URI Profs Shed Light on Why We Like to Be Scared

We Americans enjoy scaring ourselves so much we’ve dedicated a holiday to it, and I’ve got to admit that I prefer a good horror movie to all the candy associated with Halloween – and I have quite a sweet tooth!

If you ever wondered why our culture enjoys the horror genre so much, three URI professors have an answer for you. Philosophy chair Cheryl Foster, communications professor Ian Reyes and French teacher Karen De Bruin, the three co-hosts of the Beauty Salon, a weekly radio  show on WRIU, dedicate this week’s episode to the topic of horror movies.

These three are great thinkers and I promise their show will shed some light on your fascination with horror films, or whatever their topic of the week happens to be … it’s one of my favorite local radio shows, so I hope you enjoy it too.

If they manage to spark your interest in horror movies, you can watch one of my favorites here:

Yes, I’m totally embarrassed that I like this movie, but I do. It’s actually not at all gory by modern standards (you’ve probably seen worse on network TV) but it is very disturbing and scary, especially if you’ve ever traveled through the more rural parts of the country…

…Or, if you have a little less time to kill (pun intended!) and are rightfully unnerved by the latter, you can watch one of the all-time best non-scary scenes from a horror movie:

American Werewolf in London is a great example of how horror doesn’t have to be scary.

But the “Friday the 13th” series is actually one of my favorites of this genre as few movies manage such a strange way of delivering a morality message. The theme in every installment (until they get too ridiculous to really have a theme) is the camp councilors always get killed when they break the rules – either smoking pot, drinking or having sex.

Full Friday the 13th disclosure: I’ve always wanted to remake the first two in the series into one movie and tell it the same way Francis Ford Coppolla tells The Godfather Part 2, jumping back and forth between generations. Those who know these movies will understand why…

Here’s the Boston Globe’s list of 50 scariest movies of all time.

Please feel free to comment some of your favorite horror movies below … or, if you prefer, just let our readers know who creepy you think I am!!