Films and Other Horrors

I've been enjoying the annual horror movie fest on television that is a run-up to Halloween. I watched one yesterday entitled "Disturbia", (a great title that) about a kid incarcerated at home, ankle bracelet style, who watches the world from his windows and believes a neighbor to be a killer. Yeah I know, Hitchcock did this in "Rear Window", but this updated and dummied down for teens knock off starring Shia Le Bouef steak was not too bad. The leads were all believable and the heavy, I think played by David Morse, was a credible serial killer. A second flick I watched yesterday, "The Hitcher" was just a gore fest featuring another serial slayer of a particularly bloody bent. Multiple murder murderers it appears, have replaced monsters in modern horror pics in all but the SciFi genre. Truth is I suspect, that Hollywood has determined plausible horrors to be more frightening than the "suspension of disbelief" type. I still prefer the latter but that's probably more nostalgia than preference. Originality and great direction are required to frighten today's calloused horror movie veterans with monsters large or small, but I still believe it can be done. "Halloween", "Poltergeist", "An American Werewolf in London" and Coppola's "Dracula" are some of my favorite forget reality flicks. "Fried Greed Tomatoes", "Sleepless in Seattle", "Pretty Woman" "Steel Magnolias" and "Alien" were frightening as well but of course they were all SciFi.

I'm thinking a giant one bodied, three headed puppet, Dubya, Palin, McCain being the heads, danced about on strings by Carl Rove and Dick Cheney, seen stomping through the countryside (you might even say surging)would strike fear in the hearts of most movie goers today. I know I'd be frightened and I wouldn't even have to suspend my disbelief.