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00:00:39I think one of the great things about horror is that they really reflect what the fear
00:00:44of the moment is.
00:00:50Everybody in the world is afraid.
00:00:53We're all afraid of the same things together.
00:00:56It binds us as people.
00:01:10It's a safe fright when you're in a movie.
00:01:13And I think that enables you to sort of relish it, to sort of enjoy it or look into yourself
00:01:20and say, why am I afraid of this?
00:01:29I like smarts.
00:01:32I just like intelligent views of the world.
00:01:36And I am deeply committed to finding smarts where other people don't think to look for
00:01:41it.
00:01:42And I think horror is the perfect place.
00:01:51It's all about confronting your fears, isn't it?
00:01:53I mean, it really is.
00:01:54I mean, like I said, you're willingly walking in to something knowing you might see something
00:01:58that will traumatize you for the rest of your life.
00:02:01What is it about horror that makes people react the way they do?
00:02:05Millions of people love it, and yet horror fans are often misunderstood.
00:02:09Believe me, I know.
00:02:32My name is Tal Zimmerman, and I love horror.
00:02:39It's more than just a hobby for me.
00:02:41It's a lifestyle.
00:02:48I write reviews and articles for horror magazines.
00:02:54I'm an obsessive collector of memorabilia.
00:02:57I played a zombie on a TV show.
00:03:03I attend conventions as a fan and sometimes as a speaker.
00:03:07Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the girls' gore and godforsaken cinema panel.
00:03:14If you are easily offended, fuck off.
00:03:18Okay, great.
00:03:20Everybody laugh.
00:03:20That's perfect.
00:03:21You guys are the ones we want here.
00:03:23Horror has a lot of meaning to me.
00:03:25It's part of my identity.
00:03:27But why?
00:03:28Why am I so attracted to images and ideas that seem geared to repulse me?
00:03:33People have been on my ass about it since my bar mitzvah.
00:03:36Why do you like these horror films?
00:03:37Because they're...
00:03:41Yeah, gross.
00:03:42They're gross.
00:03:43No, no, no.
00:03:44They're not gross.
00:03:47And over 25 years later, I still don't have a clear answer.
00:03:51I've never felt the need to think much about it, let alone explain it to anyone.
00:03:57But since becoming a dad, I've adopted a more critical view of, well, everything, especially
00:04:02myself.
00:04:03And for the critical eye, horror gives you a lot to chew on.
00:04:09Right now, I feel as if horror is riding a crest of popularity unmatched in previous eras.
00:04:15Conventions and film festivals are popping up everywhere.
00:04:18Zombies are flooding cities across the globe.
00:04:21So now is the perfect time to dig deeper.
00:04:23I need to look beyond my own experiences and see what horror was like before movies, theater,
00:04:28or even the written word.
00:04:30I need to talk to filmmakers, artists, and academics, anyone with insight into why so many
00:04:35of us live to be scared.
00:04:36I need to know why horror.
00:05:04To shed some light on why I became a horror fan,
00:05:07it's best to start with the people who were there from the beginning.
00:05:09My family.
00:05:11I think that part of it may have had to do with trying to somehow get over some fears,
00:05:19maybe, some scary stuff that, you know, if you can't beat them, join them,
00:05:23or let's explore this and see what this is really about.
00:05:26What are some of the horror movies I used to watch over and over again?
00:05:29I remember a lot of Nightmare on Elm Street.
00:05:34It's hard to explain why exactly we love horror, because everyone loves it for different reasons.
00:05:39But as children, generally, kids love, love fairy tales.
00:05:44And fairy tales are very, very dark and very scary.
00:05:47And they're children being baked in ovens and being eaten by monsters and witches
00:05:51and horrible, horrible things.
00:05:53But as a child, the world is such a strange and mysterious and terrifying place
00:05:58that when you hear these stories, it actually helps you deal with that fear.
00:06:02If you read the 16th century version of the Charles Perrault tale of Red Riding Hood,
00:06:09buckets of blood, buckets of blood.
00:06:11I mean, that is what we would understand by horror, traditional horror today.
00:06:24There was that period, I think at 12 and 13, you want something a little harder.
00:06:29You're not a little kid anymore.
00:06:30You don't want to watch little kid movies.
00:06:32You don't want to watch the Herbie movies or, you know, the animated movies.
00:06:37You want something that's a little more gruesome.
00:06:39I remember it really well when I was a kid and going to see movies.
00:06:43I really would try very, very hard to get into the cinema to see some of these movies.
00:06:47And then when I got inside, they really scared the shit out of me.
00:06:50And I remember thinking, why am I fighting so hard to get in here?
00:06:55And now I want to get the hell out of here.
00:06:57It almost felt like that was my proper bemitzvah.
00:06:59I felt like I'd become a man.
00:07:01I'd watched a horror film and, you know, I was buzzing.
00:07:06The moment for me was Eileen took me to go see summer school.
00:07:11And in the movie were two guys who were completely into horror movies and makeup.
00:07:16And they would prank their classmates and pull skin off their face.
00:07:20And all they ever wanted to do, they were bribed into doing their homework by their teacher
00:07:25who let them watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in class after the fact.
00:07:29And I said, holy shit, I want to be these guys.
00:07:32But what did I mean?
00:07:33I did makeup effects on you guys.
00:07:34And you guys were very patient slash afraid I would kill you.
00:07:37That was the worst experience.
00:07:40It was the best when it was done.
00:07:41But I remember that ammonia smell from the liquid latex and wanting to barf.
00:07:46So it did get you into trouble occasionally.
00:07:50And that little incident when your youngest brother was going to a preschool in a Jewish day school.
00:07:57From what I was told, before I can remember, you did a big burn scar on my forehead.
00:08:03Not on his forehead, but on his cheek.
00:08:33Mm-hmm.
00:08:35And when I came to pick him up, there was children's services.
00:08:38Yep.
00:08:39Talking to him.
00:08:40And I go, oh, this?
00:08:41Here.
00:08:41Yeah, you just pulled it off.
00:08:43And they said, Aviv, why didn't you tell us?
00:08:45He said, I told you my brother did it.
00:08:47What kind of fucking can you do?
00:08:49We were awful.
00:08:50But I think that was from watching, like, from watching summer school, you got into the idea of ruining people's
00:08:56day.
00:08:59What is going on with your people?
00:09:01It's like you said, Gil, we're psychopaths!
00:09:06Why I love this stuff so much is that it's tied into my childhood.
00:09:10And it's not only tied into some of the traumas and upsets, but it's tied into a lot of the
00:09:13good stuff.
00:09:14You know, these are fond, nostalgic memories I have of growing up.
00:09:17Again, all based around movie culture, all based around feeling scared.
00:09:22It's the only genre of film that affects you for the rest of your life.
00:09:25When you see Jaws, every time you go to the ocean, every time for the rest of your life, even
00:09:30if it's on some little subconscious level, for a millisecond, you hesitate before putting your foot in the water.
00:09:36Especially as adolescents, we're very afraid of our emotions.
00:09:40I mean, our bodies are changing.
00:09:42We have these powerful urges that we don't understand.
00:09:46We have these feelings that are new and almost incomprehensible.
00:09:51So we're really afraid of our emotions.
00:09:54We're afraid of the possibility of losing control.
00:09:58And I think that for adolescent boys, and maybe increasingly for adolescent girls nowadays, you go to the horror film
00:10:05as a way of learning that actually you're not going to lose it if you're confronted by something that's very
00:10:13fearsome and disgusting.
00:10:15It's a rite of passage.
00:10:17Ask anybody, what was the first horror film that scared you?
00:10:22And they remember it.
00:10:22They remember the theater.
00:10:23They remember the day.
00:10:25It's almost like a first crush.
00:10:26That time that you were in a theater and the movie really spoke to you.
00:10:30Something beyond comprehension is happening to a little girl on this street, in this house.
00:10:38A man has been sent for as a last resort to try and save her.
00:10:45I remember specifically watching The Exorcist with my parents, and it's scaring the ever-loving hell out of me.
00:10:52I was like 14 or something.
