Partial Resumption Of Normal Service
....oh sod it, let's give it some of this (which has been printed elsewhere before, but to a comparatively-narrow online audience). What do YOU think?
As an adult, it's easy to look at the World and see the things that
frighten you. In cathartic fictional terms, this translates into a
sure knowledge of why one enjoys horror films, violent thrillers,
paranoid conspiracy tales, whatever. As an adult, I can look at The
Exorcist, and say without a doubt that what frightens me about the
film are the shocking, subliminal assaults of Captain Howdy: the
gruelling sequences of poor Regan being hooked up to spinal taps and
sinister medical apparatus; the sudden shocked fear of Father Karras
as the demon in Miss MacNeil croaks mocking taunts in the voice of a
drunken derelict; and the sure knowledge that Mark Kermode is going to
say that it's the greatest film ever made, bar none, again. When I
watch a Hammer Dracula, I can view with a certain detached,
self-mocking humour, yet still gain a surprising dose of thrill-power
from the obvious Kensington Gore, bared fangs, bloodshot contact
lenses, and screaming, heavy-breasted sacrificial victims that
terrified and jolted me as an innocent teenager, much to my continued
pleasure. I can watch films ranging from the visceral, relentless
terror of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre (hey this could happen to
YOU...dangerous lunatics are very real, and you never know quite where
you'll find them - as Wednesday solemnly comments of her Hallowe'en
costume in Addams Family Values, "I'm a serial killer. We look just
like everybody else"), to the outright ambiguity and un-nerving
chilliness of The Haunting (is it all in my mind? Or did something
just hold my hand in the dark...and if so, then who the hell was it?),
and as well as being unsettled, nervous, maybe even frightened, I can
almost academically analyse and appreciate just how that effect is
being achieved. As an adult, I know what horror films are. And I know
how they do what they do to me.
When you're a young child, it's all a very different matter.
Some years back, the author and critic Anne Bilson wrote a marvellous
piece for the now-defunct Shock Xpress entitled Insidious Little
Globs. Her basic aim was to show that, even as a child being carefully
shielded by forces governmental, parental, or what-have-you from
seeing anything that could lead to a case of sleepless nights and
soiled trousers, the cinema could still quite happily - scratch that,
gleefully - suddenly shove sights in your face in even the most
innocuous U-certificate film that would give you a case of the
screaming ab-dabs. She particularly recalled the sudden appearance, in
the otherwise pleasant enough foreign travelogue/epic saga of Sammy
Going South, of a creepy man with a shockingly blasted, scarred face.
I haven't seen Sammy Going South. But as soon as I read Anne's piece,
the thrill of recognition that ran through me was like a hammer-blow.
Oh my, I most certainly recognised that sensation...
Because, from my earliest memories, I can draw on celluloid-connected
matters that were doubtless quite innocuous in isolation - but which
still gave my childish self a very real attack of the vapours.
My first real cinema-related fears came from the screening of films on
television. As anyone knows, no matter how careful your parents may be
about getting your head down early, sometimes it isn't at easy as all
that. All that it takes is one downstairs trip to ask for a glass of
water late at night, and you may just walk into a slice of fear. So it
was with me when I encountered just the opening caption of a horror
film season, which involved the word HORROR melting down the screen in
the approved drippy, slimy manner, while a discordant, sick-sounding
brass note echoed on the soundtrack. I'm pretty sure that I screamed
my head off, due to the fact that my Dad was on the case and getting
me back up to bed as fast as he could, while sternly pointing out to
me that this was why I was supposed to get to sleep early. He possibly
had a point. In a similar vein, a year or two after, when my
precocious primary school self already knew the titles of some of the
better-known tales of terror, I saw just the opening title slide of
the Spencer Tracy Doctor Jekyll And Mister Hyde on the box. Black and
white, pleasant daylight city street scene, but just those words were
enough to get me back-pedalling out of the living room at high speed.
This carried over into school itself. As end-of-term treats, Dog
Kennel Hill primary school in London used to herd all of the pupils
into the assembly hall and show them a relatively cheap to hire but
suitable piece of film entertainment - I seem to recall an awful lot
of Children's Film Foundation numbers doing the rounds, although even
the likes of Seventy Deadly Pills could cause frissons of alarm there
- so help me, I was worried about swallowing one of those buggers.
