Another "horror story"

I was reminding myself to post sort of an addendum to my last entry regarding horror movie stories anyway, and then Deanna made the comment on it and clinched the deal. It's the tale of one Halloween weekend when I went to visit my friends Scott and Donna in Tampa before I lived there. As it was Halloween weekend, we thought it might be fun to get into the spirit and go see The Grudge. Fun... yeah.

What followed was one of the most harrowing cinema experiences that I can remember. Complete with screaming girls in the row behind us. Poor Scott's arms both must have been numb considering he had one of us latched onto either side. Things jumped at the screen so often that I actually uttered the phrase, "I'm exhausted... I'm not sure how much more of this I can take!" After the movie, we formed a human chain all way to the car, and into the house. The mood didn't even wear off at that point, as one of us insisted, "Come upstairs with me; I have to go to the bathroom!" As an added bonus, Sam the cat liked to meow randomly in the night, much like the cat in the movie. (Good thing I didn't have Ace yet at that point, since he both looks and sounds like that cat.) I was roundly mocked by Scott when he came downstairs in the morning and found that I had left the lamp on all night.

Now, I've seen this movie since, and while it's still rather creepy on a small screen in the living room, I believe that our experience was primarily caused by perfect fright conditions. Halloween weekend, pitch-black theater, surround sound, screaming girls behind us... we never had a chance.

(If anyone read Deanna's comment to my last post and is wondering what the part about the butt means, there is a scene in which Buffy - it's stuck; I have a really hard time calling her Sarah Michelle Gellar - is showering and something starts to come out of the back of her head. Based on the glimpse shown in the trailers, dad and Deanna thought it looked rather like a butt. I had to assure them that it wasn't; I believe it was in fact supposed to be a fist.)

What I should have done to make the scariness go away was check out the 30 Second Bunny Theater version, found here: http://www.angryalien.com/aa/grudgebuns.asp. 30 Second Bunny Theater makes everything a little better.

So, why do I watch horror movies again? Anybody else have a good being-scared-out-of-their-wits story?