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Feb. 23rd, 2010 11:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nilchanceJackie Earle Haley is the shit, man.
My parents separated when I was 10 and my dad worked long hours, so that left me with my older brother as a babysitter. He'd be in charge of me until the wee hours of the morning, and as soon as I knew we'd be on our own, that was it: I knew we were going to our shitty little Blockbusters to check out all the movies Dad wouldn't let me see. Chris had an appreciation for the classics, too: the Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, mecha anime (the first wave coming over from Japan, way before it became mainstream, when tariffs made it nearly impossible to own or find the decent stuff), and Killer Klowns from Outer Space. (What? It's a classic. Remember when the giant clown used the police chief as a ventriloquist dummy? And the clown waiting outside for the little girl at the fast food place? JESUS.)
It was one of those nights that Chris showed me Nightmare on Elm Street. I was a little older, already cynical about slasher flicks-- what could top tree rape? Or the looming Catholic school stories of eternal hell for feminists and queers? I ogled boobs and crossed myself a lot. Anyway, Freddy Krueger managed to actually disturb my equilibrium. The other horror icons were limited to their swamps, or there were rules they had to obey that could save you. But you HAD to fall asleep eventually. When Johnny Depp fell into the bed, I screamed and tore ass out of the living room to hide in the bathroom. That did not help; I crept in again to watch the rest, because the boogeyman was in my head anyway.
Nightmare was the first movie that really and truly scared the bejeezus out of me. It scarred my fragile young psyche. For years I slept within reach of a crucifix, even after I dropped my obsessive Catholicism. I had recurring nightmares. I refused to sleep and went days without it whenever I could get away with it. I slept on the floor so the bed couldn't eat me. It was awesome, she says without irony.
At the time, I didn't see the psychosexual shadows of Freddy's menace. I didn't get what he did to those creepy girls in white dresses, which is ironic for a Catholic schoolgirl. But I knew it was bad, whatever it was, and-- UGH. I just had to get up and turn the light on, even now.
So YEAH. The later films made me happy on one level, relieved that Freddy became funny-scary, but also a little pissed off because HI, that's the Boogeyman, why is he cracking lame jokes? (And don't get me started on my resentment that Jason got most of the kills in Freddy vs Jason.) And Haley rocked my world in Watchmen. I love that he gets that the scariest part of Freddy is both the inescapable aspects of him: you have to sleep, and you have to wake up in a world where there's a potential Freddy around every corner. Now THAT'S fucking scary.
My parents separated when I was 10 and my dad worked long hours, so that left me with my older brother as a babysitter. He'd be in charge of me until the wee hours of the morning, and as soon as I knew we'd be on our own, that was it: I knew we were going to our shitty little Blockbusters to check out all the movies Dad wouldn't let me see. Chris had an appreciation for the classics, too: the Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, mecha anime (the first wave coming over from Japan, way before it became mainstream, when tariffs made it nearly impossible to own or find the decent stuff), and Killer Klowns from Outer Space. (What? It's a classic. Remember when the giant clown used the police chief as a ventriloquist dummy? And the clown waiting outside for the little girl at the fast food place? JESUS.)
It was one of those nights that Chris showed me Nightmare on Elm Street. I was a little older, already cynical about slasher flicks-- what could top tree rape? Or the looming Catholic school stories of eternal hell for feminists and queers? I ogled boobs and crossed myself a lot. Anyway, Freddy Krueger managed to actually disturb my equilibrium. The other horror icons were limited to their swamps, or there were rules they had to obey that could save you. But you HAD to fall asleep eventually. When Johnny Depp fell into the bed, I screamed and tore ass out of the living room to hide in the bathroom. That did not help; I crept in again to watch the rest, because the boogeyman was in my head anyway.
Nightmare was the first movie that really and truly scared the bejeezus out of me. It scarred my fragile young psyche. For years I slept within reach of a crucifix, even after I dropped my obsessive Catholicism. I had recurring nightmares. I refused to sleep and went days without it whenever I could get away with it. I slept on the floor so the bed couldn't eat me. It was awesome, she says without irony.
At the time, I didn't see the psychosexual shadows of Freddy's menace. I didn't get what he did to those creepy girls in white dresses, which is ironic for a Catholic schoolgirl. But I knew it was bad, whatever it was, and-- UGH. I just had to get up and turn the light on, even now.
So YEAH. The later films made me happy on one level, relieved that Freddy became funny-scary, but also a little pissed off because HI, that's the Boogeyman, why is he cracking lame jokes? (And don't get me started on my resentment that Jason got most of the kills in Freddy vs Jason.) And Haley rocked my world in Watchmen. I love that he gets that the scariest part of Freddy is both the inescapable aspects of him: you have to sleep, and you have to wake up in a world where there's a potential Freddy around every corner. Now THAT'S fucking scary.