00:10:53But for some reason, the next day, I woke up and the first thing I wanted to do was watch
00:10:58it again.
00:10:59Is The Exorcist scary?
00:11:01Is my skin brown?
00:11:02I mean, what are we doing here?
00:11:03I mean, is The Exorcist scary?
00:11:05Of course it is.
00:11:06I dare you to cross this line into this theater and sit through this movie and not be affected by
00:11:12it.
00:11:12You know, you have like the bravado attitude, and then you have the more scary ones, and the people that
00:11:19live in the room because they cannot watch the movie anymore.
00:11:22And it's very interesting.
00:11:24It tells you a lot about the people that you are, like, you know, with at that time.
00:11:28William Friedkin always called it a safe darkness.
00:11:30I always felt that was a great phrase for it, where you could, you know, join in.
00:11:35You could all be frightened of the same thing.
00:11:36And then, of course, when it was all over, you could all laugh together because you'd think, oh, well, you
00:11:40know, we've got over that.
00:11:42It's a bonding process.
00:11:44It's a process that unites us as people.
00:11:47I think there's a sense of community in a horror film, especially in an audience.
00:11:51You're screaming, and your girl's putting her arms around you, and you get to comfort her.
00:11:56There's nothing better.
00:11:57I always remember in horror studies and kind of academic writing about horror studies, there's always the joke that men
00:12:05bring women to horror films so that they'll jump in their arms.
00:12:09But most of the time, they spend the whole film trying to be very, very stoic so that they themselves
00:12:16don't look fearful in front of women.
00:12:18Often, pheromones are going crazy.
00:12:19There have been studies that couples that go on dates to horror movies, that leads to hooking up more.
00:12:24Because you're grabbing your dates to arms, a very, very physical experience.
00:12:31Researchers have named this phenomenon the snuggle theory.
00:12:34When we were trying to look at the gender roles when people watch horror movies.
00:12:41Does the behavior of the male or the female affect the enjoyment of the horror?
00:12:47And also, does it affect the perception of the other person?
00:12:53The study set up a blind date situation.
00:12:56Subjects were paired with actors who were instructed to act courageous, neutral, or scared during the film.
00:13:02At the end of the test, researchers collected information based on how the subjects reacted.
00:13:08The premise of this research was that traditionally, guys needed to prove themselves.
00:13:14In the old days, they went out to kill the bear, or they were exposed to all kinds of dangers.
00:13:18So, we kind of lost this as a socialization tool.
00:13:23And so, in this context, we can use horror or scary material or fear as a substitute, more or less.
00:13:30So, guys can show their courage.
00:13:32And, on the other hand, girls, they can show their need for protection.
00:13:36The snuggle theory showed that males were attracted to females who were scared by the film,
00:13:40but less attracted to females who liked it.
00:13:43On the other hand, women found men who acted courageous to be more attractive, regardless of their looks.
00:13:50There was no better way to get a girl to get really close to you than take her to a
00:13:54horror movie.
00:13:56Is aliens showing?
00:14:00Because that always works.
00:14:03That's better than a wine cooler.
00:14:05Let's see if we can do that.
00:14:07When I was growing up a horror fan, I could really feel the stigma associated with the genre.
00:14:12Film critics like Gene Siskel weren't shy about expressing how they felt.
00:14:16I am seeing something on the screen and repulsed by it.
00:14:20I am sitting there dreading another needle in the eyeball.
00:14:25I am dreading another incision across the scalp and the peeling back of the scalp.
00:14:31That's dread.
00:14:32That is not horror, and that's not entertainment.
00:14:34It is dread.
00:14:37Even politicians somehow felt threatened by it.
00:14:40This is not a censorship issue at all.
00:14:42There is just no question in my mind, I don't think there's a question in anybody's mind,
00:14:47that slasher films do not meet any community standard.
00:14:53When I started high school, I didn't really know any other horror fans,
00:14:57so it wasn't hard for me to find the one other kid who was.
00:14:59How's it going?
00:15:00My friend Jesse.
00:15:02We met at Crescent School, and we both started putting up pictures of makeup effects in our lockers.
00:15:09We shared an affinity for similar things.
00:15:14Severed heads.
00:15:15Severed heads and Tom Savini and those sorts of things.
00:15:18That was my introduction of my place in the world as a horror fan.
00:15:22You weren't going to be the popular dude.
00:15:24You were going to be the nerd that gets the nickname,
00:15:26and that teacher looking at you out of the corner of his eye when you're the horror fan.
00:15:30We were very harmless.
00:15:31I mean, we weren't up to anything other than trying to figure out how we could get makeup-grade silicone
00:15:40and latex
00:15:41shipped to us from the States or something like that.
00:15:44I don't think it was particularly diabolical.
00:15:45Do you think we liked that stuff because other people didn't?
00:15:48Is there any of that there?
00:15:50It did give us a very distinct identity from anyone else,
00:15:54and I think I would argue with you and I,
00:15:56we probably really wanted to be distinct from the larger identity sort of culture there.
00:16:03So it's obvious Jesse and I and people like us share a love of horror.
00:16:08But what drives our obsession?
00:16:10Are humans somehow built to enjoy being scared?
00:16:17The biggest fear, which is universal, starts with our earliest ancestors, is the fear of the dark.
00:16:23The fear of the unknown, the fear of places we can't see.
00:16:28I mean, once humans were very small, and there were very big predatory beasts out there that were preying on
00:16:35us.
00:16:35Millions of years ago, I mean, some residue of that must remain in the human cerebellum somewhere.
00:16:42So is it necessary to scare ourselves?
00:16:44Is this a vital part of what we are?
00:16:48I don't know if it's necessary, but again, it is part of the fabric of humanity.
00:16:53Since, probably since cavemen used to sit around in open flame and point at pictures on walls and go,
00:16:59right?
00:17:00It's just what we do.
00:17:03So, one reason for the longevity of horror is that these emotions actually serve the very important function for most
00:17:13of human existence.
00:17:14If we can ignite or undergo certain emotional states without having to pay the price,
00:17:21there'll be an evolutionary reason for it, too, that we should keep those emotions in working order.
00:17:28After all, we may need them someday.
00:17:30It's necessary.
00:17:32However, it's important that we are all concerned about humans because we have a fear.
00:17:41What we need to do is we can't be afraid of anything.
00:17:44What we need to do is we can't be afraid of anything.
00:17:47So if we know that we don't know about anything, we can't believe anything because we can entrust our fear.
00:17:55Horror generates a different affect to some people.
00:17:58Some people like horror only at some point in their lives,
00:18:01as a kind of rite of passage, and just go and watch a scary film.
00:18:04And some people need horror.
00:18:06They watch it all the time because it's a familiar place.
00:18:08You know, it's somewhere where rules are subverted
00:18:10and everything can happen.
00:18:12But I don't think that everyone needs it.
00:18:15Some people can live very well without horror.
00:18:19Nowadays, we don't kill people for fun.
00:18:21We make movies where people die for fun.
00:18:24And as much as anybody could say that horror films are unhealthy,
00:18:30historically, that is a progression.
00:18:32That is a progression in the right direction.
00:18:35I will tell you that horror movies, violence in cinema,
00:18:39is probably the safest, most benign way to exercise all those violent impulses,
00:18:45which again are hardwired into us as a species.
00:18:48First of all, I would say that fear is never necessarily a pleasurable thing.
00:18:53Nobody really wants to experience fear.
00:18:55But I suspect that experiencing fear within certain contexts,
00:19:01certain safe environments, can help us deal with some of those emotions,
00:19:05sort of get a sense of mastery or control over those emotions,
00:19:08without really having to deal with any danger.
00:19:11I can't speak on behalf of all humans or for our species,
00:19:14but certainly for this human, there is something really wonderful
00:19:17about being able to step away from fiction
00:19:19and being reminded that, you know, you are now not part of that anymore.
00:19:23And that reassurance is probably why horror is somehow tied
00:19:27to a fine line between madness and reality.
00:19:33I'm coming apart!
00:19:35Oh, my dear God, I'm coming apart!
