Comfort for the Disturbed

“You put this movie on to go to sleep?”

My pal Ryan C. Bradley asked me this in a surprised tone a few weeks ago while we were watching Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond. And indeed, he’s right to be shocked. The film features not one but two scenes in which someone’s face is melted, three eye-gouging scenes, a moment where a man’s face is eaten by spiders, a gaggle of goopy ghouls, a never-ending sea of darkness, and much, much more.

In the landmark 1981 film, a woman inherits a hotel in New Orleans. While getting it up and running, strange supernatural occurrences and multiple murders take place. This leads her to discover that the building is located on one of the seven gateways to hell. At first glance, the film is an incoherent mess, with strange pacing and disorienting atmosphere. Indeed, if you go into it expecting a traditional movie in which everything is wrapped up in a cute little box, you will be sorely disappointed. Lead actress Catriona MacColl described the movie as “a macabre poem,” and it’s an apt description.

But I want to return to Ryan’s inquiry: do I put this movie on to go to sleep?

Yes. Yes, I do. It’s not always this movie, though. Sometimes it’s Phantasm or John Carpenter’s The Fog. The Evil Dead works too, but the sound needs to be turned down, as the screaming and demonic cackling is a bit much. There are probably some others that I can’t think of at the moment. The specifics aren’t important.

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. - Cesar A. Cruz

I’ve always loved that quote. Horror films, especially those listed above, have comforted me at times I was most disturbed. And while I’m certainly more comfortable than I was in my teens and early twenties, there is plenty that disturbs me—I wouldn’t be a horror writer if there wasn’t. This especially holds true on the verge of sleep, when I don’t have things like parenting and work to hold my focus.

So, yes. I put on movies like The Beyond, The Evil Dead, Phantasm, and The Fog to go to sleep. These movies feel like dreams anyway, so like liminal ghouls helping me across the threshold of consciousness, they guide me to the Land of Nod.

Does horror comfort or disturb you?

Perhaps your answer varies depending on when you’re asked. For example, I caught a 45th anniversary screening of Dawn of the Dead a few months ago. Back when I owned it on DVD, it was something I watched regularly. While I don’t recall ever falling asleep to it, I did find strange comfort in watching it regularly as a younger man. When I watched it in the theaters a few weeks before turning 40, though, I kept thinking, “Fuck. This movie is scary.”

Romero’s movies are a unique case, however. They most often reflect true-to-life horrors, and while I’ve always known that on some level, I don’t think I was capable of fully grasping this truth on every level until recently. It was something that came with maturity and experience.

Interestingly, The Beyond and movies like it don’t always comfort me. While Fulci’s masterpiece helps me get to sleep some nights, I was reacting to it like a normie the evening Ryan asked me this question. I felt every eye gouge, melting face, and ripped out throat. Fabio Frizzi’s atmospheric, theatrical score made goosebumps flare across my skin. Maybe it’s because I was among friends, in a well-lit room in a nice house. Comfortable, thus disturbed by the art on the television screen.

The disturbed can be comforted, and the comfortable can be disturbed, but just as what’s comforting and disturbing can easily switch places, comfortable and disturbed are fluid states.

Until next time…