The Real World Fears Behind 8 Popular Movie Monsters
Whether she's playing a drunk girl, an obnoxious co-worker or a reluctant would-be porn star, Eliza Skinner's performances are always 100% committed; authentic to the point of making you uncomfortable. Despite all that talent, she spends her spare time geeking out on her blog. We asked her to fill in for us this Saturday, so we could spend the day dyeing our underwear red in anticipation of the new Superman reboot. For some reason she agreed to do it.
Popular movies reflect society's fears. In the 1970s everyone was scared of the monolithic Soviets, so the bad guys in Star Wars were the evil Empire. In the late 1990s technophobes and Y2K gave us the Matrix.
Likewise, horror movie monsters reveal our true anxieties. I am qualified to do this because I have a BA in Media Studies and a blog, so, you know, I'm pretty much an expert in whatever I want. So let's see what you're REALLY afraid of when you're afraid of ...
#8.
The Monster: Zombies
What You're Really Scared Of: People
At first glance, modern zombie movies seem to be about a fear of disease - most of them feature the "infected" type of zombies, not the "crawled out of a grave to dance with Michael Jackson" type. But the really threatening thing about zombies isn't their crazy diseased eyeballs, it's their sheer numbers.
Likewise, any scientist will tell you our biggest problem isn't Bird Flu - it's overpopulation. Humans - especially stupid humans - are making way too many babies, and it's starting to get crowded in here. Instead of a desolate wasteland, the Apocalypse will look like the day after Thanksgiving at the mall. Which is exactly what most zombie movies look like: hordes of other goddamn people mindlessly swarming everywhere. Hordes of people are scary!
Stop having so many babies, dum-dums. They're just going to end up being zombies.
#7.
The Monster: Pennywise the Clown
What You're Really Scared Of: Perverts.
Pennywise is the razor-toothed clown terrorizing the children -- and later, their adult counterparts -- in Stephen King's It. I know what you're thinking: "Duh. Pennywise is scary because clowns are scary." Really -- you're scared of clowns? The guys that ride tiny bicycles and can't figure out the difference between water and confetti? The folks with the crazy hair and an inability to correctly size their shoes? BULLSHIT.
Stephen King made clowns scary, and he did it by turning one into a child molester. Clowns don't try to lure you away with candy so they can do awful things to your body -- child molesters do, and that is what makes Pennywise scary.
#6.
The Monster: Chucky
What You're Really Scared Of: Babies
It would be wrong to make a movie about the horror of giving birth to a deformed baby, because it would be wrong to admit that people are terrified of that. So instead, here's a movie about having a normal kid who gets a monster babydoll that just won't leave! But make no mistake, Chucky is your baby, and he is the most nightmarish version imaginable -- ugly, murderous, and sexual.
The idea of a child's toy totally deformed. Also, much like a real child, Chucky wants to take over his owner's life and kill his soul. Child's Play is the junction of scary baby/pregnancy movies (Rosemary's Baby, It's Alive, The Brood, etc.) and little monsters (Critters, Troll, Puppetmaster, etc.) all of which tap into fears about parenthood, childbirth, and -- if you are a man -- things relating to vaginas. Spooky vaginas!
#5.
The Monster: The Grudge
What You're Really Scared Of: Foreigners
This stringy-haired wet lady is hard to understand. She REALLY wants to talk -- she even uses the phone a few times -- but her speech sounds to us like "ching chong ching chong!" Oop, I mean it sounds like "ggguuuhuhgghghhh". The vulnerability associated with being submerged in a foreign culture can be scary, but it's hard to address without being racist.
The girl from The Grudge acts and sounds totally opposite from the way normal humans do -- she floats on ceilings and occasionally lives underwater! You can't understand a thing she says! And you can probably guess which way her vagina goes. The original Japanese version had more to do with viruses and disease, which to a US audience clearly isn't as scary as Japanese people.
#4.
The Monster: Vampires
What You're Really Scared Of: *Trick Question, Vampires are NOT Scary*
Don't lie. No one is scared of Vampires anymore. Vampires haven't been scary since 1994.
