Fear
horror - hysteria - panic - phobia- - terror
"Fear is the most powerful emotion in the human race and fear of the unknown is probably the most ancient. You're dealing with stuff that everybody has felt; from being little babies we're frightened of the dark, we're frightened of the unknown. If you're making a horror film you get to play with the audiences feelings" -- John Carpenter
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form. -- Supernatural Horror in Literature (1924-1927) - H. P. Lovecraft
Psycho (1960) - Alfred Hitchcock [Amazon.com]
Definition
Fear is an unpleasant feeling of perceived risk or danger, real or not. Fear also can be described as a feeling of extreme dislike to some conditions/objects, such as: fear of darkness, fear of ghosts, etc. It is one of the basic emotions.
Fear may underlie some phenomena of behavior modification, although these phenomena can be explained without adducing fear as a factor in them. Furthermore, application of aversive stimuli is also often ineffective in producing change in the behaviour intended to be changed. Fearing objects or contexts can be learned; in animals this is being studied as fear conditioning, which depends on the emotional circuitry of the brain.
Fear inside a person has different degrees and varies from one person to another (see also phobia). If not properly handled, fear can lead to social problems. People who experience intense fear have been known to commit irrational and/or dangerous acts.
Some philosophers have considered fear to be a useless emotion with uniformly bad consequences; other thinkers note the usefulness of fear as a warning of bad situations. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear [Feb 2005]
Fear in fiction
"Fear is the most powerful emotion in the human race and fear of the unknown is probably the most ancient. You're dealing with stuff that everybody has felt; from being little babies we're frightened of the dark, we're frightened of the unknown. If you're making a horror film you get to play with the audiences feelings" -- John Carpenter What is it about horror that is making us walk out of the smug comfort of our homes to sit for three long hours in the darkened halls only to have our nerves frayed? What is it about horror that tingles our pleasure buds? Are we truly a bunch of sadists deep inside who delight in all the blood and the gore and the suffering that the poor protagonists undergo? Is it to appease the animal in us that we delight in horror films? -- Juhi Bakhshi [...]Movies
-
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) - Terry Gilliam
[Amazon.com]
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a novel by Hunter S. Thompson, which describes the protagonist's (Raoul Duke, a fictionalised representation of Thompson) chasing of the American Dream to Las Vegas through a drug-induced haze with his attorney (Dr. Gonzo, based on real-life Chicano lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta) in tow. It is based on his attempted "coverage" of the Mint 400 motocross race for Sports Illustrated magazine in 1971. What was intended as a 250-word caption snowballed into a novel-length feature for Rolling Stone magazine in November of that year. The novel was heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the New York Times Book Review and "A scorching epochal sensation!" by author Tom Wolfe. The film version, released on May 22, 1998, only pulled in about $10.5 million at the US box office (it was budgeted at approximately $18.5 million) but has since become a cult classic.The film version was directed by Terry Gilliam and starred Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke and Benicio Del Toro as Dr. Gonzo. Both actors were cast by the film's original director, Alex Cox who wrote the original screenplay with his longtime collaborator, Tod Davies. When Terry Gilliam became attached to the project as director he rejected the Cox/Davies screenplay for various creative reasons, and Thompson himself disliked it and did not approve of Cox's approach to the movie. Gilliam then decided to attempt his own screenplay with collaborator Tony Grisoni. When the film approached release, Gilliam learned that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) would not allow Alex Cox's and Tod Davies names to be removed from the credits even though none of their material was used in the production of the film. Angered over having to share credit, Gilliam left the WGA and, on certain early premiere prints of the film, made a short introductory sequence in which an anonymous presenter assures the audience that no screenwriters, whatsoever, were involved in writing the film, despite what you may read in the credits.
The lead actors undertook extraordinary preparations for their respective roles. Del Toro gained more than forty pounds before filming began, and extensively researched Acosta's life. Depp lived with Thompson for months, doing research for the role as well as studying Thompson's habits and mannerisms. Depp even traded his car for Thompson's red Cadillac convertible, known to fans as the Great Red Shark, and drove it around California during his preparations for the role. Many articles of the costumes that Depp wears in the film are genuine pieces borrowed directly from Thompson, and Thompson himself shaved Depp's head to match his own natural male pattern baldness. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas#Film_version_.281998.29 [Feb 2005]
see also: "gonzo", drug movies
your Amazon recommendations