Week 7

1. King (2010) describes Horror as being defined through three basic elements. Explain, using references, what these three elements are. Think of a horror story you’ve read/watched/heard that makes use of all three of these elements and show how King’s definition is at play in that narrative.

According to King (2010) the horror genre is built by three different elements, or as he describes it, horror exists on three different levels. King (2010) writes: Terror on top, horror below it and lowest of all, the gag reflex of revulsion.”
King himself favours the level of terror and tries to avoid revulsion and writes that he is “not proud” if he has to use it to get a reaction from his reader.
He writes on that terror is what the readers mind sees, the unpleasant speculative thoughts our own mind creates. Horror is the underlying emotion of terror, slightly less fine and it “invites a physical reaction by showing us something which is physically wrong.” The third element, revulsion is King’s least favourite and he says that “the ‘chest-buster’ form Alien” fits into the revulsion category.

How does King’s three levels fit into a horror film I’ve seen? Well let’s have a look at my personal favourite vampire movie, The Lost Boys, which is categorized as a “black comedy horror film” (Wikipedia, 2020), though it might not be as scary as many other horror films, it definitely contains King’s (2010) three elements.  
The first and finest element can be found quite early in the movie where ‘something’ is flying over a dark amusement park, a night guard sees ‘it’, screams and starts running to his car. He franticly tries to get in, the camera goes everywhere until the guard (and the car door) is pulled from the car and disappears up in the air. We have a similar scene later one (which might be more classic horror film) where a couple is fooling around (or at least he is) in a car, she hears a sound, he says it’s nothing and the next thing that happens is that the roof disappears and they are both taken by ‘something’.
Moving on to level two we have a scene where we finally get to see the vampires aka the horror element where we see something physically wrong. The handsome teenage boys are transformed into scary vampires with pointy teeth and pale eyes, the light in this scene is set so that their facial features appear more terrifying then what they really are. The same scene takes the movie to a gorier level when we get to see the vampires feed on innocent people.
Now, revulsion! One of the most revolting scenes in The Lost Boys takes place during the last fighting scene, although there are many scenes in this movie that fits into the third level, I think this one hits the jackpot. During the last fight one of the vampires is pushed into a bathtub filled with garlic and holy water, he melts and makes a rather disturbing appearance before disappearing into the tub, but it doesn’t end there. The melted vampire then causes a chemical reaction if you like (or he’s taking revenge) by flooding the house with.. well.. vampire goo and the whole scene is rather disgusting.

Although The Lost Boys aren’t particularly scary it still follows a ‘horror movie model’ and we see a lot of classic elements. After reading about King’s (2010) three levels of horror elements it was rather easy to point them out in the movie.  

Sources:

King, S. (2010). Danse Macabre. Everest House.