• Home
  • About
    • Books
    • The Writing Place
  • Writing Services
    • Ghostwriter
    • Individual Coach, Mentor and Writer
    • $25/45
    • Testimonials
  • Workshops
    • Summer Writing Salon
    • Introduction to Memoir
    • Journal workshops and tuition
    • Feedback
  • The Writer's Blog
  • Newsletter
  • Store
  • Contact

The Writer's Life Blog

What makes a good horror movie great?

12/5/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
I love horror movies. I'm reassured in this because I know I'm not alone. Lots of people love them - just not many of my friends who look at me funny when I confess.

I was raised on them. I get it from my Mom. She was a hard-core veteran, scared to death as a child by the old black and whites, like Dracula with Bela Lugosi and The Mummy with Boris Karloff and The Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney. She and her friends used to get so traumatised they'd hide under the seats on the wooden floor. The usher would come along and tell them they either had to sit in the seats or leave. 

As youngsters growing up in Seattle, my sister and I were often bundled up in bathrobes, pyjamas and slippers, loaded into the car and taken to the drive-in movies. I guess it was one way that my parents could have a night out without all the hassle of getting babysitters. Mom's passion for horror meant the movies we went to were double features in brilliant, ghastly Technicolor, bright red blood everywhere. My sister and I took all of this in as we chugged down hotdogs and Coke, and then, satiated with salt and sugar and fat, nodded off to sleep in the midst of the gore and screams emanating through the drive-in. All these years later, I can still remember the title of a film we saw at the drive-in, The Atom Age Vampire, a film produced in 1960. You can see it on YouTube. Of course!

These days though, I am continually disappointed. I haven't seen a really good horror in ages, and I see plenty. I have a friend, a stalwart horror fan, who watches even more horrible movies than I, and it take something pretty special to impress her. She's tougher, a real critic. It takes a mega-horror/slasher/blood-spattered mess to shake her foundations. However, in saying that, there have been a few memorable times when we've been watching something hideous together, and take terrified glimpses through fingers-over-eyes. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

So what makes for great horror? If you're going to write in this genre, whether it's for film or written word, I reckon you need to do some homework because it's an art form, a talent, and it takes study and diligence.  Watch lots and read lots.  

Stephen King is one of the best horror writers in my book because he has this unerring talent to turn the everyday - the routines, the surroundings, the actions we live with - into horror. He understands our fears and turns them into stories.

For example, take his novel It,  set in a small American town. It features average, kind of normal families and kids doing kid-like stuff, and begins with a little boy chasing his paper sailboat down a roadside gutter in a rainstorm; the little boat sails down a drain, the kid is upset, peering down the culvert, and then there's a clown down in the drain who says hi and asks the kid if he wants his boat back. Of course he does. Every kid likes clowns, and they're fun and trustworthy right? Maybe a bit cheeky but OK, yeah? 

And then the horror comes. 

You have to love ghosts and goblins, ghouls and gremlins, and the evil and horror that lies within all of us.

Have a go. Write that scary thing.

As Stephen King says, "... as a writer, one of the things that I've always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that's what we're supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react."    
​     

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

Services

Writing
Workshops
Blog

Jane Bissell

About
Books
Store

Communicate

Contact
Newsletter

© COPYRIGHT 2018 Jane Bissell
  • Home
  • About
    • Books
    • The Writing Place
  • Writing Services
    • Ghostwriter
    • Individual Coach, Mentor and Writer
    • $25/45
    • Testimonials
  • Workshops
    • Summer Writing Salon
    • Introduction to Memoir
    • Journal workshops and tuition
    • Feedback
  • The Writer's Blog
  • Newsletter
  • Store
  • Contact