The scariest movie I’ve ever seen

Do you like scary movies? It's spooky season, so what better way to get into the Halloween spirit than plopping down in front of a film engineered to scare your pants off. Today, in this encore episode, we’re revisiting our conversation about the scariest movie we've ever seen – including The Babadook, Event Horizon, The Night of the Hunter, and… Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Looking for more spooky season scares? Try these episodes: In ‘Obsession,’ love hurts. It really, really, really hurts. https://www.npr.org/2026/05/15/nx-s1-5822305/in-obsession-love-hurts-it-really-really-really-hurts 'The Conjuring: Last Rites' caps off a big summer for demon hunters https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/nx-s1-5529283/the-conjuring-last-rites-caps-off-a-big-summer-for-demon-hunters In ‘Weapons’, the kids aren't at all right, not in the slightest, nope https://www.npr.org/2025/08/11/nx-s1-5496241/in-weapons-the-kids-arent-at-all-right-not-in-the-slightest-nope Is '28 Years Later' worth the wait? https://www.npr.org/2025/06/20/1254460268/is-28-years-later-worth-the-wait Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone is designed to make language learning intuitive. It mimics how people naturally acquire speech as children, helping users read, write, and think in a second language. More at rosettastone.com.

• 0:19Glen Weldon?

  Do you like scary movies? Sure you do. It's spooky season after all. So what better way to get into the Halloween spirit than by plopping down in front of a film engineered to scare your pants off?

• 0:31Aisha Harris?

  Scary movies are a dime a dozen, of course, but every one of us has one movie that really got to us, a film so deeply terrifying that it haunts our dreams. And sometimes, like when you go downstairs to get a drink of water in the middle of the night, that invades our real lives as well. I'm Aisha Harris.

• 0:48Glen Weldon?

  And I'm Glen Weldon. And today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about the scariest movies we've ever seen.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Rosetta Stone, offering an alternative approach to language learning. Without relying on traditional memorization, the platform guides users to intuitively think in a second language. More information at rosettastone.com. This message comes from Schwab. At Schwab, you can get everything from self-directed investing to full-service wealth management, all in one place. No matter your investing goal, life stage, amount to invest, or know-how, you can invest your way with Schwab.

• 1:35Speaker 03

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• 1:52Glen Weldon?

  Joining us today is NPR producer Mark Rivers. Welcome back, Mark.

• 1:56Speaker 04

  Very happy to be here, Glenn.

• 1:57Glen Weldon?

  Happy to have you. And also joining us is Jordan Crucial. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Seen on Maximum Fun. Hey, Jordan.

• 2:04Speaker 05

  Hello. Good morning, everyone.

• 2:06Glen Weldon?

  Hello, hello. All right, I love it when I don't have to write an elaborate table setting or do a really big explanatory comma, the NPR explanatory comma. No preamble, no table setting, just a simple premise. Scariest movie you've ever seen. Mark, hit me.

• 2:21Speaker 04

  All right, so there have been plenty of movies kind of over the years that have kind of gotten on my skin or, you know, really unnerved me. I remember when I was young, Carrie really hit me hard. But I think the one movie today that anytime I watch, I'm just caught in its death grip is The Babadook.

• 2:34Glen Weldon?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  Babadook, duk, duk.

• 2:36Glen Weldon?

  Good pick.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  This is Jennifer Kent, the Australian filmmaker's movie. And it's the only movie that's ever made me exclaim in a theater, oh, F that. But I'm not much of a yeller in a theater, but that one really did it for me.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  The way that Babadook sets his voice is just kind of like his vocal cords are serrated. It's just, I've never heard anything like that in a movie, in a movie before. And quick synopsis, it's about this widowed, single mother and her kid, this very kind of troubled, difficult kid. And they wind up being terrorized by this, like, you know, mysterious, spike-fingered entity that kind of pops out of a storybook that they have on the shelf one day. And this movie, I think, kind of falls in line with a discussion around trauma plots.

