I’m a psychiatrist who was terrified of horror films – until I learned about ‘cinematic neurosis’

Why do scary movies thrill some viewers and send others running for the hills? Our writer gets to the bottom of his fear of the genre – with the assistance of Freud, clinical researchers and his six-year-old self I am six years old, and I am watching a man turn into a werewolf. The film is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a 1948 comedy. I am staring up at our black-and-white TV fixated on the werewolf transformation unfolding in slow motion and I begin to scream so inconsolably that my parents must carry me upstairs to calm me down. That night was the beginning of my lifelong fear of horror films and of the supernatural, of darkness and of being alone in a house. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/nwdHRqF via IFTTT

Arthur’s Whisky review – Diane Keaton and Lulu in enjoyable body-change comedy

A magic potion de-ages three women in an enjoyably middling drama-comedy with Patricia Hodge alongside Keaton and Lulu

Viciously anodyne but not entirely unamusing, this older-folk-skewed comedy puts a gentle spin on a well-worn device, the magical-body transformation. In some genteel corner of England, retirees Joan and Arthur are leading a life of quiet resignation. She does gardening and whatnot; he potters with inventions in his shed. One night, his latest concoction, a formula mixed with whisky that will de-age a person back to the body she or he had in her or his early 20s, actually works. Arthur goes outside to holler triumphantly during a storm and gets struck by lightning, leaving Joan a widow.

After the funeral, Joan (Patricia Hodge) and her two best friends, crafty divorcee Linda (Diane Keaton) and baking-obsessive Susan (Lulu), get stuck into the whisky/youthifying brew and wake up looking like the lithe young women they once were, played by three new actors: Esme Lonsdale as young Joan, Genevieve Gaunt as young Linda and Hannah Howland as young Susan. After a predictable bout of screaming and working out that the effect doesn’t last more than six hours, they soon start to enjoy feeling stronger and healthier. (There’s a funny gag that has Linda just repeatedly getting out of a chair and sitting down again, burbling with delight in finding it doesn’t hurt.)

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