Limelight: Horror for sale By Lubna Abdel-Aziz Fans of horror films, rejoice! A new nightmarish thrill awaits you at The Village, the latest in Hollywood's string of jeeper creeper hits. Audiences are lining up in droves and paying good hard-earned money to feel their teeth chatter, their blood curdle and their hair stand on end. Their hysteric cries leave them with dry mouths, chilled spines and shaking knees, thoroughly content with their harrowing experience, gasping for air and asking for more. The Village, described as a cross between Wuthering Heights and King Kong is the fourth box office hit by that Night -- in shining armour, master of the modern horror thriller, director/author -- Shyamalan who has spooked and scared us silly in the Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), and Signs (2002). Only 33, Shyamalan has carved himself a safe niche in the Hollywood hierarchy by seizing on a winning formula, our genuine fascination with ghouls and ghosts and all things supernatural, up above or down below. Shyamalan's latest foray into the realm of the supernatural is an artful, Gothic tale about how fear can manipulate the life of a whole community, an early American pioneer village cut off from the world by woods that harbour terrifying creatures. Additional brilliance is added to the Oscar-studded cast by the presence of newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of director/actor Ron Howard) as a young blind villager facing up to the hobgoblins that have terrorised her since childhood. Why are we drawn to horror movies? Why do we seek freaky thrills on the screen, which would probably deal us a fatal blow if encountered in real life? Is this what we call entertainment? We go to the movies to escape our daily concerns, shut out the outside world and feed on the emotional charge offered in romances, comedies, dramas, history -- all understandable subjects that leave us fulfilled. Why then do we add to this, the monstrous stimuli provided by horror films? The theories are many, the answers are unclear. Is it a left over trait in our evolutionary process when danger lurked at every corner from unpredictable wild animals to unpredictable wild nature, with fires, floods, thunder and lightning and all else in between. We are repelled by the images of horror in our daily lives, yet many of us will stop at the scene of any accident to take a peek. Is it the satisfaction of our survival versus the failure of others? Or is danger always alluring to man, filling him with an adrenaline high, an emotional charge, unavailable otherwise. Horror movies give us the thrill of danger, but also a sense of relief for having ourselves escaped and survived. Perhaps fear is an emotion deep within that needs to be expressed and finds few outlets in our safe and civilized societies. Whatever the reasons, horror films are alive and well and have been thriving for over a century. French film pioneer Georges Méliès took us on our first excursion into horror, on the screen. Though it only lasted 2 minutes the vampire flick Le Manoir du Diable (1896), proved to be so pleasurable an experience, the "genre" became the dominant product in the industry's early years. Rather than really horrify, these early films sent an occasional pleasurable shiver down the spine, at best. They amused, amazed, diverted, and surprised, without causing discomfort to the viewer. More properly called "fantasy films", they turned beasts into men and men into beasts, roamed hilltop castles in Eastern Europe, gloomy laboratories in Paris and decaying old mansions in Wales. The Hollywood machine took "horror" to its bosom for many reasons. The films were popular, cheap, used few sets, and needed no stars. Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula has been made and re-made for almost every generation of filmgoers. In 1922 Germany produced Nosferatu, which is still considered a classic masterpiece -- and taught in film schools around the world. In 1932 Tod Browning re-made it for Universal, and cast Lon Chaney Sr. as the Count. Chaney died before production and the part went to Bela Lugosi who achieved stardom and made a stellar career out of it. His piercing eyes, proud stance, foreign accent and lilting voice made his Count devilishly effective, persistently unforgettable. Even today's computer-reared children, squeal when they hear Lugosi exclaim: "I am Count Dracula." The sound sears the heart and soul. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was even a greater success than Dracula. When Lugosi, turned down the role of the monster, it went to Boris Karloff and also made him a star. His performance was an uncanny mingling of the tender and the grotesque, never playing overly for sympathy yet obtaining a great deal -- "something touching and wonderful". Apart from these two major stars of the horror genre, all sorts of ghosts and monsters kept coming at us on the screen. Often leaning on literary pieces from Edgar Allen Poe's Murders on the Rue Morgue to the immortal Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. The horror palette moved from the individual monster to science fiction to film noir. Hitchcock came along in the 1940s, and carried the torch for the modern horror flick, which reached a climax in his famous shower scene in Psycho. Horror films would never be the same again. The sick mind added heightened suspense and became the secret ingredient of the horror "plat du jour". But we were not done with our taste for horror. Freddy Kruger in Nightmare on Elm Street appeared with his flame-grilled face to haunt the dreams of teenagers who were advised: "whatever you do, don't go to sleep!" His success spawned six sequels as well as a merchandising bonanza of Freddy dolls, pencils, hats, knife-fingered gloves, etc. Halloween soon followed to steal Freddy's thunder. From Satanism to insanity, from gruesome death to life after death -- horror on the screen assumed a variety of forms. Demonic possessions, such as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, made way for The Exorcist and The Omen. Stephen Spielberg gave us horror from the seas ( Jaws ) and Stephen King became the poster child of horror films ( The Shining, Carrie ). Aliens became the rage of the 1990s as we explored space, challenging our imagination on the screen as we continued to explore the dark sides of human nature and our basic fears of the unknown. Then came M. Night Shyamalan. In 1999, at the age of 29 he struck gold with The Sixth Sense, a sleeper hit about a young boy "who saw dead people", starring wunderkind Oscar-nominated Haley Joel Osment. Shyamalan became a major player in Hollywood thereafter. Born in Pondicherry, India, on 6 August 1970, Shyamalan was raised in a posh Philadelphia suburb where he still lives today with his wife and daughter, far removed from the trappings of Hollywood tinsel. His parents, both Hindu physicians, sent him to Catholic schools and bought him a movie camera when he was only eight. By 15 Night had made 45 short home films. He continued his education at the Tisch School of Arts and achieved overnight success in Hollywood, which has eyebrows still raised in wonder. Hollywood showers him daily with offers to write or direct such films as Raiders of the Lost Ark IV, or Harry Potter III, but Shyamalan declines them all, preferring to write his own script and follow his work from creation to completion. Shyamalan has proved that he has his hand on the public pulse. "I'll always be that 12--13-year-old boy, looking in on the movies," explains Shyamalan. That may be the main ingredient behind the success of his films, or any film. That also may well be why we enter darkened theatres, shed our garbs of wisdom and maturity, and become 12-year-olds again, gazing in amazement at the unmentionable and unspeakable, laughing hysterically, crying mournfully, and purging our dread of the unknown by watching horror films. The answer to our many questions may be in the basic simplicity of meeting our private fears head on, sharing them with others -- the audience -- and maybe after some tingling chills down our spine, feeling the relief and release of pent up emotions. Without such major perils in our own lives, our own worries seem all too insignificant. We leave the theatres or "confessionals", pat ourselves on the back and praise the artistry of modern cinema. For all that therapy, the price of a ticket to a horror film seems pretty meagre indeed!
