Everyone’s afraid of something. We can’t all be Daredevil or Green Lantern, and even they’re afraid now and again. But what separates everyone is what we’re afraid of. Common stuff like public speaking or heights isn’t universal by any means, and some people have weirdly specific fears. I, for example, am afraid of moths and squirrels. Probably not too many people in that specific Venn diagram. But if anything can strike fear into whole generations of people, it’s specific, hallmark horror films. Some of them have traumatized people for decades and likely will forever. On the new AMC series Eli Roth’s History of Horror, he asks some of the world’s great horror luminaries to discuss what movies traumatized them.
Roth interviews a million people in just this one clip, and it’s amazing to see what scares the people whom we associate with causing fear. Stephen KingOpens in a new tab, for example, was afraid of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Jason Voorhees actor Kane Hodder was terrified of The Birds, and The Howling director Joe Dante thought Boris Karloff as The Mummy was coming to get him. Irrational fears, but deep-seated and perpetual. As director Edgar WrightOpens in a new tab says at the end of the clip, though, it’s better to be scared in a theater than scared in real life.
