Scary Movie

We got in to see the film when we were under-age.  We were fifteen at the time, my friend Jean H. and myself.  You had to be eighteen to see an X rated film. For some reason I wanted to see Dracula.  Looking back I have no idea why.  I knew nothing of Dracula, had never read the book.  It was easier for girls than for boys to see that type of film.  We would dive down into the local public toilets and change our clothes and put on make-up and earrings and nobody ever questioned whether we were old enough. Fifteen year olds were naive in those days and not like the fifteen year olds of today.

So I persuaded Jean that we should see Dracula starring Christopher Lee.  The film had no sooner started than Jean began going to pieces, the music was enough to scare anyone.  I could feel my heart thumping but could not drag my eyes away from the screen.  At one particularly scary moment, Jean lost it, she jumped up from her seat with her arms flailing and somehow managed to hit the neck of the man sitting in front of us.  He re-acted as though his chair had just become electrified and shot into the air as did the people around him. General confusion.  The usherette appeared and told us all to behave or we would be asked to leave. The man in front told my friend that she was "a stupid bitch who had nearly given him a heart attack."  Peace returned. Jean could not watch the rest of the film and sat with her eyes firmly fixed on the floor and her hands over her ears but kept asking me in whispers what was going on.  I was whispering back the plot.

Well, the film ended and we went across the road to the fish shop to get a bag of chips.  We decided to walk home as we often did, munching and talking.  She started talking about vampires, on and on she went, would not let it drop.  By the time we reached the road where she lived, she had me firmly convinced that they did exist and that we were all in danger from them.  We said goodbye.  Only then did it strike me that I was left with a twenty minute walk to my home that took me right past a cemetery.  Needless to say I chose to walk on the other side of the road. Every footstep, every sound, every shadow, made me jump and I must have cut the walking time by well over half, in fact I was almost running. I kept seeing in my mind the scene were Dracula appears in a doorway, with the Autumn leaves blowing around his feet and the horrendously frightening music that accompanied it.

I hated going up to bed that night.  You see in our home you went up a long flight of steps onto a tiny landing, turned the corner and up three more steps onto the main landing.  There was a light on that landing but for some reason there was never any light bulb.  I never did find out why my parents did not bother with that light.  So when I turned the corner my parents' bedroom was directly ahead of me.  The door was always open and the room was lit by a streetlight from just outside.  This light cast hideous shadows on the vast old wooden wardrobes and my father usually had a suit hanging up somewhere that looked like a person.  I was petrified.  I raced into my bedroom quickly flicked on the light and closed the door. Then I had to go to the window to pull the curtains.  I did not want to look out into the darkness.  I remember still lying in bed and not wanting to go to sleep.  I had no garlic.  Well, it was not really used here in those days. I was frantic because I had no garlic.  I did have my Bible which I held until I fell asleep.  I was so relieved when daylight came but I did look at my neck to see if I had been bitten!  With the day, my fears faded, it was only at night that I became anxious.

It would have been about three or four nights after seeing the movie that I really did think that HE had come for me.  I had gone to bed as usual, doing my usual dash down the landing, put on my light and gone to the large old sash window to pull across the curtains. Here I must explain a little.  The back of our house was an L-shape and my bedroom was the bottom of the L.   So when I looked out from my window, the view ahead was the garden but directly to my left was the house wall, the toilet window and the tiled roof.  Having switched on my bedside lamp, I turned off the main ceiling light and went to the window to close the drapes.  As I looked briefly into the darkness, a cold hand gripped my heart, my legsturned to stone and I felt like I was going to pass out.  There from the roof was an enormous pair of yellow eyes looking into mine!  I squeezed my eyes tight shut, I was imagining this, when I opened them all well be well.  It was not, the yellow eyes were still there.  Somehow I found the strength to move.  I raced downstairs taking the stairs about four at a time, it is a wonder I did not fall.

I dashed into the living-room.  "Dad, Dad, help me please, Dracula is outside my room."  My father looked at me as though I had gone mad.  "Dad, Dracula has come for me, you must do something, he is trying to get in through the window".  He could see that I was shaking and trembling and I must have been as white as a sheet.  He asked what I meant.  I told him there were two eyes outside my window, they must belong to Dracula and I did not want to become one of the undead.  He told me there was no such thing as Dracula, and anyway, he wanted to know, how did I know about such things.  I blurted out "It is true, it is, I saw it at the movies........"   Oops, I immediately, knew I had given the game away but, at that moment I was too scared to care. He could see it was not a nightmare, I was fully clothed and had not been upstairs long enough to go to sleep.  He took me seriously.  I followed him back up to my room.  It suddenly struck me that maybe only females could see Dracula and that he would notice nothing and think I was mad.  Anyway into the room we went and Dad crossed to the window.   The yellow eyes were still there and he could see them.  He went off to get a torch.  Coming back he shone it through the window and just before it flew off, the torch lit up the most enormous owl!  They were not a common sight in our area, but we did hear them occasionally and think it must have come from the local park.

So, it was not Dracula after all.  I can still remember the intense relief. That did not get me out of trouble.  I had to go back downstairs and explain what I meant about the movies.  When I told them how I had seen the film they were not best pleased.  I apologised and said (with fingers crossed behind my back) that I would not see X rated movies again.  My parents discussed whether I should be punished or grounded.  In the end, my father decided that as I had had seven shades of s..t scared out of me anyway, that was punishment enough.

You would think that would have put me off horror movies for good but no, they became my favourite!  I would go to see them all.  When Mike and I first acquired a video player I would hire three on a Saturday night and watch them one after the other. I only tired of them when they became just an excuse to show ever more explicit and gory scenes just for the sake of it and when all suspense went out of the window.  The atmosphere had gone.

How could I watch those films?  I guess just for the thrill of it and because I had come to know it was all make-believe.  I suppose that  like all of us, as I got older and wiser and experienced much more of life I realised that life itself held much scarier, much more worrying and disturbing things than you could ever see on the silver screen.

Well, that is my story of Dracula.  Hope you have enjoyed reading it and that I have given you a smile or a laugh on this Saturday.  When you go to bed tonight, I hope there are no eyes looking in at you..............and..........don't look behind you!