What Scares You?

What scares you? Is it the slasher movies? Ghost stories? Stories of women bearing Satan's spawn? Are you afraid to swim in the ocean? What movie has scarred you for life?

I pose this question because a couple of nights ago, I saw a movie that totally disturbed me the first time I saw it. It is called Dreamscape starring Dennis Quaid. In one of the dream sequences, Dennis Quaid's character is helping a young boy get away from the monster in his dream. Well the monster is a pretty scary thing, or at least at the time I thought it was. It was a snakeman. In my mind, I remembered it looking sooo real! Plus they were going down miles of rickety old wooden stairs. Now who hasn't has THAT dream!? And yet when I watched it, I was half laughing at myself and literally laughing at how completely fake the effects were. And the whole concept of the movie now seems preposterous.

Another movie that scarred me for life, was a movie called "The Hand." Okay I was too young to see this movie. For weeks I would take a flying leap from my door to my bed because I was convinced the hand was under my bed and that it was going to get me! To this day disembodied hands at Halloween are very creepy to me. I can't handle it. And those obnoxious bowls with the hands that spring to life and cackle when you reach in really freak me out. The only "hand" I can deal with is "Thing" from "The Addams Family." and that is just because Thing is a dismembered of their odd family.

As an adult, the movies that scare me now are the ones that are more real. The ones that mess with your mind and make you think, "Could that really happen?" The kind that make you jump at your own shadow. For instance, "Mr. Brooks" starring Kevin Costner. It's a very different role for him. It is rated R, but I chose to watch it. He plays a philanthropist who just so happens to be a killer. And it is creepy. It's almost like Ted Bundy. He was very real and very well thought of in his community. And he was a rapist and a killer. Check that movie out--The Deliberate Stranger--starring Mark Harmon. It was a long time before I could look at him and not think of Ted Bundy.

So what scares you? Do you like to be scared? I love a good scary movie. Forget the slasher types. I am not into blood and guts. I want the type that will mess with my head for days. As for The Hand and Dreamscape, I dare say they are good for freaking out a young mind, but not much beyond that.

PS Thanks to all you well wishers! I am finally feeling better!