MY LIFE IN HORROR: I SURVIVED THE TERROR

My Life In Horror
 
Every month, I will write about a film, album, book or event that I consider horror, and that had a warping effect on my young mind. You will discover my definition of what constitutes horror is both eclectic and elastic. Don’t write in. Also, of necessity, much of this will be bullshit – as in, my best recollection of things that happened anywhere from 15 – 40 years ago. Sometimes I will revisit the source material contemporaneously, further compounding the potential bullshit factor. Finally, intimate familiarity with the text is assumed – to put it bluntly, here be gigantic and comprehensive spoilers. Though in the vast majority of cases, I’d recommend doing yourself a favour and checking out the original material first anyway.
 
This is not history. This is not journalism. This is not a review.
 
This is my life in horror.
 
I Survived The Terror

I recently returned from Florida, along with my father, stepmum, wife, and nine year old daughter, following what  has become a generational pilgrimage to the Land The Mouse Built. It was my third trip to Disney World/Universal Studios, having first gone as a ten year old, and then ten years ago, with my step kids (now teenagers, then nine and ten).
 
It was, as always, a trip; and one of the big ways it’s a trip is a mixture of familiarity and change. There’s always something new - several somethings, in fact, most significantly to me a new King Kong ride which was 1000 kinds of awesome - and inevitably, something missing (in my case, the old Kong ride, Jaws, and no more Earthquake were the biggest pangs). So there’s that. But there’s also the intensely, comfortingly familiar - The Indiana Jones stunt show, for example, is still running, 30 years after my first visit, and it’s basically identical, even though I doubt any of the performers I saw last month will be the same as the ones I saw on that first visit - they almost can’t be, in fact.
 
Perhaps the best example of all is Star Tours; a sit-in simulator ride with 3D glasses that’s run for 30 years. You’re supposed to be on a space tour shuttle, but C-3PO ends up unexpectedly piloting (with R2D2 up top, natch) and you don’t even get out of the hanger before the empire tries to stop you, and you’re off on a hyperspace tour of the Star Wars universe.
 
The way Star Tours has managed to last so long is the same way the franchise has; new shit, all the time.
 
As a kid, the three jumps we went through were all connected to the original trilogy; in 1990, that’s all they had, after all. Then, with the big kids, there were prequel parts added. But I need to unpack that, because when I say added, I don’t mean rotated in - I mean, added into the pre-existing mix.
 
Star Tours is rarely the same ride twice.
 
This time out, the queues were very low (for reasons passing understanding) and I took the ride five or six times, and whilst some sequences were repeated (I ended up in the Gungan underwater city on three occasions, and was menaced by Darth Vader and Kylo Ren twice a piece in the opening sequence), there wasn’t a single sequence that didn’t have at least one variant; even the moment when you’re informed that there’s a rebel spy on board the ship who has attracted the Empire’s/First Orders attention was delivered by both Admiral Ackbar and Poe Dameron, on different occasions.
 
It’s the kind of thing you could go through life never knowing. You do the ride once and it feels complete and a full experience, and sure, if you get all the prequel sequences, you might feel a bit meh about it - but only a bit, because it’s still the best action sequences from those movies, and you’re still flying through them with C3PO wittering and R2 blooping and bleeping away. Bad Star Wars is like bad pizza, in other words; it’s still pizza, at least when it comes to the ride.
 
The biggest buzz for me, this time, was finding myself flying over the climactic battle of The Last Jedi, with walkers sending up clouds of red-on-white dust and almost stomping us. Glorious times. I think the only thing that would have topped that would have been being dropped into the assault on the records archive in Rogue One, but I suspect the implied bummer of that might have been a deal breaker. Or maybe I just missed it.
 
Anyhow.
 
So the kid is nine, and brave for nine, but she doesn’t want to go upside down, and she doesn’t want to go backwards; the last we discovered unfortunately after the fact, having done the yeti ride in Animal Kingdom as her first coaster. There’s only a handful  of rides these restrictions eliminated, and a phenomenal time was had by all, but it did mean that I had to sneak a morning to go to the Disney Hollywood park solo, so I could single-rider the Rock and Rollercoaster and Twilight Zone Tower Of Terror.
 
The Rock and Rollercoaster is as good as I remember, basically, with that breathtaking 0-60 mph launch leading into a loop, and then off to the races. It’s fast as hell, but smooth. Great ride. I was disappointed not to find any Aerosmith themed tat that appealed in the shop, but it’s not like I don’t already have four or five shirts, so.
 
But something funny happens on the way to The Twilight Zone.
 