00:19:40When you watch a horror movie, and it's a good horror movie,
00:19:42and you scream, at the end you feel like you just got out of a roller coaster.
00:19:45And you've been allowed to go to that dark place of being terrified,
00:19:48and your adrenaline's pumping.
00:19:49If you go to a fairground, many of the rides are predicated on
00:19:55evoking certain emotional states without having to pay the costs.
00:19:59A horror film is like that, too.
00:20:08Her brain kept alive by experimental science,
00:20:12by a man whose abnormal passions inspired him to try the impossible.
00:20:20Hardcore horror fans have heard it before.
00:20:22Are you a psycho?
00:20:23Is there something wrong with your brain?
00:20:25Maybe watching horror all these years has affected me.
00:20:29I'm here to find out what happens in my brain when I watch horror films.
00:20:34Well, we're at Grand River Hospital, and we're in the MRI facility.
00:20:38And what we're going to do tonight is we're going to put you in the magnet,
00:20:40and we're going to have you watch horror movies.
00:20:42And we're going to have you watch non-horror movies.
00:20:45And later on, we can sort of contrast what happens in your brain
00:20:49when you watch those two different types of movies.
00:20:50So you're going to lie down there with some TV cameras in front of your eye,
00:20:55and we'll play these for you.
00:20:56And your job's pretty simple.
00:20:57You're just supposed to watch them and enjoy them in whatever way you normally do.
00:21:02And then we'll see what happens in your brain.
00:21:06Well, let's put me in the sausage machine, I guess.
00:21:19All right, Tal, so now you're going to be watching the horror movies, okay?
00:21:21So, like I said, your job is simple.
00:21:24Just watch what's on the screen.
00:21:26You okay and ready to start?
00:21:28I just want to scratch myself.
00:21:30Okie dokie.
00:21:32Now's the time.
00:21:33Now's the time.
00:21:33Not while the thing's on.
00:21:43Looks like a relatively normal brain so far.
00:21:52How was that, Tal?
00:21:54Best.
00:21:56Nice.
00:21:57All right, they're coming in to get you.
00:21:58Sounds good.
00:22:02So, how did it go?
00:22:04The scariest part for me was right in the beginning.
00:22:06You're going into the magnet.
00:22:07When you started strapping me in and you're talking, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, and then you put the
00:22:10headphones on me.
00:22:11And then I can't hear, and then my vision's restricted by the basket on my head, and my heart really
00:22:17started going.
00:22:18But inside, once we started going...
00:22:19The horror relaxed you.
00:22:21Took you to the zone.
00:22:22Well, that's great.
00:22:23We'll crunch the numbers and we'll see what happens in your brain.
00:22:25Okay.
00:22:26So, Tal, this is a 3D model of your head.
00:22:29We'll get inside it in a second and have a look at the brain and what it's actually looking at.
00:22:34The part of my brain responsible for facial recognition was more active during the horror scenes, like in the movie
00:22:40Zombie,
00:22:40than in non-horror films.
00:22:42For most people, this isn't the case.
00:22:45However, this wasn't the only part of my brain that reacted.
00:22:48We see these activations towards the back in what's called parietal cortex.
00:22:51That part of the brain is important for focusing our attention.
00:22:54So, when you're watching the horror movies, you're more engaged by it, and so you just really focus your attention
00:22:59on those scenes,
00:23:01and you're just more engaged by them.
00:23:02That isn't really making you afraid.
00:23:05It's actually getting you hooked in and watching more intently and closely.
00:23:08The test shows that because I've seen so many horror movies, I've effectively conditioned my fear of them out of
00:23:14my brain.
00:23:15It turns out I've been fighting this fear since I was a kid.
00:23:18You were always very creative and artistic, and you did beautiful pictures that very quickly, I mean, I think by
00:23:27the age of five, they all had monsters in them.
00:23:29In grade 10, my art teacher said that my stuff, he took me aside and said, you know, this is
00:23:35the kind of stuff that serial killers draw.
00:23:37I always thought that some of these paintings that you had, some of these pictures, were reflective of some pain
00:23:45that you were experiencing internally.
00:23:46And for me, the fact that you were putting it on canvas and expressing it was a good sign.
00:23:53I never thought you were on the track to be a serial killer.
00:23:56Like I said, many of our friends and family were really not impressed with our, shall we call it, let's
00:24:03say fair attitude towards Tal's artistic inclinations.
00:24:06But they're shitheads though, right?
00:24:09They're all shitheads, yes.
00:24:13Horrific imagery has always had a place in visual art.
00:24:17Early humans painted monsters on their walls.
00:24:21Dante's divine comedy inspired terrifying renditions of hell.
00:24:25And Hieronymus Bosch created the garden of earthly delights, depicting sublimely nightmarish visions of good versus evil.
00:24:33Part of the remit of any visual representation, any work of art, there's a desire, whether it's a poem, a
00:24:41song, or a movie, or a painting, to move the viewer.
00:24:44So that the viewer, through the confrontation with this work, will somehow be changed afterwards.
00:24:50In the case of violent images in a religious context, it is to inspire perhaps the viewer to greater piety.
00:24:58There's no question that there's a history in the art world of horror because, you know, before the technology we
00:25:05had of moving images, we just had the single still image.
00:25:08You'll find certainly in the domination from the great religions, in the great art, some really savage, brutal material.
00:25:18I think what people often forget is that in a historical moment before cinema, places like churches often served as
00:25:26places of entertainment, a venue for entertainment.
00:25:29Viewers would be moved by the pathos and shocked perhaps also by the violence.
00:25:33But at the same time, it would have had a very strong message about moral values, what is good, what
00:25:39is wrong.
00:26:07As art and culture progressed, it was the first time, it was the first time, it was the first time,
00:26:09it was the first time, it was the first time.
00:26:09First, biblical motifs were replaced by more contemporary themes.
00:26:14In 18th century England, artist William Hogarth produced the Four Stages of Cruelty.
00:26:19These groundbreaking prints, laced with satire and graphic violence, acted as a harsh message for the working class.
00:26:26I tracked down a rare set in a small London print shop.
00:26:32So what we're seeing here are Hogarth's Four Stages of Cruelty.
00:26:36What makes these quite interesting is that we have a narrative, we have a character who you see taken through
00:26:43his initial cruelties to animals and within this context of quite an unpleasant London at the time.
00:26:52You go through to the second stage where you see the scenario where, again, animals are just treated abominably.
00:27:00I think we have some representatives of the law here.
00:27:05And so we're kind of looking at crime and punishment.
00:27:07And in the third stage we see that he's actually murdered this poor woman.
00:27:13He's graduated from animals to people.
00:27:14Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.
00:27:16And then we have this fantastic finale, which is this amazing disemboweling.
00:27:20Our guy's been caught, he's been punished, he's been hung.
00:27:24And now he's been pulled apart for a purpose of medical experimentation and knowledge.
00:27:30And the dog gets the last laugh, really.
00:27:32Absolutely, well, in the first image we see a dog being cruelly penetrated in its rectum by an arrow for
00:27:40pleasure.
00:27:40Whereas here the dog, of course, is eating out the heart of a vicious character.
00:27:45That's why I like dogs.
00:27:45I always like dogs better than I like people.
00:27:48For that reason.
00:27:49What would purchasers of these prints have done with them, like hang them in their homes?
00:27:54I think he would have envisaged them probably being glued on pub walls.
00:28:00Right. So when Hogarth created these things, he wanted to scare people.
00:28:05He wanted to really kind of poke them with a stick.
00:28:08I think they were meant to be, yes.
00:28:10I think if there's anything in the horror motif which starts here, certainly into the contemporary cinema,
00:28:17you know, it's that ultimately, you know, there are good people and you want people to be good people
00:28:22and the bad people are always considered bad and they get punished at the end of it.
00:28:27But people ask me, you know, how can you look at this stuff and take enjoyment from it?
00:28:31I don't necessarily look at this stuff in the way that, you know, someone would eat a cupcake.
00:28:36It's not that kind of enjoyment, you know, it's not that kind of thing.