Nothing scary about this.
What was once a vicious blood sucking monster has become a romantic character conflicted because the strength of his kiss will surely kill the woman he wants to love. Anne Rice cut the balls off of Vampires. They are now imaginary gay boyfriends for goth girls.
#3.
The Monster: Leatherface
What You're Really Scared Of: Old Timey Executioners and Your Guilty Conscience
On the one hand, it's easy to find a reason to be scared of a retarded guy with a chainsaw. But there is an extra level of menace in Leatherface (or Michael Meyers, or Jason, or the guy from Jeepers Creepers) because he is wearing a mask. These guys are executioners, punishing their victims for their sins. Even when they have no apparent sins, they probably at least listen to rock music or want to have sex. Close enough!
The mask and the mental disability both cripple the ability to feel or communicate empathy. No matter what you do, Leatherface is not going to look sad, or happy, or anything -- he's not angry, he's just going to kill you. And deep down, you know the real reason you can't stop it is because you deserve it.
#2.
The Monster: Everything in Hellraiser
What You're Really Scared Of: Sex/Herpes
This whole movie is about how sex will drive you crazy -- either you'll get so into it that you travel to an alternate dimension looking for even more painful sex, or you'll get so addicted to one dude's zombie dick that you'll kill people just to put some skin back on it. More specifically, a lot of the monsters in Hellraiser look like personified stages of herpes.
You've got an open sore in the attic, eating people for parts, and then there's the angry genital blister running around trying to snatch a virgin. Sex is gruesome! P.S., Your parents are doing it.
#1.
The Monster: The Thing
What You're Really Scared Of: Messed up, Scary-ass Shit.
Sometimes there doesn't have to be a secret deeper level -- this is just fucking scary.
Check out more from Eliza at ElizaSkinner.net.
Yah Twilight ripped the balls of vampires but common, ya gotta admitt that Jennifer's Body gave them back. Wait she's kinda more of a Succubus but ya get the point. And The Thing is pretty awesome it looks like an angry fat nerd.
ReplyThe balls were already ripped off long before Twilight was a thing. Hence the Anne Rice remark. Right there in the article.
I'm 21 and I still had to scroll quickly past the screenshot of Chucky. Still freakin scary
ReplyWow...Seriously I didn't think there were other people who had a fear or somewhat of a fear of zombies. My friends always make fun of me about it and I try to play it off but they seriously scare me. Now that I've read the comments, it would make sense that zombies scare me because of how they attack people and what they are. Many times I've had nightmares that would end with me being trapped and surrounded by zombies; I guess that would relate to me feeling out of control and overwhelmed. I feel a bit more okay with my fear, I suppose. Cracked is awesome Haha.
ReplyThis article was way off base. Hellraiser- before it was run into the ground- was scary because, frankly, everyone has a fear of being slowly tortured. The earlier entries were scary because of this, everyone tortured and killed one by one. Subtler things as well, such as Pinhead's twisted intelligence, or his minions being ex- victims. Being tortured and slowly killed- or worse- is way scarier than sex.
Reply"Ching chong ching chong?" Seriously? Trying to point out racism by being racist? And by rationalizing thats its unavoidable? Its supposed to be funny because, what, you said "oops"?
ReplyCome on Cracked, you're way cooler than this.
I understand why you found that offensive but honestly I think you're supposed to. She was pointing out how easy it is for your mind to immediately think negatively of what you don't understand and the "ching chong" joke can really be made on any language or accent but to most Americans, Japanese culture is very different from ours and makes little sense when compared to what you know.
Clowns are wearing masks, the bright garish color, the strange elongated smile, those shoes, ugh, just no! It's just creepy, I don't like it. You did show Tim Curry, who played Pennywise, the best evil clown ever IMO. I used to be scared of vamps, now, I pity them. Lol
ReplyI know it's a humor article, but you're kinda like, way off base with most of these.
ReplyMy number one fear in the entire world is Zombies. I'm not afraid of their sheer numbers, I'm afraid of the helplessness of being in a world filled with infected and not having anything to do about it. Sure, the sheer numbers are scary, but the feeling of doomed helplessness is the number one reason Zombies are the most scary.
