Pause and Rewind: Memories of Age-Inappropriate Film Viewings in the 1980s

[HareBrain]

I found myself agreeing with the idea that I have a greater memory of watching so-called "forbidden" films when I was young - let's say at the age of 11, or 12 - at home, on VHS, than many other films. I remember watching John Carpenter's The Thing (check out this month's podcast!!) and getting as far as the scene with the dog in the cage, and having to switch off. It took me a couple of years to complete watching the film.

I have always been, and still am, too much of a wuss to watch The Thing. During our late teens a friend tried to trick me into watching it, and induced something close to a panic attack.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Read this over at CrimeReads -- which covers a surprising amount of horror -- and thought it might be apropos of the subject. It certainly pulls together succinctly some of my own thoughts about what makes for horror:

... Pet Semetary, a haunting story that, to this day, still hammers home what horror truly is and can be, not so much with violence and gore, but in the moral dilemmas and horrifying situations in which the characters so often find themselves.

This is from an appreciation of Stephen King's importance to the reading/writing life of the author J. H. Markert (a pseudonym, not sure who for).

This was back when Stephen King wrote mainly horror (as opposed to thriller). For me his best stories are in the short story anthologies. As I've mentioned elsewhere, it' hard to keep 'horror' going over 400 or 500 pages (although The Shining does pretty well!) and this is why the best ghost/horror stories are those that can be told/read in one sitting.

I agree that violence/gore does not (usually) make for a good horror story (unless it brief and unexpected), but putting the reader into the position of the protagonist (what would I do if...) and asking them to make uncomfortable decisions usually works better.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Some good posts here, particularly from @Randy M. and @paranoid marvin.

It might be useful to return this to the OP, and particularly the essay. I'm assuming most haven't read it, but it is worth a read - it's not very long as academic essays go, and it's mercifully free of any overly academic language; it's an easy read, mostly taken up with reports of the correspondents who filled nin the author's survey.

I found myself agreeing with the idea that I have a greater memory of watching so-called "forbidden" films when I was young - let's say at the age of 11, or 12 - at home, on VHS, than many other films. I remember watching John Carpenter's The Thing (check out this month's podcast!!) and getting as far as the scene with the dog in the cage, and having to switch off. It took me a couple of years to complete watching the film. The same with Alien - I got as far as the egg scene and had to stop.

But later in life I've got greater fondness for these films than a great many others I probably watched around that time (there are other non-horrors that I have a vivid memory and love for, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? but even that's got some pretty scary scenes for a kid). I didn't watch the Exorcist until I was older, and I think that film is arguably more frightening for adults, and particularly parents, than children.

There's an element of chasing the dragon with horror - this idea that when you experience the visceral thrill of fear (or perhaps vanquished fear is more accurate?) you want to experience that high again but need something that's at least equal in power to the thing that preceded it. Without going in the direction of ugliness like exploitation films (or even snuff films - the Inside No. 9 episode about the snuff film is truly terrifying) that's hard to achieve. Certainly the only film that's disturbed me in recent years is Hereditary.

I think 'Inside No 9' is absolutely brilliant. I'm not sure which episode you're referring to there, but 'To Have and to Hold' is one of the most macabre and disturbing tv programmes I've ever watched. Also this year's Christmas episode easily surpassed the MR James adaptation. I also think that some of the 'Black Mirror' episodes are very chilling, even horrifying, and achieve this by being very understated but also very realistic. Whilst attacks from vampires/werewolves etc is never likely to happen, some of the things that happen to the characters in 'Inside No 9' and 'Black Mirror' very easily could.

 

[The Big Peat]

Re The Actual Paper...

'However, it also came with the added threat of being caught out by concerned parents, with Smith arguing that “regulation from family members, friends, schoolteachers, and others central to one’s life means more to audiences than does regulation from the MPAA, the BBFC, the government, and other national organisations.”'

Of course it does. It always does. The impact of these regulations though means someone somewhere central to their life would have seen them and thought "yes, golly, that's a good idea" and then start to spread it on... or not, as the case might be. But plenty would be in the former and I suspect they wouldn't be answering this because they weren't allowed to watch these things.


Anyway, interesting read. I never really had those experiences, between not really having a friend group/family that were into such things, and having more than enough bloody nightmares all by myself, thank you. One respondent mentions permanently changing the way he went to bed - I sleep on my side after a substitute teacher said they stopped nightmares (not entirely, but well enough).

I'd love to see if there was links between how people watched them and how scarring they found them.

 

[Dave]

I admit that, being a liitle older, I was 18 before VHS video rentals became widely available, I never had the “regulation from family members, friends, schoolteachers, and others central to one’s life" to deal with. I do know plenty that sneaked into cinemas in the 1970's to see "The Adventures of a...." without parents having any idea, but cinemas were much stricter on age restrictions on film screenings than the local corner shop was going to be with videos. Cinemas had much more to lose than a corner shop. Even Blockbuster never really cared When I my son came along in the 1990's it wasn't "video nasties" that were the problem anymore, but Games such as Grand Theft Auto.