00:28:39It's definitely a reminder of our mortality and to be a good person and to know that, you know, bad
00:28:47things happen
00:28:47and life, while you have it, is worth pursuing to the fullest.
00:28:53Hogarth used brutal images as a means of moral instruction.
00:28:57Good won over evil.
00:28:59Sixty years later, Francisco Goya's The Disasters of War portrayed humanity at its worst.
00:29:04His graphic point-blank images of torture and agony spoke to the futility of armed conflict.
00:29:12Intenta contar, pues bueno, demostrar de una manera cruda lo locos que estamos, no?
00:29:17Que es un poco lo que hacemos cuando hacemos una pelÃcula de terror, no?
00:29:20The Disasters of War is a series of 80 plates that Goya etched in the early 19th century, which were
00:29:27produced as a result of his touring Spain during and after the Peninsular War,
00:29:34when the French forces invaded and sparked a calamitous battle which saw scenes of outrageous cruelty.
00:29:44What Goya does is that he puts the dead, the tortured, the women being raped, cities on fire, bodies piled
00:29:52up on the forefront of the images.
00:29:55In many respects, Goya was one of the first war artists.
00:30:00Obviously, war had been the subject of works of art for centuries before, that isn't the new thing.
00:30:05But what is particularly inspiring and dramatic here is that he depicted war from a neutral standpoint, from a dispassionate
00:30:14standpoint.
00:30:15He is looking at this and recording not the victory of one side or the other, or the valiant defenders.
00:30:22There's no spin to it. He is just pointing out how brutal man can be under certain circumstances.
00:30:29Es una gozada Goya. Goya fue el primero, no? Goya fue el primero de nosotros.
00:30:35You can see how there were artists back in the prior centuries that probably would have made great horror filmmakers,
00:30:42but they didn't have the technology.
00:30:45Baby, I would never cheat on you, and I never have.
00:30:55Art and culture have forever strove to address life's mysteries, the most present being death.
00:31:02But how exactly can we explore something that we know so little about?
00:31:07Horror may be a necessity to the extent that who knows what's coming.
00:31:13I mean, I think that's the old thing, the mystery of what's happening.
00:31:16What will happen next? What is death? What is... what's coming?
00:31:21What's... is there an afterlife? Is there not? Is it just going to end?
00:31:25I don't want to die!
00:31:31Death happens for everybody. And so this is really at odds with our animal instinct for self-preservation.
00:31:37And on the one hand, we're biologically driven to continue living.
00:31:41But on the other hand, we're capable of knowing that, you know, ultimately this... we're going to fail at this.
00:31:46And so this creates a certain anxiety in us that will bog us down in our daily activities.
00:31:52All right, what's the point of doing anything at all, if it's all just going to be erased by death?
00:31:57I'm not sure that there's much else in horror. It all comes down to that fear of death.
00:32:01You know, we're obsessed with this idea of dying.
00:32:04I'm probably a little more equipped to deal with death, disease, personal tragedy, than some other people,
00:32:11because I've seen this kind of played out, and it makes me think about how I would react in these
00:32:16situations with these misfortunes.
00:32:18Sally, I hear something. Stop! Stop!
00:32:23So somebody who maybe consumes horror or fear-producing stimuli on a regular basis
00:32:30may be somebody who just can see the illusions for what they are
00:32:34and maybe has a sense about what they're trying to cover up.
00:32:38Approaching these fear-producing stimuli can be a more authentic way of existing, really,
00:32:44where you're not trying to avoid and deny your emotions, but rather approach them and actually feel them and experience
00:32:52them.
00:33:00Too much blood.
00:33:02And I can see your gaunch. Just do it.
00:33:09There are things that are beyond our control, and when you watch a horror movie, it gives you a safe
00:33:15structure
00:33:16where you're allowed to be scared and let those feelings out and deal with them in a way that you're
00:33:21talking about something objective
00:33:22rather than openly admitting what terrifies you, which is very hard for people to do.
00:33:27So there's a number of ways that we manage anxieties about death, and in short, we do so by creating
00:33:33culture.
00:33:34Culture offers ways of thinking about things, ways of talking about things, ways of viewing the world, essentially,
00:33:41that take us out of our subjectivity and kind of objectifies reality in a way.
00:33:47So now it's not just my experience of things, everybody's experiencing things the same way.
00:33:51We're kind of sharing that experience, so I'm not so much alone anymore.
00:33:54Looking cross-culturally at horror, you can see a lot of indications of what different cultures fear,
00:34:01what bothers them, how they approach, even their belief systems on how they approach life and death.
00:34:06I do think that in our society, in North America particularly, we don't have a very healthy attitude towards death.
00:34:14It's generally we need to avoid it. This is not true for all cultures.
00:34:17In terms of the way other cultures look at it, you know, death and dying is more present in their
00:34:23culture.
00:34:23I mean, in many Eastern countries, the deceased stays with the family, and the family actually washes the body and
00:34:31dresses it for the funeral and possibly carries it and buries it themselves.
00:34:36But the concept of death and everything, especially, say in Mexico, it's like the Dia de los Muertos, like all
00:34:43of that is something that is very common, like dealing with death, dealing with the concept that they are ghosts,
00:34:49is something that is like natural.
00:34:57Every November, Mexican families get together to celebrate El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. This tradition
00:35:05dates back centuries.
00:35:07In reality, El Dia de los Muertos is marking a festive cycle that has to do with the production, life
00:35:13and death of corn.
00:35:15And it's the moment of abundance so that you, your ancestors, your ancestors, your ancestors, can give you a little
00:35:22bit of what they help you from the land, because they are buried.
00:35:25And it's said that in Xochimilco, it's not that they are buried, but that they are buried.
00:35:39In North America, kids are generally protected from the idea of death. We don't have anything quite like this.
00:35:49The closest thing to Day of the Dead that I know of is Halloween, when we wear costumes, gorge on
00:35:55candy, and try to scare each other.
00:35:57However, our annual tradition is beginning to creep into Mexican culture.
00:36:03The national culture has been strongly impacted by Halloween, and by these images that are not necessarily part of our
00:36:12culture,
00:36:13and they become tenebrous, what it is not.
00:36:17It would be logical that you put an offering and light a flower to a entity that will come to
00:36:24harm you.
00:36:24So there's this pressure that says that the Day of the Dead is to be afraid, to be afraid, and
00:36:30it's not like that.
00:36:32Mexico was a real eye-opener for me.
00:36:35There, they look at death not as something to fear, but as a natural part of existence.
00:36:40Sure, this doesn't answer every question, but at least it lifts some of the anxiety that gets in the way
00:36:45of enjoying life.
00:36:55In 1764, English author Horace Walpole wrote The Castle of Otranto.
00:37:00Walpole didn't know it at the time, but he started a new genre, Gothic literature.
00:37:05Probably what makes the Gothic novel the beginning of modern horror, if you want.
00:37:12The 18th century is also a century where the importance of external stimuli on our minds is properly understood.
00:37:20I think Gothic is like horror. It's become a genre that we look back on that has a lot of
00:37:26motifs associated with it,
00:37:27which are dark castles that are sort of usually set in a far back historical period, slightly erotic elements.
00:37:37This sort of conflict between the rational and irrational all the time.
00:37:45Some of horror's most enduring characters, including the aristocratic vampire and Frankenstein's monster, have roots in Gothic fiction.
00:37:54Mary Shelley, I just love for so many reasons. One, because one of the most horrific novels of all time
00:38:00was written by a 19-year-old woman.
00:38:02I think Shelley was already trying to do something new with the Gothic.
00:38:06I don't know if you know the story behind the creation of the novel Frankenstein.
00:38:10It was 1816. They call it the year without a summer, because it rained all summer.
00:38:15And these sort of, I guess at the time, titans of English literature, Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy Shelley the
00:38:24poet, his wife Mary Gordon,
00:38:25they ended up in this villa on Lake Geneva in Switzerland during this rainy summer where they didn't get to
00:38:32go outside.
00:38:33So they basically just stayed inside and told each other scary stories.
00:38:37And the challenge there was pretty much to try and come up with something that was different.