• 3:23Glen Weldon?

  Sure.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  Not just horror movies that have like depended on trauma as almost a narrative crutch. But here, I think Kent uses it almost as a weapon. It feels weaponized against the mother, it feels weaponized against you almost, because Kent just completely puts you in her psychic and emotional space, and it is a terrible place to be. And I think what the movie really shows is just how little you need to actually scare somebody. You don't need the jump scares. You just need very simple things like little shards of glass that show up where they definitely shouldn't be, or a person's reflection showing up where it certainly just shouldn't be. Or even something as simple as the look on a kid's face when he looks at their mother and realizes that their mother may harm him. I think one thing about horror that can be really effective is when they take things that are almost taboo, almost unspeakable.

• 4:06Speaker 04

  And I think there are very few things more unspeakable than the idea of a mother hurting their kid. And here, it's just that kind of taboo, it just unsettles me every time. And it loses me a little bit once Kent gives the mother kind of like supernatural powers. But honestly, at that point, it's almost like a relief for me because I'm reminded it's just a movie and not a waking nightmare out to get me. So I'm cool with it. I think one thing about great horror movies is, is that like they can feel like they're coming after you. And I guess I wonder if there are movies for you guys where it's like the movie makes you feel like you're unsafe while watching it.

• 4:39Aisha Harris?

  I almost chose this movie myself. But I think for me, when I think about movies that feel like they're coming after you, it's usually the sort of home invasion type of movies. That's one of my biggest fears. I don't understand how people don't have blinds or like curtains on their windows because I'm just like, everyone can see inside your house. That's terrifying. So, you know, something like Scream, the opening scene still, yeah, that still haunts me.

• 5:02Speaker 06

  You never told me your name.

• 5:04Speaker 07

  Why do you want to know my name?

• 5:06Speaker 06

  I want to know who I'm looking at.

• 5:09Speaker 07

  What did you say?

• 5:11Speaker 05

  If it was just like, hey, pick the scariest scene of the 21st century, the home invasion sequence pulled out from Us, I think is one of the most awful experiences of my entire life in the exact way that it was designed to be.

• 5:22Speaker 07

  There's a family in our driveway.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  There is not a family in our driveway.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Huh. Who is that?

• 5:34Glen Weldon?

  And also, I'm with you, Mark. I hate jump scares. Jump scares, I just resent jump scares because that's a physiological response. You didn't do anything, movie.

• 5:41Speaker 04

  Totally. It's like Pavlovian.

• 5:42Glen Weldon?

  Shook something in front of your head.

• 5:43Speaker 05

  You didn't do anything. Okay, you choreograph a fine jump scare and tell me you didn't do anything when it goes off.

• 5:49Aisha Harris?

  I know, come on.

• 5:49Glen Weldon?

  I'm telling you, it's just somebody jumps out of a closet and goes boo. You don't critique how well they jumped out of the closet. You know what I mean? It's not, it's not that. And also, I think the films that traffic in dread, like The Babadook does, like Us does, I mean, that, I guess you can have a little bit of both.

• 6:06Speaker 05

  There's a reason the Luton Bus has a name and defined a key aspect of horror since cat people in 1942. And it's because the timing of a jump scare is a masterful.

• 6:16Aisha Harris?

  Yes, I was going to say that. It's more about the editing and the pacing. That is what we are awarding.

• 6:22Glen Weldon?

  It's a release. I'll give you that much. It's a release.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  I think what I resent is when they kind of underline it or italicize it with sonic cues. The zoom, you know? I've never heard a cat make that noise. I've been around cats and they don't, they don't, they don't make zooms. They're very kind of like light scurrying. I think a movie like The Babadook or a movie like Us even, they allow you to kind of like to sit in the quiet stillness of a scene where all you really have is your own anxiety. And it's kind of allowed to build. And they don't need those kind of like sonic or visual kind of devices to kind of make you feel what the scenes are already making you feel, you know?

• 6:55Glen Weldon?

