Memorable Experience(s) With Horror Film(s)

I'm not sure whether or not you all know this, but I am not a big fan of horror movies. I watched a bunch of scary movies as a younger child with my father and I couldn't sleep for some reason. Every time I would close my eyes, I would see the movie, wake up sweaty, fall back asleep, and wake up again and again in my own sweat. The ordeal would be over when the morning sun finally rose.

For the sake of this project, I am going to talk about 2 of my most memorable experiences with films in the horror family. This is going to sound weird, but both of these movies are referenced within the Clover reading that we were assigned. The two movies that I will be discussing are "Alien" and "Psycho".



I will begin with "Psycho" because it is a very classic movie and I remember the circumstances behind me watching it much better than "Alien". First of all, when I watched this movie, I was about 8 or 9. My father said that we should watch the movie, and my brother and I agreed because it sounded like a good idea. We watched the movie in the evening in my father's basement apartment in Ronkonkoma. My brother and I were both in our pajamas and we were laying on the fold-out couch in the living room. My father was sitting in his armchair (like always), and he began the movie.

For those of you who have not seen "Psycho", the movie basically begins with a distressed employee stealing money and fleeing town. She drives a while, spends a night in the car, draws attention from a police officer, and decides eventually to stay at the Bates Motel. While there, everything is fine, and the girl (Marion), decides to take a shower. While in the shower, a female figure, presumed to be Mrs. Bates, the mother of the hotel clerk, comes into the shower and stabs Marion to death. Norman, the hotel clerk, later comes in and is horrified when he finds the bloody mess. He then dumps her body in her car and dumps the car into a nearby lake.

After more filling details and another killing, two other characters decide to investigate and stay in the motel. While there, they find evidence of Marion and the male (Sam) decides to confront Norman alone. When confronting him, Norman knocks him out with a golf club. In the meantime, Lila (the other character) decides to sneak into the house while Norman is distracted. She hides in the cellar and discovers, completely by accident, the mummified body of Norman's mother. At this point, Norman rushes in dressed like his mother and is suppressed by Sam, who was no longer unconscious.

At the end of the film, the viewer realizes that it was Norman who was both himself and his mother. He had a dual personality which included both himself and his mother and he was permitting her to live even though she was dead.

Now, I reacted to one part of this film in particular. The part that really scared the crap out of me was when Lila turned around the armchair with the mummified body and saw the dead mother. I don't know why, but this part absolutely shocked me at the same time as scaring me. That night, when I went to sleep, all I could picture was that dead face and that mummified body just staring at me from the armchair. The fact that there was stabbing and killing didn't bother me in the slightest. It was the fact that there was the mummified mother that really bothered me. This is the part that I can't explain, but this movie really left an imprint in my brain and after that, I didn't watch any horror movies for a LONG time!

As far as Psycho goes, I would say that I agree with the Clover piece. Psycho really did set the stage for slasher films of the future. The fact that Norman used a knife to murder Marion in the shower, and the fact that there was a lot of blood in the movie really changed the way that those types of movies were made. Also, Clover's arguments that the killer usually has sexual issues would prove true because the killer (Norman) was both a man and a woman. He didn't have a sexual identity and whenever he did develop feelings for a woman, as he did with Marion, his other personality (his mother) ordered him to kill her. In essence, he was incapable of having sexual relations with women because of his alter-ego.

The aspects of the Clover piece describing the "Final Girl" don't necessarily apply, unless you count the part of the movie where Lila is about to be stabbed by Norman in the end. However, I don't think that this concept applies because of the fact that she is saved by Sam. While the "Final Girl" might not necessarily apply, the idea of a terrible place is definitely present. Whether it be the dirty motel bathroom where Marion is murdered, or the creepy basement where the mummified mother is discovered, this movie is full of places that would make your skin crawl.



The second movie that I would like to discuss is the movie "Alien". I don't really remember much about this movie, but I do remember several ways in which I reacted to it. I am not going to go into the plot, but I will make some references.

Watching this movie was, again, my father's idea, and my brother and I watched it in the same place that we watched Psycho. This movie was quite different than movies I had watched before. It was much more gory than other movies and had a lot of death. In fact, every single character died except Ripley.

I reacted to this movie quite negatively I'm afraid. First of all, the thought of an alien attacking me wasn't very pleasant and my dreams didn't seem to think so either. Secondly, I was afraid that if I sat down at my table and ate, I would have an alien burst out of my stomach. I was deathly afraid of this and the night I watched "Alien" I couldn't even eat my steak because it reminded me of the alien. I look back on these moments now and laugh, but back then my fears were legit.

This film, unlike Psycho, applies the "Final Girl" principle of the Clover piece. Ripley, one of the only females in the movie, is the last to survive, and as the Clover reading suggests, she is a very masculine character. She is not a true female and she fits the description of the "final girl" described in the reading. She also has a great struggle with the alien before she finally is able to eject him from the ship using a forklift.

The other part of this movie that applies to the Clover reading was the way in which the characters of the film were killed. As suggested in the reading, each of the male characters were killed quite quickly and in most of the camera shots, the creature was not even showed, but instead a muffled scream was heard. However, Ripley's ending battle with the creature was very intense and it was really the focus of the movie. The ejection of the alien of the end was a victory for the "final girl".