Random Movie Recollection

I'm blogging this, because this completely tangential fact keeps going through my head and I have no idea what else to do with it.

I went to a Catholic school between kindergarten and 8th grade (as opposed to high school, when I went to a Catholic school, and college, when I went to a Catholic school, and grad school, when...) As expected, we were exposed to blood and gore a great deal as a result of this. Lent was always a very uplifting time of year; I think I saw just about every filmed account of Jesus' short life and horrific death in existence, sitting in uncomfortable wooden folding chairs in the cafegymatorium. Lots of flogging, lots of thorns being pressed down on heads, lots of graphic depictions of the martyrdoms of saints, all before the tender age of 14. I even recall going to a performance of the Living Stations of the Cross one year, where we watched a half-naked, rather handsome high school lad, painted all over with lurid stage-makeup welts and bruises, stumble through the aisles of the church while another kid enthusiastically pantomimed whipping him. Suffice it to say that to attend a Catholic grade school was to become somewhat inured to violence.

This still doesn't explain why, when I was in seventh grade or so, Sr. Helen (still one of the coolest and down-to-earth nuns I've ever known) rescued us from our usual curriculum and let us all gather our chairs around to watch a movie on the portable audiovisual cart. The only reason I can think of is that I think it was around Easter time, and maybe they just felt like giving us a fun activity. What they did, though, was show us a movie called House of the Long Shadows. I know more about it now; apparently it's a decent example of Gothic horror from 1983, starring Vincent Price. Back then, all I knew about it was that I would rather have had teeth extracted, without novocaine, than watch it. Even now, at 25, I'm not a fan of horror movies. I stare in confusion at people who think Nightmare on Elm Street is funny, and I can't even watch the trailer for The Grudge. So I sat there, trying my best to meld with my plastic chair, as I watched people get strangled with piano wire, worm-eaten corpses fall from the ceiling, people catch battle-axes in the stomach, and a women wash her face in a bowl of water that OMG TURNS OUT TO BE FLESH-EATING ACID INSTEAD AND SHE RUNS AROUND SCREAMING AS HER FACE PEELS OFF IN BLOODY CHUNKS AND THEN SHE DIES!!! I sat there and stared while the nun cheerfully told me that it was just a movie, and I'd feel better if I just refrained from suspending my disbelief.

For days afterwards, it was by god an epic struggle for courage to step into the shower and let the water hit me.

I'm still not sure why she decided to show us this movie--even this particular type of movie--when, the same year, we watched National Lampoon's Vacation and our teacher very carefully fast-forwarded all of the parts where there's nudity or where Chevy Chase uttered swears worse than "damn". I'm also not sure what I'm trying to say about this event. Maybe it's that during the 80s, people saw no problem with randomly exposing children to really ugly horror movies (I experienced the same phenomenon very often at sleepovers, where I had no choice but sit through Puppet Master and the aforementioned Mr. Krueger franchise, or risk being ridiculed by a bunch of girls who were only tenuously my friends in the first place). Maybe it's that it seems like a double standard that they were okay with showing us scenes of Gory Death, but wouldn't dream of allowing a single moment of the sh-bomb or Christie Brinkley skinny dipping in the hotel pool. Maybe it's just that I have an extremely overactive imagination, and am glad that Adam has other friends to go and see scary movies with, so I don't have to.

Maybe it's just that I wonder what ever happened to the kid who played Beaten Jesus. He was really cute.