  Right, yeah, exactly. Now, Jordan, when I learned what this show was going to be and the fact that you were on it, I was like, well, I mean, of course, there's an inevitability to this.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  Ghosts.

• 7:04Glen Weldon?

  I want to hear from Jordan Crucial what the scariest movie you have ever seen is. Hit me.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  1997's Event Horizon.

• 7:15Glen Weldon?

  Okay, I hate this movie.

• 7:17Speaker 05

  Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, is the scariest movie I have ever seen. And it is a movie that three separate people, completely unconnected in my life, have told me it is the scary movie that made them realize they can't watch scary movies. Now, guys, Paul W.S. Anderson, not necessarily P.T. Anderson.

• 7:36Glen Weldon?

  Not PTA, yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 05

  Let me tell you, he put lightning in a bottle with this knockout cast. Laurence Fishburne, Jolie Richardson, Sam Neill, Richard T. Jones, Kathleen Quinlan, Jason Isaac, Sean Pertwee. Come on, you cannot go wrong with that murderers' row. I love sci-fi horror. I love isolation horror. And it's a bit like a haunted house. It's a bit like a home invasion, like your vessel is being invaded. You cannot get to safety. You are in a cabin in the middle of the woods. And this time, the woods are space and the cabin is like Neptune and where you're outside of it. So this ship, the Event Horizon, has a pioneering new technology at the center of it. It has the gravity drive, which theoretically can send you from one point in space to another immediately.

• 8:19Speaker 05

  Well, when it goes out to test that technology in the year 2040, it disappears, they send out a rescue vessel helmed by Captain Laurence Fishburne and joined by chief science guy who invented the gravity drive, Sam Neill. And they are sent to salvage either what is left of the crew or the tech or the ship or all of the above. But what they find is nothing hospitable. And where the ship has been and what it has brought back with it are horrors of the highest order. And this movie, for me, was like, I'm going downstairs. I'm not turning off the lights behind me. I'm getting to my room. I'm making sure that hallway light stays on and I am nestling myself under the covers. I think I put it on the strength of the cast and the production design of the ship

• 9:02Speaker 05

  that makes this movie, that does have many dissenters, power through some of its messiness or unevenness. And it gives you some of my favorite gore that I had ever seen up to that point in my life that I still think holds up. The airlock, when a guy gets airlocked in this movie and blood comes out of every single pore of his body. I mean, my God, the images of like gore plastered to walls, highlighted only by flashing lightning that comes in from like Neptune storms outside. I think this is top shelf isolation horror. I think this movie is a perfect blend of that dread that builds in the classic horror terrible place and also excellent jump scares and meaningful gore

• 9:45Speaker 05

  that really plays to like your visceral, deep fears. I love Event Horizon. I watched it recently. Totally holds up. I love showing this movie to other people. I call it a classic and I love standing for the 90s in a way that, love the postmodern drop, Scream at all, give me the faculty, give me disturbing behavior, give me all of those like teenager movies. But the 90s have so many gems of horror that do not adhere to that like thematic resurgence of the genre that put it on the blockbuster level again. And I think Event Horizon is one of the best.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  I think the thing about this movie also is it rejects today's idea of like elevated horror, like prestige horror. It is just down, it's down dirty. And honestly, I think you kind of, I think you made the plot sound too complicated. This, this other, this other ship finds another ship that it went to hell and back and did not come alone.

• 10:28Speaker 05

  Fact check, yes.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  I mean, horror to me is like one of the more derivative genres, right? Like so many horrors just pulling from this, pulling from that. But it's what you do with the ingredients. You don't know where this is going to be going. It is a true ride.

• 10:42Speaker 06

  We won't need eyes to see.

• 10:45Speaker 05

  Sam Neill saying where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  Truly chilling, truly chilling.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  It maintains its status as one of the great line readings of all time for me.

• 10:54Glen Weldon?

