For Halloween I wanted to try and write something about horror and scariness and how it’s very personal to everyone. I don’t particularly like the horror genre in general as I don’t really see the appeal of intentionally seeking out fear. The first horror film I can remember watching in the cinema is The Woman in Black with Daniel Radcliffe. And I sat next to a friend who was a big Harry Potter fan and I remember having a lot of fun making dumb references to the wizarding world. Jokes about Dementors were pretty easy with this one. I think the reason why I was trying to be so funny when seeing that film was a defence mechanism since I was actually kind of creeped out about it.
That film was slightly better than most other horror films that I can remember seeing. It did rely on a few cheap jump scares but the way I’ve often experienced horror seems to be super crude and gross imagery instead of anything nuanced and artful. I remember watching Final Destination 3 where one of the first deaths was someone’s head getting thrown into a car engine and being absolutely blended. It was a shock but wasn’t what you would define as scary. Also, I recall a lot of horror films I viewed as having loads of unnecessary sex scenes. I didn’t really know how to react to these when I was watching them (as you do when you’re watching things you’re too young for) but it feels like the standards for horror are too low and really have a lot of shite in them. Some people love this – I get that but even horror that’s masterfully done isn’t really my cup of tea. A lot of that unnecessary content often made me feel like the creators were meeting a quota after they had been bestowed an 18+ age rating.
I remember when it was one of the final few days of term our Media Studies teacher in Year 10 decided to put on The Shining. We managed to get around 30 minutes into it before another teacher came in and realised that we shouldn’t actually be watching it, despite the fact that The Simpsons‘ parody had already filled me in on what was going to happen.
So thanks to all the above and out of choice, I haven’t really had much exposure to horror movies.
The things that have scared me (and still do), are the things that are really creepy, even when there has been no intention whatsoever to make them that way. I think I wrote a while ago about how I used to get really scared about death but this is a different thing entirely.
Come to think of it, the scary things that I’m about to talk about have a few common themes and are related to things that are on a screen – TV shows and video games. The only other thing I can recall being scared of that wasn’t on a screen was how I used to imagine someone in my room because I heard a noise in the house – although this hasn’t stuck with me as much as what I’m about to go through.
But three main things that scared me when I was little were things that were definitely through visual media on a screen. And another recurring connection is something that appeared and made me quite uncomfortable during something normally comforting.
One such thing belonged to The Simpsons. Now it isn’t what you expect, not the Treehouse of Horror episodes, they were more crude and gross and gory as opposed to being subtly creepy (holy fuck though, I’m rewatching the linked clip and laughing with squeamish glee). These were bits which were intentionally unnerving – specifically the Who Shot Mr. Burns? two-parter (the specific part that left an impact with me isn’t exactly from those episodes however). The whole late half of the first part of that episode was unsettling – the story wasn’t wrapped up to a light-hearted comedic conclusion and left on a cliff-hanger. And it truly was a cliff-hanger for me since we had The Simpsons Season 6 boxset (the limited edition shaped like Homer’s head!) which I watched religiously and the final episode of the season was Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part 1). After that episode I was like “Crap! We need to get the next one NOW!”. I didn’t have Sky TV when I was little so recent episodes of The Simpsons were locked off to me and I genuinely had no idea who was the shooter until the first part of Season 7 (It was particularly frustrating since everybody at school who had seen it was pointing out how obvious it was who did it!).
The first part starts off hilariously, but the very final moments end eerily with a suspenseful arrangement of the credits theme (which is normally quite jovial) and the tone at the end of the episode is mysterious, suspenseful and quite unnerving – this was a massive juxtaposition in a show which I normally find light, comforting and easy to watch as this is what The Simpsons is to me. Another thing that made it so strange was the lack of any incidental music from the fantastic Alf Clausen during the final set up for the cliff-hanger. It is pitch silent music-wise and this really was a signal that something was different and something was wrong.
The truly creepy part which really stuck with me wasn’t from those episodes but is linked to it. It’s from The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular in Season 8 where Troy McClure presents a hilarious faux-meta retrospective at the show’s production history in one of the ever-creative attempts from the writers room in avoiding the conventional, contractually obligated crappy clip show.
In the episode the viewer is promised never before seen footage and one such clip is the alternate ending to the Who Shot Mr. Burns mystery where the shooter is revealed. In it, a shadowy figure steadily creeps up from behind Mr Burns, completely silhouetted apart from their shifty eyes.
This image creeped me out because of the shadowy image in a pitch-black silhouette steadily sneaking up from behind; appearing out of place in a show that always brings me a smile. The mystery of not-knowing and the sinister nature of this cartoon really stuck in my head and often kept me awake for a little bit longer at night.
That kind of juxtaposition between something I find comfortable and warm and the opposite being dialled up for needless shock effect is a recurring thing with me and animation. There’s a clay animation from a few years ago made by Lee Hardcastle where The Simpson family basically get brutally slaughtered in their own home and I couldn’t get through all of it because it just made me feel wrong. There’s also a YouTube channel called Dark Simpsons and it consists of edited together clips from the show ripped out of their original context to create something new with dark overtones and horrific implications for the sake of being dark and edgy. Don’t get me wrong, I respect the talent someone can have to make something like that, but it really isn’t for me.
