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Horror

So, what is horror? I suppose we only have to look at Nazi Germany; or Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia; or the moors murderers, Brady and Hindley, and on, to understand the true nature of horror, of what real people can do to other real people. The events of 11/09/01 in the USA have added a new dimension to the insane excesses committed by fanatics.

Here, though, we are dealing with fiction, the above carry a wealth of material for the horror writer but are rarely used in the genre, touched upon in war or crime novels but only as an aside, too close to reality I suspect.

Probably, the answer is different for us all. Some like the blood and guts slasher stuff, others, the good ghost story or material drawn from myth and legend, deadly, mythical creatures, but also vampires. Of course, there is just general horror, stuff that falls into the Dennis Wheatley, supernatural type of story.

There are some other works, generally not classified as horror, I'm thinking of, say, the oppression running through works like Metropolis or Orwell's, 1984; and Dystopia dressed as Utopia in Huxley's, Brave New World.

I don't go for the slasher stuff, where horror is measured in body count, measured in a growing mountain of severed heads, limbs, and disembowled torsos, it seems to be all shock and no thought.

For me, the scarriest film is, Quatermass and the Pit, science fiction horror, of course. I first saw the story as a series on BBC as a kid, watched it from behind the settee. Now, when I think about it, it is the scene outside the church that frightens me, the man prostrate and the ground is undulating beneath him. I also feel uncomfortable with the hopelessness of the story, of the notion that mankind was created by aliens who fitted us with a built in wild time when the elites cull the workers, nasty.

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