I enjoy being scared. Not in a weird way where I go off looking for danger in dark alley ways in the middle of the night in the rougher parts of town, but scared in a safe, in front of the telly, or in the cinema with an oversized drink and a bucket of popcorn threatening to be catapulted everywhere at something that makes me jump happens on screen.
This love with horror films stems back to my early childhood, watching the likes of Doctor Phibes, Dracula and many Hammer Horror films with Christopher Lee, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing that my Mum would record for me.
None of these were ever particularly scary, especially when today we have things like Doctor Who on at Saturday teatimes with much scarier monsters and life threatening storylines, but they introduced me to a genre I still love today.
The first film I remember watching that truly scared me was Jaws. I remember several times trying to watch it, probably aged about eight or nine, as all my friends at school would talk about how great it was, but couldn’t get past those opening credits and that music.
I remember being at a friends house and they put it on the video, and I tried to be brave in front of my friends, and even made through the credits, but when we got to the part where the diver dislodges the body and it pops out and scares him I screamed and ran from the room absolutely terrified.
That scene terrified me for along time and it was quite a while before I gave it another go and sat down to watch the whole film. When I did I discovered that it apart from that jump at the start, there is very little scary about the rest of the film at all. I do love it and it is a great film, but after that encounter with that early scene I built it up, in my mind, to be the scariest film ever.
That said I am now 35 and still am very wary when I go swimming in the sea, and there is no way I’m getting on a lilo.
