Maybe it’s all the Halloween candy that hit grocery stores the week after Labor Day, or the spooky decorations plastered everywhere, but for whatever reason, I have been in horror movie mode for weeks.

Finding a movie that will scare the bejesus out of me is quite a challenge. Instead of your typical supernatural colliding with real world theme, I’ve found Sarah Palin impressions on ‘Saturday Night Live’ to be way more frightening – because those spoofs are actually real.

I just don’t get scared of the next to impossible – a concept with which Mr. M Night Shyamalan can’t seem to come to terms. I’m really not buying this entire alien crop circle, isolated village, lady in the water, apocalyptic bioterrorist attack stuff.

Generating popular catchphrases, like Shyamalan’s ‘I see dead people,’ along with producing popular Halloween costumes and recognizable sound bytes are essentially the only ways to define horror movie success.If it wasn’t for ‘Here’s Johnny!’ and ‘Seven days,’ films like ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Ring’ wouldn’t still haunt our minds today.

The ‘Scream’ disguise, the Mike Myers mask and the Jigsaw tuxedo all keep these scary movies on the map.

And if the theme songs from ‘Halloween’ and ‘Jaws’ didn’t consistently send goosebumps up our spine, they would easily be forgotten.

But what is it exactly that allows fictional films to get our adrenaline pumping?

Psychologists have suggested that movie-goers are not necessarily so much afraid of scary movies as they are excited by them, and that they watch such films for the euphoric sense of relief at the end.

I’ve found the psychological thrillers are the ones that really get under my skin. These are the ones psychologists claim cause nightmares, make you question every creak and lock every access to the house, cat doors and fire shoots included.

When I saw ‘Taking Lives’ after having just broken up with a psychotic boyfriend, I slept on my parents’ floor for nights, scared that he would come and kill me.

After I saw ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ I never ate three-course-dinner chewing gum again, and ever since I saw ‘Final Destination 3,’ I’ve strayed away from tanning beds – not to prevent melanoma, but to avoid getting burned alive.

When I’m not hiding out in my parents room or sprinting down my dark hallway to the light switch, I am laughing at the physical horror movies, like the time I watched the original ‘Exorcist’ and peed my pants when the possessed girl spider-crawled down stairs at record speed.

It really doesn’t matter how prestigious an actor is: horror movie stars range from Courteney Cox to Samuel L. Jackson, from Jamie Lee Curtis to Mark Wahlberg, and even from Paris Hilton to Brad Pitt.

Really, all you need to do to act in a horror movie is open your eyes as wide as humanly possible and scream like you just walked in on your parents having sex.

When I went to see ‘Saw V’ the other night, I was pretty scared.

Not because of the man getting his body diced on the enormous screen in front of me, or because a woman’s decapitated head soared across the picture. I was haunted by this question: who the hell comes up with these things?

How do the writers of the ‘Saw’ movies keep thinking of new ways to kill people? Ways that are so obscure, using tools that a regular psychopath would never even fathom?

I found myself doing the weak man’s peek – the whole throw-my-hands-over-my-eyes-but-spread-my-fingers-wide-enough-that-I-can-clearly-see-everything thing.

Luckily, I was accompanied by someone I liked, because I don’t think a stranger would have appreciated all my squirming and question asking.

You really have to think about your scary movie tendencies before you venture out to the theater.

I’ve had a friend who flailed about, throwing limbs left and right. Another friend would scream at a pitch to which no human should be subjected. One girl I knew would turn her fear into laughter, so she would crack up at everything.

None of which are enjoyable ways to watch a movie.

Historians claim the golden age of horror was in 1931, when America was deep in the Great Depression.

People back then used scary movies as an escape, and would think to themselves, ‘Wow, things could be a lot worse.’

Depending on the outcome of our presidential election next week, horror films might have to show real-live snuff films to reach a second Golden Age.

Talia Pollock’s weekly pop culture columns appear on Wednesdays. She would like to thank her terrific neighbor for making sure she didn’t see ‘Saw’ alone. Scary movie recommendations? E-mail her at tpollock@syr.edu.

Published on October 28, 2008 at 12:00 pm