JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 164 из 359but as she is gradually sapped of strength and lapses first intoshock and then into unconsciousness, the light moves more and more slowly, sinking to the floor. Until there is only dark . . . and in that dark, the tenebrous, whirring flutter of many wings.
I'll not belabor the point by analyzing the "darkness quotient" in all these films, but will close this aspect of the discussion by pointing out that even in those few movies that achieve that feeling of "sunlit horror," there are often feary moments in the dark-Genevieve Bujold's climb up the service ladder and over the operating room in Coma takes place in the dark, as does Ed's (Jon Voight) climb up the bluff near the end of Deliverance . . . not to mention digging up the grave containing the jackal bones in The Omen , and Luana Anders's creepy discovery of the underwater "memorial" to the long-dead little sister in Francis Coppola's first feature film (made for AIP), Dementia-13 .
Still, before leaving the subject entirely, here's a further sampling: Night Must Fall, Night of the Lepus, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, The Black Pit of Dr. M., The Black Sleep, Black Sunday, The Black Room, Black Sabbath, Dark Eyes of London, The Dark, Dead of Night, Night of Terror, Night of the Demon, Nightwing, Night of the Eagle . . . Well, you get it. If there had been no such thing as darkness, the makers of horror movies would have needed to invent it.
10
I have held out mention of one of the films from the quiz, partially because it's the antithesis of many of those we've already discussed-it depends for its horror not upon darkness but upon light-and also because it leads naturally into a brief discussion of something else that the mythic, or "fairy-tale" horror movie will do to us if it can. We all understand about the "gross-out," which is fairly easy to achieve,* but it is only in the horror movies that the gross-out-that most childish of emotional impulses-sometimes achieves the level of art. Now, I can hear some of you say that there is nothing artistic about grossing somebody out-all you really have to do is chew your food and then hang your open mouth in your table-mate's face- but what about the works of Goya? Or Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes and soup cans, for that matter?
Even the very worst horror movies sometimes achieve a moment or two of success on this level. Dennis Etchison, a fine writer in the genre, reminisced fondly with me on the phone one day not too long ago about a brief sequence in The Giant Spider Invasion where a lady drinks her morning hi-potency vitamin cocktail, all unknowing that a rather plump spider fell into the blender just before she turned it on. Yum yum.
I'll not belabor the point by analyzing the "darkness quotient" in all these films, but will close this aspect of the discussion by pointing out that even in those few movies that achieve that feeling of "sunlit horror," there are often feary moments in the dark-Genevieve Bujold's climb up the service ladder and over the operating room in Coma takes place in the dark, as does Ed's (Jon Voight) climb up the bluff near the end of Deliverance . . . not to mention digging up the grave containing the jackal bones in The Omen , and Luana Anders's creepy discovery of the underwater "memorial" to the long-dead little sister in Francis Coppola's first feature film (made for AIP), Dementia-13 .
Still, before leaving the subject entirely, here's a further sampling: Night Must Fall, Night of the Lepus, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, The Black Pit of Dr. M., The Black Sleep, Black Sunday, The Black Room, Black Sabbath, Dark Eyes of London, The Dark, Dead of Night, Night of Terror, Night of the Demon, Nightwing, Night of the Eagle . . . Well, you get it. If there had been no such thing as darkness, the makers of horror movies would have needed to invent it.
10
I have held out mention of one of the films from the quiz, partially because it's the antithesis of many of those we've already discussed-it depends for its horror not upon darkness but upon light-and also because it leads naturally into a brief discussion of something else that the mythic, or "fairy-tale" horror movie will do to us if it can. We all understand about the "gross-out," which is fairly easy to achieve,* but it is only in the horror movies that the gross-out-that most childish of emotional impulses-sometimes achieves the level of art. Now, I can hear some of you say that there is nothing artistic about grossing somebody out-all you really have to do is chew your food and then hang your open mouth in your table-mate's face- but what about the works of Goya? Or Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes and soup cans, for that matter?
Even the very worst horror movies sometimes achieve a moment or two of success on this level. Dennis Etchison, a fine writer in the genre, reminisced fondly with me on the phone one day not too long ago about a brief sequence in The Giant Spider Invasion where a lady drinks her morning hi-potency vitamin cocktail, all unknowing that a rather plump spider fell into the blender just before she turned it on. Yum yum.