ANI MOLLER: Superior Content, Hot Text

My Disturbing Film Fetish

I have a fetish. Horror films, thrillers, gory, action, art festival films. I can't get enough of them.

When I was very young, I remember going into the local video store and looking at the cover of Demons. It used to scare me so much, but I always went back and looked at it. I usually ended up getting out Jem and the Holograms or My Little Pony, but oh boy, did the cover of Demons intrigue, scare and fascinate me. My mother wouldn't let me get it out. I'm sure she thought it would warp my mind.

When I was 11, I met a girl who also enjoyed disturbing films. Phillipa and I ended up becoming great friends, and I would go around to her place to watch scary movies since my mother would not let me at home. There were Freddy weekends, Jason weekends, Living Dead weekends and we loved them all. I have another friend, Penny, and we went through a David Lynch phase (which hasn't quite ended), and we watched the entire series of Twin Peaks in a few weeks. When you work fulltime that's quite an effort.

I can't help but wonder where this obsession all began. Did I find the blood and goo on the cover of Demons 1 attractive, or maybe it was Demons 2? Was it my Christian upbringing, and the gore in the bible? Is it even something that is imprinted in my genetic code, like a violent offender or a hemophiliac? It's even possible that it's all just phase, and I'll grow out of it by the time I'm 30. Or maybe I'll be watching, and re-watching, The Doom Generation until the day I die, or until I go mad and go on a killing spree.

The media often blames violent crimes on films, and make comments about the offender watching movies such as Child's Play, Friday the 13th or Silence of the Lambs. But who are we really to blame? The movie-goers, or the movie-makers? Do we blame someone for dreaming up an idea which has a dire effect on society as we know it? Do we hound Albert Hofmann for creating LSD in 1938? No, because "at that time I had no inkling that the new substance would also come to be used beyond medical science, as an inebriate in the drug scene." I say if a 10-year-old boy kidnaps a 3-year-old girl and ties her to train tracks, there's obviously something wrong with his mind, and you can't blame that on visual and aural stimuli.

Everyone reacts to stimulus in different ways. Whereas someone might see something disturbing and cry, someone else might not have the intelligence to realize that it's wrong, and copy what they see. I, on the other hand, take it with a pinch of salt and realize that gore is part of our society. So I have this little fetish, which may or may not be healthy, but I'm intelligent enough to realize that what I see isn't necessarily what I should do. We can't lead sheltered lives and try to protect ourselves from the violence and disturbing images we may see in movies. I would prefer to watch a movie, knowing that it's make-believe, than watch the news and know that the body under that sheet used to be alive.

I grew out of B-grade horror movies in my mid-teen years. Although, they are often very humorous, especially as you are giggling, "Don't go up the stairs you silly bitch!" they just weren't real enough. I once watched a film called Curse of the Cannibal Confederates. This is quite possibly the crappiest movie I have ever seen, but there are reasons why I watched it in it's entirety.

1. It looked like it had been made with a 1970's home video camera
There was this one scene where the exposure was so wrong that one of the main characters body blended into the white caravan behind her. All you could see was her hair, a triangle over her left breast, a triangle over her right breast, and a triangle over her frontbum.

2. The "special effects" weren't particularly special
There was supposed to be intestine eating in this movie, although it was plain to see that normal, precooked sausages had been used. They weren't even covered in blood. (Who'd want to eat intestines anyway? You might as well wait until they crap and then wrap it up in skin.)

3. The acting was really, really bad
If they weren't reading the script from cards offset, I'll be really surprised. It's quite possible that they also had notes on their hands, and on their "intestines".

Maybe I'd actually label that movie "Comedy" and put a big smiley face on the cover, because it certainly made me smile.

I'm not sure what compels me to continue watching these movies. I watched Deliverance this weekend, and although it totally scared the pants off me, I know I'm going to watch more disturbing films. I know I'm going to watch Hollow Man, no matter how crap anyone says it is. I know I'm going to watch the Exorcist again and continue to like peas. There is only one thing that is going to stop me from from watching disturbing movies, and that's if I have to stop seeing a person because they remind me of the lead character from American Psycho. Oh hang on, that's already happened.

Maybe I should have listened to my mother. I'm probably already warped.