What if it got mixed up with my aspirins or something, after somehow
finding its way across the city to my family medicine cabinet by some
arcane sorcery? But, as a very sensitive child, I was deeply afeared
of Doctor Who: and had accordingly gained a basic knowledge of the
sort of things that appeared in the show, for two reasons. One, to
allow me to bluff my way through playgound and classroom conversations
so as not to appear a coward: and two, to be able to recognise the
warning signs. So, when one pre-Christmas holiday afternoon, we all
sat down to watch what looked like an exciting cops-and-robbers
adventure - a kindly-looking young bobby had just been coshed over the
bonce by a couple of thugs who promptly blew up a jeweller's shop
window and made off with the swag, leaving the poor copper hopelessly
running in their wake - my alarm bells started ringing as he suddenly
spotted a police call box. Which was given a highly significant
close-up. That was enough to kick up the sweats. By the time a few
moments later that a swirling tunnel filled the screen, and the word
DALEKS appeared, I was stumbling out of the hall with terrified
urgency, seeking refuge in a deserted classroom and a big pile of TV
21s (the rubbish later ones - Star Trek, amusing strips about comedy
aliens, maybe a half-page black and white Joe 90 strip if you were
lucky) so that the big bad film couldn't come and get me.
But it was Cinema itself, during many holiday matinees and special
treat excursions, that gave me a great many unexpected chills. (A
propos of nothing, it also gave me some severe perplexing - one of the
first films that I saw at my local fleapit was the movie version of
Morris and Goscinny's comic strip, Lucky Luke. As a kid, I couldn't
see that Luke was a piss-take of the perfect Western macho hero. All
that I saw was a boring cretin who could never lose, which kind of
made me lose interest. Ah, the follies of youth.) These chills were
usually met with indifference or even delight by my siblings and any
parental/pseudo-parental presences, and my hysterical reactions to
some of them led to bewildered irritation - technically known as the
"what's so scary about THAT?!" syndrome. I'm slightly embarrassed to
say that the first one of these that I can remember clearly is one
that these days, for all of its undeniable quality, has come to rank
alongside smug maunderings about Spangles or Spacehoppers as
representing The Wrong Kind of Nostalgia almost perfectly. Namely,
Robert Helpmann. As the Child Catcher. In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
In all fairness, it wasn't the evil skipping down the cobbled streets
or sinister whining about treacle tart and lollipops - "all free
today!" - that scared me. No, to me that was pretty funny. And since I
couldn't stand the little brats whom he was out to catch, I was pretty
much on his side. Until we got the huge close-ups of his face. Dear
god, that face. That mis-shapen blade of a nose: those huge, staring
eyes; that deathly-pallid skin; that death-black hat brim overhanging
his eyes like the brow of some Frankenstein's Monster. This wasn't a
man any more. Not a funny man who did for annoying smartarses. This
was a towering demon, probably not out to catch me but more likely
just swallow me whole. Scream, Ken! Scream! I duly did. And my Nan,
understandably a bit peeved, packed me off back home (only five
minutes away) with a key to let myself in and watch telly. It was a
black and white adaptation of Chingachgook, as I recall, which bored
me silly in those days - but was nonetheless therefore a very welcome
sedative.
Next up was a Disney classic. Now, I'd sat through 101 Dalmatians, and
perhaps disturbingly with hindsight had found myself rather fancying
Cruella de Ville - well, as far as a seven-year-old can fancy anyone,
anyway. I'd seen a lot of Disneys, and their villains had never
frightened me - venal butlers with crappy motorcycles, burly idiot
thugs who could be out-smarted by the average protozoa, never mind an
intelligent kid. So it was with an easy heart that I went to see Snow
White And The Seven Dwarfs. One of my Nans had a set of framed
illustrations from this one on her walls, and the pretty girl and the
funny little men with huge noses and beards didn't seem the stuff of
nightmares - and they weren't. And nor, come to that, was the Wicked
Queen - either as herself, or as the Mister Hyde-like Witch. No: what
got me this time came out of nowhere. In every version of the tale
that I'd otherwise seen, the magic mirror had been an innocuous, even
a beautiful little bauble of a thing - much like any mirror that could
have been found on a hallway wall anywhere, except maybe with some
more jewels and gold on the frame and some optional tinkly music. But
Walt - the bastard - decided to take a much nastier route. Imagine a
glass easily two or three times the height of a tall grown-up. Then
imagine it in a dark, gloomy chamber thick with incense fog. Then
imagine it having a booming voice, echoing like a malevolent fog-horn.
