George Carlin has a bit on one of his albums about jerking off as a teen. he posits that it was always more arousing to abuse oneself while fantasizing about girls one knows from the neighborhood because hey. . . it COULD happen, whereas a tryst with Marilyn Monroe is highly unlikely to ever come to pass.
Do we, as horror fans, feel similarly? Is a movie about a deranged - but human - maniac wielding a knife (or a chainsaw, or whatever) more terrifying than a story about something generally believed to be totally fictional, like a ghost, a monster or demonic possession, or some other such supernatural enemy? Unlikely as they may be, the exploits of, say, Hannibal Lecter (at least in the 1st 3 movies; I haven't seen "Hannibal Rising" and withhold comment) ARE possible. Is a sociopathic serial murderer with Lecter's cunning, ruthlessness and calculated savagery more terrifying than an implacable, unstoppable, relentless killing machine like Jason Voorhees or Michael Meyers? Is a film about a horrific (but still theoretically possible) disease like "Cabiin Fever" scarier than one about zombies taking over the world like "Dawn of the Dead", BECAUSE it's possible?
There are strong arguments to be made on either side, of course. "Possible" horrors have that added element of fear - namely, that it could really happen to you in this crazy world - but supernatural horrors have their own unique cache as well. If you're at all religious (or at least spiritual) you may very well believe in the Devil or the spirits of the angry dead, and "The Exorcist" or "The Ring" may terrify you more than anything else you'll watch or read. To some, these too are things that COULD happen in reality, because they believe in them on some level. I'm sure even if you don't REALLY believe in such things, if you sit down and ponder the what if's, the prospect of some of these things being real would send shivers down your spine. "I'm an atheist, but what if there really is a Devil, and a Hell? Brrrrr!" After all, the ability to empathize on at least some level with the trials facing the characters on screen or in the pages before you is what makes an effective horror story possible.
Personally, I fall into the latter camp. I was raised catholic, and while I don't practice the faith, the ghosts of all that nun-inspired indoctrination still cling like cobwebs to the dark recesses of my mind, and I am not fully prepared to disavow all belief in supernatural things of any stripe. Are ghosts, or UFO's, or the Devil real? Could be, I think. And there's no way (in most instances) to defend yourself against such things. Most of us don't have hot and cold running holy water or shelves full of arcane tomes to consult with just the right counterspell contained therein. Their power is probably much greater than anything you as an individual can muster, and so alien in their origins and means, they can scarcely be comprehended, much less combated, by mere mortals. The sheer enormity of the implications of some of the supernatural, such as the entirely new and terrifying dimensions written about by Lovecraft, for instance, peopled with malevolent and powerful beings - gods, in some cases - staggers the imagination and have chilled the blood of readers for most of the last century and all of this one. Psychotic killers may be notoriously hard to kill, but they CAN be killed. Michael and that bitch from "The Ring" can't. And the less said about Cthulhu (That is not dead which can eternal lie. . . ) the better.
What say you all?
Do we, as horror fans, feel similarly? Is a movie about a deranged - but human - maniac wielding a knife (or a chainsaw, or whatever) more terrifying than a story about something generally believed to be totally fictional, like a ghost, a monster or demonic possession, or some other such supernatural enemy? Unlikely as they may be, the exploits of, say, Hannibal Lecter (at least in the 1st 3 movies; I haven't seen "Hannibal Rising" and withhold comment) ARE possible. Is a sociopathic serial murderer with Lecter's cunning, ruthlessness and calculated savagery more terrifying than an implacable, unstoppable, relentless killing machine like Jason Voorhees or Michael Meyers? Is a film about a horrific (but still theoretically possible) disease like "Cabiin Fever" scarier than one about zombies taking over the world like "Dawn of the Dead", BECAUSE it's possible?
There are strong arguments to be made on either side, of course. "Possible" horrors have that added element of fear - namely, that it could really happen to you in this crazy world - but supernatural horrors have their own unique cache as well. If you're at all religious (or at least spiritual) you may very well believe in the Devil or the spirits of the angry dead, and "The Exorcist" or "The Ring" may terrify you more than anything else you'll watch or read. To some, these too are things that COULD happen in reality, because they believe in them on some level. I'm sure even if you don't REALLY believe in such things, if you sit down and ponder the what if's, the prospect of some of these things being real would send shivers down your spine. "I'm an atheist, but what if there really is a Devil, and a Hell? Brrrrr!" After all, the ability to empathize on at least some level with the trials facing the characters on screen or in the pages before you is what makes an effective horror story possible.
Personally, I fall into the latter camp. I was raised catholic, and while I don't practice the faith, the ghosts of all that nun-inspired indoctrination still cling like cobwebs to the dark recesses of my mind, and I am not fully prepared to disavow all belief in supernatural things of any stripe. Are ghosts, or UFO's, or the Devil real? Could be, I think. And there's no way (in most instances) to defend yourself against such things. Most of us don't have hot and cold running holy water or shelves full of arcane tomes to consult with just the right counterspell contained therein. Their power is probably much greater than anything you as an individual can muster, and so alien in their origins and means, they can scarcely be comprehended, much less combated, by mere mortals. The sheer enormity of the implications of some of the supernatural, such as the entirely new and terrifying dimensions written about by Lovecraft, for instance, peopled with malevolent and powerful beings - gods, in some cases - staggers the imagination and have chilled the blood of readers for most of the last century and all of this one. Psychotic killers may be notoriously hard to kill, but they CAN be killed. Michael and that bitch from "The Ring" can't. And the less said about Cthulhu (That is not dead which can eternal lie. . . ) the better.
What say you all?
