Things That Go Bump In The Night
I love to be scared. Love that little frisson of sensation that makes goosebumps rise on my arms and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I love the tension that makes me glance toward the door to make sure it’s locked, or prowl around in the house checking the windows after staying up until three a.m. to finish a really spooky novel. Love to close my eyes at night after I’ve watched something fiendish and terrifying, trying to wipe the images from my brain, but ultimately failing. My mind keeps shifting into overdrive as I imagine whatever story I was watching/reading…and mentally take it just one step further with my writer’s imagination. 
The medium doesn’t really matter. I like ghost stories told by tour operators in New Orleans or Savannah. Episodes of “Most Haunted” or “Psychic Detective” on TV. 
I can completely lose myself in a chilling book by Peter Straub or Stephen King. (King, IMO, is one of the greatest writers of our generation. That man knows how to put some words together, can I hear an amen!) And when it comes to movies, well, I’d rather watch The Sixth Sense over My Best Friend’s Wedding any day.
I guess that really hit home to me this past week when I evaluated my entertainment choices. I’d recently re-read Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher, so I was glued to it when it came on HBO the other night (as with most of King’s work, the movie translation just blew in comparison to the book….sigh…) In the past few days, I have sat with my hubby and kids and watched all three of the Final Destination DVD’s, with remote in hand so I could “choose the fate” of some characters using the special DVD-Rom features. (We saw the 3rd one at the movies opening weekend. I really think my husband and I were the only adults in the theater.)
I also did something I would never have imagined I’d do. I went with them to see Snakes On A Plane. 
Now, for those of you who know me, I’m sure I don’t need to repeat this, but for my online friends who haven’t seen me flipping out at the very thought of a slithery reptile, let me make it clear: snakes are my number one phobia.
Yeah. Snakes. Phobia. As in utter and complete irrational terror when I see one. I thought they were going to have to call for an ambulance the night a tiny little baby one showed up inside my house. I kid you not, my daughter very casually said to my husband, “Uh, Dad, I think that’s a snake,” and I, without a single moment’s hesitation, leapt over the back of the couch and ran into the other room screaming. The thing was more like a worm with snake-like pretensions, but it still left me shaking in agony.
Yet I went to see Snakes on a Plane. And I loved every minute of it.
To be honest, I couldn’t understand why. I mean, of course, it has Samuel Jackson, and it has a rather clever storyline. And, as a writer, I just have to admire the balls on whatever guy went into a movie exec’s office to do his pitch and held his hands up in the air saying, “Picture this: Snakes. On a plane.”
A surefire hit.
But afterward, I had to stop and think about why it didn’t bother me. And when I put my finger on it, I realized the explanation is the same one for why I like Stephen King books so much more than Thomas Harris’s or James Patterson’s. Or why I can watch Alien or The Shining 948 times but could never EVER sit through one showing of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Saw.
You know the secret?
I like my terror completely out of the realm of possibility. Absolutely, never-in-a-million-years-could-this-happen.
If it had been one big fricking snake on a plane, I am quite sure I would have had to be carted out of the movie theater in a little red wagon full of shivering Leslie goo. But with 500 of the things? Impossible. Implausible. Utterly out-of-the-question ridiculous. And a-okay with me. I could let go of any last little remnant of realistic concern and just enjoy this crazy, terrifying ride for what it was. Pure entertainment. Pure Samuel-Jackson-Kicks-Snake-Butt excitement.
Same with vampires or ghosts. Clowns in sewers, zombies or aliens terrorizing kick-ass women of the future. 
Poltergeists or werewolves or twenty-foot-tall spiders are a-okay with me.
Serial killers armed with chain saws? Not so much.
That, I realized, is my litmus test. If it could happen, I can’t take it. You won’t catch me voluntarily watching a movie about some twisted nutcase who abuses children. The all-men-are-scum movies on Lifetime freak me out a lot more than anything I could ever watch on the Sci Fi channel. Because when it comes to horror, I want my fiction to be completely fictional.
It’s called escapism. If I want to be terrified for my kids or worried about the security of those I love, I’ll turn on the damn news or open a dreary newspaper.
But when I just want to be scared out of my wits while knowing, in the reasonable, always-calm corner of my mind that everything’s fine and those I love are safe and sound, I’ll reach for the snakes on a plane or the aliens on a spaceship or the death-stalks-the-teenagers-who-thwarted-it any old time.
Because, in the end, I know that all’s right with the world and that my happily-ever-after reality is going to continue on just the way I like it.
Leslie can add spiders to her phobia fear. I should know. She saw one near my bed at National. She screamed. It moved. We never found it again. For all I know, it slept in my bed. With me. Hard to reconcile THAT Leslie with the one who loves horror. Too funny. Me, on the other hand, I hate scary things. Real or imagined, plausible or implausible. Can’t understand those who love it. It’s beyond my realm. I’ll leave scary stuff to you, Les.
Comment by Carly — August 28, 2006 @ 6:11 am
I like to read scary stuff more than I like to watch it. I think it’s because my imagination, as anyone else’s, makes it a lot scarier than it ends up being….like a visit to the doctor. (Or not). I remember seeing one of Stephen King’s books turned into a movie, and the book was soooo much better. Very disappointing on so many levels.
The guy who did “6th Sense”, “Signs”, “The Village” - he puts some imagination into it, and his movies, though not scary, have the potential to be that way. There’s something lyrical about the way he tells a story. That works more for me than the obvious gore or creepy crawly. Though did you ever see “Kingdom of the Spiders” with William Shatner - ewww! Now that was scary!