And then, imagine it having a face. A vague, hollow-eyed face. A
gargantuan visage of cold terror. This supernatural vision had been
created for one purpose only: to give me the shits something chronic.
I was cringing in my seat, hoping that those immense, blank eyes
couldn't see me. Somewhere a way away in the stalls, I could hear an
unfortunate younger child sobbing and screaming unashamedly. What had
happened to the happy ending? It was a long, long way off...
However...for real unexpected shudders...it took a cinema icon to show
me the light. James Bond, 007, to be exact. Or, in all fairness,
various of the unfortunate thugs, henchmen, and master villains that
he ended up bumping off. The first Bond that I saw in a cinema was
Goldfinger, being shown in 1973 a few weeks before the release of Live
And Let Die. And, thanks to some friends of the family, I got to see
them both in rapid succession.
Goldfinger didn't scare me, just exhilarate me - apart, that is, from
one brief moment. The unfortunate Mexican who gets dumped into an
electrified bath-tub in the pre-credits sequence. It didn't matter
that Connery made a funny afterwards. It didn't matter that the actual
electrocution was a couple of seconds long at most. For me, it felt a
lot longer. The abrupt death-scream seemed to echo for about half a
minute. The discreet thrashing became outright flailing, I could hear
the frying, sizzling sounds...smell the smoke and charred flesh...a
quick piece of throwaway action was turned by my fevered imagination
into Grand Guignol gruesomeness. And for some reason, ever since, I've
always had a certain amount of sympathy for the poor, put-upon henchman.
But that was as nothing next to Live And Let Die. Sure, the thrills
were there: as was - all too briefly - the marvellous Madeline Smith,
even if I didn't really appreciate her mightily-breasted,
porcelain-doll-faced charms until much later in life (she was still
easily better than Jane Seymour). But so was the fear. Bizarre and
unusual ways of death - ways that just felt plain WRONG - were there
from the opening seconds. The UN delegate who dies a vile, private
death as a killing sound blasts through his translation
head-phones...the unfortunate besuited cove on a tropical island who
suddenly finds his cheek becoming the home for a bite from a
deadly-poisonous snake, brandished by a wildly-laughing witch
doctor...and the opening credits didn't make things better. Oh, sure,
they tried to soothe my nerves with Wacky Macca Thumbs Aloft doing
some soothing singing over a reassuringly gentle melody as semi-clad
fillies gyrated. But then...we got a big close-up on one beautiful
face...and on cue, it erupted into a flame-shrouded skull as the music
exploded violently. Shit!
After that, the thrills took over...until the climax. In short order:
Baron Samedi has the top of his head blown off, his eyes rolling
grotesquely upwards before being revealed as a robot: shortly after
which, the real Baron falls into a coffin filled with deadly poisonous
snakes, its lid slamming shut on his hideously cut-off scream; and
then ho for Mister Big's underground grotto lair. As he gloatingly
sliced into Rodgy's bared forearm, there was a real queasiness to the
deed, heightened by the significant close-up of blood dripping into
the water to attract woefully-ineffectual sharks (should've got
piranhas...). But Mister Big's subsequent gas-pellet-assisted demise,
again, got re-written heavily by that wonderful thing, the imagination
of an hysterical child. When I saw the film later in life, his death
did seem properly ridiculous - an obvious inflated dummy with
comically-big goggling eyes hurtling ceilingward to the accompaniment
of a loud farting noise, before blowing up in a puff of rubbery
scraps...but my childhood memory saw him rising slowly, almost
stately, towards his doom - visibly inflating as he went - and his
eyes gruesomely rolled back to the whites in his head: as well as the
explosion being a rushing cloud of blood and guts in my mind's eye.
And even then, the damn film hadn't done with me. Baron Samedi was
DEAD! I'd SEEN him die! So why was he sitting cool as you please on
the front of a speeding train, raising his hat in a mocking salute
right at me and laughing fit to, well, raise the dead?...I wanted the
lights on before going to sleep that night.
Doubtless there were more, but those are the ones that really stick in
my nervous mind. Even the "proof" of screenings in later years can't
disprove them. Someone clearly realised just how terrifying they were,
and carefully toned them down to prevent heart failure in children
made of less stern stuff than I was.
