feeling listless

Film This piece from The Wave Magazine is a primer for people in the Bay Area of San Francisco to help them decide what to do on my birthday. Which is pretty pointless if you're out of the area. But I'm more interested in the sidebar which lists five scary Halloween films. Number 2 is The Karate Kid....

"... a horrifying tale about a boy who gets forced into slave labour by an evil martial arts guru. Despite having the most clever costume at the party (or, perhaps, because of it), Ralph Macchio gets his shower curtain-covered ass handed to him in a scene that will scare the high holy crap out of every kid with a single mom.

It's a while since a film actually scared me. Or rather disturbed me rather than make me jump -- a slightly different effect. I tend to be horrified by images. At University I saw a photograph in a Life Magazine portfolio entitled 'The Odyssey of Pain', which consisted of a young man strapped to a wooden chair, as two old men used electrodes to administer an electrical current to various parts of his body to see where the pain would go, the word odyssey suggesting that this was some voyage of discover the chap was on. The look on his face as the fear pulsed through a face which was trying to show utter placidity haunts me. Just be glad that I couldn't find a copy on-line.