Have you ever felt so lonely that you could map it on your body?
Tonight I went to hear Nathan Ballingrud and Paul Tremblay read at Pandemonium Books & Games; they were great, I got signed copies of Nathan's Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell (2019) and Bracken MacLeod's 13 Views of the Suicide Woods (2017), and a man in the audience recognized me from my jacket photo (and then said nice things about my writing), which I was not expecting. I had hoped to come home and write about a movie, but in fact my brain appears to be toast, so I am sitting on the couch beside a dozing Autolycus, discussing horror movies with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch. I am not confident that I am really equipped to fill out the meme about horror movies that's been going around my friendlist on Facebook, but I have decided to give it a shot anyway.
Horror Movie I Hate: Motivational Growth (2012). It took me forever to remember it, in part because I have been fortunate enough to see very few movies in any genre that I truly hate and I suspect in part because I had repressed the experience, but we were subjected to this 104-minute exercise in pseudo-existentialist audience exhaustion as a last-minute, four a.m. replacement for The Hands of Orlac (1924) during SF37 and even Jeffrey Combs voicing a sentient blob of black mold could not save it. It just kept not stopping. Rob refused to leave the theater because he was afraid that if he didn't see it end, it might never be over. I feel bitter about missing out on Conrad Veidt to this day.
Horror Movie I Think Is Overrated: I do not generally find it useful to think of a film as overrated when all that means is that other people like it more than I do, but I did not enjoy An American Werewolf in London (1981) at all. It had been talked up to me as a comedy; it upset me badly with its gross-out effects, its protagonist's terror, and its bloody ending; I was watching it with someone who loved it; it was awkward all round.
Horror Movie I Think Is Underrated: I don't think I can cite Jennifer's Body (2009) since that film currently seems to be undergoing a renaissance, so on the grounds that I still find myself recommending it to people who have never heard of it, let's say Demon (2015). It remains the best dybbuk film since Michał Waszyński and it's even on Kanopy.
Horror Movie I Love: Psycho (1960). Much to my surprise. I didn't think I would hate it when I finally managed to see it in an irony-free environment, but I didn't think I would watch it three times in the same forty-eight hours. I still haven't managed to write about it because I loved it so much; some movies I can't stop talking about, some I don't know where to start. It's like I'm afraid of getting them wrong. I suspect this of being some permutation of Tiny Wittgenstein, but it's kept me from writing about more than one film for years. Psycho is not at the top of the list, but it's frustratingly included.
Horror Movie I Could Watch on Repeat: I have watched The Legend of Hell House (1973) at every possible opportunity since being introduced to it and expect to continue to do so, partly for its parapsychological weirdness, partly for its radiophonic soundtrack by Delia Derbyshire, greatly for Roddy McDowall. I love that it is explicitly a Christmas movie. I love that its ending goes so far over the top that one of my other favorite character actors cameoing as a corpse registers with a shrug of sure, why not? while still being emotionally poignant to me. Besides, it got into my fiction while I was asleep.
Horror Movie That Made Me Fall in Love with Horror Movies: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). I do not think that I ever actually saw a single movie that made me fall in love with horror movies, especially since there are so many different kinds of horror movie and I have an evident affinity for some and a much more tenuous relationship with others, but if I had ever been tempted to say categorically that I didn't like horror movies, early imprinting on Peter Lorre's Dr. Einstein would have demonstrated otherwise. When my husband just now told me he was about to microwave a pizza instead of putting it in the oven, I responded instinctively, "Oh, Johnny, not the Melbourne method." If you would prefer a less funny answer, Cat People (1942).
Horror Movie That Changed My Life: Shaun of the Dead (2004), although technically it was an on-set photo that did it. I found one character's death scene so emotionally upsetting, it really helped to find a production photo afterward in which the actor looked at most mildly dubious about his violent and wrenchingly mistimed disemboweling. I don't want to say that I had never thought about practical effects before that, because I have written proof that I did, but I think I thought about them differently afterward. It's been useful.