I'm older now...wiser...harder to scare...but those insidious little
globs always lurk in my mind. Ready to jump out in my face whenever I
forget about them.
As an adult, it's easy to look at the World and see the things that
frighten you. In cathartic fictional terms, this translates into a
sure knowledge of why one enjoys horror films, violent thrillers,
paranoid conspiracy tales, whatever. As an adult, I can look at The
Exorcist, and say without a doubt that what frightens me about the
film are the shocking, subliminal assaults of Captain Howdy: the
gruelling sequences of poor Regan being hooked up to spinal taps and
sinister medical apparatus; the sudden shocked fear of Father Karras
as the demon in Miss MacNeil croaks mocking taunts in the voice of a
drunken derelict; and the sure knowledge that Mark Kermode is going to
say that it's the greatest film ever made, bar none, again. When I
watch a Hammer Dracula, I can view with a certain detached,
self-mocking humour, yet still gain a surprising dose of thrill-power
from the obvious Kensington Gore, bared fangs, bloodshot contact
lenses, and screaming, heavy-breasted sacrificial victims that
terrified and jolted me as an innocent teenager, much to my continued
pleasure. I can watch films ranging from the visceral, relentless
terror of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre (hey this could happen to
YOU...dangerous lunatics are very real, and you never know quite where
you'll find them - as Wednesday solemnly comments of her Hallowe'en
costume in Addams Family Values, "I'm a serial killer. We look just
like everybody else"), to the outright ambiguity and un-nerving
chilliness of The Haunting (is it all in my mind? Or did something
just hold my hand in the dark...and if so, then who the hell was it?),
and as well as being unsettled, nervous, maybe even frightened, I can
almost academically analyse and appreciate just how that effect is
being achieved. As an adult, I know what horror films are. And I know
how they do what they do to me.
When you're a young child, it's all a very different matter.
Some years back, the author and critic Anne Bilson wrote a marvellous
piece for the now-defunct Shock Xpress entitled Insidious Little
Globs. Her basic aim was to show that, even as a child being carefully
shielded by forces governmental, parental, or what-have-you from
seeing anything that could lead to a case of sleepless nights and
soiled trousers, the cinema could still quite happily - scratch that,
gleefully - suddenly shove sights in your face in even the most
innocuous U-certificate film that would give you a case of the
screaming ab-dabs. She particularly recalled the sudden appearance, in
the otherwise pleasant enough foreign travelogue/epic saga of Sammy
Going South, of a creepy man with a shockingly blasted, scarred face.
I haven't seen Sammy Going South. But as soon as I read Anne's piece,
the thrill of recognition that ran through me was like a hammer-blow.
Oh my, I most certainly recognised that sensation...
Because, from my earliest memories, I can draw on celluloid-connected
matters that were doubtless quite innocuous in isolation - but which
still gave my childish self a very real attack of the vapours.
My first real cinema-related fears came from the screening of films on
television. As anyone knows, no matter how careful your parents may be
about getting your head down early, sometimes it isn't at easy as all
that. All that it takes is one downstairs trip to ask for a glass of
water late at night, and you may just walk into a slice of fear. So it
was with me when I encountered just the opening caption of a horror
film season, which involved the word HORROR melting down the screen in
the approved drippy, slimy manner, while a discordant, sick-sounding
brass note echoed on the soundtrack. I'm pretty sure that I screamed
my head off, due to the fact that my Dad was on the case and getting
me back up to bed as fast as he could, while sternly pointing out to
me that this was why I was supposed to get to sleep early. He possibly
had a point. In a similar vein, a year or two after, when my
precocious primary school self already knew the titles of some of the
better-known tales of terror, I saw just the opening title slide of
the Spencer Tracy Doctor Jekyll And Mister Hyde on the box. Black and
white, pleasant daylight city street scene, but just those words were
enough to get me back-pedalling out of the living room at high speed.
This carried over into school itself. As end-of-term treats, Dog
Kennel Hill primary school in London used to herd all of the pupils
into the assembly hall and show them a relatively cheap to hire but
suitable piece of film entertainment - I seem to recall an awful lot
of Children's Film Foundation numbers doing the rounds, although even
the likes of Seventy Deadly Pills could cause frissons of alarm there
- so help me, I was worried about swallowing one of those buggers.