On a more dialled down note, this bad mix makes me feel uncomfortable even if it’s a colourful animation – my brain just doesn’t like it. Many of my friends like more adult focused animation like South Park and Family Guy. An example of this affecting my enjoyment and not necessarily being scary is in the case of Team America: World Police. This is because I grew up on Thunderbirds and seeing something mocked so crudely makes it a little less funny to me.
I think my brain has adjusted to seeing certain styles/framerates/methods in something I love. Then when they are recontextualised for something crude and opposite to what I’m used to – it doesn’t feel right to me. Sometimes it is the combination of having something adult focused created in a style that I often intentionally view to make me feel childlike again – with the result making me feel uncomfortable.
Another thing that really scared me when I was young was from a dumb licensed Disney game – my sister had the movie game on our PS1 for Hercules – it was a side scroller with a different level for each labour. The game over screens has a few animated clips of Hades (played by James Woods) saying that it’s game over. But one screen specifically is when he smokes a cigar, blowing smoke which spells the words ‘GAME OVER’ and makes a creepy taunt to the player with a smile and it creeped me out big time. In the movie Hades is actually a pretty funny villain if I recall correctly but when you have something bright and colourful and fun and then have something like that as a penalty – it really didn’t make me want to ever play again due to the risk of seeing that screen. I remember turning the whole game off before he could appear whenever I died since it really stuck with me.
Now the third thing was something I only remembered recently, but HE definitely deserves to go on this list: Motherfucking Charn.
Look at him. It’s fucking Charn! Classic Charn, giving you nightmares.
Charn was from an old educational serial from the BBC called Through The Dragon’s Eye, part of their Look and Read programming. It was the sort of stuff you would have to watch on TV when you were ill and stayed at home – it would disappoint you at first when you were actually expecting good TV.
It was originally broadcast in 1989, definitely before my time but thanks to the magic of VHS technology my mum had taped it for my sister (who is 10 years older than myself and explains my exposure to something so old and niche).
One thing I do respect for this show was that it didn’t fuck around – I definitely encourage you to watch it on YouTube, because it has a killer story and some really great educational pieces. Basically, three children get transported through a mural into a magical kingdom where a dragon helps them restore the kingdom’s ability to read.
A couple of episodes in to the show, you meet Charn. A towering, humanoid bird skull faced motherfucker with long spindly fingers and a creepy ass villain voice. What the fuck were they thinking?! If their intention was to encourage reading through fear then this was a sure fire way to do it. On one hand, I was creeped the fuck out by him (and still am, even rewatching him makes me shiver, although it is fun to find solidarity in the comments) but on the other, I have massive respect for the production team for making a genuinely good villain for a great story – it was a million times better when Gorwen the Dragon beat his spindly ass in the end.
There’s one more thing too which I feel as though I should add. I used to be a massive fan of Ashens – a British YouTuber who reviews tat you find in the deep dark recesses of Poundland or the internet. He started and soon ended a series called Ashens World that I stumbled upon a couple of years ago. The first entry was pretty funny with him trying to set up the Emperor from Star Wars as the voice on his SatNav, but the second one I tried to get through before being creeped out and have not gone back to it ever again. The premise was that he was running through a house in the dark, and the last frame I remember was a white mask floating in mid-air. You can try and find it if you want, but they appear to have disappeared off the internet.
The worst thing about this was that a friend went to Comic-Con once to do a meet and greet and he got me a signed patch from him (thanks C!), but by then the Ashens World videos had disappeared off the internet. I asked him to ask Ashens about the Ashens World videos but he had no idea what I was talking about. For a couple of years I thought I was mad and had just imagined them, but lo and behold I found them again a couple of years later and tweeted them where he responded and finally remembered he made them. You have no idea how relieved I was to finally solve that mystery.
Whenever I used to remember that stuff, often in the middle of the night when lying in bed, I used to also think ‘how am I going to get this out of my head?’ or often make a conscious effort to forget something which obviously makes it worse. You think that you’re never going to forget it ever ever again. But ten minutes later it disappears. It’s a funny little quirk our brains do.
Writing this, I realise that everybody probably has some silly little things that creeps them out. And it’s very personal, nuanced and we own it. A lot of people in Reddit threads and YouTube comments seem to bond over it too, which sometimes gives a bit of closure and validation. And maybe one of you reading this has the same thing too.
Sometimes the chaotic combination of things – the bouncing of light on a surface to make a odd shadow or pausing a TV show at the right moment to create an overly sinister frame of an animation – it can really stick with people. This isn’t to say that everything we make must be screened to avoid it – all of the above things I mentioned were most likely designed to have the effect they’ve had on me – but as long as we talk about it, we can help put it all into perspective.
However, everything I discussed was experienced via screen. I’m going to give it a guess here, but I imagine many of these fears all hold the same ‘weight’. If it’s so easy for us to disconnect them since they’re just through a glowing window, then maybe they’re distractions from the truly horrifying things that we just can’t brush away in the real world.
minutiae+musings 