Horror Roundtable - Week Sixty-Four
Name a horror-related experience from the past that you would have liked to have witnessed.
Jeff O’Brien
Real life horror - Hindenburg coming down, Titanic going down, Monica Lewinsky going down…
Movie related… I’d like to have been on set for one of those seventies drive in flicks during the shoot. Any one. John Ashley film, Herschell Gordon Lewis… that would have been fun.
To me, as someone born in the early 80’s, I always feel like I just barely missed out on a golden age when Slasher sequels were as common as well… oxygen. There were some magical years in the early to late 80’s when you very well could have seen a new Halloween, Nightmare on Elm St and Friday the 13th all in the same year. Sure not all of them were great, but man that must have been a fun time to be a horror fan. One of my earliest horror memories is seeing a trailer for a new Friday the 13th sequel on television. The feeling of wonderment and fascination is still with me all these years later.
Sean T. Collins - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat
Remember when the big thing about a horror movie was people fainting or vomiting in the audience? Like, that was the indicator that holy shit, this was a scary movie? I’m not 100% convinced that that EVER happened, but if it did, I would like to have seen it.
I can think of three great eras of horror that I missed on account of being born about eighty years too late. Two of these experiences we can recreate today without much difficulty, but one is lost forever.
As an actor with a versatile voice, it saddens me deeply that I missed the golden age of radio. If I had been around in the 1930s or ’40s, I think I could have been right there in the studios, maybe even alongside greats like Orson Welles, Arch Oboler, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, dramatizing stories to terrify thousands of listeners on shows like “Lights Out,” “Price of Fear” and “The Creaking Door.” Fortunately, many of these shows survive on archival recordings, so we can still enjoy them today.
Moving forward to the early 1950s, we find a young man named Bill Gaines taking over the publishing house he inherited from his late father and teaming up with Al Feldstein to begin the golden age of horror comics. What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall at the EC Comics offices, and to have seen artists like Jack Davis, Jack Kamen, Graham Ingels and Feldstein himself creating those delicious and gruesome images. The enthusiasm and creativity bouncing around that place must have been amazing. Sadly, that era lasted only a few short years before EC was effectively destroyed by the efforts of jealous competing publishers, the United States Congress and archfiend Fredric Wertham, but many of the best comics of that age, including EC’s output, are still available in reprints.
But while we can still listen to old time radio shows and read classic comic books, we’ll never be able to see the horror plays of Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. In the early twentieth century, this tiny Paris theater was famous for its bleak and horrifying short plays, mostly written by André de Lorde, which featured bloody climaxes and grotesque special effects. An average of two patrons fainted every evening. Paula Maxa was a star performer at the Grand Guignol, and over the course of her career was murdered on stage more than ten thousand times in at least sixty different ways. The theater closed in 1962 after a lengthy period of artistic decline, and most of its scripts have been lost to history. Even the mechanics of some of its makeup and special effects techniques died with the people who created them. The Grand Guignol is one horror experience that we’ll never be able to see the same way our ancestors did.
Billy
Ok, while not “horror” per sé, I’d have to say WW2. There’s something about seeing a dog fight above your city, cheering your side on or watching in horror as your guys get shot down, that both terrifies me and fascinates me at the same time.
Damn there are about a million answers to this question! I think if I had to choose just one, I would want to be there while Hitchcock filmed the shower scene from Psycho. Not to get a look at Janet Leigh’s knockers or anything - obviously - but just to be there and see the most iconic scene in horror film history get captured. And I’d sit on Alfred’s lap and we’d talk and laugh and tickle each other’s earlobes.
I wish I could go back to the summer of 1979 and witness Dawn of the Dead in its original theatrical run. Preferably at a drive-in with Ridey Scott’s Alien. It couldn’t get much better than witnessing Romero’s masterpiece at a drive-in.
The horror show hosts of the 50’s through to the early 80’s. I would have dug to see Ghouladi or Vampire back then just for the sheer experience and love of it. Especially in the 50’s when there was the whole Universal horror revival taking place.
Dave - Rue Morgue’s The Abbatoir
The Hindenburg disaster — now that would’ve been horrifying!
Oh, wait, that’s probably not what you meant. Hmm, there are so many choices…
I wish I could’ve attended a Grand Guignol performance at the height of the theatre’s popularity. A second choice would be seeing Karloff made up as Frankenstein for the very first time. And a third pick would be witnessing Ed Wood shoot Plan 9.
And of course, I think I speak for all of us when I say, nothing would be more electrifying than watching Steve create The Horror Blog: “It’s alive… IT’S ALIIIVE!”
Actually it was more like “Hm. Bored. thehorrorblog.com isn’t taken? Ha. That’s hilarious!” So what floats your boat, dear readers? Let the Roundtable crew know in the comments below.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Sean,
I distinctly remember my Mom reading me an excerpt from an article in READERS DIGEST (!) when I was a kid back in about 1970 or so, about the reaction from stunned audiance members to viewings of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. I remember it recounting that at least one woman fainted & had to be carried from the theater. Cool, huh?
The only other legit occurances that I can recall about similar occurances that weren’t staged & whatnot, was all the adverse reactions from folks during the first run release of THE EXORCIST. Those are pretty well documented.
I’m pretty sure there were some incidents of fainting in the theaters & a LOT of cases of people becomng hysterical during & after the screenings as well.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
JA,
Aw C’MON dude, you’d have to at LEAST take a peek at Janet’s knockers! LOL
September 14th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
T VAN,
Tell you what, as someone who was at a preview screening of DAWN here in Buffalo back in the spring of ‘79 when I was 17, it was just as much of a seminal, jaw dropping experience as you probably imagine it was at the time. All that & MORE.
The theater was packed full & there was this collective GASP from the audiance the first time that that first zombie bit a gaping chunk out of the victim. It was obvious that most of those there ( including myself ) had never seen anything remotely like it before!
There was definitely a feeling during & after the screening that we’d experienced something special.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
I’ve gotta agree with Dave. I think seeing a Grand Guignol performance during their peak years would be almost impossible to beat. Coming close, the one staged reading of “Dracula” that Bram Stoker held with actors, as I recall from Henry Irving’s troupe.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I’d love to have been a zombie extra in Dawn (or any of Romero’s movies, really) to witness some zombieness first hand.
Oh and I faint during most Julia Roberts movies, but that’s due to a different kind of horror; the soul-chilling dread that comes from seeing a very bad actress laughing like a disabled hyena. Ugh.
September 15th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Okay, okay, I’d totally look, you got me.
Though, to reveal my true Hitch-geekiness, I do believe that Janet wore a flesh colored bodysuit when it was actually her being shot, while a large portion of the filming of the scene was done with a body double, so I’d have had a better chance of seeing body double’s knockers than Leigh’s. Unfortunately. Or fortunately. I’ve confused myself now.
September 17th, 2007 at 12:05 am
What are the chances of TWO Hindenburg references in a Horror Blog roundtable?
Also, the opening day of Disney’s Haunted Mansion would’ve been pretty cool to attend. It really captured my imagination when I visited it as a kid.
September 17th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
hello, when i read this post i’am begin to look around.. for my imagination got so wild..