00:38:41And Frankenstein emerged out of that kind of challenge.
00:38:47So a lot of the roots of horror literature actually come from this one time, you know, in 1816 with
00:38:55these very specific writers.
00:38:57The Gothic movement marked a critical phase when horror went from moral instruction into pure entertainment.
00:39:03Centuries later, the popularity of horror literature shows the written word still holds the power to chill us to the
00:39:09bone.
00:39:10Reading horror is maybe a little bit more cerebral.
00:39:14You're taking your time with it and you're thinking about less visceral things that are happening.
00:39:19It's sort of the complexity of a plot of the different characters and their involvement and how the characters will
00:39:25turn out.
00:39:25I think the best Gothic novels, the best horror texts, have a strong fear component and a strong sense of
00:39:32wanting to disturb, to transgress.
00:39:34But they are kind of also studies into things that worry us, like psychology.
00:39:40Like, why are we here? Can we go beyond our physical limitations?
00:39:44But also, any work of art would have also strove towards trying to entertain, to please, to move and to
00:39:52instruct the viewer in the way that cinema does for us today.
00:39:59And now, a way-too-brief history of horror cinema.
00:40:03We begin in the silent era.
00:40:06Georges Mellier produces several influential short films, surrealist phantasmagoria that gives way to a wave of silent horror around the
00:40:12world, most notably in America and Germany.
00:40:15Obviously, the German Expressionism was just a magical time and the design and the art direction in those films, so
00:40:25wonderfully stylized and creating mood.
00:40:28The 1930s are the golden age of monster movies.
00:40:31Lavish productions inspired by literature and folklore are brought to life by Universal Studios.
00:40:36The Mummy, Frankenstein and Dracula are still as iconic now as they were then.
00:40:41It was the universal horror films that really brought Dracula and vampires into Western popular culture.
00:40:48I mean, it had been there in literature, but sort of more for a mass audience, really, who were looking
00:40:55for that kind of entertainment.
00:40:56In the 40s, House of Dracula, The Invisible Man Returns and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein proves that the genre
00:41:02had been saturated with endless sequels and comedy hybrids.
00:41:05But by the time the Second World War ends, classic monsters are replaced with a new threat.
00:41:13The Godzilla movies very much came out of fear of atomic radiation, but then we had our own version of,
00:41:19you know, giant ants and giant bugs and the mole people and things from atomic radiation that was very much
00:41:25in the 50s.
00:41:26In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock gives us our most shocking monster yet, the unassuming boy next door.
00:41:33A few years later, the gore film is born in a splash of blood and visceral.
00:41:38By mid-decade, horror is booming on an international scale.
00:41:42Britain's Hammer Studios leads the way, returning to the pool of Gothic literature that inspired horror's golden age.
00:41:48Hammer Studios made a lot of films in the 60s, which were kind of quite high-budget, high-production-value
00:41:59Gothic horrors.
00:42:01And they went back to kind of the universal set of creatures, so they looked at Dracula and Frankenstein and
00:42:10The Mummy.
00:42:11And then, in 68, all hell breaks loose.
00:42:15Night of the living dead.
00:42:22In the 70s, you could feel what happened with the Vietnam War and all of a sudden we get the
00:42:26Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Last House on the Left.
00:42:29And, you know, even Toby Hooper says that he felt with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you used to be living
00:42:35in a Norman Rockwell painting and now you're living next door to the Manson family.
00:42:38The rise of cults sets off a wave of popular satanic-themed movies with The Exorcist and The Omen.
00:42:43And a giant mechanical shark launches horror to new heights of popularity.
00:42:50At the same time, Italy is pumping out its most recognizable export, the giallo.
00:42:56They are sensual, visceral, emotional experiences, and that's what makes them so great.
00:43:02Fuck character, fuck narrative, fuck logic, you don't need that.
00:43:05They're dreamlike, they're beautiful, and there's just something so alien and wonderful about them.
00:43:11By the end of the decade, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead brings flesh-eating zombies back to life.
00:43:16And John Carpenter's Halloween opens the door for the slasher kids.
00:43:21Psycho killers stalk their victims from campsites, suburban homes, and even their dreams.
00:43:27In the 80s, filmmakers take their bloody imaginations to another level.
00:43:31Makeup artists are the stars of the day, and the films revolve around their creations.
00:43:37The genre is fitted with a cleaner and safer appearance in the 90s.
00:43:40Mainstream fright flicks take the form of attractive teen movies, self-referential slashers, and horror disguised as dark thrillers.
00:43:49If I made a movie about a guy who kidnaps and skins women and holds them in a hole, it'd
00:43:54be a horror movie.
00:43:55It'd probably be an NC-17 horror movie.
00:43:57But if you put Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in it, and it's put out by a major studio, it
00:44:02wins Oscars and it's Silence of the Lambs.
00:44:04But by the end of the millennium, The Blair Witch Project and The Ring blindside audiences, making horror scary again.
00:44:14In the time since, digital technology has smashed down international borders.
00:44:19Horror is now seen and produced in more countries than it's ever been before.
00:44:37I've seen enough horror movies to know that I have a dark side.
00:44:41I suspect everyone does.
00:44:43We all seem to have a monster inside of us.
00:44:46But what makes us who we are is how we choose to face it.
00:44:50I feel that some horror movies and those villains are like the mirror of ourself.
00:44:54When it's about the fight between good and evil on screen, it's also the fight between good and evil inside
00:45:01ourself.
00:45:03Humanity needs monsters. We need monsters to explain the mysteries of the universe or at least project, you know, our
00:45:10fears and anxieties onto some other creature that's not like us.
00:45:14Then we can go out and kill and that's sort of, now we're done.
00:45:18The imaginary monster is, I think, our way of envisioning all of that evil within ourselves and all of the
00:45:29danger in the world in an object that's made up.
00:45:33And if you make it up, you can control it.
00:45:36If you make it up, you can write a story about it.
00:45:39You can kill it off. It always comes back.
00:45:40But at least you're in control.
00:45:43And some audio movies bringing you this extreme interpretation of who we are but we don't want to admit.
00:45:53And I think that's really like one of the main functions of the genre is to help people to see
00:45:59their dark side somehow.
00:46:01We like to be scared. We learn something from it. It's an education and self-control. It's also a kind
00:46:09of a delving into the soul. We want to know ourselves better. And there's a part of us that's dark.
00:46:40Some people are offended by it. As a way, some people are offended by violence.
00:46:45And blood and gore and war. But to say that those things don't exist, I think is more dangerous than
00:46:52the monsters themselves.
00:46:54I think that the first step to enlightenment is recognition of the dangers that lurk in our soul.
00:47:02Man is not truly one but two. Now supposing we could break that chain, separate those two selves, free the
00:47:11good in man and let it go on to its higher destiny and segregate the bad.
00:47:15Let it destroy itself in its own degradation.
00:47:18But there's always going to be that section of society that thinks there's something wrong with you because you indulge
00:47:25in those types of narratives.
00:47:27You invite that darkness into your life. And so sometimes they don't get that.
00:47:34The big irony is that those are the same people that are watching real life atrocities on CNN, on TV.
00:47:39Really, I think that if you want real horror, just read the newspapers, right?
00:47:43Read the newspapers and go online and look at what's happening in the world.
00:47:46And you'll constantly be shocked and amazed at the depths that people can sink to or, you know, the level
00:47:54of depravity that is out there every day in society.
00:47:58Is it more mentally sound to, you know, watch fiction about monsters and blood and atrocity and gore?
00:48:06Or to watch real life news footage of actual people dying and getting killed?
00:48:19I thought I liked horror and scary stuff very much.
00:48:24So there was a movie that I saw and I think I would have been 16 or something like that.
00:48:29A Dario Argenti movie, Four Flies on Grey Velvet.
00:48:33Argento.
00:48:34What did I call him?
00:48:35Argenti.
00:48:35He should have changed his name a long time ago.
00:48:38You're embarrassing me.
00:48:40Well, she's from the South.
00:48:41Let's just call him Dario.
00:48:43Yeah, Dario.
00:48:45And I remember walking home from the theater and being so scared.
