Unk and Aunt John, it's you dear old ghoulish friend, Fiji Mermaid. I've got a Traumafession for you.
After reading a few recent traumafessions I realized as much as I love horror and scary stuff all my life, it's really out of true enjoyment, fun I guess. Rarely… rarely has anything scared me at any age. When it's happened it's quite memorable. The one big and first clear memory of something scaring me was a scene in "Alien" (1979). I was maybe around 9 years old. My dad rented the movie for me on VHS. I definitely was looking forward to seeing it. I knew some things about the movie, but not a whole lot. Basically it was going to be a monster movie that takes place in space. Now a big thing to me was that I knew exactly what the Alien looked like because when I was around 3 years old my parents bought me the know legendary Kenner giant action figure. I loved that toy and played with it until it fell apart. So I was really looking forward to seeing the monster on the silver screen.
All the stuff up to and including when Harry Dean Stanton's character is killed was enjoyable and not scary in the least, but then the next kill is what did it. Dallas going into the ventilation system to hunt down the Alien, when clearly they had no clue what they are up against. Parker did describe it as "big, like a man" sized thing, but still it didn't seem frightening. But when he's in the tubes and everyone is watching the computer screen and the tracking system and he seems to be disoriented really made the tension tight. Being that he was a main character I thought, no way he's going to die, he'll make it out. Right when I thought he'd escape he turns around and the AlIEN reaches out to grab him with a weird scream and feedback over his microphone. The editing, music, performances, visuals… it terrified me. I was literally frozen with fear. I couldn't move, couldn't close my eyes nothing. It took a minute for it to wear off. That scene was a success.
"We found this laying there. No blood, no Dallas, nothing. How come I don't hear anybody say anything?" – Parker
I'll tell you why Parker, nobody is saying anything, because we are frozen with FEAR!!
Even though in my older years, my blogging team and I have included evolved, civilized xenomorph aliens in our weird stories on our blog, I still see Xenomorphs in the shadows sometimes. The unevolved, uncivilized, killing machine kind. They were definitely one of the most effective movie monsters ever made.
Alien was terrifying. Aliens was a fantastic action movie far more than a horror movie. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection? Puke! Neither of those exist. They are simply nightmares resulting from someone eating bad space meat loaf before going into hypersleep.
If you all haven't already, you should take a look at the blog "Some Wonderful Kind of Noise," from a person (currently recovering from a severe accident), who has never seen major pop-culture movies, but has only heard them tangentially quoted at his D&D gaming groups. Anyhow, he saw this movie, and he now refers to it as "That Movie." Ohhh, he is not happy about That Movie, and I think it was in no small part attributed to the fact that he saw it alone, in the dark, and tripping on pain meds.
The blogger, Jeremy, says of it: "Roomie's home. He told me why the movie wasn't on the shelf. Someone let him watch it when he was ten. That person is guilty of child abuse. No part of this movie is appropriate for a ten-year old. No part of this movie is appropriate for a [17-year-old] Jeremy."
This brings up my own memory of poking around the aisles of Kay-Bee Toys when I was nine and being compelled to try the Kenner Alien Movie Viewer. "Pick up and See!" It cajoled, much like a facehugger would to a curious colonist, with similarly devastating results to the psyche. [For an image: see http://technicolordreams70.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/alien-action-figure-1979/ , which also embeds the action figure clip above.]
The blogger is remarkably erudite in his "Second Impression" reviews. Read his First Impressions Liveblog here: http://somewonderfulkindofnoise.blogspot.ca/2014/06/alien-first-impressions.html , and take a look at his Second Impressions Recap here: http://somewonderfulkindofnoise.blogspot.ca/2014/06/alien-second-thoughts.html .