I was scared of Chucky because I was afraid my toys were going to come to life and kill me. I'm pretty sure that's what Chucky was all about.
Also, I know so many people that are legit afraid of clowns. They're afraid of the makeup, the person, the weird horns they honk, the fact they can juggle, everything about clowns. The thought that the clown might be a pedophile doesn't cross their mind because most of them are mid twenties. A few of them haven't even seen Stephen King's 'It'.
I won't go more into details through every single one of yours, but seriously, you're like, really off base. I'm surprised this article was even approved.
I think you're right about fear of infection. I think we may not realize how much we fear infectious disease on a visceral level, since we haven't worried about it much intellectually for a few generations, what with vaccines for smallpox and polio, and antibiotics for scarlet fever and TB. Just watch how hard it is to get parents worked up over the idea of their children getting the measles anymore. People skip vaccinations just to be badass rebels, because they don't think they really have anything to worry about.
However, if you were around in the mid-1980s, when people had figured out that the cause of AIDS was infectious, but no one had any idea otherwise what it was. Children with HIV had to sue to be allowed to go to school, and there was even talk about quarantines. People got fired when their HIV status became known, and in the rare instance where they weren't fired, they had to do things like use disposable utensils in the cafeteria at work, and weren't allowed to use the water fountain. People were afraid to shake their hands. People would do things like stop going to their church if they found out a parishioner was HIV+.
So that fear is there, waiting to bubble up as soon as we have something we don't recognize, or that feels overwhelming.
I thought I was the only one with the fear of zombies! Every time I tried to explain it to my friends, I could never think of the right words to break it down for them but what you said is basically how I feel.
Actually I am scared of clowns, but that's more fear of not knowing than fear of tiny bicycles.
ReplyI always thought zombies were scary because they kept coming at you, and you couldn't talk to them. They're people, but people without reason or language. It's pretty much the same reason the idea of being dropped off in a foreign country where you don't speak the language at all, and don't know anything about the culture, is scary. The reason the POV character in the US version of The Grudge didn't speak Japanese, and hadn't exactly decided on her own to go to Japan, but it had just sort of happened to her, is in that situation, is that it makes it scarier. It's like being alone in the cabin in the woods with the ghost, and no phone. There are people around, but they can't help you, because you can't tell them you are in trouble.
ReplyRoman Polanski made a movie called Frantic with Harrison Ford, where he's a businessman who travels to France with his wife. She disappears. He has to look for her, and what makes it scary, aside from the whole "My gawd, did Charles Manson murder my wife, and what did he do with the body?" aspect, is that he doesn't speak French, but his wife does. The plan for the trip was that she would interpret for him. When she disappears, he doesn't even know how or where to get help.
Clowns are scary. I am on record as declaring this at the Ringling Bros. circus in 1975. The movie It had not been made. I don't know whether the book had been written, but I had not read it (I was 8). Clowns are scary.
I f*****g love The Thing
ReplyMe too. That prequel didnt suck half as bad as I thought, but it wasn't as good as the original.
An I the only one that squealed at the picture next to the Grudge at #5?
ReplyAnd I've seen the japanese grudge, to me it wasn't that scary. But still a bilion times better than the remake.
Are...these meant to be legitimate reasons why people are scared of the above? I was kind of getting the feeling all that was just meant to be creative reasoning and not really meant to actually analyze the real reason.
ReplyMany of these are scary for similar reasons; they're mockeries of humanity. They have the appearance of a human being, but in reality there's nothing human about them. but instead they're the exact opposite. They take the familiarity of humanity and being around others and twist it into something sinister and dangerous.
On a related note, I'm not sure if it's the case, but I believe almost all of the above fall into the 'uncanny valley', as is often talked about on cracked. These things are meant to look human in nature, but they act in such an alien fashion that it sets off alarms in one's head that there's something wrong and they're to be avoided. I'm guessing that probably evolved as a form of disease prevention and safety measure against the physically and/or mentally ill, but that's the reason things like dolls are so unsettling; they're made to look human, but don't fully look the part and don't act the part. There's a reason some of the absolute scariest entities are perversions of humanity.
