I Can’t Believe I Liked That
I have been a horror film fan as far back as I can remember. Aside from the first several years of my life that I don’t recall that well, the rest of my 32 years are filled with horror movie after horror movie. Like all people, however, my tastes have changed as I have grown older. I look back at some of the titles that I used to hold so dear and wonder what I ever could have found so appealing in them.
I think back about my affinity for Brainscan, the Edward Furlong vehicle from the mid-nineties that showcased all that was cheesy about being an adolescent at that time. While the film was one big commercial for Fangoria and technology that was still years away for the common person, the film thrilled me in the way that only adolescents can be thrilled by stupid crap. I have recently attempted to watch it and wasn’t able to make it more than halfway through before turning it off. All of the charm that it once had for me had long since absconded, and all it left me with was the question of why Frank Langella would be in this film.
I think about The Gate, about The Nightmare on Elm Streets 2-8, about Poltergeists 2-3. I think back on all of the really bad Stephen King films that weren’t helmed by a notable director, the ones that stuck really close to the plot of the novels or short stories. I think of all of these films and many others and feel a little embarrassed in front of my now very sophisticated and worldly horror fan self – tongue lightly placed in cheek. I realize however that zeitgeist need not exist solely outside the self as an element of one’s surroundings, but it can reside within the self as a time in one’s development. I teach my students that zeitgeist reflects the worries, hopes, fears, controversies of a particular time. I believe that there are some times that are static, times that do not change with the changing tide of politics, trends, or anything else. We have times like adolescence, adulthood, the awkward in between stages.
I realize that I don’t like Brainscan any longer because I don’t understand it any longer. While it is true that the film will not go down in horror history as one of any importance, it is still true that I no longer have the faculties needed to find the pleasure, the exhilaration in the film that I once did. It is true that adults don’t really understand youth. We try to remember what it was like to be that age, but all we really have is our adult memory of a time long since past. This is not the same thing as knowing youth.
What horror films did you used to like that you now find funny, stupid, cheesy, or trivial? To the younger readers of this blog, what genre films do you find most enjoyable right now? Please comment.
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