What if it got mixed up with my aspirins or something, after somehow
finding its way across the city to my family medicine cabinet by some
arcane sorcery? But, as a very sensitive child, I was deeply afeared
of Doctor Who: and had accordingly gained a basic knowledge of the
sort of things that appeared in the show, for two reasons. One, to
allow me to bluff my way through playgound and classroom conversations
so as not to appear a coward: and two, to be able to recognise the
warning signs. So, when one pre-Christmas holiday afternoon, we all
sat down to watch what looked like an exciting cops-and-robbers
adventure - a kindly-looking young bobby had just been coshed over the
bonce by a couple of thugs who promptly blew up a jeweller's shop
window and made off with the swag, leaving the poor copper hopelessly
running in their wake - my alarm bells started ringing as he suddenly
spotted a police call box. Which was given a highly significant
close-up. That was enough to kick up the sweats. By the time a few
moments later that a swirling tunnel filled the screen, and the word
DALEKS appeared, I was stumbling out of the hall with terrified
urgency, seeking refuge in a deserted classroom and a big pile of TV
21s (the rubbish later ones - Star Trek, amusing strips about comedy
aliens, maybe a half-page black and white Joe 90 strip if you were
lucky) so that the big bad film couldn't come and get me.
But it was Cinema itself, during many holiday matinees and special
treat excursions, that gave me a great many unexpected chills. (A
propos of nothing, it also gave me some severe perplexing - one of the
first films that I saw at my local fleapit was the movie version of
Morris and Goscinny's comic strip, Lucky Luke. As a kid, I couldn't
see that Luke was a piss-take of the perfect Western macho hero. All
that I saw was a boring cretin who could never lose, which kind of
made me lose interest. Ah, the follies of youth.) These chills were
usually met with indifference or even delight by my siblings and any
parental/pseudo-parental presences, and my hysterical reactions to
some of them led to bewildered irritation - technically known as the
"what's so scary about THAT?!" syndrome. I'm slightly embarrassed to
say that the first one of these that I can remember clearly is one
that these days, for all of its undeniable quality, has come to rank
alongside smug maunderings about Spangles or Spacehoppers as
representing The Wrong Kind of Nostalgia almost perfectly. Namely,
Robert Helpmann. As the Child Catcher. In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
In all fairness, it wasn't the evil skipping down the cobbled streets
or sinister whining about treacle tart and lollipops - "all free
today!" - that scared me. No, to me that was pretty funny. And since I
couldn't stand the little brats whom he was out to catch, I was pretty
much on his side. Until we got the huge close-ups of his face. Dear
god, that face. That mis-shapen blade of a nose: those huge, staring
eyes; that deathly-pallid skin; that death-black hat brim overhanging
his eyes like the brow of some Frankenstein's Monster. This wasn't a
man any more. Not a funny man who did for annoying smartarses. This
was a towering demon, probably not out to catch me but more likely
just swallow me whole. Scream, Ken! Scream! I duly did. And my Nan,
understandably a bit peeved, packed me off back home (only five
minutes away) with a key to let myself in and watch telly. It was a
black and white adaptation of Chingachgook, as I recall, which bored
me silly in those days - but was nonetheless therefore a very welcome
sedative.
Next up was a Disney classic. Now, I'd sat through 101 Dalmatians, and
perhaps disturbingly with hindsight had found myself rather fancying
Cruella de Ville - well, as far as a seven-year-old can fancy anyone,
anyway. I'd seen a lot of Disneys, and their villains had never
frightened me - venal butlers with crappy motorcycles, burly idiot
thugs who could be out-smarted by the average protozoa, never mind an
intelligent kid. So it was with an easy heart that I went to see Snow
White And The Seven Dwarfs. One of my Nans had a set of framed
illustrations from this one on her walls, and the pretty girl and the
funny little men with huge noses and beards didn't seem the stuff of
nightmares - and they weren't. And nor, come to that, was the Wicked
Queen - either as herself, or as the Mister Hyde-like Witch. No: what
got me this time came out of nowhere. In every version of the tale
that I'd otherwise seen, the magic mirror had been an innocuous, even
a beautiful little bauble of a thing - much like any mirror that could
have been found on a hallway wall anywhere, except maybe with some
more jewels and gold on the frame and some optional tinkly music. But
Walt - the bastard - decided to take a much nastier route. Imagine a
glass easily two or three times the height of a tall grown-up. Then
imagine it in a dark, gloomy chamber thick with incense fog. Then
imagine it having a booming voice, echoing like a malevolent fog-horn.
