Why We Crave Horror Movies

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Why We Crave Horror Movies Movies have been growing increasingly more explicit for years. Drama movies have gotten more dramatic with more sex, more violence, and more action. Comedy films have tried to improve themselves by adding more sexual and vulgar humor. Horror films are no longer based on a cleverly written script with lots of twists and turns, but rather how graphic and twisted the images are throughout the movie. It is perfectly suiting that this article was published in playboy in 1981. Playboy is, of course, a magazine that is frowned upon by the general public because of its uncensored pictures of completely nude women. This is ironic due to the fact that the use of women’s bodies in sexualizing horror has taken a huge increase in the past decade. Claim: Stephen King’s claim is clearly discernible from the first few sentences of his article “Why We Crave Horror Movies” when he says I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better – and maybe not that much better, after all. We’ve all known people who talk to themselves, people who sometimes squinch their faces into horrible grimaces when they believe no one is watching, people who have some hysterical fear – of snakes, the dark, the tight place, the long drop . . . and, of course, those final worms and grubs that are waiting so patiently underground (King 107-108) King is saying that audiences must be mentally ill to want to go to horror movies and watch people being hunted and mutilated from the front row, sitting in front of a 70’ movie screen. Towards that end of the quote King mentions that everyone has their own quirky fear of something, not uncommon, but as irrational as fearing snakes or the dark. After making mention of various phobias, King mentions the more universal fear, the fear of death. Along with
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