30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 6: Favourite horror

Um, right.  Horror.  My least favourite genre.  Hmmmm….

Well, I had a scroll through the top 250 movies on imdb and at #1 is the Hitchcock classic, Psycho, which I actually really enjoyed, especially because it was reinvented horror for its time.  It was a toss-up between this film and Tod Browning’s Freaks, which I studied in my English Lit. class (the class is about freaks and freakery).  Though the film is still debated whether or not it’s a true horror or not — just click on the imdb forum and there are various threads debating its categorization — what happens in the film is pretty horrific.  But we’re not talking about Freaks.  Maybe another day.

On the other hand, I don’t really know what to say about Psycho that no one’s said before.  It’s possibly the classic horror film.  I read the script back at VFS and saw clips of it but I finally saw the full movie last Halloween with some friends, and it was still quite frightening, way more than the gratuitous gore and slash of today’s so-called horror films.  I may not like horror much, but a good horror film should be atmospheric, not just blood and guts.  I swear, I could probably write a good horror film if I put my mind to it but alas, I don’t have it in me to write a full-length screenplay, let alone create a horrific story.  So yeah.

Here’s the trailer for Psycho that someone made:

Dark Fairytale

We were told one day to tell a scary story in one of my pitch classes at VFS but since I didn’t know any, I wrote a poem.

Dark Fairytale
Once upon a time

There was a girl with long blonde hair

Her looks were just to die for

And her beauty was oh so fair.

 

Up and down she walked the paths

At every waking day

With all her lovely joyful friends

She just loved to play.

 

And in the shadows came a figure

From the depths of dark

He swayed with every step he took

His face all riddled with marks.

 

“Come with me” he said to her,

As he offered out his hand.

“But who are you?” she politely asked

And he said “They call me the Triangle Man.”

 

And so they skipped, down the paths

Not once ever looking back

Until they stopped at a broken light

And frightful house of black

 

He led her in through the door

While she felt a little fear

But the Triangle Man calmed her down

“It’s just you and me here, my dear.”

 

She followed him up, up the stairs

Floorboards creaked with every step

He opened up a door for her

Saying, “This is where my pretties are kept.”

 

And when he opened that fateful door

She cried a terrible cry

For on the bed lay five little dolls

Girls who had been previously alive

 

The girl with long hair tried to move

But he made her want to play

A scream she tried but oh, despair

As he scooped her voice away

 

 

Her tongue he simply pinched it out

As he grabbed her life and her bones

He bent her pretty face in two

And her body became cold as stone.

 

With his long thin arms, he plunged his hand

Into her soft body with ease.

He licked the remnants of liver and lung

As he proceeded to pull out her knees.

 

A bucket was set aside

Containing a feast of her entrails

He tasted all her fingers

Till the blood ruptured through the nail

 

The long golden hair was all sliced away

Her scalp hanging off like a flap

And after that he took her spine

Chewed on it till it snapped.

 

A polka-dotted dress, a bow for her new hair

To her cheeks, a touch of red

And she finally took her rightful place

With the other dolls on the bed.

 

There was a girl with long blonde hair

But it doesn’t really matter

‘Cuz with the Triangle Man in the house of black

They all lived happily ever after.