Why we love a good scare
Series: With Good Reason news features
From: With Good Reason
Length: 00:02:48
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With Halloween right around the corner, you're likely to see more horror films on TV. What is it that we love so much about a good scare?
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Piece Description
With Halloween right around the corner, you're likely to see more horror films on TV. What is it that we love so much about a good scare?
Broadcast History
Aired on ten public radio stations in Virginia October 25 - 31, 2008
Transcript
Back in the days when movies cost a quarter, Bela Lugosi?s Dracula scared the pants off movie-goers. :06
CUT Dracula ?Dracula very much...sentimental.? :12
But Steve Prince says horror films have changed in the past eighty years. For one thing, today?s monsters are less likely to be supernatural. :09
CUT modern monster is us. ?The monsters are?next door neighbor.? :13
One of the most memorable next door neighbors is Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock?s 1960 classic Psycho which, Prince says, ushered in the era of the modern horror film. :11
Cut psycho ?My mother is...mad sometimes.? :07
CUT Prince on psycho ?Not only?violence and savagery in the older period.? :14
That violence has only grown increasingly graphic and disturbing since Psycho. Steve Prince, who teaches communications at Virginia Tech, says it was Edgar Allan Poe who understood that readers...
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Timing and Cues
2:47
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