Only a few days left before Halloween and All Saints’ Day, and as everyone watching TV knows by now, it’s that time of year when spook fests, ghost stories and horror movies abound.
It’s also a time for Halloween-themed parties, like the one held in advance here at Cebu Daily News last Wednesday. It’s also that time when media outlets either replay their own stories of supernatural horror or give fresh updates on past spooky stories, like the features shown annually in broadcast personality Noli de Castro’s program “Magandang Gabi Bayan.”
Aside from the news and the occasional local show here and there, I haven’t watched any local programs for the past several years, thanks in part to cable TV, YouTube and live streaming in mobile devices.
While I watch a lot of TV and make sure to watch a movie or two in my off days or on weekends, I make an exception to horror movies. Watching “The Exorcist” when I was a kid and having experienced my share of ghostly encounters back then made it difficult for me to sleep well at night.
If ever I do get to watch one, like when it’s movie night at home, I make sure to tune out the horror scenes so I can sleep better afterward. From “The Nightmare on Elm Street” series to “Friday the 13th” to the “Halloween” saga headlined by seemingly unkillable characters like Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, the strategy in watching these movies is simple: bring popcorn or any snack and one drink, and when creepy music is being played, peek a little. And when some blood drops, look down at the food and chow down, take a few sips while everyone around you screams their lungs out. Chill out or at least a semblance of it.
Any scary local movies? When I was a kid, I found all of them scary, but there was one scene in a TV film, an anthology starring former actor now TV host Ariel Ureta, that creeped me out and which I still remember to this day.
It was a vampire story, and Ariel Ureta played a doctor who supposedly tried to cure a girl’s blindness. The scene played out thus: as Ureta’s character unwrapped the bandages around the girl’s eyes, he then examined the girl and told her that it looked like there was something in her eyes.
The camera then shows a full face close-up shot of the girl in black and white, whose hair stood on end as she screams full throttle with her eyes bulging and fangs protruding from her wide open, grinning mouth. That scene gave me my first sleepless night, and I had to keep the lights on for two nights before I managed to doze off.
* * *
I remembered that scene after watching some scenes of the “found footage” 1999 horror film “The Blair Witch Project” which detailed the disappearance and deaths of three amateur film makers by an unseen ghost believed to be the titular character.
That one scene that stuck on my mind was a close-up shot of actress Heather Donahue who played a fictionalized version of herself as amateur filmmaker. Her face covered in half with what appeared to be a ski mask and her low mumbling voice recounting how she had spent days without eating as she wandered deep in the forest lost and her friends and equipment gone without a trace.
It isn’t as scary as that screaming vampire girl in the Ariel Ureta film, but that close-up look of muted terror on her face and that footage that looked so raw and real made that scene disturbing enough to make my skin crawl.
And we’re not even talking about the first “Paranormal Activity” film, which I didn’t watch based on the filmed reactions of the audiences whose terrified reactions were shown on YouTube.
I read the film’s ending on Wikipedia, and for those who didn’t watch it, I quote a passage from the Wikipedia entry on the film. Tell me if this scared you or not: “She slowly walks into the room, stained with blood. She crawls to Micah’s body and then looks up at the camera with a grin. As she lunges toward the camera, her face takes on a demonic appearance just as the scene cuts to black.”
Since horror movies are a definite no for me, I’ll stick to watching “Dr. Strange” this week. At least it has a supernatural element to it without the scary stuff even if it’s directed by the guy who made “Sinister.”