by Giaco Furino

In this world of blood-soaked machetes, chainsaws, cannibalism and terror, it's easy to get swept up in the fervor of fear. We run to movies that feature a masked killer or a crazed psychopath. But if we only gravitate toward the bloodiest flicks, are we missing out? Are there some good old-fashioned scares escaping us? Scares that are hiding in non-horror films?

Hollywood is a city of labels--you?re either an action flick or a thriller, a horror or a rom-com. And we the audience have been taught to look for that label which most interests us. Horror fans, in particular, know which labels to look for. Is it rated R? Does it feature some terrible thing happening to pretty people? Will it make us piss ourselves? But sometimes labels can be misleading, and the reality is that mainstream Hollywood puts out movies every year that they would never admit are horror movies.

If you look at this from a movie studio?s point of view, it makes sense to try and label a movie as anything other than a horror movie, especially if it's meant to be a big hit. A good example of this is the recent I am Legend. Here we have a movie about a lone survivor of a post-apocalyptic New York, who?s on the run from vampire-like creatures. Sounds pretty horrific, right? Well, not if it?s meant to be a 260 million-dollar box-office smash starring Will Smith! The powers that be decided to market this flick as a post-apocalyptic action movie, and not what it really turned out to be: an end-of-the-world fright fest! By doing this, they were able to rope in a huge number of viewers who may have shied away from a clearly labeled horror movie, even if it did star the freshest of all princes.

Other examples abound in Hollywood. While it?s chock full of high action, huge explosions, and high speed chases, the original Terminator film is little more than a monster stalking its prey. The Terminator character feels no remorse, kills anything in his way, and is seemingly unstoppable. How different is that from your favorite Freddy, Jason, or Michael? Another prime example of Hollywood presenting a mainstream movie with horror elements as anything but horror is the David Fincher classic Se7en. While it?s presented as a classic cops-on-the-hunt thriller, the murders that the serial killer commits are anything but classic. Some may even see this as the ultimate precursor to the Saw franchise, which is, of course, absolutely horror.

There was even a movement in the eighties to tone down the horror and present fans of many age groups with terrors and spooks. Just look at the bizarre, hard-to-pin-down masterpiece that was Return to Oz. Here we have an honest to goodness sequel to The Wizard of Oz, and yet it features a destroyed yellow brick road, crazy monsters, and a terrifying story that starts with Auntie Em sending Dorothy to a mental institution for shock therapy! Yikes! Not to mention flicks like Something Wicked this Way Comes, which featured true carnival terror, under a Disney label.

Today we see it more than ever. Just look at the psychological thriller genre, and in particular the movie Bug. The movie started as a stage play (and a not terribly scary one) but put it on film by the often-times brilliant William Friedken and you?ve got some great, tense terror. The story follows two down-and-outs in a motel room, who become convinced that bugs are crawling all over and inside them! It makes for a great power-of-suggestion freak-out, but Hollywood execs won?t go around calling it horror (even if the director did helm The Exorcist). Even the new X-Files film (and the old one for that matter) slap on a heavy sci-fi banner--yet, like the original series, there exists more terror, supernatural horror, and gore than some of the tamer horror flicks that have been released. Perhaps the most poignant example of this was the recent Cohen brothers masterpiece No Country for Old Men. Joel and Ethan, and the studio, would never call this a horror movie, and yet, it features a remorseless serial killer shooting his way through town. These movies embody the very spirit of horror (and often times the gore), yet their marketers frequently shy away from the horror label.

Well, here at FEARnet we say, ?Bah!? to that notion. Cast aside your trepidation, Hollywood, and start calling them like we see 'em! We know your small art-house pics are really horror movies in disguise (Hard Candy, anyone?)! Embrace the horror community. We, in turn, will embrace you!