Posts by Rich Lock
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There's just differing genres which freak people out a little. People who are queasy don't like gore flicks like Saw, Hostel etc. Those who analyse can't handle thrillers, because they build themselves up too much. Eventually all of them fall into hollywood conventions and can't be discerned from one another.
I disagree. Just gore and splatter on-screen is all very ho-hum in terms of freaking people out.
It's expected by the audience that people will lose their rag and do something extremely dumb, like attack someone with a hammer in a road-rage incident. It's not out of the ordinary, it happens every day.
Large red-faced angry men, with or without weapons, just aren't really scary in a cinematic context. Scary to be on the receiving end of? Yes. Scary to watch in a cinema? Not really.
Stick a knife in someone and you expect blood. Stick a knife in them and they pull it out and keep coming, expecially if they don't even seem to have noticed much....?
No. For genuine creepiness, you need to introduce an element that's outside the expected or anticipated context. The reason Jason's hockey mask is iconic is because it gives him the appearance of a blank, emotionless automaton. Being attacked by an angry bloke is one thing. Being attacked by 'something' that doesn't even seem to care is another.
The original Schwartzenburger terminator would be another example. An unstoppable, emotinless automaton. No matter how many holes you put in it, it keeps on coming, with no change of expression (which Jason does, too). When you shoot things that to all intents and purposes appear to be human, you expect them to gurgle a bit and then stay down, not get back up without even wincing and keep on coming. Now that's freaky.
Another example would be Dr Lecter. Genial, charming, cultured, just like your Grandad. Except if you turn you back on him, he's biting your face off. Somewhat outside the assumed and expected pattern. And he doesn't even seem to be particularly bothered - it's just a rather tedious job he has to do before he gets back to listening to the Goldberg variations.
The Wicker Man - a rather likeable and charming chap is explaining to you, with regret in his voice, but firmly, that he's awfully sorry, but they have to put you in this large pagan symbol and set it on fire. You remonstrate with him - he seems reasonable - but he's very sorry, it has to be done. Well outside the standard pattern of behaviour.
Things that look human, but when they run they jerk and twitch and look as if their limbs jointed backards? Outside the expected pattern = Freaky.
An otherwise sweet teenage girl who seems to have a head mounted on a 360-degree swivel? Outside the expected pattern = Freaky.
Empty London streets in the middle of the day? Outside the expected pattern = Freaky.
A head which drops off the corpse on the autopsy table, grows legs and scuttles away? Outside the expected pattern = Freaky.
I reckon there's three levels of fear:
1. Gore. All very well, but not outside an anticipated pattern. Icky, but not particularly scary.
2. Monsters that you know are there but can't see yet (gee, Billy's been a long time, I'll just look for him in the dark cellar by myself...). They're scary becuase you don't actually know for sure what you're getting (antici.....pation). Once you see them, you know them, it's all going to be fine.
3. Stuff that's well outside any pattern you could anticipate, and that sticks with you long after the film is done (see all of the above).
There's also a sub-group of te 'outside the pattern' stuff, where the modus operandi/raison d'etre/whatever is never fully explained - possibly even scarier.
Sapphire and Steel, for example. All we know is that there are 'things' out there, that want to be 'in here'. What exactly they are, why thay want it, and how they're going to do it, are never explained...
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quote> Aye boy, you just use that "shin" of yours and Willie'll come a-runnin'</quote>
Thanks for the snowmobile, Willie!
You don't mind if we leave your slowly cooling corpse in the lobby 'til spring, do ya?
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Best part of the shining is the telepathic cook.
Sunning himself on a tropical island somewhere when he gets the telepathic call for help from the little kid.
Drops everything, fights his way through holiday traffic and flight cancellations. Eventually gets back in the right state and at the foot of the mountians. Begs/borrows/steals a snow mobile and claws his way up foot by agonising foot in the teeth of a blizzard. Eventually reaches The Overlook.
After al that, he barely manages to stick a foot through the front door and Jack Torrence pops him with an axe.
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his story of a surgeon stranded on an island facing starvation creeps me out just recalling it
lady fingers they taste like lady fingers
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Bloody hell. Unafraid of the link to the Nazi death marches, was he?
I read this semi-recently, which is why I was able to find it so quickly.
In the foreword, King states that when he was writing the story was intended to be allegorical on several levels. Having re-read it at a later stage of his life so he could write the foreword, it was clearly allegorical on several other levels that he wasn't consciously aware of when writing it.
But an explicit link to actual, historical death marches isn't really one of the theme that jumps out.
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one of the stories is about a guy who is in a competition where you've gotta keep walking along a road or you get killed. I wish I knew its name so I could read it again. Can anyone help?
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more unsettling than the crazed husband gouging his wife's eyes out in her hospital bed?
'unsettling' more than 'gross'. Things that move in ways that they shouldn't stick with me more than plain old vanilla gross-out.
Although there was a large element of 'deeply unsettling' in that particular scene. Thanks for reminding me....
I think the thing with the dancers stuck with me because it made me think 'yes! of course! how clever' when I was watching the 'making of'.
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something that looks like a person but isn't moving or acting correctly.
The sequel to '28 days later' - '28 weeks later' - is not a particularly good film (or particularly scary), but some of the extras on the dvd are interesting.
Most of the zombie extras were played by professional dancers or people from that sort of background. People who were trained in body movement and could easily add a sort of unnatural jerky twitchiness to their movements, with their limbs or head moving in the 'wrong' manner when they run or attack.
By far and away the most unsettling thing to watch in the film.
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You'll know me by my smoking jacket.
You'll know Sam by his robe and wizard hat.
If this is going to be Sci-Fi/Fantasy dress-up, then I'm quite happy to bring along my spare set of BSG Cylon battle armour for you, Paul.
It's no trouble, really.
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There will be optional name-tags on which you may write your screen-name
Oh, goody. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to come as Whaleoil, Redbaiter, or Dad4Justice.