six. Loomis retorts back stating “Well he was doing a pretty good job of it!” The boogeyman fear has been firmly instilled in the audience. Micheal Myers is some kind of supernatural psycho-freak, beware!
Carpenter uses a technique of what appears to be Myer’s point of view watching a potential victim only to have Myers' shoulder and head slide into left or right of shot accompanied by an electronic stab. This is used to exceptional effect several times throughout the movie. So important was this technique that Carpenter even had a body double used who was credited as The Shape.
There are other horror movies which instead of pounding the audience with a series of sudden shocks, rely more on an overall tone and atmosphere; a palpable sense of dread and doom. Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and also Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987) use shock tactics, but to much subtler effect. What they deliver in spades is a tone of dread, increasing paranoia, which permeates the whole movie.
There are films like Takashi Miike’s Audition where you barely aware you’re watching a horror movie until near the end when the rug is pulled out from under you and the most appalling act of violence is committed. In many respects a film like Audition is one of the more disturbing exercises in modern horror because it provides you with a false sense of security.
And once the bloodied penny has dropped, the blood has curdled, and you’ve tried to stifle the scream, the movie’s immaculate sense of horror has closed around your throat like a constricting serpent, the Darkness quickly engulfing you …
So how do you like to be frightened? What’s in your grab bag of scare tactics?
* the images on this page were taken from the following wikipedia pages:
Michael Myers (Halloween, screen shot) and Audition (movie poster detail)
Horror films have all manner of different ways to scare an audience. There can be the simple black cat darting out of an alleyway, to the heroine in extended jeopardy with the audience on the edge of their seat, gripping their partner’s arm in antici …… pation, then everything settles, audience relaxes, and suddenly a dark figure lurches out from the shadows and all hell screeches out!
Years ago a movie critic described John Carpenter’s seminal scarefest Halloween (1978) as “the perfect Boo! machine”. I’d definitely agree. It is one brilliantly constructed, engineered and executed frightmare. Why does it work so well? For a start there’s Carpenter’s electronic score with the high staccato repetition and the low brooding chords. It works a wicked charm (or threat to be more precise). Then there’s the almost mythological setup; the prologue where a very young Michael Myers has murdered his own sister. Jump to modern day and we have psychiatrist Loomis (a superbly paranoid Donald Pleasance) inform the police that Myers has escaped the asylum and stolen a car. The police question how did Myers know how to drive since he’s been incarcerated since the age of six. Loomis retorts back stating “Well he was doing a pretty good job of it!” The boogeyman fear has been firmly instilled in the audience. Micheal Myers is some kind of supernatural psycho-freak, beware!
Carpenter uses a technique of what appears to be Myer’s point of view watching a potential victim only to have Myers' shoulder and head slide into left or right of shot accompanied by an electronic stab. This is used to exceptional effect several times throughout the movie. So important was this technique that Carpenter even had a body double used who was credited as The Shape.
There are other horror movies which instead of pounding the audience with a series of sudden shocks, rely more on an overall tone and atmosphere; a palpable sense of dread and doom. Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and also Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987) use shock tactics, but to much subtler effect. What they deliver in spades is a tone of dread, increasing paranoia, which permeates the whole movie.
And once the bloodied penny has dropped, the blood has curdled, and you’ve tried to stifle the scream, the movie’s immaculate sense of horror has closed around your throat like a constricting serpent, the Darkness quickly engulfing you …
So how do you like to be frightened? What’s in your grab bag of scare tactics?
* the images on this page were taken from the following wikipedia pages:
Michael Myers (Halloween, screen shot) and Audition (movie poster detail)
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Comment by suitably*wounded
Eternal Days; Author: Illness, M.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Tis a pity John Boorman fucked up the sequel, and William Blatty made the third film a chore and a bore ...
I trust you've seen the "director's cut" with the sensational use of subliminal imagery (spectre face in the shadows, yikes!!!) ....?
Comment by suitably*wounded
Eternal Days; Author: Illness, M.
But first you must not overwhelm me, my dark lord, I'm still stuck back there with all the Disturbing Scenes (tm), trying to furiously compose a list of ones that have managed to elude me thus far. And it's the perfect pre-Halloween gift. Gracias senor.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by suitably*wounded
Eternal Days; Author: Illness, M.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
Voices~
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile