Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Oh! The Horror Of It All
By Donovan Baldwin
My father lost an eye when he was a boy. I grew up not thinking that there was anything was odd about seeing his empty eye socket.
He had a fake eye, a glass eye, of course, but, had to clean his eye socket with a special towel.
Ever see somebody clean their eye socket?
Once, when my aunt, my mother's sister, known for her "fainting spells" visited, my Dad dropped his eye, and yelled, as you do when you drop something.
My aunt ran into the room.
He turned to look at her, and, she fainted.
He also had a huge gash down his leg, a souvenir from another childhood injury. It opened up fro time to time. When this happened, it suppurated (leaked pus) and, occasionally, the bone was visible.
Oddly, I was not allowed to see horror movies, probably for fear they would mess up my head somehow.
The first "horror" movie I ever saw was "The Tingler" (Vincent Price 1959). I was a theater usher, at the Saenger Theater in Pensacola, and saw it dozens of times until I was sick of it. (I saw Liberty Valence get shot a lot too.)
I also saw the trick they used to scare theater audiences watching "The Tingler"...which you cannot duplicate watching it on TV...unless you sneak up behind them and pop a paper bag at an intense moment.
By the end of that experience, I had concluded that "horror" movies were: Silly. Stupid. Ridiculous. Funny. Dumb.
Maybe I missed something as a result, but, I've never really missed missing it.
My father lost an eye when he was a boy. I grew up not thinking that there was anything was odd about seeing his empty eye socket.
He had a fake eye, a glass eye, of course, but, had to clean his eye socket with a special towel.
Ever see somebody clean their eye socket?
Once, when my aunt, my mother's sister, known for her "fainting spells" visited, my Dad dropped his eye, and yelled, as you do when you drop something.
My aunt ran into the room.
He turned to look at her, and, she fainted.
He also had a huge gash down his leg, a souvenir from another childhood injury. It opened up fro time to time. When this happened, it suppurated (leaked pus) and, occasionally, the bone was visible.
Oddly, I was not allowed to see horror movies, probably for fear they would mess up my head somehow.
The first "horror" movie I ever saw was "The Tingler" (Vincent Price 1959). I was a theater usher, at the Saenger Theater in Pensacola, and saw it dozens of times until I was sick of it. (I saw Liberty Valence get shot a lot too.)
I also saw the trick they used to scare theater audiences watching "The Tingler"...which you cannot duplicate watching it on TV...unless you sneak up behind them and pop a paper bag at an intense moment.
By the end of that experience, I had concluded that "horror" movies were: Silly. Stupid. Ridiculous. Funny. Dumb.
Maybe I missed something as a result, but, I've never really missed missing it.
Labels: article by Donovan Baldwin, donovan baldwin, fainting, fake eye, glass eye, horror movies, Pensacola, Saenger Theater, the tingle, Vincent Price
