X factors blog and journal...

Measuring a scary movie



Measuring a scary movie isn't about how scary it is to you today, but rather how scary it was to you when you first saw it, the scary impact it had on viewer when they first saw it is how you properly measure a scary movies effectiveness.

And one of the few scary movies I can think of that to this day it's a bit hard to watch alone in the dark, would be 'The Exorcist' (The original)..

Another movie that comes to mind, that at night, if alone in large place with lights out, 'The Shining' and those sadistic ghosts that stalked and haunted Jacks family in that movie.

I've seen hundreds of scary movies since then, but like music from the past, only a few always seem to instantly come to memory.

The Friday the 13th series, gruesome but not really scary, accept the first one possibly.

The 'Evil Dead', the original one, is another one that had raw scare fact on me when I first watched it, where as now it's almost laughable, but I measure it by how it made me feel when I first saw it, and wanted to leave theater, along with a friend, we both wanted to leave, and wished the movie would end.

No movie has had that type of scare effect on me since, but again viewing it now, since special effects have gotten a lot better, most would laugh at you for being scared while viewing the original 'Evil Dead'.



This scene was the beginning of complete horror, as the vehicle slowly approached isolated cabin, and in the audio you could hear the twigs snapping underneath the tires, but nothing else.

The audio producers of this film totally got it right, totally set up the opening scenes like a nightmarish dream, the way you abstractly hear things in a dream.

They did a better job than I even think they knew they were doing, and that's the good thing about spontaneity.

No other film in this series could ever match the allure of the first one.

And the remake was just a blood fest with no rhyme or reason.

Back then you can tell writers, directors, film makers, were allowed to use their imaginations more, back then they all weren't trying to follow some studio template directive.
Big box office directive where all movies now follow the same template. (some are beginning to break away again though).

But back then the directing artists were just given way more lee way, and you can tell, cause every movie felt and was different. (at least the good ones)
I mean there were a lot of 'B' movies back then as well, but there were bad do to artist just having a bad vision, and not do to studio interfering.

Anyways, so sad that my favorite month will be over here in less than 10 days, for those of us who adore October, the Fall, this time of the year, when it finally arrives it all goes by in a flash.

But when it does, I try to mark it here, in the Halls of the Zone, where I can.