Cute Creeps From Pop Culture: Darkriders

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Darkriders

I sure do like a good, old-fashioned Darkride. Ever since I was a 7-year-old riding DisneyWorld's Haunted Mansion for the sixth time, I've been enamoured with the idea of goofy ghost houses. Phantasmagraphics has some elaborate insights into the makings of a Darkride, and there are some great photos at The Imaginary World. There's a sad little photo essay on abandoned Darkride stuff at Funchase, and more info at Laff In The Dark...

but the best resource is Darkride And Funhouse Enthusiasts, a place you'll definately want to peek around a few corners in. I had a blast this past summer taking my 7-year-old daughter on her first Darkride in the old 'Haunted Barrelworks' on Centre Island.

"Horror and humor have been on intimate terms at least since the time of Elisabethan and Jacobean drama. Shakespeare's darkest tragedies were leavened with a gallows wit..."

-David J. Skal The Monster Show

"Even as we deny that our flesh must decay, however, we surround ourselves with fictional images of the very fate we strive to hear nothing about. They are everywhere: in books, films, and TV, in advertising, in toys and games for all ages, in children's breakfast food. No American child (even one lucky enough to escape Count Chocula) can grow up without learning what a vampire is..."

-Walter Kendrick The Thrill Of Fear

"... through expressions such as the comical Hyakkiyagyõ emaki, an inversion occurs, and that which should not be gazed upon is rendered visible-- and gazed upon with pleasure. The unseen (unseeable) is transformed into spectacle; the mysterious spirits of untamed nature are transmuted into familiar everyday objects; terror turns into humor; pandemonium becomes parade."

- Michael Dylan Foster Pandemonium and Parade

"The horror movie asks you if you want to take a good close look at the dead cat (or the shape under the sheet, to use a metaphor from the introduction to my short story collection)... but not as an adult would look at it. Never mind the philosophical implications of death or the religious possibilities inherent in the idea of survival; the horror film suggests we just have a good close look at the physical artifact of death. Let us be children masquerading as pathologists."

-Stephen King Danse Macabre

"No one will ever love a story the way a kid loves a story, whether told in a novel or as a ghost tale furtively whispered around a campfire. That's because no adult has an imagination quite like that of a child, where monsters might be real and lurking just under the bed."

-Monica S. Kuebler Rue Morgue

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Darkriders

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