  See, that's the thing. Okay, so I saw this movie in a theater and I hated it. And I do not remember anything about it, except that concluding image of Sam Neill. And yet I have never watched it again because I know I don't want to because it was so creepy. And one of the things it does, it's, it puts us in this science fiction space and then flips it and then does a premise switch where we're getting all kinds of hell stuff. So a lot of Judeo-Christian hell stuff. And it's like, I thought, that was not what I signed on for movie.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That movie knows just how much to show you also. It shows you just enough to be appalled, but not so much you're kind of like just overwhelmed with it and that you're kind of like, like numb to it. When they first see the footage of what happened to the last crew and Lawrence Fishman has this just like perfect, just kind of like deadpan reaction like, we're leaving.

• 11:44Speaker 05

  I got my shit.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  It's like, enough said.

• 11:47Aisha Harris?

  All right. Well, I am sold. Never seen this movie, but now I, I obviously need to see it.

• 11:53Glen Weldon?

  Yes, Ayesha, you definitely need to see it so it can traumatize you like it's traumatized us. So that is 1997's Event Horizon. Thank you, Jordan. Ayesha, what, what's the scariest movie you have actually ever seen?

• 12:04Aisha Harris?

  Oh, okay. So I'm already sensing that there are going to be people who are like, really, Ayesha, what are you talking about here? This is not a conventional pick, I, I think by any means. But I think just off of hearing both Jordan and Mark's picks and the way we're talking about these things, you know, when you ask this question, you're really asking, I think, or at least the way I interpreted it is like, what is the thing that scares you most? Whatever movie can bring that out in you, I think it's going to be the thing that you consider to be the scariest movie you've ever seen. And I think there are definitely movies that have had more of an effect on me in terms of like me not wanting to go downstairs or always, always, ever since I saw Psycho when I was like 10. I make sure, like if I'm home by myself and I'm showering, the door is getting

• 12:47Aisha Harris?

  locked. That being said, the movie that I picked, the one that sort of still haunts me and just makes me really, really, it just unsettles me. I think unsettling is more of a word than like scares me, is the 1955 film Night of the Hunter.

• 13:02Speaker 04

  Oh, it's my favorite film ever. I love it. I love it. I love it. You win it. You win, Ayesha. You win.

• 13:09Aisha Harris?

  I'm not, I'm not trying to win, but I will take the prize. So 1955, directed by Charles Lawton, the only movie he ever directed. He was an actor. I wish he had made more because this movie, like for this to be your one and only like mic drop, like come on now.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  One of the great ones.

• 13:24Aisha Harris?

  One of the great ones. So basically, Robert Mitchum plays Reverend Harry Powell. He is a phony minister, minister in air quotes, who seeks out widows to marry and then kill for their money. So you've got serial killer, one of the things that scares me. He's also a fake preacher, fake minister, fake person of the cloth. And that's another thing that scares me, not just about religion, but just those people who claim to be moral, claim to be like have the high ground and are really not. They're the complete opposite of that. Hypocrites. I hate those people. And this is actually based on a real person, Harry Powers, who is this guy who like answered lonely hearts ads and murdered women and

• 14:05Aisha Harris?

  their children for money. And what makes this film so unsettling is not just those things, but it's the way that Lawton sort of imagines this world. There's, it's really dealing with this idea of artifice. And Harry Powell, he famously has two tattoos on all of his knuckles. On one hand, he has love and he has hate. And that's been, you know, referenced in countless movies over and over. We see him coming into a town and he targets Willa Harper, played by the great, fantastic Shelley Winters. She's been widowed because her husband killed a couple of people in a bank robbery and hid like $10,000. And he told their son where it is, and his son is the only one who knows where it is. John

• 14:50Aisha Harris?

  and Pearl are his children. They're young. Harry marries Willa, kills her, and then he tries to figure out where the money is and he knows the kids know and the kids run off. This movie is just, it's creepy. It's shot like a German expressionistic film. There's lots of angles, angled set pieces, dark lighting, very stark highlighting contrasts. And when the kids make their way to this woman played by Lillian Gish, Rachel Cooper, who's basically this like tough old broad, and I mean that in the best way, who has opened her home to stray children. And here we have Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, the hymn that pops up a few times. But I want to play a little clip from a moment.

