Ina's Horror Blog: Horror?

good guys?

I’m writing this here because Amanda, the consummate horror fan--much more intrepid than I--would have been 31 years old today. She particularly loved Chucky from "Child’s Play" and she would regularly and ghoulishly answer the phone with a cheery “City Morgue!” Since I wasn’t allowed to partake in horror films at her young age, I was always a little concerned that she watched stuff like that, but even more that she would invite, if not enforce her younger sister and cousins to watch,too. But, I think the result for the girls was an empowering lack of fear and a real enjoyment of scary movies because they were, in fact, “only movies”! I am still trying to unlearn my fear (hence this blog) and wish ARA was here to assist, again.

Amanda was a real film fan. She wrote reviews for her high school newspaper and had an enviable collection of videos taped from the TV over the years. She was also the (somewhat autocratic) director of the family living-room plays and variety shows.

I had been (and still am) planning a film series about adolescent girls on screen looking at films chronologically from the beginning of cinema. I was (and am) hoping to name it “Little Sisters” (something I’ve always been but never had). When she was about 13 or 14, I ran some of the list by Amanda and asked her for some suggestions knowing she and her buddies watched movies regularly, and I wanted age appropriate, informed opinions. Would you guys see a program with various older versions of “Little Women” if they were coupled with a new adaptation like the Winona Ryder one that was out then? What movie would she love to see on the theme of girls and young women growing up on screen? Amanda considered for only a moment and her answer surprised me:
“Stand By Me”, she said, definitively. I had never seen it but I knew it was one of her favorite movies--she often referred to it.

Isn’t that about boys coming of age? For a “Grrl” fest?

“Yes.” she replied, regally (as always). “It’s a movie we would go to see because it’s about a group of friends. That’s why it would be good for your festival.”

Our audience was over.

Stand By Me--a thoughtful, terrific suggestion and so much more imaginative than I had been in my selections.

I still have not seen the film. Several years after both mom and now Amanda were gone I was in New Rochelle and the movie was on TV. I watched until a point which seems to come early on, where something happened that was so ironic and sad that I was blinded by tears, spotting whatever it was I was pressing. I had to catch the train or something, needed to get going. It was a more difficult film than I imagined, not horror precisely, but requiring (emotional) courage to watch.

If I can locate it physically or streamedly I think I’ll give "Stand By Me" a watch today.

And, I can’t wait to include in the program now that I know that it doesn’t have to depict girls to be valuable to young women. Which, I think somewhere deep I knew, but needed to be schooled to reach!

Thanks for the suggestion, Amanda! Happy Birthday!!!