Ocular Screams: Horror is in the eye of the beholder...
Hello and happy Halloween - the most wonderful time of the year of course. I hope you are all celebrating with your favourite horror films, a pumpkin spiced beer or just getting spooky on your local danse floor.
I do love Halloween but I am always watching horror, always researching spooky and weird stuff - it is in my DNA (dark, nightmarish ancestory) so everyday is like Halloween.
So to begin at the beginning…I have to tell you that despite my hard horror exterior and spooky interiors - I have a fear of eyes.
They call it Ommetaphobia.
But aren’t eyes the thing that tells you the most about a person? At the very least you feel like you can see something of a person through their eyes. I love eyes in that respect, but I also fear them. I have never suffered trauma to my eyes so it is a rather irrational fear.
Throughout the years I have seen eyes in films that are possessed, beast-like, injured and tortured and that to me dear friends is pure horror. I have a macabre fascination with all things medical, but if they get close to anyone's eyes, I turn off that TV or close that book!
This may be a conversation for a psychologist and not a newsletter, but I find the eyes vulnerable. Carol Clover (a film academic) says that horror films focus on eyes to "tease, confuse, block, and threaten the spectator's own vision” and I believe this to be true. Looking at a monster in the eye or having your own vision threatened is frightening - even if it is on your television or cinema screen.
These were the eyes that haunted me the most. I remember lying in my bed, the room was pitch black and I would see David Kessler’s feral eyes - they would float around in the darkness, these unblinking eyes. I have to add to this that I was very young and probably too young to watch the film but even when I watch it these days I still have that uneasy flutter in my stomach.
The Exorcist is an excellent example of the use of eyes. A young girl with such a penetrating gaze is very unnerving, so Reagan's are an obvious choice. The moment Father Karras takes the demon into his body at the end of the film, we see those eyes again. However, they are in a different vessel. The demon eyes (above), they come and go so quickly, a flicker of evil - it really makes me feel uneasy. I have to say that this film is excellent. I never found it scary but it has a sense of dread about it. It has the same impending doom-like feeling that is present in Rosemary’s Baby.
Lucio Fulci is well known for his eye watering set pieces. One of the most iconic examples of Fulci's use of eyes can be found in his 1979 film Zombie. Fulci showcases a memorable scene that includes a large splinter of wood, the tension is wild!
In another of Fulci's films, The Beyond (1981), eyes are again a recurring theme. Fulci employs close-ups of characters' eyes as they watch the horror in front of them and not to forget the white contact lenses, this spooky use of contact lenses was quite a painful experience for the actors, rendering them nearly blind whilst wearing them. Ocular fear all round then!
So, the moral of the story is watch out for wood splinters and demonic little girls.
Happy Halloween, Spooks!