00:48:51I could hear the leaves moving in the trees.
00:48:54I was just so scared.
00:48:55And that was it.
00:48:57From then on, it was very clear to me.
00:48:59I'm never watching another movie that scares me.
00:49:01Horror can trigger a physical response.
00:49:04We scream, our pupils dilate, and our heart rate increases.
00:49:08My mom and I are at the University of Toronto.
00:49:10We're here to compare the physiological reactions of someone who loves horror to someone who does her best to avoid
00:49:16it.
00:49:17Sorry, Mom.
00:49:19Hello.
00:49:21Hey, how are you doing?
00:49:21Good.
00:49:21How are you?
00:49:22Hi.
00:49:22You're Tal?
00:49:23Tal, yes.
00:49:24I'm Liz.
00:49:24I'm Nona.
00:49:24Nice to meet you.
00:49:25This is a victim.
00:49:27Wonderful.
00:49:28I mean, subject.
00:49:29Indeed.
00:49:30We'll be subjecting you to interesting things.
00:49:33Shall we proceed on into the lab?
00:49:35Sure.
00:49:37What we're going to do is I'm going to bring you into the room and connect you to a bunch
00:49:41of sensors that will be measuring your heart rate,
00:49:45as well as the amount of blood flowing in your torso, the amount of electricity your skin conducts,
00:49:51as well as the temperature of your skin, all these good things.
00:49:55And while I'm measuring those things, we're going to have you first start off watching a calming nature video
00:50:02that is supposed to get your normal resting levels of all these physiological measures.
00:50:06Then we're going to show you film clips of different sub-genres of horror and see how your body responds
00:50:15in these contexts.
00:50:16Now, specifically what we're interested in is whether or not you have a stress response at all when watching the
00:50:23horror movies relative to, you know, just your resting baseline.
00:50:26So it's pretty important that to know that she doesn't like horror and that I like horror and we're looking
00:50:33for the different sort of responses between the two kind of people.
00:50:37Indeed.
00:50:38And also how much you guys correlate as well while watching the movies.
00:50:42So do you even respond the same way while you're taking in the stimuli?
00:50:47I shouldn't have admitted to what I'm really scared of.
00:50:50That's right.
00:50:54This is the blood that is coming out of both Tal and his mother.
00:51:00Again, Tal's mom is on the top and Tal is on the bottom.
00:51:12He's probably chill. She's still a little bit wigged out, I think.
00:51:20Oh my God.
00:51:23Why are you laughing? I'm not looking. It's scary.
00:51:27I'm not looking.
00:51:28You have to look.
00:51:29I can't look.
00:51:31I can't look.
00:51:32You have to.
00:51:33No, I don't. I can't.
00:51:34There's nothing. There's nothing. Watch.
00:51:41Ah, shit.
00:51:43Oh my God.
00:51:48The results showed that at the beginning of the test, my mom and I had different levels of both heart
00:51:53rate and heart contractions.
00:51:55But as the footage became more intense, gruesome and horrific, our levels started to converge and our internal responses became
00:52:02nearly identical.
00:52:03And even though my mom was more scared than I was, physiologically speaking, we had a shared experience.
00:52:10So given the results, can you tell, without knowing who we are, who loves horror and who hates horror within
00:52:16the results of this study?
00:52:18I would need to observe many more people, but here's why. Because I would have expected that the person who
00:52:25doesn't love horror would become much more stressed out.
00:52:28But as I said, it seemed, if anything, that you had the greatest degree of arousal. So I could have
00:52:35told a difference between you, but I would have made the wrong guess.
00:52:39Really?
00:52:39As to who was the horror lover and who hated it.
00:52:43I mean, obviously there's a ton of books that have been written about the portrayal of women in horror.
00:52:46Probably the most notable, which is Carol Clover's Men Women in Chainsaws.
00:52:50She was one of the major proponents of slasher films, not being as misogynistic as people think, because there's the
00:52:57whole concept of the final girl, which is that, almost as a rule, there's a lone woman who survives at
00:53:02the end of these films, and that the audience for the films will tend to identify with her.
00:53:07I don't know why Texas Chainsaw, all these movies that, you know, there's this woman who survives, and sometimes you
00:53:16don't see it coming. I mean, she's not strong along the way, but, you know, she's the cutie pie that
00:53:21survives, and at the end manages to, you know, stick something into the guy's brain.
00:53:28Typically in horror movies, I think you see women being defiled a lot more than men. It's just sort of
00:53:35natural. And I think it's a natural tendency of a man to want to protect women.
00:53:42I've never seen a huge difference between women fans and male fans, except women fans often come to us and
00:53:50say, thank God you're doing what you're doing, because now it's okay for me to say that I like horror.
00:53:56And it's really shitty for me to think that an industry or, like, a genre where you have the final
00:54:02girl, and you have that empowering feeling for women, and still women are made to feel like, oh, it's weird
00:54:08that you like horror, or you're not a real horror fan, or that kind of bullshit.
00:54:12For a long time, when you pitch to, you know, to various markets, people would tell me, women don't watch
00:54:19horror. You know, it's for the pimply 18-year-old boy. And I was like, well, I'm a woman, and
00:54:24I watch horror. So I think it's important to actually be making films that you want to see.
00:54:28I've heard that 60 percent of the horror viewing audience is female. And the nice thing is that there are
00:54:37more characters reflecting the modern woman.
00:54:40For one, they're the vast majority of the fans. I think, you know, that's a big misconception. I just know
00:54:45from sitting at my table that I sell more horror to women than anybody else.
00:54:49I don't quite understand people sort of stereotyping of women not being interested in horror, because it's an area of
00:54:58sort of stories that kind of are so pertinent to women.
00:55:02Who's the guy?
00:55:05Who's the guy here? Huh?
00:55:07Who's the fucking guy here?
00:55:09Don't we need protection here.
00:55:12Stop it!
00:55:15Wait a second.
00:55:16You're fucking hilarious, cave boy.
00:55:19No!
00:55:20Certainly the horror filmmaking and filmmaking in general has always been a 100% male-dominated industry.
00:55:28And now, you know, society is changing, and there are places available now for women to express themselves in horror.
00:55:37The reaction I tend to get as a female filmmaker who makes horror is usually a surprise, at least from
00:55:43people who are a little older
00:55:45and, you know, have certain expectations on what women want to do.
00:55:49And I think that's what we're struggling with when it comes to Hollywood, which is when they keep telling us
00:55:55as female directors that your stuff isn't commercial.
00:55:58I think kind of the success of female filmmakers like the Siska sisters is almost indicative of the fact that
00:56:04there is this, like, vacuum in the horror industry, and people want to see women making horror movies, and female
00:56:10fans want to see films by female directors that they can identify with on that level.
00:56:15And then there's some other females that say, oh, you're working in horror, I'm sorry, something better will come along.
00:56:22I chose horror. I love horror. I would not do anything that I'm not a fan of.
00:56:42There are several cultures in which women play a vital role in horror stories, and some of the most compelling
00:56:48examples come from Japan.
00:56:56Japanese horror is some of the most frightening stuff I've ever seen.
00:56:59Many of the archetypes that dominate modern cinema date as far back as the 12th century, where ghosts haunted the
00:57:05stages of No and Kabuki theater.
00:57:08In No theater, you have stock characters. You have male or female or old men, and they all have different
00:57:14types of masks.
00:57:15And one of the stock characters is this idea of the vengeful, the onryo, the female ghost who comes back
00:57:22from the dead.
00:57:23And then, in the middle of the village, there are many people who come back from the dead.
00:57:29And the
00:57:31Japanese horror is the same as the human being.
00:57:36It's a strange thing that they can be used to.
00:57:39It's a strange thing that they can be used to.
00:58:03The most famous motif would be the vengeful female ghost who is typically a woman who has been wronged and,
00:58:10you know, this very motif that you always see with the
00:58:13lank black hair. The white smock that they wear comes from the funereal outfit they wear when they're burying the
00:58:19corpses. This is to show that she's just risen from the grave.
