what have you read/watched that twisted you?

[dave_a]

Ok, I seem to have this problem conveying exactly what I mean in some of my OPs so bear with me if I ramble a bit trying to explain what I am asking.

I am wondering if you have ever read or viewed something that took you in, captivated you and ultimately left you feeling things that you were not comfortable feeling? If so please indicate what the book/movie/whatever was and the effect it had on you.

To serve as an example of the phenomenon I am discussing I will list some of my own experiences.

The first one, a mild one, was reading "Where the Red Fern Grows". I was a young kid and this book was assigned reading material for class. I loved the book, but the ending of it devestated me. I was uncontrollably overcome with grief. I wept until I fell asleep. There are probably only 3 or 4 occassions in my entire life where I have experienced grief to that degree.

The next one, a darker one, was while reading a book whose name/author I do not remember. This was while I was a teen. The book was about a serial killer who used rabies as the instrument of death. I have no idea if the facts the author presented about rabies are true or not, but the book detailed how the killer aquired the rabies from the brain of an infected animal, how he kept infecting other animals to keep up a supply of rabies, how he extracted it from the brains of the animals, how he preserved it, how he packaged it, and the absolutely clever methods he used to infect his human victims with it. Plenty of detail was also paid to the "fact" that rabies is non symptomatic until it is too late to save the infected person. The book also spared no details when it described the agonizing deaths of his victims, the horror of the victims' families as they watched him die etc. The overall mood of this book was so dark, so evil. The thing that disturbed me about reading it was that I so respected the killer's cleverness that I enjoyed "watching" him kill his victims. I think I should have been repulsed by this evil monstrosity, but I loved him and respected him for his cunning. To this day my enjoying his killing his victims and the suffering it caused leaves me with an uneasy feeling. It's like I shouldn't be capable of feeling that way. I didn't want to feel that way.

Lastly, and this is by far the worst one so if you think I am a sick puppy for the last one, do us both a favor and don't read this one. Again, I was a teenager at the time, and I was basically a hormone enraged boy who walked around with a constant erection. Pretty much anything was capable of causing sexual excitement. And it did. I almost can't even bring myself to talk about this one it is so bad. I was watching one of the "Faces of Death" videos. For those not familiar with the series, it is basically a compilation of film clips showing a person dying in some manner. A person getting eaten by an alligator, a person comitting suicide by jumping from a building complete with body bounce etc. The scene which has permanently altered my perception of myself was a rapist/murderer set up a video camera in a crawl space under his home. He brought his victim, a very attractive, nude woman into the crawl space and proceded to rape her. While raping her he strangled her and she died. In the background as she was being strangled to death police sirens were audible. The police were on their way to save her, but they would be too late. The reason this twisted me is that it turned me on. There, I said it. Absolutely sickening. My teenaged brain simply saw a nude woman and got turned on. Nevermind the real (this wasn't fiction) rape and death of this poor woman, I was turned on because I saw boobies.

I swear parents need to do a better job of censoring what their kids are exposed to, because no way should I have ever had that experience. Permanently scarred me, not because of what I witnessed, but because of my incredibly innappropriate response to it.

Ok, so who has something to share? I understand if you need to go take a shower first.

[HelenM]

I've read books that left me feeling depressed; and then I wish I had never read them. One was The Bone People, which has a child in it who is being severely abused in an ongoing way. I just read The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy which describes horrific and sad things happening to children and adults, very realistically. A year or two before the movie was out I read The House of Sand and Fog which I also found depressing.

As much as these bothered me, I find troublesome movies the most disturbing because I can't get the images out of my head for a long time. I was curious about the Passion of Christ movie but I didn't go because from what I heard about the graphic nature of it and my past experience with anything graphic in a movie, it didn't seem like it would be a positive experience for me overall.

Helen

[JoeP]

American Psycho - there are sick scenes in that that arouse me. The Atrocity Exhibition, and other stuff by Ballard (disturbing, but brilliant).

The first thing that sprang to mind, though, was Red Shift by Alan Garner. This left me uncomfortable (when I read it as a teenager, and still) because it's very powerful and evocative but I could not work out what it meant.

[lisarea]

Stop feeling bad about the Faces of Death thing. First, it's probably not real at all. A lot of the scenes in those movies are faked. Here's a snopes page on the snuff films (http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/madmen/snuff.htm) that FoD a little.

Second, you were a kid. A virtual morass of raging hormones. You did not rape and murder someone. You saw boobies and reacted in the way that most teenaged boys probably would. And then you felt bad about it, which is evidence that you're not a bad person.