Comment by Stacy ~ — August 28, 2006 @ 6:56 am
Other than the phobia’s, the only time I like to be scared is when I need an excuse to cuddle. LOL!! I used to like watching the scary movies on a date back in High School. It was a great way to see if the guy you were dating was sympathetic or just more interested in the movie.
Comment by Kelly — August 28, 2006 @ 8:14 am
I am not into scary movies or books. I am with Carly on this one and have to leave it to the ones who can watch these things. I would never be able to watch movies like that………..I can never understand why people make movies like that and why others love to watch them………..
Comment by Cryna — August 28, 2006 @ 10:13 am
Don’t like snakes, worms or anything that doesn’t have legs. Spiders i can handle.
I love movies like the Sixth Sense, anything along the lines of Alfred Hitchcock. Can’t stand gory, bloody, cut ‘em ups. No sense in them I guess. Unless it’s one of the Scary Movie series. We spend more time trying to figure out what movies they are making fun of. Can’t stand King, but love Patterson. LOL
Comment by ev — August 28, 2006 @ 10:14 am
I am with ev…I don’t really like that stuff. Give me a good fun, light romance anyday….My 4 year old screams at bugs, too….we make my hubby kill them.
Comment by katie — August 28, 2006 @ 10:38 am
I found as I get older that I can’t take getting scared at the theatre anyone.
Well, I’m not going to pay to be scared.
My hubby and daughter went to see Snakes on a Plane the weekend it came out. My daughter loved it. My hubby thought it was like some of the things he watches on the SciFi channel.
The last really disturbing movie I saw in a theatre was Ransom. I thought I would have a heart attack. My heart was pounding so much.
Like Leslie I like my scary movies to be about Vampires and things that don’t really exists outside the movies.
I’m going to stick to good looking Pirates, Superheros and things like that.
:doggie::doggie::doggie::doggie::doggie::doggie::doggie::doggie::doggie:
Comment by Gigi — August 28, 2006 @ 10:49 am
I don’t like scary movies because, well, they SCARE me!
However, my husband and kids like to watch them, which they do together. And usually, afterward, we have every light on in the house at night until the kids forget about whatever it was that scared them. Or they’ll come and wake us up with every little noise they hear. Geez. 
Comment by Janelle — August 28, 2006 @ 11:27 am
i watch it sometimes. i can’t until your next blaze!!!
Comment by kim H — August 28, 2006 @ 1:08 pm
I think I can handle snakes (not that I’m a big fan) rather than rodents. The rat in Harry Potter had me covering my eyes. (I’m a wuss I know).
Comment by Yolanda — August 28, 2006 @ 1:39 pm
snakes…it doesn’t matter how big or how small. I hate them and am scared to death of them. Spiders run a close second though.
Comment by Vicki — August 28, 2006 @ 2:19 pm
My teenage son (19) has always loved scary movies. Scary, gory, gross, believable or not, he loves them. In fact, he would probably be a great horror movie critic because I’m pretty sure he has seen every horror movie ever made. He will even go onto e-bay to find old ones that he can’t rent anymore.
Give me the funny, loveable, “ahhhh isn’t that sweet” movies. Since I’ve had kids I can’t stand anything that makes me scared or freaked-out.
I guess that gene ran out of my body straight into my son.
Comment by Jodie — August 28, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
The scariest movie for me is Fire in the Sky - it’s about alien abduction and IT’S BASED ON REAL FACT.
I also heard on the news that someone let two rattlesnakes loose in a theater where Snakes on a Plane was playing.
Comment by jeanne — August 28, 2006 @ 9:00 pm
I ususally trash the hell out of cheesy ass movies like “SoaP”, but I had to go see this with an audience. I enjoyed almost every second of it.
The movie just opens to the inciting incident. You have the opening sequence, and then you expect the credits to start rolling for the title. And they do. With the backdrop of one of the Hawaiian islands, there the first star of the movie is
Samuel L. Jackson
And then the next thing you see is the word.
SNAKES
Like the snakes were the second billed star! And they were! Nice touch, but the SNAKES stays on the screen and below it is the rest of the title.
ON A
PLANE
You go for the viceral thrill of this one.
There’s one moment where the snakes charge the front of the plane on top of a rolling drink cart, (Like a “Let’s Roll” kind of horrible opposite take on the heroes of Flight 93) so the movie does not spare you from all sorts of cringingly bad moments.
Watching it in an empty theater at this point will defeat half the fun. The theater where I went, some in the audience waved fake snakes or long balloons in the air when the snakes attacked. (I know, I was one of them!)
So, this was an audience participation kind of film, and for that, it worked.
Back in a previous time, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, I roomed with four other guys in a house off of the University we all attended, and one of the roomates kept snakes. A LOT of snakes. This was back in the days when the trading of poisonous snakes wasn’t as illegal in populated areas as it is now. He had about 15 non poisonous snakes, and about 12 poisonous ones. Our utility room was filled with the 10 gallon aquariums that was home to them. For a while, we had a managerie of live animals used to feed the snakes. Apparently, egg snakes like the smell of the chicken still on the egg. and the rattlers he kept… ah, there’s a story or two…
Comment by Walt — August 28, 2006 @ 11:56 pm
Leslie, I couldn’t agree with you more. I love scary movies and books, but only to a point. If there is anyway at all that this could possibly happen in reality then I don’t want to see it. I don’t need that going through my head. I tend to over analize things and I will keep running it through my head over and over. So when my husband wants to watch Saw I send him downstairs to watch it while I sit with a nice book and go to my happy place.
Comment by Jennifer C — August 29, 2006 @ 10:08 am