What happens is, I get to the Tower Of Terror, and I look up at the doors opening in the side of the tower, 5 or 6 stories up, and I hear the people in the ride screaming…
 
And all of a sudden, I kind of don’t want to do it.
 
It’s the weirdest fucking feeling. I love thrill rides. Love ‘em. I love being high up, scared as I am of heights, and dropped/flung/inverted at speed. I adore it. And suddenly I’m on my own, and I’m looking up at the ride, and my belly turns over, and I’m not sure I want to do it.
 
I examine the feeling. I don’t mean I can’t do it, I discover; not at all. Of course, I could. Can. Will. Probably. But…
 
And it’s safe, right? Sure. Safer than flying, never mind crossing the road. The laws governing my safety while I sit on that ride will be among the most strenuous in the world. For the 30 - 40 seconds I’m sat in the ride, I’ll be pretty much as safe as I’ll ever be in my entire life. Stay on the ride, live forever. Ha ha.
 
So it’s not that it’s not safe. On the other hand, I hate heights. I mean, really hate them. It’s a phobia that I’ve had since a child, linked in my mind to being abnormally short for much of my formative years (does that even make sense?) and though it’s waxed and waned a bit, it's never gone away, and right now is as bad as it’s ever been. And to be really clear, it’s an intense fear of falling, not the height per se. I can’t look over any substantial drop, under normal conditions, without experiencing a lurching sensation, as though I am falling forwards, falling over and down. It’s fucking horrible.
 
So, put like that, why in the hell do I want to do the ride?
 
It’s a question I ponder as I browse the tat shop, again failing to find anything to spend money on (and seriously, Disney - up your tat game, for crying out loud. If you can’t sell me anything in either an Aerosmith or Twilight Zone themed shop, you are Fail). I don’t have to do it. I’m on my own. I can go anytime. I can say I didn’t feel like it. I can lie and say I did it. No-one need ever know. So, why?
 
#
 
It’s the summer of 1984. I am six years old.
 
My father takes me to, as far as I can recall, my first theme park, along with my sister and step brother. I am insanely excited. I will do All The Rides.
 
I remember looking up at The Corkscrew. Seeing it on the horizon, as the park opened. My first thought, as my brian tried to make sense of it, was that it was some kind of oversized monkeybar setup. With the distance, I had no sense of scale, you see. I imagined the kid brave enough to climb it, swinging over the inside of the loop-the-loop. Quite how I thought that was in any way possible or sane or within a galaxy of safe is a mystery lost to me now. I can only report the memory, and kind of dig the kid whose mind came up with it.
 
At some point, it became clear it was a coaster. At some point, I realised I’d get to ride it.
 
And then, at some point, I found out I wouldn’t be able too.
 
I mentioned being short, as a kid. Well, it turns out, too short for The Corkscrew.
 
I wish this was a lie, that I had a better sense of proportion from an occurrence so far distant. But I don’t, and I have to tell you, I can still taste the disappointment.
 
Did I cry? Oh, hell, probably. It sure as shit put a crimp on what until then had been a pretty good day. Either way, I must have communicated my disappointment well enough, because when we reached the queue for The Black Hole, my dad measured me up against the ‘astronauts must be at least this tall to ride’ and declared me, against the evidence of my own eyes, tall enough.
 
And so it was that my first coaster ride was one taken indoors, under cover of darkness, and in a state of ecstatic terror.
 
I’m sure it would look awful to my adult eyes, but my child memory is that even the queue was cool. I’m still a sucker for sci-fi trappings and aesthetics, and back then, I was an indiscriminate fiend, so no level of shabbiness or neglect will even have registered; it was Space Shit, and I was enraptured. And the rides themselves were brilliant; red metal framed shuttle shapes, single file bench seats. My memory is that I sat at the front, butterflies in my stomach as my father cheerfully insisted I was tall enough as he sat down immediately behind me. That said, I also know I dreamt about the ride a lot, after that day, so it may be a dream memory, and the reality may have been that I sat behind him. What I am certain of is that I remember feeling the enormous comfort of his immediate physical presence, his smell the most powerful reassurance in the world.
 
Whatever happened, I was safe.
 
Or was I? As the ride began, a leisurely spiral up, around a lit model of figures in a space suit alongside some asteroids, I had all the time in the world to think about the fact that I was, in point of fact, a good centimeter short of the required ride height (in the interest of fairness, I have to point out that this, too, may be false memory, in that I may have only believed that, so please don’t assume my dad was insane. Probably he wasn’t).
 