• 15:34Aisha Harris?

  This is like the third or fourth time when it shows up in the film. And Harry is like sitting outside of Rachel's house, like, I'm looking for this money. And he's trying to claim that these kids are really his kids. And she knows that's not true. He's sitting outside singing that song in his creepy voice.

• 15:51Speaker 06

  Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms.

• 16:03Aisha Harris?

  So we have that. And then we see Rachel sitting in her rocking chair with a large shotgun.

• 16:12Aisha Harris?

  And then she joins in.

• 16:14Glen Weldon?

  Yeah, she does.

• 16:14Speaker 06

  Leaning on Jesus, leaning on Jesus, safe and secure from all alarms.

• 16:28Aisha Harris?

  Lillian Gish with her shotgun. This, this movie's scary. It scares me and it still haunts me. I don't know how you all feel about it, but it sounds like you all also understand where I'm coming from here, even though it's not your traditional horror movie. It's more film noir sort of.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Night of the Hunter would be one of my top 10 favorite movies, if not for how much those kids annoy the hell out of me. I can't, I cannot stand the kids in the sound of this movie.

• 16:51Aisha Harris?

  Oh, I'm usually with you on kids, but I, I, I like the kids here. Maybe that's just me, but.

• 16:56Speaker 05

  A sort of emotional double feature I put that on my mind with is one that I did consider for this. Like I knew it was going to be Event Horizon, but I was like, but if it's something else, it might've been Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear. Because De Niro as Max Cady as that depraved, just like the limitlessness of the grotesque inhumanity, and particularly like the way that that movie ratchets itself up in any one-on-one involvement between Robert De Niro and Juliette Lewis, giving one of the most incredible young actor performances you've just ever seen. You can't argue with a good killer movie. And then like the introduction of, like you said, those taboos, like with children and like the sexual violation and infringement on children. And then just like

• 17:39Speaker 05

  somebody willing to make something so benign or perhaps polite or courteous or genteel, indicative of the most disgusting thing you've ever seen or representative of the scariest thing you've ever seen. I mean, it, it just rearranges you inside and you're like, I can never see anything pure again.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  I mean, it's that, it's that like Freudian idea of like, you know, the terrifying being the familiar, right? Like Night of the Hunter is just like really just like American stew of, of just like, you know, American misogyny, of destitution, of, you know, religious fanaticism. Like, these are such familiar things that the movie kind of like makes uncanny through its images and like through these characters. And it's, it really is like a kind of like dream that like you can't like shake. I love that movie. It's just, it's so, it's so good.

• 18:23Glen Weldon?

  Yeah, I love it too. And I think it's about seeing these very, you know, classical Americana, the prairie, the farm through this incredibly dark lens. This film is worth the price of admission because you get to see Shelley Winters say, my whole body is just a quiverin' with cleanness, which is right there.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  So right. You're so right.

• 18:45Glen Weldon?

  All right. So my pick kind of synthesizes a bunch of things we've been talking about. I had considered, at first, several documentaries about man's inhumanity to man. You know, I'm fun. So like The Act of Killing and The Wonderful Horrible Life of Lenny Riefenstahl, which are all very disturbing films about, you know, the lack of morality. But then I thought, you know, that's not scariest. That is very mediated, it's processed, kind of intellectualized because I am me. And I thought, no, for scarcity, you gotta go pure. You gotta go true. You gotta go primal. You gotta go pre-intellect, pure emotional fear. And for me, that means childhood fear. So folks, please welcome to the stage the 1968 Sudsy Soapy Fun for

• 19:27Glen Weldon?

  the Whole Family Musical Extravaganza, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  I'm out on this one. I'm totally out on this one.

• 19:34Glen Weldon?

