It’s not that I advocate terrifying children, I hope you understand, but… well, let me start at the beginning.
When I was 8 years old, my dad used to wake me up late at night to join him in watching the classic Creature Features package on local TV. The deal was I had to finish my homework and go to bed early, and then at 11 he’d come wake me up to join him for late night popcorn and Dracula (or pizza and Frankenstein—he’d mix things up).
As I’ve mentioned here before, I was blessed with parents who made little effort to censor what I had access to, and who blithely took my pre-teen self to see things like Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Ridley Scott’s Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing… I was enthralled—and also terrified. I had nightmares, and I loved them.
When I became a parent myself, I wanted to share with my kids the monster movies I’d grown up with. And so, one night in 2005, I showed my 5 year old daughter and 3 year old son a marathon of DVDs on Halloween that culminated with The Blob.
I thought of The Blob as a safe choice—the candy colors of the monster and the goofy performance by Steve McQueen kept it from being too scary, while the ability of the title creature to ooze under doors and invade any space seemed just the right kind of spooky.
By the time the movie was over, Ann was definitely unnerved, and didn’t want to go to bed. So we sat up watching making-of material, looking at behind the scenes photos, and talking about the people who made the movie—and how they made the movie. The next day at school, she wanted to play “Blob” with her friends—which resulted in one very perplexed elementary school, I have to say.
The point of my anecdote is that there are two ways to keep kids from having nightmares. One involves shielding them from exposure to scary things, which seems to be the more common approach. Or you can confront the scary things and decided they aren’t worth being afraid of—which is the more robust and lasting approach, in my view.
Let me share another anecdote from my family, but this one doesn’t involve movies. I was with my extended family at a baseball game, watching from a private box as the nighttime fireworks show got underway. There was a little boy there—it’s not worth trying to work out how he’s related to me, my life is too much like Modern Family to make that game worth playing. Let’s just call him “nephew” for convenience and get on with the story—and he was terrified of the fireworks.
I sat with him and held his hand and said that I also thought the fireworks were scary. So bright and loud, the way they exploded unexpectedly in the sky. But they are also a fun scary—a safe scary. They are big explosions in the sky that can’t hurt you. And look around—here are all your family, your parents and grandparents, and other little kids, and we’re all watching them together. It’s OK to be scared, because that feeling is exhilarating and that’s why we do it.
I don’t really remember what I said. I’m reconstructing it as best as I can after the fact, because my mother in law told me afterwards how much it meant to her. Until I’d said these things, she’d been trying to convince the boy that he wasn’t scared—as if telling him his feelings weren’t real would make them go away.
But that’s letting fear win. That’s saying that fear is itself so objectionable an experience that it should be avoided—which is another way of saying that if you’re feeling fear, something’s gone wrong. Either you’re afraid of something you shouldn’t be (something’s wrong with you) or you’re in a situation you shouldn’t be (something’s wrong with the world). Either way, that’s not a reassuring message to give a toddler, or anyone else for that matter.
Scary movies aren’t gonna hurt you. In fact, owning up to your fear is more empowering, and more fun, than avoiding it. A fireworks show was right on the edge of what Carson could handle at age 3, The Blob was right on the edge of what Ann could handle at age 5; Donald Sutherland being turned into a Body Snatcher was right on the edge of what I could handle at age 8. And walking that edge, without falling in, made us all stronger for it.
So—what classic horror movie was just on the edge of what you could handle when you were young?