Please read and write a paragraph-long summary of the following excerpt from Stephen King's "Why we Crave this roller coaster. Which is
not to say that a really good horror movie may not surprise a scream out of us at some point, the way we may scream when the roller coaster
twists through a complete 360 or plows through a lake at the bottom of the drop. And horror movies, like roller coasters, have always been the
special province of the young; by the time one turns 40 or 50, one's appetite for double twists or 360-degree loops may be considerably
depleted.
We also go to re-establish our feelings of essential normality; the horror movie is innately conservative, even reactionary. Freda Jackson as
the horrible melting woman in Die, Monster, Die! confirms for us that no matter how far we may be removed from the beauty of a Robert
Redford or a Diana Ross, we are still light-years from true ugliness.
And we go to have fun.
Ah, but this is where the ground starts to slope away, isn't it? Because this is a very peculiar sort of fun, indeed. The fun comes from seeing
others menaced - sometimes killed. One critic has suggested that if pro football has become the voyeur's version of combat, then the horror
film has become the modern version of the public lynching.
It is true that the mythic "fairy-tale" horror film intends to take away the shades of grey... It urges us to put away our more civilized and
adult penchant for analysis and to become children again, seeing things in pure black and whites. It may be that horror movies provide
psychic relief on this level because this invitation to lapse into simplicity, irrationality and even outright madness is extended so rarely. We
are told we may allow our emotions a free rein...or no rein at all.
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