So I was lying in bed this morning, looking all over my bedroom at the pictures that I have posted on nearly ever spare inch of wall. I put most of this stuff up when I was 14, 15, and 16 and so a lot of it is movies that I loved back then but am indifferent to now. Since I'm not home for eight months of the year, I haven't bothered to update anything. One of the pictures that I glanced over at was a small poster of "The Ring." That made me start thinking about how I got into horror in the first place. I think I may have already mentioned that my dad showed me a ton of Hitchcock movies and read me some Poe and that is one of the reasons I got into horror. Lots of things sort of pushed me along in the horror direction for a lot of my young teenage life, but I don't think there's a single thing that pushed me over the edge as much as "The Ring" did.

I was thirteen when it came out, and several of my fellow-eighth graders came to school telling everyone that it was quite "creepy." Naturally, being a "creepy" buff, I gathered my right arm (my best friend, who watched all the 80s horror movies with me last summer) and we hauled our skinny eight-grade asses to the movie theatre.

"Creepy" was an understatement, at least to me. Just because scary things fascinated me, it didn't mean they didn't scare me out of my absolute wits. I was covering my eyes throughout the entire thing and cowering under my seat. I missed nearly every scene, even covering my eyes during the investigation parts that weren't even scary. The atmosphere of the film alone was enough to send me running out with my tail between my legs, but I stayed throughout the entire thing, bugging my friend and the lady beside me (who'd brought her eight-year-old son!) to tell me what had happened in every scene that I missed (which was nearly every scene). When this hell finally ended, I was sweating and shaking and the little boy with the woman was crying in her arms. My friend thought it was a pretty good flick, nice and creepy (what the hell was the matter with these people!?!?! didn't they get SCARED!?!?!?!). I couldn't eat dinner that night and I couldn't sleep all night. I kept hearing that awful ring TV noise in my head and expecting Samara to jump out of the corners. The worst part was, since I hadn't seen most of the movie from covering my eyes, everything I'd missed I filled in with my imagination, which made it a hundred times scarier. I'm not exaggerating when I say I was terrified for a year.

Yet somehow I couldn't stop talking about it. Though I was still scared half to death, I began to relish my fear and told my other friend all about it and how scary it was. She's shy but isn't nearly as fearful as she appears to be (that's still the case, I was surprised that she was up for watching "Inside" with me in June), and she began to get a bit curious. She decided she wanted to watch it, and after I vehemently refused to watch it with her, I finally agreed. I was still terrified and extremely apprehensive, but somehow was looking forward to it. Instead of going to the Homecoming dance at my high school, I went to her house and we watched "The Ring." And this time I actually watched it. We only closed our eyes when the dead girl popped up in the closet, and again when I thought the guy popped up in the end. Ha - he actually pops up later, along with a flashback of the girl, so we kind of lost on that one (though not as much as her sister did when we woke her up with our screaming).

After that, I was completely obsessed. I was obsessed for at least two years, maybe a bit more. I found out that this was a remake and rented the original from Blockbuster. I found that the Japanese one wasn't nearly as intense and downright frightening as its remake, though it really was "creepy." Ironically, I probably would have enjoyed that one much more as a thirteen-year-old, just because it's more suspense-based than anything else. Anyway, after watching "Ringu" I bought "Ringu 2" and "Ring Ø: Basudei" from amazon and watched those. I bought and read the manga and the trilogy of books by Koji Suzuki. I rented "Rasen" and "The Ring Two" (which I didn't like quite as much) and "The Ring Virus" from South Korea (did not like it either). I even managed to do a Ring-based geometry project in 10th grade (does the angle at which Rachel falls into the well affect when and where she will hit the opposite wall?).

This is actually kind of embarrassing when I look back on it, but I know it's essential. After having my pants scared off by America and then being fascinated by the eerie suspense stuff that the Japanese seemed to be doing, I started going a little nutty over Asian film. I watched "Uzumaki" and "Kairo" and "Battle Royale" (I bought the book and some of the manga, too). I watched "Dark Water" and "Ju-On" and briefly skipped over to China for "The Eye" and South Korea for "A Tale of Two Sisters" and "Whispering Corridors." In San Francisco, I bought and watched "Suicide Club" (awesome!) "2LDK" (awesome and funny) and "The Red Shoes" (not so much), which is from South Korea. I watched "Shutter" and spent some time working up the nerve to watch "Audition" (finally watched it last spring). Like I said, I went crazy. The movies I mentioned are just the ones I can remember.

Along the time that I mentioned, mostly in my junior and senior years, I got interested in horror from the 70s and hopped back over to America for that. My 70s search brought me to "Suspiria" and Italy, which took me all over Europe. And now, I'm open to horror from every corner of the globe. I think that what happened to me with "The Ring," as pathetic of a story as it is, is a perfect example of being so afraid of something that it fascinates you. It's that mix of fear and fascination that keeps me going today.

And today... let's see. Well, yesterday, actually, I saw two movies, one with my friend (back from China! yay!). That was "Wolf Creek," which I liked. I'm really not a huge fan of things jumping out at you. Hitchcock was right in saying that "there is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." As a matter of fact, I've found that the bang actually brings some relief to the situation instead of fear. When you expect a bang and it never comes, the tension is still there. This movie did that quite well, I think. And I really don't get it when people say this is a rip-off of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The similarities are far and few, I think.

The second one I saw was "Pumpkinhead." I rented it mainly because it's the subject of this month's Rue Morgue and I like having seen a movie before reading about it. It's pretty campy and damn fun, so naturally I loved it and now I can't wait for my idiot Borders branch to get the magazine already. This is getting pretty long though, so I think I'll stop.

Wait, one last thing about "The Ring": when I was 14 or so, maybe 15, I was talking to someone online. Someone I hadn't met. Maybe it was on the imdb boards. Anyway, I asked them what their favorite movie was and then they asked me. Of course, I said "The Ring." I don't remember what they said word for word, but they basically said, "wow. that's an old movie." I was pretty taken aback at that, honestly. I really don't remember exactly how old I was, but the movie hadn't been out for more than two years for sure. I really don't get people like that, but oh well.

So I know this isn't a horror quote, but I think it's fun. And I like to leave with quotes.

"Unfolding in front of us is a scene so chilling, so horrific, so utterly bizarre that if you look real close and real fast--you can actually see Alfred Hitchcock in the background, cleaning the windows."

                                                      -Party Monster by James St. James