  Have you guys seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? That's a no from Mark.

• 19:39Speaker 05

  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

• 19:41Aisha Harris?

  Yes. I mean, I've seen it once.

• 19:43Glen Weldon?

  All right. Now, Mark, and for listeners who have not seen this film, Dick Van Dyke plays an inventor. He goes on a magical adventure with his two truly annoying and repellent kids. Talk about repellent kids, whom the movie finds adorable, but you won't. And his new girlfriend, who's played by Sally Ann Howes, who is not Julie Andrews. Don't get it twisted. She's not. You could mistake her for a squint. And he's got this magical flying car which lands in a kingdom where children are outlawed. Now, if you know this film, you know, I'm not trying to say, I'm not out here in these streets saying that this is the scariest film of all time.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  What are you suggesting here, Glenn?

• 20:17Glen Weldon?

  It does contain a few songs that are going to chill your blood. There's a song called Truly Scrumptious, which is sung by those two tone deaf kids. You're going to want to take out your eardrums with knitting needles. It's bad.

• 20:26Speaker 07

  Our hearts beat so unruly because we love you truly.

• 20:34Glen Weldon?

  I'm talking about only a couple scenes and it's one character, whose name, whose face, whose costume, whose whole vibe is indelible. If you belong to the now several generations of kids who've had this character kind of seared across your very soul, right now you are closing your eyes, you are picturing him. I am talking about the child catcher.

• 20:59Speaker 07

  There are children here somewhere. I can smell them.

• 21:06Glen Weldon?

  I can smell them. In the film, this guy is dressed as an undertaker. He's all in black. He's got a black top hat, black top hats, like the Bubba Doo.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Thief's hair, yep.

• 21:14Glen Weldon?

  A sign of evil.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  Top hats are terrifying.

• 21:16Glen Weldon?

  Yeah, he's got a black butterfly net and a black hook. And I always thought the hook is scarier than the butterfly net. And he doesn't find the kids at first, right? So he comes back later, dressed as a candy man to entice the children out of hiding. He calls to them from the village square.

• 21:32Speaker 07

  Dolly Pops and all free today. Cherry pies, cream puffs, ice cream, treacle tarts. Treacle tarts. And ice creams. And all free. Come along, kitty winkies.

• 21:52Glen Weldon?

  Kitty winkies, yep. I'm a little, I'm a little unnerved. Okay. Couple of things to note. A treacle tart, that doesn't sound good. That sounds like a medical condition, treacle tart. You don't want, you've blown a gasket if your tart is treacleing. The other thing is ice creams. He's got ice creams. And, you know, I, I get it. I get it that it's British, but like the plural unsettled me as a child because it's not where it should go. So a child catcher was played by Robert Helpman with two N's. He was an Australian actor, dancer, choreographer, which checks out because one of the things that makes this guy so unnerving, Mark, is how he moves. It's very balletic, but there's also a lot of British panto. You could kind of tell from that it's kind of broad. And I do commend to you and to our listeners, this guy's Wikipedia page, Robert Helpman.

• 22:35Glen Weldon?

  He had a long and fascinating and queer as hell life and career. So rest in power. But one of the reasons it's so terrifying is because it's not, you don't go into this theater thinking you're going to be terrified, right? Because you go to Night of the Living Dead, you think, okay, I know what's, what's I'm in store for. This is so wrapped in this very sugary treat. And in the middle of it, there's this black licorice hateful character that is coming for you.

• 22:57Speaker 05

  Well, I just have to say, this is so crucial that you have brought this movie in actually, because we shouldn't have a conversation about the scariest movie you've ever seen without that critical component of scary things, which is things ostensibly meant for children that are actually the scariest damn thing you could ever imagine. And, you know, if you grew up with the dark crystal.

• 23:17Glen Weldon?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  If you grew up watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, if you grew up watching like fantasy programming of the 1980s, if you watched Legend and you saw Tim Curry as Satan and you had like the image of what was possible to scare you change forever. Like the element of like, it's fantasy, but it's also like a prime evil sensation. That is such an important category of horror. Things for kids that are actually things for adults that will scare you forever.

