What is your favorite type of horror?

[vipera aspis]

I must say that all good horror has it's place. Each type effects people differently. Not mentioned much yet is the slasher/splatter horror. Knowing that a relentless, unstoppable, murderous thing is slowly shadowing the party and hidiously ending all contacts of the fated PC's can be horrorfing. As the body count rises and less and less survive in the wake of the dreadful Walking Curse of Fever Thicket, fewer and fewer people have the bravery required to aid the stalked PC's in any way.

[crazybantha]

And you call yourself a horror fan!? JK. It's Dawn of the Dead.

Yeah, that's the one, lol. With the womb zombie, right? Keep forgetting the names, cause they're all similar. A zombie fan I am for sure! Gotta love em. Vampires too.

I know the gothic horror theme is not meant for villains to redeem themselves

It isn't?
Aaaaah! I've been doing it wrong!

lol, that's not what I meant, but, well...

Not quite Herbert West as it were, but if you can prevent decay, prevent further damage to any cells and fix what is wrong with the body- it is technically within the realm of possibility to revive the body to life.

One problem I know is that they can't stop the aging process (so far). So, even if they reanimate a corpse with all it's functions, they can't stop the corpse from natural decease. Mythocondria control the decay of cells.

The other issue is restoring all metabolic functions. Not just heart pump or electric chain through locomotion tissues. The definition of "living thing" is capability to reproduce, metabolism and... maybe another thing or two that I forgot.

[Archedius]

We have nothing in our genetics that prevents us from living on indefinately. What prevents us from doing so are free-radicals in our bodies that damage our bodies ability to keep itself repaired.

It is possible to reduce the amount of free-radicals by staying healthy, exercising and consuming foods rich in anti-oxidents. Jack Lalane anyone?

The problem is you can never fully be rid of them as they are in the environment all around us : )

The cool thing is that your body doesn't age uniformly, it all depends upon exposure to radiation, free-radicals, wear (which can be repaired except for free-radicals gradually interfering with the process) and injury. Your right hand can be older than your liver or your heart might be older than your joints.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I haven't heard anything of the sort in the biological literature, Archedius, but it's probably an urban legend based on a misunderstood experiment. If such an operation took place, my guess is that the recipient rat was a different one from the heart's source -- in other words, the researchers were testing a new method of preparing and/or preserving transplant organs, via tissue culture -- and that fact got mislaid in its translation from medical jargon.

[Zettaijin]

Yeah, that's the one, lol. With the womb zombie, right? Keep forgetting the names, cause they're all similar. A zombie fan I am for sure! Gotta love em. Vampires too.

The original Dawn of the Dead certainly didn't feature any womb zombie, although I can tell you right now that there was a pregnancy-related zombie scene in Fulci's Zombi 3 (along with a flying zombie head in the fridge scene) and if you count Lamberto Bava's Demons as zombie-like, then the first sequel featured a notorious womb-related sequence.

I'm pretty sure other Italian film makers have exploited the zombie fetus concept, but I can't seem to recall any of the top of my head.

[Algaris]

I must say that all good horror has it's place. Each type effects people differently. Not mentioned much yet is the slasher/splatter horror. Knowing that a relentless, unstoppable, murderous thing is slowly shadowing the party and hidiously ending all contacts of the fated PC's can be horrorfing. As the body count rises and less and less survive in the wake of the dreadful Walking Curse of Fever Thicket, fewer and fewer people have the bravery required to aid the stalked PC's in any way.

I have nothing against the relentless unstoppable horror, chasing down it's prey and offing anyone that gets in it's way. It's just the blood guts and gore that tends to be liberally heaped in which puts me off.

A fan of slasher/splatter horror I am not.

[High Priest Mikhal]

I must say that all good horror has it's place. Each type effects people differently. Not mentioned much yet is the slasher/splatter horror. Knowing that a relentless, unstoppable, murderous thing is slowly shadowing the party and hidiously ending all contacts of the fated PC's can be horrorfing. As the body count rises and less and less survive in the wake of the dreadful Walking Curse of Fever Thicket, fewer and fewer people have the bravery required to aid the stalked PC's in any way.

I have nothing against the relentless unstoppable horror, chasing down it's prey and offing anyone that gets in it's way. It's just the blood guts and gore that tends to be liberally heaped in which puts me off.

A fan of slasher/splatter horror I am not.

