By Rish Outfield
Alfred Hitchcock once said, "People like to be scared when they feel safe." Horror movies, when they're done right, can make you jump, look nervously behind, move faster, and leave on the closet light. They can also be a lot of fun. It's fun to feel your heart beat faster, to gasp, to have a girl clutch your arm in fear. Fear is primal, it's natural, and it brings people closer together. While it's not for everybody (some people HATE to be scared, they hate the sight of fake blood, and despise eerie music), but a lot of people get great enjoyment out of things that go bump in the night. Look at Halloween, a holiday celebrated by nearly everyone in the country (in fact, the third biggest holiday in the U.S.A.)--it's fun to shriek and laugh and scare and eat enormous amounts of candy. Look at Steven Spielberg's breakout hit ("Duel") and his first blockbuster ("Jaws"). Look at the career of Stephen King or Edgar Allen Poe or R.L. Stine. Look at urban legends and campfire tales and tunnels of love and wax museums and Marilyn Manson. Look at horror movies... it's fun to be scared.
I, personally, find great joy in scaring people and being scared. It's something I've always felt, and it's caused me more than my share of sleepless nights. But I love it. I've seen a lot of horror films. And now that I'm an adult, I recognize that some of the movies I used to think were so cool, are actually pretty poorly done, or even stupid. Still, it's kind of fun to notice that, too. Soon, you figure out patterns in these movies, silly little things that characters ALWAYS seem to do, conventions that sneak into all of them. For example, how many horror films have you seen where the victim cowers beside a window, hiding from the killer, and you just KNOW that the killer is going to come through the window, and he does? As dumb as that is, it's neat to turn to your buddy or girlfriend and say, "I' KNEW he was gonna come through that window!"
The majority of horror films in general, and splatter films specifically, are pretty bad. They're easy to make, and easy to make money off of. And there are a lot of them. But, in pouring through all the really bad films out there, every once in a while, I'll find a gem, a really good one that's buried under all of the crap. And that makes all the bad ones worth it. This webpage is here to point out some of those conventions, make fun of the worst of the lot, and also shine some light on those few gems that we've discovered. Maybe then, you will too. After all, it's no fun to be scared alone.