Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Stop the Scary-Go-Round, I Want to Get Off!!

I'm a huge baby when it comes to all things spooky. I have never been a fan of scary movies, I don't like shocking surprises and you couldn't pay me enough to set foot inside a haunted house. I remember watching the original Halloween when I was a kid. I was so petrified that I began burping uncontrollably, which caught me completely off guard. Here I was balled up on an old quilt in front of our car at the drive-in, burping like crazy. Now when I happen to catch a movie teeming with tense scenes, I find my body on the verge of a burp. I'm not sure about any medical explanation for mysterious gastrointestinal phenomena, but it happens. I also have a movie-viewing method I like to call "watching through the picket fence." If I think there might be a frightening scene coming up, I'll place my hand in front of my face and watch through my fingers. That way, if something creepy happens, I can quickly snap my fingers together.

Here are some of the things that still scare the bejesus out of me.

* When I see an image of the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz, I feel like I might vomit. Just this morning I was thumbing through a copy of Entertainment Weekly and her creepy green grimace caught my eye and I froze. I will avoid future thumbing of that issue. Remember the scene when the house is flying through the air and she is riding her bike through the farm-debris-filled tornado turmoil? Eeek!! Please pass the Pepto.

* I refuse to watch the original Amityville Horror again for fear that I will lose all future prospects of a good night's sleep. Scary is bad, but true-story scary is horrifying. If I ever moved into a house that told me to get out, I'd be at the Holiday Inn faster than you can say "holy water."

* I watched The Ring only after someone assured me that it wouldn't be "that scary." As the Japanese horror movie re-make gods would have it, the following weekend my husband went out of town. Thanks to the fresh images of that swampy, un-dead little girl crawling out of the well, I hid under the covers with my cats all night long and refused to answer the telephone.

* I would like to virtually punch everyone who ever e-mailed me that terrible "optical illusion" that you stare at until a frightening, shrieking image pops onto the screen. I will send you the bill for my new anxiety meds.

* Crypt-Keeper-looking guys totally terrify me. Case in point: the limo driver from Burnt Offerings and the eerie old guy from Poltergeist. I just thought about Googling images of both and nearly needed to begin breathing into a paper bag.

* These are movies I will never watch again: Silence of the Lambs, Amityville Horror, Halloween I-XXIV, The Shining, The Omen, Nightmare on Elm Street and Burnt Offerings. Swarms of flies named Damien eating fava beans and shouting, "Here's Johnny" couldn't make me do it. Nope.

* These are scary movies I never plan to watch the first time: The Exorcist, The Grudge, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Rosemary's Baby, and anything anyone tries to convince me is "not too scary" -- they're big fat liars.

I am quite content to spend another Friday night in front of a quirky romantic comedy. And the only movie-related-burping I want to experience will come from characters in another silly Seth Rogen movie.

5 comments:

  1. LOL All the movies on your never to watch AGAIN list are ones I have never watched in the first place.... The last scary movie I saw was "Prom Night" and that was in the 1980's sometime LOL and only because my dumb friends dragged me to it.

    Horror movies are pointless in my opinion.

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  2. BOOO!!

    *waits for you to burp*

    I used to looooove scary movies, fright houses, you name it. After I had kids, it was like that part of me was removed. I'm a complete chicken shit now.

    *BURRRRRRP*

    See? ;)

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  3. Thought you miight like to take a visit here:

    http://www.spookers.co.nz/

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am so with you. Although Halloween XXIII was pretty solid. OMG The Ring....I can't believe you have seen that. That was the first time I have seen this whole muted-color-freaky-special-effects thing they are doing now. I was 4 months post-partum and I am still getting over seeing that. Please whatever you do, don't ever watch the Exorcist. WAY ahead of its time. I used to like them too. Something about having kids changed all that. And no one is more of a freak about haunted houses than Leah. Well, maybe you two are about the same. Ugh. I have no interest in scary movies anymore. Half the time my brain IS a scary movie.

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  5. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE scary movies...emphasis on scary. I HATE gory movies. Blood and guts for the sake of blood and guts...stupid. The human imagination can fill in the blanks just fine, thank you. I don't need it thrown in my face. I rented Hannibal on pay-per-view a few years ago, and ended up turning the channel. I was really disappointed in that one.

    I love ghost stories, especially true ones. (Although, George Lutz's lawyer came out a few years ago and said they made up the whole Amityville Horror thing as a way to make money.) I watch Ghost Hunters every week and love to look up stories on the web. Creepy is cool. :0)

    Since you don't like scary, I guess you won't be buying my novel if/when it comes out. *sigh*

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