Guilty Pleasure: I have no movies I feel bad about liking! If I have to pick one that sounds unlikely, Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) is a deliberately, splatterily over-the-top Goth-punk neo-Jacobean Grand Opera Guignol and I own both the DVD and the soundtrack. I think I was supposed to like it ironically, but unfortunately I tend to like things either unironically or not at all, so here we are.
strange_complex linked me a Twitter thread on the Great Selkie of Sule Skerry. That's one of the oldest songs I can remember knowing; my mother used to sing it to me as a lullaby. I wonder if there are any selkie horror films. Stolen skins would do it.
spatch. I am not confident that I am really equipped to fill out the meme about horror movies that's been going around my friendlist on Facebook, but I have decided to give it a shot anyway.Horror Movie I Hate: Motivational Growth (2012). It took me forever to remember it, in part because I have been fortunate enough to see very few movies in any genre that I truly hate and I suspect in part because I had repressed the experience, but we were subjected to this 104-minute exercise in pseudo-existentialist audience exhaustion as a last-minute, four a.m. replacement for The Hands of Orlac (1924) during SF37 and even Jeffrey Combs voicing a sentient blob of black mold could not save it. It just kept not stopping. Rob refused to leave the theater because he was afraid that if he didn't see it end, it might never be over. I feel bitter about missing out on Conrad Veidt to this day.
Horror Movie I Think Is Overrated: I do not generally find it useful to think of a film as overrated when all that means is that other people like it more than I do, but I did not enjoy An American Werewolf in London (1981) at all. It had been talked up to me as a comedy; it upset me badly with its gross-out effects, its protagonist's terror, and its bloody ending; I was watching it with someone who loved it; it was awkward all round.
Horror Movie I Think Is Underrated: I don't think I can cite Jennifer's Body (2009) since that film currently seems to be undergoing a renaissance, so on the grounds that I still find myself recommending it to people who have never heard of it, let's say Demon (2015). It remains the best dybbuk film since Michał Waszyński and it's even on Kanopy.
Horror Movie I Love: Psycho (1960). Much to my surprise. I didn't think I would hate it when I finally managed to see it in an irony-free environment, but I didn't think I would watch it three times in the same forty-eight hours. I still haven't managed to write about it because I loved it so much; some movies I can't stop talking about, some I don't know where to start. It's like I'm afraid of getting them wrong. I suspect this of being some permutation of Tiny Wittgenstein, but it's kept me from writing about more than one film for years. Psycho is not at the top of the list, but it's frustratingly included.
Horror Movie I Could Watch on Repeat: I have watched The Legend of Hell House (1973) at every possible opportunity since being introduced to it and expect to continue to do so, partly for its parapsychological weirdness, partly for its radiophonic soundtrack by Delia Derbyshire, greatly for Roddy McDowall. I love that it is explicitly a Christmas movie. I love that its ending goes so far over the top that one of my other favorite character actors cameoing as a corpse registers with a shrug of sure, why not? while still being emotionally poignant to me. Besides, it got into my fiction while I was asleep.
Horror Movie That Made Me Fall in Love with Horror Movies: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). I do not think that I ever actually saw a single movie that made me fall in love with horror movies, especially since there are so many different kinds of horror movie and I have an evident affinity for some and a much more tenuous relationship with others, but if I had ever been tempted to say categorically that I didn't like horror movies, early imprinting on Peter Lorre's Dr. Einstein would have demonstrated otherwise. When my husband just now told me he was about to microwave a pizza instead of putting it in the oven, I responded instinctively, "Oh, Johnny, not the Melbourne method." If you would prefer a less funny answer, Cat People (1942).
Horror Movie That Changed My Life: Shaun of the Dead (2004), although technically it was an on-set photo that did it. I found one character's death scene so emotionally upsetting, it really helped to find a production photo afterward in which the actor looked at most mildly dubious about his violent and wrenchingly mistimed disemboweling. I don't want to say that I had never thought about practical effects before that, because I have written proof that I did, but I think I thought about them differently afterward. It's been useful.
Guilty Pleasure: I have no movies I feel bad about liking! If I have to pick one that sounds unlikely, Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) is a deliberately, splatterily over-the-top Goth-punk neo-Jacobean Grand Opera Guignol and I own both the DVD and the soundtrack. I think I was supposed to like it ironically, but unfortunately I tend to like things either unironically or not at all, so here we are.
strange_complex linked me a Twitter thread on the Great Selkie of Sule Skerry. That's one of the oldest songs I can remember knowing; my mother used to sing it to me as a lullaby. I wonder if there are any selkie horror films. Stolen skins would do it.
no subject
It's one of the earliest movie I can remember watching, along with Singin' in the Rain (1952) and Splash (1984). Our copy was taped off the TV and I didn't realize until I was in grad school, when a friend gave me a DVD, that it had either a Halloween setting or a prologue outside the Brewster house.
Have you ever seen UNDER THE SKIN?
No! I've heard very good things about it, but never seen it. I'm still not up to speed on contemporary movies.
What does Pat love about it? Or what terrifies you?
no subject
I find it terrifying because it's creepy as fuck.