As to your question, there was a story I read when I was maybe six or seven that made me miserable. I don't remember the title, but it was in some kind of science fiction collection, and it was about a little girl whose parents had just been transferred to some planet where the sun only shone about once every ten years or something. Most of the kids in her school hadn't even seen the sun, so she was describing it to them, but they didn't believe her, and they bullied her around and stuff. They were approaching the couple of hour window during which they'd see the (a, I guess) sun, so, as a joke or something, they locked her into a closet in the school. The sun came out, they went out to play for the duration, and as they were coming back in after the sun was gone, they remembered she was in there.

Anyway, that story made me entirely miserable for a long time.

I guess I got pretty jaded or something, though, so most things don't really affect me all that significantly. I get the creeps and even nightmares from certain types of things, but they don't mess with my worldview or anything, because I already know people suck.

Closest thing was probably the time I spent writing reviews of true crime books. Every month, I'd get a box full of books about serial killers and things like that, and I'd read a few and review them. It wasn't really any one book, but the cumulative effect of the constant flow of stories, combined with the fact that I then had to write reviews geared toward selling those books, complete with prurient references to the gore and unnumbered photo sections contained therein, that did end up messing with me somewhat.

Oh, and the BOOK THAT SHALL REMAIN UNNAMED about Jon Benet Ramsey, which I threw across the room and refused to review, it was so fucking disgusting. The author even lived nearby, and was listed in the book, and I came real close to calling him to tell him what a vile and disgusting little turd he is, but I didn't.

[LadyShea]

As to your question, there was a story I read when I was maybe six or seven that made me miserable. I don't remember the title, but it was in some kind of science fiction collection, and it was about a little girl whose parents had just been transferred to some planet where the sun only shone about once every ten years or something.

I never read the book, but I saw a movie made from it. It was called "All Summer in a Day" and the children live on Venus. It is a Ray Bradbury story.

I was disturbed by The Mosquito Coast, though I also loved the book. The fact that this father's genius was so closely tied to his insanity bothered me because I know some people who walk that fine line, and so I find myself wondering "this person is a frickin' genius, wonder when he/she will snap".

[viscousmemories]

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer chilled me to the bone. I remember being angry at the woman who recommended it to me; wondering what I had ever done to her that I deserved such a thing. But I have in the past prided myself on the ability to face anything, so I couldn't really hold it against her.

To be honest, Army basic training twisted me more than anything I've ever read or seen. I was always lonely, scared and confused as a kid, but I never knew the full-on wonder of being utterly dead inside until then. During the first five years or so after I got out I had more than one person close to me say they thought me truly sociopathic.

I'm quite cheery and loveable now, though. :D

[Adora]

Documentaries tend to do it to me.

Return to Sarajevo was the first one, really, and probably the most powerful because of it. I think I was only 12 or 13 (given, a very mature 12 or 13 yr old, but still) when I first saw it. So it was pretty disturbing at the time. I knew about the Balkans' conflicts and all, but like any good doco, it put faces to the dehumanised news reports and so actually made some sort of emotional connection. Yeah, pretty much anything like this that puts a face to human suffering I tend to get thingy about (in good and bad ways)

Fiction wise, eh, let me think...
It's always been an escape for me, something I could retreat into whenever I needed to, which is a lot actually. So the only real hangups I have about it are the same ones as I do for most other mediums: Rape and Torture.

There was one book actually, I think it was Eating Fire Drinking Water or something (or was it The Last Time I Saw My Mother?... it was one of the two anyway) which had a scene in it where a political prisoner was raped and tortured in South America somewhere (non-specific country, but obviously, it could be any of them). That disturbed me, and I didn't eat for the rest of the day because I couldn't hold anything down.

Ahh, now I remember. Fury by Salman Rushdie. Whatever you do, don't read this when you're feeling borderline yourself. It is not good. You'll start worrying you're going to do something stupid like the main protagonist did when his family was asleep.

I guess what's more twisted than anything that's influenced me is my "thing" for antagonists and anti-heroes. Pretty much doesn't matter how evil they are, I'll probably end up liking them at some point. I don't think that's the fault of something influencing me though, just my Devil's Advocate complex. I'm sure a psychologist could explain this to me, but I haven't been able to figure it out properly yet.

[Blake]

Nothing's twisted me quite in the manner described in the OP, but I've had a couple of very strange, enduring reactions to some things. The movie Se7en sat badly with me for some time, but--kid you not--the one that really did it to me was Shel Silverstein's The Missing Piece. I do not like how I feel after reading that book.

I feel a little bit better about the way I feel after reading The Giving Tree, but it rips my guts out even worse.

[viscousmemories]

Oh yeah, it just occurred to me that some people might think it a bit twisted that I own and have seen Natural Born Killers about 12 times... that flick just moves me on so many levels, a few of which are fairly disturbing.

