Horror vs horrible: How to tell them apart and not be scared

Canadian funnyman Mike Myers was born in 1963. So his parents can be forgiven for unknowingly naming him after future horror film legend Michael Myers, who－prior to performing open-neck surgery on his big sis－was affectionately called "Mikey" by his close-knit family members. Before his sudden and rather unexpected act of sororicide at the age of 6, maybe little Mikey liked everything too, including Death cereal.

Where is this all headed? Once a month I contribute a thoughtful, deadpan serious, timely, thoughtprovoking and uplifting piece to this page 22. Today is no exception. I enjoy doing it. I would say the only drawback－other than the countless groupie-stalker-reader types that will NOT stop shadowing me across town on the subway－is that I don't pick my publishing date. Therefore, some of the topics might be slightly dated.

Such is the case today. Halloween recently came and went. If you like, consider this piece forward-looking and see it as a rather ahead-of-its-time essay on Halloween 2020. Regardless, just a few weeks ago, on the evening of Thursday, Oct 31, I had just finished work not temporally far from the stroke of midnight (Blast! More concrete scheduling factoids for my sleepless stalkers!).

So halfway to my bachelor bungalow, I hear more than the rustling of leaves scraping on the asphalt behind me. I whir around, expecting to confront a fully-grown Michael Myers in the William Shatner mask, but no … It's just a young female trick-or-treater dressed as Sadoko from the Japanese horror franchise The Ring. Anyway, I tossed a Milky Way bar into little Sadoko's candy sack, but my aim was off and I accidentally knocked the mirror she was holding aside, at which point I realized I was looking at her reflection and her reptilian tongue shot out chameleon-like to catch the chocolate and right her looking glass. Ah, kids these days… So good at multitasking.

So back to Mike Myers. The Canadian comic is perhaps best known for films of split personality/split camera roles such as Austin Powers and his arch nemesis, Dr. Evil. However, there could be nothing less scary than the funny franchise. There are links, however. English character actor Donald Pleasance was the psychiatrist who fell asleep at the switch at the bughouse, allowing his ward－a now adult "Mikey"－to escape into civilization and resume his unsolicited and un-anesthetized "scalpelry".

As the Ontario actor had the same name as the homicidal maniac in the 1978 John Carpenter horror classic, the former claimed to have been greatly influenced by some of Donald's past roles, especially in 007 films, in characterizing his Dr. Evil role.

All of this flashed through my work-addled mind just before midnight on Halloween. Perhaps the very young age I unwittingly took in Halloween on TV had something to do with the fact that it spooked me a lot more than The Ring. Or was it the cultural familiarity of Indiana over an offshore Japanese island and a video you really, really shouldn't watch?

But how can you explain that I found other incarnations of The Ring, as well as The Grudge from the same country spooky to boot? And who can forget one of the scariest domestic screamers of all time, The Lonely Spirit In An Old Building? Released in the late 1980s and produced by a group of professors from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy on a shoestring budget, it was initially praised as an instant classic Chinese horror movie but later fell out of favor after an elderly female moviegoer was reportedly frightened to death in a cinema in the capital.

Even though I would rate the original Halloween ahead of any of these in terms of jump count, I would put all of its foreign rivals ahead of the 2015 horror classic: Jason Voorhees (of Friday the 13th fame) vs. Michael Myers. It became a jump-the-shark sequel at that point, and not in a feed-the-shark 1975 Jaws scary sort of way.

So why do we endure heart-pounding, popcorn-scattering chillfests, especially with the cost of theater tickets and the gum on the seats?

Perhaps we enjoy the vicarious fight-or-flight response without actually being a babysitter chased through a darkened home by a cleaver-wielding Mikey? Or maybe we are drawn to archetypal fears without knowing anything of Jung? Perhaps it's microbial, because studies have show that fear produces adrenaline spurts that coincide with immune boosts. Also, you DO burn more calories when you are running from state hospital sociopaths through churchyards, so don't be shy of getting extra butter on your carmelcorn. In addition, it has been shown that those suffering from depression can kickstart a release of some of the happier hormones in the cortex, like dopamine. Finally, it can be a mood booster for an oft-overlooked but rather obvious reason. "Hey, I might have a bit of stress at work and in life, but at least I'm not being forced to poke a killer in the eye with a coat hanger through the slats of my wardrobe to live another day."