Flip Garza: The Scariest Movie To Me
[The assignment I gave each of the Red Carpet Crash writers this week was a no-brainer: what movie scared you the most, and why? We'll be running the pieces through the week leading up to Halloween. Enjoy - Devin Pike]
I could take the easy way out and say any movie by Eddie Murphy in the last fifteen years sends me hiding underneath my sheets, or the horror that Larry the Cable Guy is still able to make movies, and of course Nicolas Cage (no explanation needed), but I won’t.
Some of the most horrifying movies are ones that install a real fear that some one is lurking near by and, your demise could actually happen. That car in your driveway is not just your ordinary red and white ’58 Plymouth Fury, but a vessel for the evil just waiting for a chance to mow down little children walking to school.
Speaking of children, innocent children are never so innocent. Children-as-the-harbinger-of-evil have always made for the better horror films. “The Exorcist” and “The Omen” ares some of the best examples of evil personified by a child which leads me to the scariest movie to me, “Children of the Corn.”
As an adult, I know I have seen chilling, gorier and more suspenseful movies than “Children of the Corn,” but as a child no movie made me so frightened of a field of produce than this movie. I must have been at least eight years old the first (and only) time I saw this movie. As a child, I could not fathom the idea that children being anything scary – let alone evil – until I laid my eyes on Issac. Issac (John Franklin) is this kid preacher/occult leader who worships a God named He Who Walks Behind the Rows that lives in a cornfield in a small Nebraska town.
Issac, under the influence of He Who Walks Behind the Rows, convinces other children to kill/sacrifice everyone that is over the age of nineteen ala Logan Run. Issac’s raspy voice is chilling and his pale skin and chili bowl haircut frighten me. Issac easily kills adults with no remorse, something incomprehensible to me as an eight-year-old child.
I can’t recall what He Who Walks Behind the Rows looks like, but after watching the movie I had nightmares of being attacked by stalks of corn. My nightmares were so bad that I remember my father had to come into my room and calm me down and assure me that it wasn’t real.
This movie is truly the only recollection I have of ever being frightened by a movie, and to this day I will not watch the movie again. As I go to sleep tonight I will try not to think of Issac, the corn, and the horror that lies in the field.
