Too Horrible

Horror can certainly go to far. I was watching TV recently and saw the ads out for Saw II. It seems pretty similar to Saw I, that is, it features ingenious sadism on a low budget with unknown actors, and as far as I can judge, little else. This is one that I don't think I'll ever go to a theater to see, rent at the store, or watch when it comes to television, though if it ever does come to television it will be edited down to ... absolutely nothing, because that's about what they could show. I don't think there's much that will be redeeming or fun or scarey in the 'good' kind of scarey or spinechilling or any of that. It just looked sickening.

Now, of course, I obviously can't do a review of movies that I haven't seen or even state with confidence that nobody else should see them, either. I'll leave that to fundamentalist Christians, who can, it turns out judge a book by it's cover or a movie by it's trailers.

The first horror movie that I remember thinking was too much was The Excorcist when I was about twelve. I couldn't tell you now what I thought was so horrifyingly appalling about that movie. Perhaps I thought some of the blood and violence was entirely gratuitous or that it seemed too real and believable. I don't know. I went home terrified and asked my mother if this was at all true or possible. My mother, a bit of a hard-core Christian herself assured me: "Yes, Stevie, Demons can inhabit your body like that."

I didn't sleep for three nights.

Another movie that I thought went too far for the time - not a horror movie, but I'll add it here anyways - was The Godfather. I know, it's a classic and if it's on TV and not much else is on - then I will watch it, because it's a great story and it had great acting. But when I first saw it (13 years old) the portrayals of frank violence made me feel like I'd been hit in the stomach. I especially remember when Luca Brazi has his hand nailed to the counter with a knife and is then garroted from behind with piano wire. I kept thinking to myself: "Please don't show anything more like this."

But they did. And looking back on it, it seems almost hilariously mild, but up until then I had never, ever even seen somebody getting shot and then actually bleeding from that gunshot. That alone, the mere concept that people will bleed from being shot got to me.

Horror I've seen in real-life has gone too far. In Minneapolis at different times I've seen three different men get onto city buses - and they had no hands. Not only did they not have hands but they didn't have prosthetics, either; just the stumps. And each of these men were very dextrous with what was left of their arms, manipulating bus cards from their pockets and into the correct slot.

The first guy I saw do this - I tried not to look or stare, but there was almost no way not to - he noticed me and, instead of scolding me for my impoliteness, smiled gently and wished me a 'Good Morning'. It made me feel one inch tall. These guys I saw were all African in appearence and I would guess victims of the civil wars raging in Central Africa, where to spread terror they amputate the limbs of people they don't like so much. They would have been in Minneapolis, probably, because of the institute for torture victims that's in that city on the University of Minnesota campus.

Too far in horror, then, is too real. The frightening monsters in the mafia and in Africa are not mere figments of a writers imagination but live and breathe. I never want to watch a movie to find out the truth that the world is a horrible place full of evil, pain, sickness and death. I like to believe that at least some of us are going to escape and live until the next sequel.