A child of Horror
As an adult, I am a lover of all things scary and taboo. I enjoy haunted houses, scary stories and horror movies. Recently, I was thinking about where this fondness came from and I linked it back to my childhood. A fond memory I have from my childhood is watching scary movies with my dad. We would stay up all night and create paper airplanes while watching several horror movies from his childhood. It was a good bonding experience for the both of us and we still bond over horror movies to this day. In this article, I put together a list of movies that I distinctly remember watching during my childhood and loving.
- The Bad Seed (1956)
This movie is about a young girl who commits crimes due to her own selfishness. I don’t remember what age I saw it at, but I know I was younger than nine and I would watch it with my father. A theme I noticed within this movie is nature vs nurture. It made me wonder if people are truly born evil or if they develop the quality from their surroundings and experiences.
- The Birds (1963)
Now, this movie? I thought it was really strange and didn’t make any sense to me. This movie is about a series of sudden bird attacks on people living in California. I’ve always wondered what was the cause of this happening. I vividly remember seeing a scene where all these birds just start attacking the main character and I’m just sitting there, bewildered and scared, wondering if that’ll ever happen to me in real life.
- Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Imagine having the weirdest pregnancy ever, giving birth and being told your baby was stillborn and then finding out your child is actually alive and well and was taken by a satanic cult that your husband is a part of. I would have been so livid and everyone would get a taste of my wrath. I watched this movie by myself in my teens, but my parents did talk about it and I was intrigued. I can recall hearing my mother talk about the movie, but we never watched it together. When I watched it, I was asking so many questions and was becoming upset for the main character. I feel like there was nothing she could truly do to prevent what happened to her and her child.
4. Carrie (1976)
This movie was so sad to me, but I was so happy for the main character at the end. Carrie is about a teenage girl named Carrie White who is bullied by her classmates and eventually finds out she has supernatural abilities. I found it weird during the scene where the other girls were bullying Carrie about getting her period like who would care? Even as a little kid, I knew menstrual cycles were a natural thing and happens to almost every person with a female reproductive system. You shouldn’t get shamed for it no matter how old or how young you get it. So, as you can tell, I was rooting for Carrie from the very beginning and I would’ve burned the whole school down as well if I was in her shoes.
These are just a few movies that stick with me past childhood that I rewatch from time to time.. It gave me a sense of the culture that my parents grew up in and made me feel like I was a part of it as well. It’s comforting to have a passion that one of your parents have. I might even pick one of the movies from this list and do a review of them, as an adult.