Srtgray wrote:
> Peter A wrote:
>> Richard Brookman wrote:
>> I can't see any of today's youngsters finding them
>>
>>> anything but laughable. Younger people I have talked with seem
>>> to find them very tame and even funny. Good or bad thing? Dunno.
>>
>>
>> They're desensitised, don't you think? They're bombarded with
>> visual imagery from day one, almost. One kid trying to out-scary
>> the next. Back when the first series ran though, the tv was the
>> only day to day source of imagery, and it was mostly talking heads
>> or the flower pot men or for lucky Irish viewers, Val Doonican
>> sweating under the studio lights in an Aran sweater and bobble
>> cap. So the very idea of something scary on the tv was kinda scary
>> in itself. Wouldn't mind betting though, that for today's kids, that
>> unexplained shadow in the night-time bedroom gloom is still *more*
>> scary than anything the screen can throw at them, as they stop
>> being passive observers and start to use their imagination.
>> Hitchkock had it right - he would *never* have allowed the special
>> effects people to come up with the blobby thing that lived inside
>> the Daleks... they were *far* more scary when you *didn't* know
>> what was inside. Pity the youngsters in a hundred years time when some holographic
>> type 3D image generator conjours up their worst nightmare and has
>> it crouch on the end of the bed!
>>
>> I agree with you ref the Excorcist and Deliverance - they had that
>> power I suspect, because they were going off in directions that
>> hadn't been explored in mainstream cinema up to then. Green
>> projectile vomiting not being a big feature in Mary Poppins or
>> Chitty Chitty Bang etc., as I recall.
>>
> One of the scariest movies I ever saw was the original Alien. Why?
> Because you had *no* idea what it was that was taking the people,
> except that it started life as a small joystick handle that burst
> out of people*. Tense, psychological stuff
>
> Stuart
>
> *interesting trivia: that particular scene (alien bursts out of John
> Hurt) was not scripted. Ridley Scott told actors + film crew that
> they were filming some filler, to go behind the titles or
> something. The only people who knew what was really going to happen were Scott,
> Hurt and the SFX person. The screams that the actresses came out with
> were real.
Indeed, a true classic, one i watch again & again.
Duel is another classic.
Nige