In other words, "horror, not gore." Sadly Hollywood seems to have lost sight of the fact that special FX and makeup don't equal horror. It helps if used properly. Too much, like the RLPH says, not only doesn't work, but it ruins the mood.

[Archedius]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/13/eo ... newssearch

Wasn't an urban myth I heard, was an article I only remembered in passing and misremembered : ) I think because they used a dead heart as the template I misremembered it as being a reanimation- although experiments and procedures have been done with extremely quick cooling and certain chemicals being injected to the vessels to induce clinical death for periods of time before replacing the blood and warming the body.

[High Priest Mikhal]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/13/eo ... newssearch

Technically that's a form of cloning similar to growing skin in petri dishes for grafts. The "heart" wasn't even a real heart; it was a scaffold, a skeleton.

As for the cooling thing, I think I remember something about that where surgeons stop the heart during transplantation by cooling the patient down to hypothermic levels. By doing that the body can survive longer without the heart--minutes instead of seconds--and gives the surgeons time to attach the new heart.

[vipera aspis]

i dont know, a good splatter at the right time can be very alarming. but then again the human body can only hold so much blood. but what about a dwarf....

[Zettaijin]

The thing about blood and guts is that the Italians did it better back in the days and Hollywood could never hope to match that level of ingenuity.

While contemporary torture flicks à la SAW and Hostel do come close, they lack that surreal, implausible and downright fun quality of 70's/80's Italian horror cinema.

I mean seriously, City of the Living Dead/Gates of Hell went well above the call of duty with regards to gratuitous viscera but there was a level of imagination (not to mention a complete and utter lack of logic) to these scenes that made them memorable.

Anyhow, what we tend to forget is that gore and viscera have been employed as scare/shock tactics for ages. Try reading a little bit about some Japanese Buddhism and their various Hells. They're not exactly PG13 or anything.

[Dion of the Fraternity]

For some odd reason I gravitate more to comedic horror. Maybe that's why I'm the only person I know who actually loved the movie "Tequila Body Shots."

[High Priest Mikhal]

Anyhow, what we tend to forget is that gore and viscera have been employed as scare/shock tactics for ages.

Yes, but don't forget that the human mind can become inured to anything if it's exposed to it enough. Eventually even the most horrid of sights will lose its impact if someone sees it enough. Also fright after fright in rapid sequence usually induces shock, not terror. The mind adapts and we stop responding.

The Italian horrors, especially Zombi, are definitely worth a watch.

[Zettaijin]

Anyhow, what we tend to forget is that gore and viscera have been employed as scare/shock tactics for ages.

Yes, but don't forget that the human mind can become inured to anything if it's exposed to it enough. Eventually even the most horrid of sights will lose its impact if someone sees it enough. Also fright after fright in rapid sequence usually induces shock, not terror. The mind adapts and we stop responding.

And that's a good thing to! Where would we be without forensics experts and morticians? Blood and guts are part of us. Splatter movies merely exploit the fact that we don't get up close and personal with our inner organs on a regular basis.

Even the most finely crafted tale of terror will eventually wear thin once its themes and basic structure have been copied for the umpteenth time. There are only so many tales to tell and so many ways to recycle them.

And just for clarification purposes, and this isn't aimed at you Mikhal, slasher flicks are not necessarily splatter. In fact, a whole bunch of slasher pics feature very little blood.

[crazybantha]

I'm pretty sure other Italian film makers have exploited the zombie fetus concept, but I can't seem to recall any of the top of my head.

I'm yet to watch these italian movies and classics you all keep talking about. I'm pretty unknowledgeable when compared to you guys, it seems. I'm used only to what hollywood/USA delivers at my neighborhood (Brazil).

Eventually even the most horrid of sights will lose its impact if someone sees it enough. Also fright after fright in rapid sequence usually induces shock, not terror. The mind adapts and we stop responding.

Not to be thread-jacking, but I was having a discussion with my friend recently, prompted by my project to soon run a RL campaign. He was worried how the dense and violent stuff could have a bad influence on us over time. And then we jumped to how media in general could.

His principle is mostly motivated, if I got it right, from a series of journalistic and psychology studies that discuss the growing of violence among recent generations, violent media among the major causes (besides sociological e economic). "Ten years ago, in our time, we were bullyed... a few months back, a kid in a rich school shot another one for a slight misunderstanding. Thats how they're expressing they differences more and more these days."

To sum it up, we had major disagreements as to hows and whys. In short, he says it will affect someone, and I say it might.