Episode 003- Religious (and Sacrilegious) Experiences

Sharing the movie experience with a theater full of people can be exhilarating or frightening—sometimes both.  You put yourself in the hands of the filmmaker to take that ride, not knowing where or how it’s going to end. 

In rare cases a movie can provide an audience with an ecstatic, transcendent experience, almost religious in its power that leaves you walking on air afterward and running back to grasp that experience again. 

Sometimes the audience isn’t ready for that story or style and the shared experience with the audience is much darker and marked with disapproval…and sometimes outright hatred.  It’s as if the film has committed sacrilege against your expectations for it. 

When that happens in a horror film is it the fault of the film or filmmaker, or the audience not prepared for the “horrible-beautiful” imagery and storytelling that challenges the comfort zone? 

In this episode we discuss religious and sacrilegious experiences in movie theaters, and the unwritten pacts that audiences make with filmmakers, and how the shared experience in a theater affects your own experience of the film

 

Movies Discussed:

In 1895, the Lumiere Brothers showed their film “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station”.

Lumiere Brothers

The Blackboad Jungle

The Exorcist

the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease discuss The Exorcist http://mindhacks.com/2008/05/25/mental-illness-following-the-exorcist/

Rocky

1970’s, The golden Age of Hollywood Cinema http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2007/jul/13/the70swasthegoldenageof

Jaws

John Carpenter’s The Thing

Examining the critical reaction to The Thing http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-thing/28921/examining-the-critical-reaction-to-the-thing

 

“First Kiss” Fan Recommendations:

Friday the 13th Part 6

Twilight Zone

Twilight Zone (It’s a Good Life w/ Billy Mumy)

Nightmare On Elm Street

Fright Night

“Death’s Other Dominion” from Space: 1999

A Cauldron of Witches

Anne Rice

The Wolfman

The Wolfman makeup: https://latimesherocomplex.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/6a00d8341c630a53ef0128775c636b970c-600wi.jpg

Famous Monsters of Filmland comic books issue 54

The Crestwood House Monster Series

Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbinders in Suspense

 

This is S.A. Bradley, and I’m a life-long horror lover. This podcast combines horror history, personal observations, common themes, and cultural trends to tell a story with each episode.  Here we talk about all things horror. Horror movies, books, comics, hosts, conventions.

 The door swings wide here, and all types of horror are welcome.  Each episode covers some aspect of horror with lots of viewing or reading suggestions for you to check out.  I want to start conversations with people about all types of horror. 

I’ve been a fan all my life, and I love all the different styles: Classic Universal Monsters, Slasher Films, Found Footage, French Extreme, Asian Extreme, Korean Ghost Stories, J-Horror, Hammer Horror Films, Amicus Films, Glass Eye Pix, EC Horror Comics, Creature Features, Horror Hosts, Italian Zombie movies, Spanish Zombie movies, George Romero Zombie movies, Giallo, Silent Horror Films, Nature Run Amok, Atomic Age Horror, Roughies, Exploitation, Horror Literature, Serial Killer, Halloween, B-Movie, Splatter films, ghost stories, Folk Horror, supernatural, body horror, torture porn, VHS, Psycho