[dave_a]

Oh yeah, it just occurred to me that some people might think it a bit twisted that I own and have seen Natural Born Killers about 12 times... that flick just moves me on so many levels, a few of which are fairly disturbing.

ewww. you sick mother of satan what's wrong with you? :P

[Penni]

I was sort of twisted by a Disney movie when I was young. It was called Watcher in the Woods. OOOO, I just got goosebumps recalling the name. I swear it was by Disney and I don't know what the hell they were thinking because it was far too scary for a young girl to watch. It was really creepy and it is probably what started by adolescent fascination with the supernatural. Luckily, I outgrew that, but when I was about 20 and I was at Chantilly outside of Paris, my friend and I were walking through the woods and I was like, "You know what this reminds me of?" and she KNEW! So, I'm not the only little girl that was scarred by it.

[viscousmemories]

I remember that flick, and I remember thinking "This is really creepy for a Disney movie". I just checked at IMDB and it says it came out in '80, which puts me at 12. I don't really remember being particularly scarred by it, but I was a pretty, um, rambunctious 12 year old.

[lisarea]

I can't believe I forgot this one: The Other (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069050/). I was at my grandparents' farm one summer, and without telling me, they arranged for my uncle and aunt to take me for the night. So, they came to pick me up and brought me to the drive-in. I don't remember the first movie at all, but The Other was the second feature, and I hope they thought I was asleep.

I guess I was seven years old at the time, but my parents were pretty weird about TV and movies, so that was my first even remotely creepy movie. I've seen it since (and read the book, too), and it is respectably creepy, but my being a big newbie seriously exacerbated the effects.

Several of my standard-issue recurring nightmares came from that movie, particularly the well scene. I mean I still have them, even.

So, anyway, I think that messed me up some.

PS: Thank you, LS! I should probably feel stupid for not knowing what that story was, but I don't read much science fiction anymore, so I'm kind of clueless.

[Lauri D]

dantonac, you're not sick and twisted. Unless I am also sick and twisted (which is entirely within the realm of possibility).

I have a somewhat macabre sense of curiosity; lisarea's mention of serial-killer books reminded me of that. On my bookshelf is a rather incongruous sight; there's Dostoevsky, then Krakauer, then a few books by Eric Schlosser sandwiched between Kevyn Aucoin's "Making Faces" and "The Demon-Haunted World" by Sagan...

... and then what do I spy with my little eye? Perhaps it's Anne Rule's ENTIRE FUCKING COLLECTION of books in the "True Crime" genre, from "The Stranger Beside Me" (her bizzarely coincidental acquaintance with Ted Bundy) to stories of murder and mayhem from all over the country, some well known, some not. I can discuss for hours the intricacies of some of the most "prolific" serial killers of the current century - Lebowitz, Dahmer, Gacy, Ramirez, Albert Fish, Ridgway (recently confessed as the Green River Killer) - even some of the names of their victims and their lives loom large in my mind. Denise Naslund, Janice Ott (a few of Bundy's victims that stuck with me, their lives interuppted and thereby frozen in time for all eternity).

The story of Shanda Sharer (victim) most recently has been of morbid fascination to me.

In any case, it's not just you. I can't explain exactly what it is about these things that draw my attention, but the closest I can come is that they are a stark reminder of what is real, what is out there, what is quite possibly living next door and walking among us as we go about our lives.

Many years ago - in 1991 - a girl (woman) by the name of Denise Huber went to see a Morissey concert at the Long Beach Arena. She left the concert with a friend, dropped him at his home, continued on her way to her own. Where the 55 freeway meets the 73 (about two miles from my house), on a stretch between the Bristol and Jamboree offramps, her car apparently blew a tire. Based on the search dogs' indications, she got out of her car and was walking toward the next exit (Jamboree, where there is a 7-11 store and a slew of other establishments) - and then the trail stopped. This was before cell phones were par for the course; being less than 3 miles from her home and own warm, safe bed in Newport Heights, it seems likely that she was trekking toward the closest pay phone to call her parents.

She was never seen alive again.

For about two and a half years, there was a banner hung aloft on a building that faced that stretch of highway where the 55 and 73 meet, that said "Have You Seen Denise?" Every single time I passed it, I said to myself (or aloud, if someone else happened to be with me) "No, I haven't seen her, because she's dead, you dumb fucks!" And of course I didn't want that to be true, but I couldn't think of anything else.

Three years after her disappearance, not long after they finally took down the banner sign, the neighbors of one John Famalaro became suspicious of a padlocked truck on his property in Prescott, Arizona. When the authorities arrived, and began to search the property, they found the body of one Denise Huber, nude and handcuffed in a freezer, apparently having been killed by multiple blows to the head with a blunt instrument.