• 23:46Glen Weldon?

  And I think one reason it stays with me, and Jordan, either help me out on this or contradict me, but I think we can say that conventional horror, which this is very much not.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 23:54Glen Weldon?

  Conventional horror is pretty conventional. So the people who get punished generally historically transgress in some way. There's a moralistic streak to it.

• 24:02Speaker 05

  They have sex.

• 24:03Glen Weldon?

  In slasher films, they have sex.

• 24:04Speaker 04

  The worst of things.

• 24:05Glen Weldon?

  Or they desecrate a grave or they go to a cabin they were expressly warned not to go to. Somebody makes the wrong choice, capital W, capital C, the wrong choice. In this film and in the other, some other films we're talking about, they're kids. They merely exist. There's nothing they can do about it. It's who and what they are. They're being hunted. They will be punished because they're kids. Now, yes, in this case, we can say that, you know, they're caught because they give in to their desire for candy, which also is very, you know, Judeo-Christian. It's very Hansel and Gretel. It's very Germanic. It's very Lutheran. It's very physical pleasure. It's for the week, so sit here on this splintery pew and think about our Lord's suffering. It's very that.

• 24:46Glen Weldon?

  But the prevailing conditions of the story are these kids are just kids and children are outlawed and are to be condemned. And if I had to make a theory of the case, I would say that why this still has its hooks in me is my status as a queer person in America in 2023. It's who I am, can't do a thing about it. And yet my mere existence is all it takes for, for me and folks like me to be the target of some pretty ignorant and hateful rhetoric and actions. And like in the film, not just by my fellow citizens, but in the film by people in power.

• 25:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:16Glen Weldon?

  Right? I think that's pretty easy to unpack. I don't think I'm a very complex person here.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:20Glen Weldon?

  That's what I think is going on here.

• 25:21Speaker 05

  You know, to say that horror movies might be a dime or dozen or like can be a collection of pastiches. But like you said, it's what you do with the ingredients. It's the stew that you make out of the things that you have in the pantry. And the fact that you can evoke those sorts of reactions when people grafting them thing, themselves onto a narrative and that the humanity that they find within it is such a pain point as to understand the fear and paranoia of being ostracized for who and what you are, simply for the fact and nature of your existence. And that you can feel that when you watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, like, and that that we can put into a discussion, like, that has every bit the like weight and standing of talking about Night of the Hunter and the deep visceral appeal of a movie like that. Like, that is the amazing power of fear invoking cinema.

• 26:06Speaker 05

  Like, that is why these movies still do numbers at the box office. That is why this communal experience still works out. We're wondering like, what is the future of the theater outside of Marvel? Like, because we need to feel these things together. Like, this is the rock concert experience of seeing a movie together is horror.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. And the great thing about that, too, is that like, you don't need to sell it based on, oh, it's a secret of this movie. Or like, oh, it's based on this thing. It's just like, oh, you just got to see it. It's like, it's the one genre where you can, we can kind of just like get away with just like selling it based off, you just got to see it.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  And people go, okay, don't do it. I don't know anything.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, don't tell me anything. Yeah, no spoilers.

• 26:40Glen Weldon?

  Yep. Well, that's us. We now want to know what you think. What is the scariest movie you've ever seen? Find us at facebook.com slash P C H H. I'm sure I can hear you shouting. The Exorcist, Silence of the Lambs, OG Halloween, The Shining, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Blair Witch Project, which we almost hit, It Follows, Hereditary, all these movies. But that brings us to the end of our show. Jordan Cruciol and Mark Rivers, Aisha Harris, thank you so much for being here. What a great discussion.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 27:05Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 27:06Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 27:06Glen Weldon?

  This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and my cats have been edited by Jessica Reedy and Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon and we'll see you all tomorrow.

• 27:21Speaker 03

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