Chills 'n' Thrills

The run up to Halloween finds me knee-deep in nostalgia and indulging in one of my passions: old scary movies. I'm digging out the DVDs starring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney. I don't know what it is about these movies that fascinate me so, because I'm not morbid or given to dark thoughts. My theory is that my first exposure to these films is associated with good times with my family back there on East Street in the late sixties and early seventies. Creature Features on Channel 5 was pretty much required viewing by older sister and brother every Saturday so I would catch bits and pieces of the classics they were watching as I was playing with toys. Why did the people in these movies look so strange? I remember thinking. If I got freaked out my sister would calm me down by telling me that the movie was about "a nice monster who is just pretending to be scary." A good strategy on her part—mom would have come in from the kitchen and turned the channel otherwise!

That isn't to say that the strategy always worked. I remember being terrified, just terrified, of the claymation hand that used to bookend movies on WPIX's Chiller Theater. Remember that? "Chilllllll—errrrrrr…" My sister and I had a different strategy for Chiller. At the first sign of the hand I'd run and hide behind the chair and cover my ears. When the commercial break was over, she'd tap me on the shoulder as a signal that it was ok to come back out. That goofy hand scared me more than the actual movies.

So many scary (but kind of fun) images come to mind from the family TV circa 1970s: The Zuni Fetish Doll from the movie Trilogy of Terror, Bigfoot chasing around the Six Million Dollar Man, The Blob, and a slapdash screamfest called Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things that aired on Channel 9's Million Dollar Movie. Steve Niver, who grew up around the corner on the South Side, shares a lot of these same memories. We were both blessed with wonderful and responsible parents, which make us wonder how we ever were allowed to watch this stuff. I can only imagine that we must have been pretty sneaky kids!

I remember watching was Salem's Lot when I was 11. My sister kept asking me if it was too scary for me—it was—but I kept insisting that I was fine. I resented the fact that my sister was treating me like a "little kid." During the commercial break she went to the kitchen to get a drink of water. I stealthily tip-toed behind her through the dark house on Onondaga Avenue. When see turned around from the sink I let out a hissing sound while doing my best Count Dracula impression. The result was a broken glass, water everywhere, and a panicked older sister quickly turned into an angry older sister. I think Salem's Lot might have been too scary for both of us! (Not a nice trick for me to play on the person who told me about nice pretending monsters and helped me hide behind the chair!)

I watch scary movies and write about them in this annual self-indulgent pre-Halloween column. Steve went to Hollywood and makes scary movies. With his new company The Monster Machine he's making movies with titles like Arachnaconda  and Grizzligator. He really gets that these kinds of movies are meant to fun. The fact that he's getting these projects off the ground pleases me to no end. I imagine in a few years someone will be writing about how they hid behind the chair from Arachnaconda when they were a kid. Isn't that cool?

Ian Eastman, M.A. is the Youth Coordinator for the Southwestern Conference of the Upstate New York Synod, the Coordinator of the Shared Lutheran Youth Ministry in Jamestown NY, and a Youth Minister in the Pastoral Care Department at Gustavus Adolphus Family Services. He is a student at the Institute for Youth Ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary. He promotes the spiritual development of young people and advocates for best practices in youth work.