05 November 2009

terrors of my childhood

I've been sort of obsessed with this recently in that way that you can't help but scare yourself, like watching scary movies. I'm sure there's a logical explanation(s) for it, but it freaks me out.
In a roundabout way, thinking about being freaked out suddenly made me remember this memory that I honestly think I repressed in some way. It was of some movie that I had seen on TV and all I really remembered about it were:
A.) Bloody children
B.) Parents cradling their dead, bloody children in a school
C.) A mother was the one that came and killed the kids
D.) A bloody guy crawling around on a floor
E.) it scared the absolute fucking shit out of me.
I don't know when I saw this movie but I know I was young and it was at the height of my childhood nightmares and inability to sleep.
Thinking about that, I set out to find this movie. It wasn't that hard. It's Murder of Innocence. I just watched it on Youtube. As a movie, it sucks. Super dramatic music, weird editing, not the best ever writing (although, based on the real case of Laurie Dann, pretty accurate). But when it got to the end, when all the shooting starts, it still sort of made my heart drop in fear. As it turns out, I naturally remembered stuff wrong, as the shooter wasn't a mother of any of the kids and the scene that I seem to remember so vividly of parents cradling dead kids isn't in there at all, so I guess I made that part up in my head. But the bloody children in the classroom, the bloody guy crawling across the floor (which, when I watched it, was almost disturbingly accurate with the way I remembered it) were all there. And was still fucking scary.
The movie aired in 1993. In the later half of 1992, Pearl Jam's Jeremy video premiered. Because of my sister's obsession with Pearl Jam, I also had a weird 7 year old's crush on Eddie Vedder and liked (or at least pretended to like) their music. But that video . . . you all know the one I'm talking about, with the kid and the gun and the classroom and blood, absolutely scared the fucking shit out of me.
How did I see all of this somewhere between the ages of 6 and 8? I don't know. Probably sneakiness. I was always trying to sneak into watching stuff I wasn't supposed to, most notably Kids in the Hall and Jaws (that second one was a big fucking mistake, jesus). Sort of along the lines of my absolute determination when I was in sixth grade to see A Clockwork Orange, which I did see in sixth grade, and which was also a huge mistake. Now as a near 22 year old, I love the movie, think it's brilliant and funny etc etc. But when I was 12 . . . it was just a big scary rape movie.
In all, I'm really glad I watched that TV movie again. I was actually really scared to because it's late and I'm in the apartment by myself (as always) but I was sincerely hoping that it wasn't as scary as I remembered. And it wasn't, and it was sort of amazing to compare the filmed images to the images in my mind, from how spot-on my memory was to how I completely made up stuff.

It also helps to watch something scary like that with the lights on and Charlie snoring next to me.

1 comment:

Katie said...

Eddie Vedder is still hot.