Also, as someone said further down, animals are naturally afraid of dead and dismembered creatures, especially of their own species. Corpses are full of disease, and if they're dead and ripped apart there's a good chance whatever did that to them is still around. That results in us being afraid of dead people, and then on top of it movies make those dead people actually dangerous, which only further plays on those fears.
Of course that's just the base of what makes a monster scary in my mind. Each one still has its own nuances that make it scary in its own way, it's just usually it uses familiarity and comfort as a stepping stone to turn that upside down and make it scary. Zombies and vampires do it through converting those around you into hostile bloodthirsty beasts, pennywise (IT) does it by taking the form of one's greatest fear and taking the shape of people's loved ones he's consumed to fool and lure others (which is why IT preys on children allegedly; their fears are usually more concrete than adults'), child's play/chucky does it by taking a normally mundane, innocent (albeit creepy) inanimate object and turning it into something hostile and dangerous, etc.
So pyramid head is the same as Jason voorhees. Interesting
ReplyBabies are scary. And ugly.
Reply:|
But yeah, zombies are only scary because humans have over-populated, and yet people still want to believe that we haven't.
No, zombies are scary to me because they represent mindless, numbing conformity to the herd. As well, that me, like everyone else, thinks they are truly different and special and don't want to be a conformist. In short, life is vexing.
There's a reason for #1. D.O. Hebb did a study on chimp reactions to certain stimuli, and found that being shown a dead or dismembered chimp scared them more than anything else. Among other things, he concluded that seeing what is basically a member of your species, but mutilated or horribly changed causes you to s**t your pants harder and faster than anything else.
ReplySimilar reasoning with the clown. You know that it's a person...but humor and fear straddle a common line through disgust, so when paint etc...is piled on trying to be funny, it just looks so NOT RIGHT to your brain it becomes scary as s**t, because it just SHOULDN'T LOOK LIKE THAT. Then your brain fills in the rest with nightmares.
Sex and fear straddle the same kind of line through violence. Having something sexual or an outright sex scene makes you pay more attention, heart beat increases, etc...and then shock and awe by replacing boobies with blood.
Boobies and blood, I would've liked to have been involved in that study.
f**k that. I am scared of clowns because they ARE f*****g scary. Ive never even seen It, so theres no reason I would be afraid of them thinking they are child molesters. Im afraid of them because their f*****g creepy, and scary. f**k CLOWNS!!!!!
ReplyEr, what is scary about them? Seriously, it's a freak with multicolored crap on his face and weird hair. Not much different from goths and gay people. Both of which you've surely run into.
The Monster: Clowns
ReplyWhat You're Really Scared Of: Clowns.
End of story. Clowns are created in the bowels of hell out of pure evil and they feed on your hopes and aspirations and puppies and are probably the ones make sure nothing you throw at a garbage bin, no matter how close it might be, will ever actually fall into the garbage bin.
Seriously though, f**k clowns.
Ok, Pennywise is a shapeshifter, he has appeared as a werewolf, a mummy, a leper, a big ass bird, and other humans too. He is in no way a "child molester" maybe the cracked staff should "crack" a book once in awhile. The movie IT is pure unfiltered CRAAAAAP compared to the book. Stephen King should be shot for allowing that pile of steaming s**t to be made into a movie.... A made for TV movie at that.....SMH
ReplyReal World Fears Behind MOVIE Monsters.
His book was a steaming pile of shit? But you were praising it in the first part of your comment.
#5: Foreigners my arse. I'm more scared of an evil, broken-necked spirit breaking into my house without my knowing and pulling me, FROM UNDER THE COVERS ON THE BED I'M IN, to some unknown horrors...
ReplyOh wait, that's me every morning, minus the broken-neck thing.
okay i agree with most of her presumtions but... The Thing is just plain scary
ReplyI'm pretty sure youre still agreeing with her, because thats excatly what she said....