Digital Joe #15

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Looking over my collection, there´s a suspicious lack of horror films. I´ve got plenty of sci-fi flicks, dramas, a healthy dose of comedies, a couple musicals…but not many horror films. There´s the "Nightmare on Elm Street" box set, the "Scream" trilogy, "The Exorcist", "Dawn of the Dead" and…well, that´s just about it. Sure, some of what I have could be considered to have one foot in the horror genre (the "Alien" quadrilogy and "Jaws"), but the classics of the horror genre aren´t there.

I´ve resisted adding nearly any "modern" horror films because, frankly, they´re not scary. And I haven´t bought many older thrillers on the grounds that once I have one or two films from a series, I have the perverse need to have them all. Who in the world in their right mind wants "Halloween 1,666" sitting on the shelf? Yeah, yeah, an argument can be made against the entire Freddy franchise (and I´m sure the question why I don´t have the sequels to "The Exorcist" will come up).

But the simple fact is I don´t find horror movies very…horrific. I admit I did get a jump or two when we went to see "Saw 2" last fall and one or two scenes during the remake of "House of Wax" got to me. (Shoot, seeing someone tear the side of another person´s face off will do that to anybody.) The problem with the horror genre from where I sit is that people are confusing scares and chills with stupidity and gore.

The classics of the genre didn´t have lots of blood or unnecessary gore. They did their jobs by being creative and genius. How much blood, really, was in "Alien"? Lots of slime, sure, but not a whole lot of blood. Was there any blood in "Halloween"? To the best of me memory, no. John Carpenter, Ridley Scott and all the other masters got us scared out of our wits not because of the hideous monster in front of us. They got us all to jump in our seats and cringe in the corner (not to mention sleep with the lights on) because of what we couldn´t see.

I am, obviously, a huge fan of the first "Alien" flick. Is it the most inspired movie ever made? Certainly not. It borrows rather heavily from the 1958 film "It! The Terror From Beyond Space". And it does move slowly at times. But whatever deficiencies you notice get flung out the window. The thing that makes "Alien" such a scary movie is precisely the fact that we don´t see the creature nearly as much as we create its look in our mind. And that is much scarier than anything Hollywood could come up with for the screen.

Look at the rest of the franchise. "Aliens" is a solid action film, but it´s not on the same horror plane as the first. Among other things, "Alien 3" suffers from seeing the creature entirely too much in the light (not to mention the "real" monster giving way to some pretty horrid computer effects). And the less said about "Alien Resurrection", the better we´re all going to be.

Remember "Jaws"? That film was the first summer blockbuster not because Steven Spielberg is a genius, but because his mechanical shark did not work. He was forced to show less of his moster, alluding to it with a simple fin or John Williams´ legendary "Jaws" theme. What happened with the subsequent entries in the series? We saw more and more of the shark. When that happened, each successive director didn´t need to think about being creative. If the story wasn´t up to par, they undoubtedly felt that an extra shark shot would do the trick.

Look how "Jaws: The Revenge" turned out.

What´s the lesson so far? Less blood, less screen time.

Now, I enjoyed the "Saw" movies without a doubt. I didn´t even think the body in the bathroom was Jigsaw. It was a neat twist on a dirty and disgusting movie. But it went for those scares with gore and blood (and general nastiness). In fact, they weren´t necessarily scares, they were more gross-outs. Cutting off an appendage? Not scary. Disgusting. Being stalked by predator you can´t see in an environment that isn´t your own? Scary.

More often than not, in horror films, I find myself yelling at the characters in the movie. Don´t these people ever watch movies? Don´t they know that, if you´re in a large group, you don´t split up? That you don´t go poking around in a house that isn´t your own? That´s you don´t trust townspeople? Doesn´t anyone remember the rules of horror movies, courtesy of "Scream"?

Our minds can always make things out to be worse than they really are. We have certain ideas of what scares us. For me, it´s snakes. Hate, hate, hate, hate them. In fact, this past weekend, I was canoeing with a bunch of friends and my boyfriend. Knowing full well I hate even the mention of a snaked, what does he do? He points to a long piece of green grass in the water. Know what he said?

"Water snake."

I freaked out. Yes, I was in a canoe. There was no chance of this thing getting to me, let alone into the boat. But I still cursed him to high heaven. I don´t know what it is about those creatures. They´re disgusting, slimy, nasty, ugly and generally not my favorite creature in the world.

It´s the same reason I will never see "Anaconda" or the upcoming "Snakes on a Plane". Hell, if I run across a picture of a snake in a magazine, I throw the damn thing as far away from me as I can. I simply don´t like those things.

On the other hand, I´m the guy who wants to swim with sharks. I´ve done it with stingrays and fish, cave diving and I´ve even looked out of the edge of an underwater cliff. No fear. I want a shark.

Horror movies just aren´t scary anymore. Gross? Yep. Nauseating? Sure. But not scary. Someone needs to learn that real quick or else the entire genre is going to be dead…again.

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