Favorite Frights!

Melon votes for Godzilla as favorite movie monster.

Since it is the season for ghosties and ghoulies and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, we thought we’d talk a bit about scary books and movies. Horror like beauty is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

First up is Jeanne:

I don’t read a lot of horror books any more. I did while I was in high school many, many years ago. There was this new guy, Stephen King, and he did some good books like Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot. I read Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin and The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I read a lot of Shirley Jackson, like We Have Always Lived in the Castle (still a favorite) and The Haunting of Hill House. I read a lot of forgettable books, too; so forgettable that I have forgotten them. Then a neighbor recommended that I read Richard Matheson’s Hell House (also known as The Legend of Hell House) because it was the scariest book he’d ever read.

The plot was fairly standard. A group of researchers go to an allegedly haunted house. It’s a diverse group, of course, with skeptics mixed in with believers, mediums and scientists. The house in question belonged to an eccentric millionaire who disappeared after some murders; no one knows how he was involved, victim or perpetrator. Naturally—or unnaturally—things start to happen after the researchers move in. I’m sketchy on the details. I do remember finishing the book and thinking, “Well, that wasn’t so scary.”

Pride goeth before a fall.

I hadn’t been asleep for more than a few minutes when I began to dream about the book. I was so badly frightened I sat up the rest of the night and only dozed off after the sun came up. It took several nights for me to be able to sleep without dreaming about a particular scene. I don’t know exactly what it was about the book, but it’s the one that sort of weaned me away from horror. I never wanted to be afraid to go to sleep like that again.

That was the first Richard Matheson book I ever read. He’s one of those wonderful underrated authors who can write stories that linger in the mind. Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes it is a bad thing! His stories were adapted for film: he wrote a number of the Twilight Zone episodes, including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” about the demon on the plane’s wing that only one passenger sees. Or is the man simply hallucinating? He also wrote Bid Time Return, which was made into the movie “Somewhere in Time” with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour and was a sweetly romantic story. Possibly his best known work is I Am Legend, a vampire tale that has been made into a move three times and had a graphic novel adaptation, but for all that he remains an author that few people seem to know by name.

There are scary non-fiction books, too. There are at least two non-fiction books that kept me tossing and turning as well as turning pages. The first was Helter Skelter : the True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, which isn’t surprising: killers are scary, especially ones who are just plain nuts. Just as scary, though, was The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, which was the first time I had ever heard of the ebola virus. I learned more than I ever thought I wanted to know about deadly diseases and he made it fascinating and exciting. I found myself holding my breath when the investigators went into a cave where it was suspected the virus could be found. I also used a lot of hand sanitizer and worried a bit when I had a headache. The Hot Zone is a book as thrilling as it is terrifying, and a great reminder that not all monsters come in large packages.

I would tell my scariest movie, but it’s too embarrassing. I found it on a list of the most ridiculous movies ever made. Somehow it seemed really scary when I watched on “Chilller” very late one night, back when I was twelve. Suffice it to say, there was a creature locked up behind a door for most of the movie and all the audience could see was an arm attempting to grab the mad scientist. Perhaps I’ll settle for the more respectably scary “The Birds.”

What would your picks be?