00:58:31And a lot of it has to do with the constraints that women are under in certain types of cultures
00:58:37where they don't have any way of speaking out, they don't have any way of asserting the
00:58:43themselves in a societally acceptable way.
00:59:14The Japanese culture comes out of their acceptance of life and death, and an understanding of what they're
00:59:15the most afraid of.
00:59:18And they're always going to come.
00:59:21They're always going to come.
00:59:23They're always going to come.
00:59:27They're going to come.
00:59:27They're going to come.
00:59:30They're going to come.
00:59:35They're going to come.
00:59:37They're going to come.
00:59:38They're going to come.
00:59:39The Japanese culture comes out of their acceptance of life and death, and understanding the cycle of life.
00:59:45It comes through in their filmmaking, because literally, everything's about ghosts and the afterlife.
00:59:50Which, if you were making an American movie, you've got to explain all that stuff.
00:59:53You know?
00:59:54You've got to get people to get to the point of, oh, they're a ghost.
00:59:56Now I believe in it.
00:59:57With a Japanese movie, you just throw it out there.
00:59:58There are ghosts in this building.
00:59:59Everybody's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:00:00I got that.
01:00:01There were some just fantastic movies in the 90s that were imported to America, you know, when I saw them.
01:00:07Like Juwan, The Grudge, and The Ring films.
01:00:11And they really tapped into the Japanese obsession with ghost stories.
01:00:16And I think it was a revelation for American audiences.
01:00:19Some undoubtedly, none.
01:00:25Some of them have chopped mmm, like what else on the heart.
01:00:30Can you tell us what's with us if aren't wanting to live faithfully?
01:00:34Is empire ship~~ and most of them were МихaBeing of the aggressively, who couldn't happen so much?
01:00:48What are the reasons that thevention film has ever played with theimientos of these performances?
01:00:49...of the J-horror boom is that these films were scary.
01:00:52They weren't relying on sort of in-jokes and jumps and scares.
01:00:56Not something very self-referential and jokey...
01:00:59...but actually something that was just scary and unsettling.
01:01:04Visiting Japan proved what I had always suspected...
01:01:07...that horror is a truly universal expression.
01:01:10I was delighted to learn that Tokyo has bars and restaurants...
01:01:13...that celebrate the macabre.
01:01:14It was in one such place that I found kindred spirits...
01:01:17...that spoke the same language as I do, the language of horror.
01:01:21Hey, how's it going?
01:01:23Tao.
01:01:24Are there a lot of bars like this in Tokyo?
01:01:27There are several bars like that.
01:01:28I'll tell you how many bars like this there are in Toronto.
01:01:32Zero.
01:01:33Nothing. It is too bad, because that's where I would hang out.
01:01:37Even though my new friends and I grew up on opposite sides of the world...
01:01:40...we bonded over our shared experiences.
01:01:43I was making those special effects, masks and everything.
01:01:46Yeah.
01:01:47I mean, I have similar pictures of me when I was 14, 15 years old...
01:01:51...putting bullet holes in my brother's head.
01:01:53Yeah, yeah. I did the same thing.
01:01:55And put something in a fake lab and a teacher went crazy...
01:01:57...and I was sent right to the medical care.
01:02:01Oh, that's hilarious.
01:02:02Yeah. We did that all the time.
01:02:04I can't believe that. This is so funny.
01:02:06You know, a million miles away, I'm here in Japan...
01:02:10...and we did the exact same thing when we were kids.
01:02:13One of the most exciting parts of my stay in Tokyo was finding this store...
01:02:17...stocked floor-to-ceiling with VHS tapes.
01:02:19Like so many other fans of my generation, I got my greatest horror education at the local video store.
01:02:26The VHS boom was the proliferation of home video as a mass-market consumer item...
01:02:34...because it represented the opportunity for people to own movies.
01:02:38VHS tapes allowed you to kind of, you know, where you couldn't get it mainstream...
01:02:43...you at least had a source for it, whether it was the library or Friends, things like that.
01:02:46So you could read about it in Fango, and instead of me wondering what it was all about...
01:02:50...knowing I would never see it, kids nowadays were able to, like, go get it...
01:02:54...and trade it, and fast-forward to that place.
01:02:58Video Boom had a huge impact on horror because it offered an opportunity...
01:03:02...for a lot of small companies or independent filmmakers to produce something that they knew would sell.
01:03:07If you have a concept that seems horrifying, or if you can package it in a way that seems to
01:03:12suggest...
01:03:13...it's going to be gory or outrageous, there would be an audience for that.
01:03:17What a day.
01:03:19Like, I needed to add another 40 pounds to my luggage.
01:03:22When the video boom happened, suddenly there was this log of these movies...
01:03:26...from the 60s and 70s going into the early 80s...
01:03:30...that all of a sudden you had access to.
01:03:33The video store was such a huge component of growing up and being a huge movie fan.
01:03:38And my dad would have to drive me to the video store...
01:03:41...and there was a section for horror.
01:03:43So, you know, I always appreciated a good decapitation because my dad did.
01:03:47If I closed my eyes, you know, because it was just really terrifying...
01:03:50...he'd stop the VHS, back it up, and say, you missed it.
01:03:53Is there anything more fun to put on a movie and just watch somebody watch it?
01:03:57Because you've seen this so many times, you can just sit back and watch somebody.
01:04:01I wonder how they're going to react to this.
01:04:04You have to be crazy not to be scared by this, or not to laugh at this point.
01:04:07Evil Dead is a movie that you have to watch with a group of friends.
01:04:11You have to take a video, you see it better in video than in cinema.
01:04:14You have to take a video to be a VHS, put it at home, put it on the TV,
01:04:22...muchas palomitas, pizza, cervezas...
01:04:25...and all that together generates a feast.
01:04:28It's a feast.
01:04:29O sea, gritar todos juntos, no hay nada más divertido, ¿no?
01:04:40It's an interesting question. Why is the zombie the heavyweight champ?
01:04:44First of all, I wouldn't call them heavyweights, but I think it's video games.
01:04:52Video games have taken fans from being passive consumers to active participants.
01:04:56In 1994, Shinji Mikami created Resident Evil, which had a profound impact on the gaming industry and horror in general.
01:05:05First of all, the puzzle was not in the original biohazard.
01:05:12In the first stage of the game, it was just a game to run away from the enemy, and it
01:05:20was just a game to run away from the enemy.
01:05:25It was a game to run away from the enemy, and it was a game to run away from the
01:05:35enemy.
01:05:35It was a game to run away from the enemy.
01:05:42The Resident Evil series, for me, really evolved the blending of sort of Japanese horror and sort of American tropes.
01:05:50A lot of had to do with the setting, the themes that it brought, you know, the tension that it
01:05:55brought, and the emotion that it brought to it.
01:05:58Not just on a story level, but just you as a player and your engagement level.
01:06:01It's just been profound, and it's actually helped, you know, this velocity of maturity in games.
01:06:06Certainly, video games now have a great influence on how kids might react when they can walk around as a
01:06:13single-person shooter and just blow the hell out of people left and right.
01:06:17For me, I know there's a desire to just kind of fulfill that survival horror fantasy and nothing better than
01:06:23having a world with no rules.
01:06:24I can actually be incredibly violent if I want without any repercussions, because I'm not killing humans.
01:06:30They're kind of—I need to put them out of their misery.
01:06:32So, like, the best example is, I think, the first Silent Hill.
01:06:36When you first walk into that game, you're walking through the fog with a fire axe,
01:06:41and one of the first things that attacks you is a crowd of children with tiny knives, and you've got
01:06:47a fire axe.
01:06:48And so, as the game designer, you're saying, you can't proceed with this game until you fire axe this crowd
01:06:54of children to death.
01:06:55And that's something that, like, if you made a character in a movie do that, everybody's like, okay, fuck that
01:07:00guy.
01:07:00He fire axes children. I'm done sympathizing with him.
01:07:03Whereas in the game, you just fire axed all those children.
01:07:06Well, video games really, they take you into the experience yourself.
01:07:10You are now in a maybe dark room if you play with the lights off.
01:07:14You know, the zombies are coming directly at you, and it's happening to you.
