"UNEXPECTED TERROR" Guest Post by Jake Bannerman

To me, the best horror is when it comes from something you never expected it to come from: for example, the horror I am going to get from Kate when she notices that this is all in capitals. I didn’t notice until I was almost done, and I wasn’t going to start over!
So, unexpected horror – like what, you may ask?

I am going to go over a list of things that in normal everyday life are not scary in the least. However, in the movies, they can be skillfully manipulated in such a way to make all of us piss ourselves with terror.

#1. The radio! Remember in ‘Christine’? “You keep on knocking but you can’t come in…” Argh, fuck that! Or how about in 1408 – of all things, the Carpenters? Karen Carpenter; the woman with the true voice of an angel – and Stephen King turned her into Satan!

#2. Little children. I mean, who is scared of kids? Not me, not in the least bit – I’ll dropkick the little bastards. But the number one example has got to be the two little bitches standing in the hallway in ‘The Shining’. Oh, my fucking leaping Jesus, kill them – kill them with fire! Then there’s the little blond Aryan child from ‘Pet Sematary’ – no, no, no, no! Kill him and the f*@#ing cat as well!

#3. The telephone. Oh, we could do this all day, starting with the original ‘stranger in the house’ calls and working all the way through to the semi-modern ‘Scream’! The opening of the first ‘Scream’ was just about as close to perfection as it gets; hearing her screams and struggles on the other end of the phone line was utterly bone-chilling.

#4. Okay, even the toilet can be frightening! I can think of three superb examples. Stephen King again, firstly – in ‘Dreamcatcher’ when Jason Lee gets the alien enema. Brilliance! Then in ‘The Amityville Horror’ when the toilet fills with blood; that would have been my first sign that something was wrong, surely! Last, but most definitely not least is ‘Crocodile’, when the giant crocodile comes out of the sewer and smashes through the toilet. Awesome!

Okay, well, that’s about as much fun as I can stand for today! Thanks, all of you, for reading my post. J. (Jake Bannerman)