I hate going to see horror movies at the theater within the first couple of weeks of release. hate hate hate. Generally, the crowds they attract are younger people with no respect for the cinematic experience, who carry on cell phone conversations, who read out loud everything in print on the screen (yet complain at subtitles.)
But what pulls me out of the movie the most is when something horrifying appears on screen and it gets a laugh. Now I can see where you may laugh at yourself for getting scared. I know I’ve laughed myself silly after a particulary hair-raising rollercoaster, thanks to excess adrinaline(sp?) needing a way to work its way out of my system. But these people are laughing at the actual scene itself. Has this always been the case? Are kids just too jaded these days?
My opinion about the jaded part. My experience is that a lot of the horror has been done, in that there aren’t a lot of new concepts left, or at least that have been explored recently. Possession - The Exorcist, Witchboard; Crazy Guy(s) in secluded area - Psycho, The Shining, The Hills Have Eyes; Zombies - Romero; Evil Incarnate - Omen, Hell Raiser; Monsters - The Blob, The Thing, Dracula; etc.
One can only watch those movies for the first time once, and once the concept is out there, it isn’t usually improved upon these days. I watch horror to be scared, but find I ignore a lot of what is available now, for that reason. I thought there’s been a shift from horror = scary, to horror = funny, for quite awhile now. The first Pet Sematary compared to the second, any of the Nightmare on Elm Streets after the first, the sequels to the original Evil Dead. I liked The Ring, but for the most part, if I want to see a scary horror film, I go back and try to rent things I haven’t seen. There’s usually a Rosemary’s Baby or Bad Seed out there I’ve missed, if I look long enough.
I’ve never seen a horror film that I didn’t find laughably ridiculous. But then, I guess I don’t spend money going to see a genre I have no interest in, which isn’t the case in the OP.
I once read - I think it was Desmond Morris, of The Naked Ape fame - an explanation of this phenomenon as the result of the conflict created between appearance and reality. You are watching scenes that are designed to frighten and horrify you, and yet you are sitting in a comfortable, safe movie theatre. The stimulae you are receiving are telling you to be frightened, but the reality is that there is no need to be, and so the fear gets suppressed. In some people, the suppression is not complete, and is expressed in laughter.
In a different situation, we have all experienced the “nervous laughter” phenomenon, which I seem to recall is a similar process…
The only time I have ever been requested to leave any establishment is once back in the early '80s when I went with a friend to see some horror flick, possibly one of the “Friday The 13th” series. We both found it to be so unbelievably stupid that we couldn’t help but laugh. Not uproariously, or even obnoxiously, but we were definitely unable to contain ourselves. So they kicked us out.
I have no interest in that genre, either, but geez, how can anybody take it seriously enough to be frightened by it? I must have been absent on the day when that was taught.
Admitted laugher here. Been doing it for some twenty odd years. It is my reaction to gruesome or frightening scenes. Not because I find them funny or that I’m jaded it is my own natural reaction to prevent me from screaming. I do the same on roller coaster rides too. The excitment of the moment makes me laugh hysterically. I don’t mean to ruin others experience it’s an automatic pavlovian response. It may be true of others not all of course.
I’ve seen this happen in live theatre too - people laugh at scary or horrifying scenes. I think it really is just human nature. Adrenaline turns on our fight-or-flight response, but reason says neither of those things are necessary. Sort of a cognative dissonance that brings on the nervous laughter.
I don’t laugh at horror movies because I’m jaded or prevent me from being scared. I do it because most horror movies now are so badly produced you can’t help but laugh at how bad they are. “Jason Goes to Hell” and “Jason Takes Manhattan” as well as any movie on the Sci-Fi being prime examples. I’m pretty sure the producer and writer just phoned those in while the director was drunk.
Well, are you talking about horror movies, or slasher movies?
Slasher movies are supposed to be startling, but not really scary. They make the later Vincent Price movies movies look like horror classics.
I think color has a lot to do with it; great horror movies are black and white. Color just does not allow for the same ominous atmosphere. Those few good horror scenes made in color actually have very little color in them.
I remember the last time I was actually scared by a movie. I was recovering from an illness and wasn’t quite there.
The movie was (i think) Ghost Story. It involved a cast of old coots who murdered a woman in their youth. The ghost of the woman returned and had sex with one of the children of the coots.
The line “dont you want to know what you have touched?” and the womans flesh sloughing off like overboiled chicken creeped me out for days. I honestly couldn’t sleep that night.
I think things can get into your head and creep you out but once you’ve seen it it doesn’t work any more. I rented the movie for my wife and we both yawned at it. Familiarity breeds contempt. Thats what I think we are laughing at.
My mom says she went to see the original King Kong in a movie theater with her older sister–it was released in 1933–and she couldn’t stop laughing because it was so stupid. Her sister got really mad at her.
