"NO TEARS, PLEASE. IT'S A WASTE OF GOOD SUFFERING!"

Pinhead (Hellraiser, 1987)

Smoking kills.

I'm banging on about horror again.

Not really a continuation of my last horror-themed post, but related. Sort of.

I finished last time by saying that horror continually changes through the years to address the fears that speak most to us in our present time, and so the more we learn and the more we evolve the less we find frightening. With every passing year the overall trend seems to be that old cliché “man is the most frightening beast of all”, that man is scarier than anything else because it’s real! Even the most hardened horror fan would be pushed to come up with a way to inflict evil on his fellow man that hasn’t already been used in the real world… Boogymen are a thing of the past, Jason, Freddy and Pinhead stand aside for masked intruders and serial killers. These days, the supernatural is predominantly the domain of fantasy, and alien beings to science fiction, although the odd exception is noted.

Anyway, that's all wildly off-topic.

I used to be under the belief that “they just don’t make horrors like they used to!” I often said things to the effect of “horrors were much scarier in my day” and “modern horrors are all about nastiness and gore”- although I’ll concede nasty and gory horrors have been doing good business since the 70’s, they usually had more going on than simple savagery (Last House On The Left oozed uncomfortable subtext, while Texas Chainsaw Massacre was always a case of ‘seeing less than you remembered’), and now days these torture-porns prove the rule rather than the exception.

In my day, teenagers (usually under-age) cut their teeth on classics like Friday the 13^th, Halloween, A Nightmare On Elmstreet- you know, real horrors! Except I’d never got round to seeing Clive Barker’s Hellraiser… I decided 'tonight was the night' to put right an injustice in my childhood, and so watched the 80's "horror classic" Hellraiser. All this, under the belief that I’d somehow missed out on one of the horror classics of my generation. 

Now, let me tell you something- it’s caused me to have something of a reassessment. 

Hellraiser, the film itself, was mediocre at best; although it does boast some wonderfully grisly effects and a creepy nightmare-come-real vibe missing from most clean-cut modern horrors (I personally think the film grain lends something to that, as it does in the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Despite its mediocrity, Hellraiser has earned itself high praise in horror-circles as a definitive 80’s horror. To begin with I assumed this was just a case of overly high expectations, and after this I decided that it was just a poor film, but with a little more thought I came to a stark realisation:

"Maybe horror films aren’t getting any less scary; maybe I’m just getting harder to scare? And not just me, but my whole generation?"

Are we just becoming overly used to the language of cinema, and of all the old and familiar horror tricks that used to scare us as young teens? Perhaps today’s horrors are doing the job just as adequately as ever, except that we’re now too experienced and cynical to become lost in the macabre suspension of disbelief necessary for 'fear'? If I’d watched Hellraiser as a 17 year old, I’m fairly certain it would have creeped me out, it’s certainly more extreme than many of the other films that had me reaching for the light in the dead of night. I mean, those 70's and 80's horrors were almost a rites-of-passage for the teenagers watching them- you watched them with friends or on dates to prove you were brave, and that you could stomach the gore. They were exhilarating. Is that so very different to the droves of kids paying to see the latest Saw or Final Destination, no matter how derogatory us "oldies" find them?

Case and point: 

I remember the first time I watched Friday The 13^th. I was probably 12 or 13, a friend lent it to me and I watched it on my own- my parents had gone shopping. Spoiler ahead. The following could be partially inaccurate but this is how I remember it. Close to the end of the film (and I was already unnerved by this point) the camera pans out as our last remaining character relaxes on a boat drifting lazily on the lake. The sun has come up, and the terrors of the night seem distant, easy-listening music can be heard… THEN A GREAT BIG FUCKING ZOMBIE comes BURSTING out the still water, HUGE FUCKING KNIFE in hand, and pulls our heroine down into the murky deep. I kid you not, I fucking leaped off my seat in fright, and I don’t remember sleeping soundly for a very long time afterwards...

But these days, I know better. The biggest clue that something was going to happen was the film hadn’t already ended, or that the credits hadn’t started to roll- because if the film keeps rolling, something’s yet to happen. I didn’t know that back then, at whatever age I was- I didn’t dissect films as I watched them. I never once thought “we’re seeing the gun / axe / car keys / bare feet because later it's sure to prove important".

So, there you go, I’ve changed my opinion. 

Don’t go and get me wrong, most modern horror is still crap (no plot, no character, no originality) but while you’re young you don’t really notice things like that (try watching Last House On The Left  again and defend the acting), and honestly, that’s not why you’re watching horror at that age, is it now? 

That’s not to say horror can’t be more than just jumps and cheap tricks, but let’s not pretend it was any different “back in our day”…