Facing our Childhood Fears

When I was a child I had a love/hate relationship with fear. The thrill of a roller coaster outweighed the fact that I practially fudged my pants waiting in line to go on it. I loved to watch Creature Features every Saturday night, cultivating my relationship with Frankenstein, the Wolfman and Dracula (as well as Godzilla and Gamera). As I entered my teen years, my father fed this relationship by taking my sister and I to grown up horror films. One memorable double feature: Burnt Offerings and Demon Seed.

During one of my moviegoing outings, the trailer for Suspiria came on. The slightly off-key sing song voice and just barely evident slo-mo footage immediately tipped me off that something about this movie just wasn't right. When the woman turns to reveal...well, you'll see. I think I wet my pants. I KNOW that at future movies, when the trailer was shown I hightailed it out of the theater, waiting till it had passed before returning to my seat. One of my most vivid memories is staying up late to watch "Mary Hartman Mary Hartman" on my tiny black and white set. During a commerical break what should beging??? THE DAMNED SUSPIRIA TRAILER!

I remember shutting off the set immediately, and getting ZERO sleep that night.

Fast forward 30+ years later... The advent of the internet allowed me to do a google search for Suspiria Trailer and sure enough, YouTube had SEVERAL postings of it. My heart beat loudly as I clicked the play button on my screen. A small voice inside said 'Don't do it!" and other said "C'mon you chicken shit, you're 45!!!"

I watched the trailer. And then it hit me: Wow, that was lame.

I showed my 10 year old the trailer and he LAUGHED at me and said "THAT actually scared you?" (wse'll see if he has bad dreams tonight.)

But it taught me two lessons:

You should always face your fears, especially your old ones.
You can find ANYTHING on the internet!