And boy did that weigh on me, the higher we got, oh so slowly, lazily, the model that had been above us now below, and passing out of sight... How high were we? Genius design, this; sensory deprivation to create a feeling of infinite peril. The slow pace of the elevation adding to the sense of dislocation. And then the cheesy-unless-you’re-six-years-old launch warning. My heart absolutely pounding. And then, pitch black… a split second of suspension… and then a plummet into darkness, the scream forced from my throat, my blood absolutely singing with raw adrenalin.
 
The rest is, appropriately enough, a blur, with sharp lefts, rights, and a sudden hill the only features I have any impression of. This’ll sound odd, but I have vivid memories of the vivid memories, of replaying what I could remember over and over on the car ride home, in bed that night. I had a verbal version of the story prepared that I would tell pretty much anyone I met for months afterwards.
 
I didn’t end up with the ‘I survived the terror’ T Shirt, but I did get a Black Hole eraser that I kept for years. It was in the shape of a T-shirt, with blue sleeves. Funny, the things you treasure, the things you remember, and the things you remember treasuring.
 
#
 
Back at Disney World, I end up taking the ride. I do it for two conscious reasons. The first is shame. Disney are running a new digital scheme to manage the whole get-a-slip-when-your-photo-is-taken thing that so rarely leads to your picking up said picture. Now, you pay upfront, and then anytime a person or ride snaps you, you scan your wristband. The photo is then linked to your app account, and you can download it to your phone.
 
Pretty nifty.
 
But it occurs to me that it also means I can’t convincingly lie about not taking the ride. We’ve already seen photos show up for rides where we didn’t scan the wrist band. But/and/also, it means telling two lies; one, that I took the ride, and two, I didn’t scan the band. And, as most people who know me could cheerfully tell you, I’m a pretty awful liar at the best of times. I might sail one past the fam, but two in a row?
 
Not hardly.
 
And I don’t want to admit that I’m scared to do the ride. I just… don’t.
 
And then there’s the second reason, and the second reason is love.
 
I’ve discussed before how I can trace my messed up relationship with sleep in large part to staying up until 3am on a Friday night, to try and watch Raw Power (later Noisy Mothers), the only terrestrial broadcast TV show that featured metal music videos and interviews. An incidental side effect of this was that I ended up watching The Word regularly, despite hating everything about it except the live music (which is, admittedly, a big exception, because they got some off-the-hook bands on occasion). A more pleasant side effect, however, was the midnight Twilight Zone reruns that were often on ITV.
 
In glorious, grainy black and white, Rod Serling would walk me through some wierd/scary/miraculous scenario. The show had a reputation that preceded it, meaning that everything about it felt familiar, from the title credits and theme to the stories themselves, even though most of it was new to me. To this day, I find episodes of the show incredibly comforting to watch, whatever the actual content - like my other great genre love, Dr. Who, I’ve not seen anything like any episode, and have no strong urge to either. Also like that show, I find that the wildly variable quality bothers me not at all. Bad pizza is still pizza.
 
It’s the story equivalent of comfort food, is what I’m trying to say. And, despite the relative severity of the ride itself, the way the ride is dressed and presented is absolutely exquisite, even by Disney’s obscenely high standards. It’s is set in an old, crumbling hotel, once an exclusive venue for the brightest Hollywood stars to cavorte in comfort, now dusty, cobwebbed abandoned… and, well, haunted, probably.
 
So in addition to the catnip of Twilight Zone nostalgia, we have a perfectly dressed haunted hotel to walk through - and, before the ride proper starts, we’re even put into a room where a CGI Serling talks us through the history of the hotel and hints at what is to come, in glorious black and white. I’m getting emotional just thinking about it, and how fucking cool it is. It’s a form of immortality for a working storyteller that you feel is genuinely affectionate, and that the man himself might have approved of. Even the slightly macabre nature of the presentation plays into it, given how he made his coin.
 
It’s the best bit of the ride, honestly. And if I could have done it and then skipped the drop afterwards… well, I dunno, actually. Probably not. Hopefully not. Because actually, the atmosphere continued after that room, with an impeccably put together boiler room style queueing area, and an incredibly atmospheric pre-drop sequence that used the music and iconography of the series, and it filled me with joy. And, oddly, when we got to the drop, I dug that too. It felt fun, in the spirit of the material, somehow. I felt safe, wrapped up in genre, hugged tight in the arms of the imagination thrill ride of The Twilight Zone.
 
#
 
On our penultimate afternoon in Florida, my seventy five year old father and I scored fast passes to Space Mountain. As we sat in the single file, four-to-a-car coaster seat, and the familiar rattling, clanking of the chain dragged us up towards the top of a steep slope, red lettering around the top asking us to prepare for launch… honestly, I was too in the moment to really feel the moment. Which is probably as it should be.
 
And this time, after the ride, I bought the damn T shirt.
 
KP
30/4/19