The lady runs into the forest, her clothes flapping in the dark night air. And though you know she is doomed, you hold your breath waiting for the inevitable.
And then, it happens. Vines swoop down from scary-looking trees, grabbing her by the legs. Similar monstrosities appear, pinning the screaming person to the ground and soon, all you can see are her eyes glowing with fear.
But no… wait! The vines are parting her legs now, while one particular vine mischieviously hovers in the air like a snake readying for the kill. Wonder what is it up to…
And the next moment, a shriek ensues even as an older person’s hand quickly covers your eyes. And the moment is lost.

Evil Dead was my first scary movie ever, and it was this very flick that made me the horror freak that I am. And so impressed was I by the entire package — the shrieking ladies, the trapdoors wrapped in heavy iron chains and the delightfully musical demons — that I just had to watch it again, a week ago.Which, quite understandably, was a tame affair.
The demons, so alive and horrifying in my memory, looked more like fat geezers covered in wet flour; the actors seemed to be performing in some pre-school drama and the special effects were… well, I had seen better in Shaktimaan.
Well, maybe I am overdoing it. It wasn’t all that bad, actually — especially if you compare it with stuff like Decadent Evil and well, my all-time non-favourite, Child’s Play. But then, expectations are bad things… and if movies don’t live up to it, they might as well die.
Or maybe it’s because things change, and even more so — your idea of horror. When I was a kid, even Shyam Ramsay could use one of his lame zombies to scare the shit out of me and my idea of terror was generally a sari-clad woman, equipped with bloody canines and a candle, singing pathetic songs about ‘undying’ love.
Watched Psycho at a little over 12 and I, for the life in me, could not understand why my co-viewers were trembling just because a lady (Janet Leigh, I know now) was doing something similar on the other side of the screen. And, naah, the psycho was just too lean to be scary.
Fast-forward till a couple of years ago, when I sat through (make that trembled through) Psycho once again. This time I could understand everything — including how good the acting was — and was in the danger of making my fingernails the movie-time snack. Times had changed, yes… but my love for horror movies hadn’t.
If you ask me what my favourite movie in this genre is, I would say… The Sixth Sense. Now, there are many who would object – say that it is actually a thriller and stuff. But this, I opine, is hogwash! Anything that is capable of sending a shiver up my spine, I would say is ‘horror cinema’.
Now, that particular scene in which Cole sees a lady sneaking into the kitchen, after he’s taken a leak – man, that was scary! It made the hair on my head reach for the moon and I shrieked out so bad, I had to look around to see if anybody in the theatre had been disturbed.
But no.. luckily, they were too busy doing their own shrieking to notice.
Another notable one was The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Now, saying that this movie is one of your personal favourites is not going to make you very popular. Many of my friends insist that it made them laugh. And yeah, my fellow members of the audience were also guffawing away while I was busy trying to tame my nerves.
Don’t know why. Maybe they thought Emily’s contorted face (whenever she got possessed) looked funny. Or maybe they were just trying to hide their fear behind hollow sounds of pleasure.

(To be continued)