01:07:20It's not something that you're watching on a stationary screen or you're imagining in your head.
01:07:25If you don't hit the right buttons, you know, those zombies might tear you apart.
01:07:29There aren't a lot of movies that I'm too afraid to watch.
01:07:33There are some video games that I am too afraid to play.
01:07:36And because we are co-gamers, I was born with a player one and a player two.
01:07:40Map maker for life.
01:07:41Yeah, you should see the way we play Resident Evil games, because there's no, like, real trade-off point.
01:07:47And you're like, oh, I'll play it to the next save point.
01:07:49I'm like, no, that was really short. That was easy. You've got to keep playing.
01:07:58Horror has come a long way since it first got its hooks into me.
01:08:01As a devout fan, I used to feel like an outsider.
01:08:04But these days, I meet fans everywhere I go.
01:08:08Horror is now more popular than it's ever been.
01:08:12There's, um, all sorts of horror fans.
01:08:16A lot of people wear leather and have tattoos.
01:08:20And then there's the other intellectual type of horror person, very buttoned up and straight-laced.
01:08:25You're proud that you're a horror fan.
01:08:27You're showing the world that, hey, like, I like this stuff, you know, um, there's really nothing wrong with it.
01:08:32I don't know that I'm, like, the super fan that some other people are, but I love the fact that
01:08:37there's a whole community of people out there
01:08:40that want to talk about the same things that I want to talk about and that love monsters and aren't
01:08:46afraid of these things and don't think it's weird.
01:08:48Horror is, like, the most embracive, kind place imaginable.
01:08:52You have horror conventions and you have these big, like, eight-foot scary guys that come over and say,
01:08:57Hey, I really, I really liked your movie. It was cool. Can I get a picture with you ladies?
01:09:02And it just melts your heart and he's covered with tattoos and he's got, like, a pentagram on his forehead.
01:09:08But it's fine.
01:09:09Hi, John. Pleasure to meet you. My name is Tao.
01:09:11How are you?
01:09:12I'm doing well, thanks.
01:09:14Uh, I would tell you which one of your films is my favourite, but, you know,
01:09:18a yes for Big Trouble in Little China is a no for Halloween, which is a no for the thing.
01:09:23And I'm not just going to, I'm not going to do that.
01:09:26Like any other horror fan that, you know, sort of proudly wears the horror t-shirts
01:09:31and, you know, isn't afraid to talk about the genre and indulge in it,
01:09:35you do get those looks and those sneers from that section of mainstream society.
01:09:40Not so much anymore because it's been absorbed into the larger fan culture
01:09:44and horror has really gone mainstream in a lot of ways.
01:09:47We saw the progression from, like, B-movies into blockbusters sort of in the 80s as we were dealing with
01:09:52it
01:09:52to now where it's, you know, it's one of the main cycles.
01:09:56It's like I used to tell people my favourite movie in the world was Dawn of the Dead
01:09:59and they would look at me like I was whistling in there or some kind of dog or something like
01:10:03that.
01:10:03But now it's like people eating intestines, cannibalism, shoot for the head, aim for the brain.
01:10:10That's all popular stuff.
01:10:11Now we have something like The Walking Dead on AMC
01:10:14and you can meet anybody these days and be like,
01:10:16oh yeah, I love zombies, I watch The Walking Dead every Sunday.
01:10:19And it's like, I mean, have you ever seen Day of the Dead?
01:10:21I mean, any of that stuff.
01:10:23And it's like, well, no, no, I never made it that far back.
01:10:25But I really like The Walking Dead and it's just because it's accessible and it's on TV.
01:10:28My mum watching The Walking Dead is like, what the fuck?
01:10:32You know?
01:10:32And she just loves zombies.
01:10:34And it's funny because it starts like something that is obscure,
01:10:37like zombie movies made by George Romero,
01:10:39then it's like nobody cares about them,
01:10:42then suddenly they are cool again.
01:10:44The horror fan, the real guy who loves this shit,
01:10:47isn't the guy in the multiplex.
01:10:49The guy bringing his girlfriend to the show,
01:10:51maybe casually likes horror,
01:10:53just wants to maybe get his girlfriend wet
01:10:55in the hopes that he'll get her home and get some nookie later on.
01:10:57He's not a horror movie fan.
01:10:59They don't exist together in the same world.
01:11:0120 years later, they do.
01:11:02Yay, we're normal, Tal.
01:11:05We did it.
01:11:05It only took, however, 20 some odd years to do it.
01:11:09But we didn't change for them, though.
01:11:12Yeah, now we live in the party that we helped create and move forward,
01:11:16and now we get to enjoy the, as elder statesmen now,
01:11:19we get to enjoy the fruits of all of that.
01:11:22Good for us, Tal.
01:11:23We did it.
01:11:38It's no secret that monsters have a lot to offer young minds.
01:11:42Although, there's a difference between what I call horror
01:11:45and the monsters that helped teach my son how to count,
01:11:48identify colors and shapes,
01:11:49or just be secure with being a little different.
01:11:51But hey, every horror fan's got to start somewhere.
01:11:55Once upon a time, there was a very lonely monster named Lamont.
01:11:58I think fear is something that we universally experience as children,
01:12:03just because there's things that children don't understand and can't understand,
01:12:07and particularly the things that our parents can't explain to us.
01:12:10These things are mysteries to us.
01:12:12But they also teach a lot of lessons,
01:12:14and I think some of these are important moral lessons,
01:12:19both to ourselves and to our children.
01:12:22and we're brought up with learning about the boogeyman and the monster that will take them away.
01:12:50A lot of parents now that I see that might be a bit protective,
01:12:53well, it's a little bit like bubble wrap,
01:12:55you know, how much do you want to protect them,
01:12:56and you're better off actually watching it with them,
01:13:00rather than actually thinking that your child's gone demonic
01:13:02or is a satanic occultist or something.
01:13:05Children of darkness, repeat after me.
01:13:09Owa.
01:13:10Owa.
01:13:11Anah.
01:13:12Tana.
01:13:14Siam.
01:13:15Siam.
01:13:16I'll tell you, I think I speak for your father as well,
01:13:19which I try to do often, right?
01:13:21Go ahead.
01:13:22We're quite impressed with you.
01:13:24Come on.
01:13:25Yeah.
01:13:26Yeah.
01:13:28It's very impressive how you took a hobby from childhood
01:13:32and you actually took it to a level that will really go beyond just your own personal interest
01:13:40and just entertainment,
01:13:44but really make it into a nice exploration of this area.
01:13:49This is like the best part of the movie and kids are screaming.
01:13:52Yeah.
01:14:13Why horror?
01:14:15It's a question with answers as diverse and abundant as the people who enjoy it.
01:14:23When we're talking about, like, why horror, I don't know if you're saying, like, why long-distance running?
01:14:28You know, like, why any of the shit that just proves that, like, we can survive this and humans are
01:14:34awesome?
01:14:35Because we need it, because we need it, because we need it, because it, you know, you have to have
01:14:40some bloodletting.
01:14:42It's, it's, it makes a culture healthy.
01:15:14Don't like it, well, the adrenaline's going, it's kicking in, and the sense of the unknown, the fear of the
01:15:20unknown starts kicking.
01:15:21So I think that's as much of a fix, ironically, as the people who go, bring it on.
01:15:28I've seen everything. You can't scare me.
01:15:51On this journey, I learned that there are many answers to why horror.
01:15:54Horror, it's not a simple question.
01:15:57Looking back at my life as a horror fan, I've discovered that it's given me a way to master my
01:16:01fears,
01:16:02diffuse my worries, and channel my sometimes dark imagination.
01:16:07Horror is a way to explore aspects of life we're generally taught to avoid.
01:16:11We don't celebrate the pain of others, we transform our own.
01:16:16You don't have to love horror or even like it to recognize that it plays an important role in the
01:16:21way we engage with the world around us.
01:16:23It's safe, it's fun, and sometimes we have to play in the shadows to fully appreciate the good things in
01:16:30life.
01:16:31And that's why horror.
01:16:33guitar solo
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