And then, imagine it having a face. A vague, hollow-eyed face. A
gargantuan visage of cold terror. This supernatural vision had been
created for one purpose only: to give me the shits something chronic.
I was cringing in my seat, hoping that those immense, blank eyes
couldn't see me. Somewhere a way away in the stalls, I could hear an
unfortunate younger child sobbing and screaming unashamedly. What had
happened to the happy ending? It was a long, long way off...
However...for real unexpected shudders...it took a cinema icon to show
me the light. James Bond, 007, to be exact. Or, in all fairness,
various of the unfortunate thugs, henchmen, and master villains that
he ended up bumping off. The first Bond that I saw in a cinema was
Goldfinger, being shown in 1973 a few weeks before the release of Live
And Let Die. And, thanks to some friends of the family, I got to see
them both in rapid succession.
Goldfinger didn't scare me, just exhilarate me - apart, that is, from
one brief moment. The unfortunate Mexican who gets dumped into an
electrified bath-tub in the pre-credits sequence. It didn't matter
that Connery made a funny afterwards. It didn't matter that the actual
electrocution was a couple of seconds long at most. For me, it felt a
lot longer. The abrupt death-scream seemed to echo for about half a
minute. The discreet thrashing became outright flailing, I could hear
the frying, sizzling sounds...smell the smoke and charred flesh...a
quick piece of throwaway action was turned by my fevered imagination
into Grand Guignol gruesomeness. And for some reason, ever since, I've
always had a certain amount of sympathy for the poor, put-upon henchman.
But that was as nothing next to Live And Let Die. Sure, the thrills
were there: as was - all too briefly - the marvellous Madeline Smith,
even if I didn't really appreciate her mightily-breasted,
porcelain-doll-faced charms until much later in life (she was still
easily better than Jane Seymour). But so was the fear. Bizarre and
unusual ways of death - ways that just felt plain WRONG - were there
from the opening seconds. The UN delegate who dies a vile, private
death as a killing sound blasts through his translation
head-phones...the unfortunate besuited cove on a tropical island who
suddenly finds his cheek becoming the home for a bite from a
deadly-poisonous snake, brandished by a wildly-laughing witch
doctor...and the opening credits didn't make things better. Oh, sure,
they tried to soothe my nerves with Wacky Macca Thumbs Aloft doing
some soothing singing over a reassuringly gentle melody as semi-clad
fillies gyrated. But then...we got a big close-up on one beautiful
face...and on cue, it erupted into a flame-shrouded skull as the music
exploded violently. Shit!
After that, the thrills took over...until the climax. In short order:
Baron Samedi has the top of his head blown off, his eyes rolling
grotesquely upwards before being revealed as a robot: shortly after
which, the real Baron falls into a coffin filled with deadly poisonous
snakes, its lid slamming shut on his hideously cut-off scream; and
then ho for Mister Big's underground grotto lair. As he gloatingly
sliced into Rodgy's bared forearm, there was a real queasiness to the
deed, heightened by the significant close-up of blood dripping into
the water to attract woefully-ineffectual sharks (should've got
piranhas...). But Mister Big's subsequent gas-pellet-assisted demise,
again, got re-written heavily by that wonderful thing, the imagination
of an hysterical child. When I saw the film later in life, his death
did seem properly ridiculous - an obvious inflated dummy with
comically-big goggling eyes hurtling ceilingward to the accompaniment
of a loud farting noise, before blowing up in a puff of rubbery
scraps...but my childhood memory saw him rising slowly, almost
stately, towards his doom - visibly inflating as he went - and his
eyes gruesomely rolled back to the whites in his head: as well as the
explosion being a rushing cloud of blood and guts in my mind's eye.
And even then, the damn film hadn't done with me. Baron Samedi was
DEAD! I'd SEEN him die! So why was he sitting cool as you please on
the front of a speeding train, raising his hat in a mocking salute
right at me and laughing fit to, well, raise the dead?...I wanted the
lights on before going to sleep that night.
Doubtless there were more, but those are the ones that really stick in
my nervous mind. Even the "proof" of screenings in later years can't
disprove them. Someone clearly realised just how terrifying they were,
and carefully toned them down to prevent heart failure in children
made of less stern stuff than I was.
I'm older now...wiser...harder to scare...but those insidious little
globs always lurk in my mind. Ready to jump out in my face whenever I
forget about them.