Writers – and researchers – as Siri Hustvedt argues, ‘circle our wounds’. We have a sensitivity to areas of recollection and connection. We know the familiar triggers, in the news, in the loud voice of an enraged man on a tram, in the escalation of tension in an argument between loved ones. But there are times even when we are groomed and on alert that we can be surprised.
I avoid horror movies. I’m amazed by people who deliberately look for the escalation of their fear. Life itself is fearful enough for me.
When I was in my twenties I saw the movie Don’t Look Now. I was distressed by the opening scenes when a couple’s young daughter drowns in the pond on their sprawling estate in England, later juxtaposed with the beauties of the main character – played by Donald Sutherland – restoring ruins in Venice, as part of his job. His wife played by Julie Christie encounters a blind and pupilless woman who warns her that her dead daughter Christine is in touch and warning them of danger. Then there’s the tongue-poking gargoyles who leer from the tops of buildings to the flashes of a funeral ferry through the canals, the widow in black mantilla. I should have seen the signs, but I did not.
After the film, when I caught any glimpse of a crazed dwarf in a red hooded coat like the one the apparent daughter Christine was wearing on the day she drowned, I was reminded of the horror of Don’t Look Now. The father chasing a red coated figure across Venice up and down bridges through dark tunnels convinced his daughter has returned. Only to discover in the dark of a church where he cornered the red coated creature who turned to reveal the hideous face of a freakish person and then plunged a sharp knife into our hero’s neck. After the dwarf and that hideous face streaked across the screen, I could not sleep for days.
I made myself watch this film again in my forties to come to terms with the memory and this time, the horror was more manageable this time, but still it lingers.
Linked I suspect to a fear I held as a child. A fear I remember with all the clarity of a fact. I could be on the bus with my mother on our way to the shops in Camberwell, walking back home after school with my sisters, He will kill us all. Starting with my mother. The thought popped into my head unbidden in the same way this monstrous murderer pounced onto the screen in Don’t look now.
I, also, avoid horror films. The one that had the most lasting effect on me was ‘The Sentinal’ from 1977. I’m not sure what drew me to watch it which I did, alone, in the La Scala on Sauchiehall Street. It actually gave me nightmares which is odd because I’m usually good at compartmentalising. Most of the famous horror films I’ve never watched and I have no intention of watching the remake of ‘The Exorcist’ when it comes although I did read the novel back in the day as it was being handed around at school; I wasn’t impressed. The only other horror writer I’ve read was James Herbert (the ‘Rats’ trilogy and one other, I think) but that’s it. My only Stephen King was ‘On Writing.’