Based on accounts given at the trial... she went to a concert that night. She started home, dropped off her friend, began the final journey toward her own home. Where the highways merge - not a mile before, where the carwash is just below the slope of the freeway, and not a mile after, where Del Taco and El Pollo Loco compete for business on a well-traveled thoroughfare - one of her tires blew. So few of us had cell phones then; it was 1991. She got out of the car, began walking in her heels toward a pay phone. And at that moment, a man with a thirst for blood just happened to be driving by - a man with a warehouse in Aliso Viejo housing a deep freezer, a man who had already killed and only needed to find new prey.

WHAT ARE THE FUCKING ODDS?!?!!?

There is not a day that goes by, when I pass that spot, that I don't picture her - walking along, feet probably hurting at that point, seeing a car pull up and a friendly-looking man say - "Hey, do you need a ride to the gas station?"

If she had caught one red light instead of green. If she had lingered a bit longer in saying goodbye to the friend she dropped off. If she had stopped to use the bathroom before leaving the concert. In the 30 seconds elapsed that John Famalaro drove by that spot, she happened to be walking, car with a flat tire behind her. 30 seconds. What a difference half a minute makes.

Long story short (too late I know, cliche) - dantonec, you are not a weirdo.

[LadyShea]

PS: Thank you, LS! I should probably feel stupid for not knowing what that story was, but I don't read much science fiction anymore, so I'm kind of clueless.

Gimme a break, I had to look it up on IMDB because I had never read it and couldn't remember the name, and I am a Bradbury fan!

Lauri, I have also read almost every true crime novel out there. The most disturbing was the story of Joseph Kallinger who has his young sons help him kill...::shudder

[viscousmemories]

Lauri, I have also read almost every true crime novel out there. The most disturbing was the story of Joseph Kallinger who has his young sons help him kill...::shudder
More disturbing than Albert Fish (http://www.crimelibrary.com/fish/fish/fishmain.htm)?

[LadyShea]

Oh I remember reading about Fish some time ago...horrible! What creates these monsters?

Joesph Kallinger killed young boys. In one instance he cut off the boys penis and stuffed it down his throat with the help of his 8-10 year old son IIRC. All of these insane killers are chilling, but for some reason "The Shoemaker", Kallinger, has always stuck in my mind.

[viscousmemories]

Yeah, I just learned about Fish a few years ago. He's the guy Hannibal Lechter was modeled after. He killed a lot of children, apparently, and ate a few of them. He even wrote a letter to the mother of one young girl he ate explaining the recipe and how good she tasted. You can read the letter by following that link above. - Not recommended for the faint of heart.

[Adam]

Not quite in the same vein as some of the other responses, but ever since I read The Golden Bough (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684826305/qid=1090702366/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-5181709-5448802?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) when I was maybe 16 or 17, I've been fascinated by the brutal religious rituals that various peoples have practiced over the ages. It's a disturbing exercise to try and imagine the sort of frame of mind one would have to be in to view ritual human sacrifice as a normal, sane, part of life. There's a particularly good fictional account of a practice involving a priest killing a young girl and wearing her skin as a sort of costume while dispensing blessings in Gary Jennings' Aztec (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812521463/qid=1090702744/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-5181709-5448802?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). While I'm not historian enough to vouch for the complete historical accuracy of the practice as portrayed there, it's similar enough to several scholarly accounts that I have read that I'm asuming it's correct in its broad outline.

Speaking of The Golden Bough, I wish I still had my copy. Let this be a lesson to you, folks. Never lend your books to your friend's girlfriend's sister, no matter how cute she might be, because chances are that your firend and his girlfriend will have an apocalyptic breakup in short order, and you'll never see her, the sister, or your book ever again.

[Adora]

Oh, now I remember. I watched Mac & Me when I was a kid. Nothing will wipe that hideous mess from my mind, ever. I blame it as the thing solely responsible for me not being able to look at cola without feeling sick (I throw up if I drink it).

[Paul H.]

What about "I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"? the Ellison short story.

Or "Iron Cross" (the war movie, where the 'hereos' are Germans).

[Shelli]

Movies and books can affect me deeply, so I'm careful about what I watch and read these days.

After reading "The Long Walk" by Stephen King which he wrote under the pen name, Richard Bachman, I actually went into a short term depression. The story characterized the worst in humanity in such a way that left me truly feeling that life is futile to the point of not worth living. :blah:

I've not read another book of that sort since and I definately do not watch anything of that kind.

[IRON MAN]

Oh yeah, it just occurred to me that some people might think it a bit twisted that I own and have seen Natural Born Killers about 12 times... that flick just moves me on so many levels, a few of which are fairly disturbing.

Okay, after seeing that flick I just couldn't stand Rodney Dangerfield every again. That fucking sitcom scene just fucked with my brain. I've got to admit that it was artistically brilliant, but freaky as fuck.

I was staying at a friend's house and he had a novel in the room, "A Clockwork Orange". I had heard the title but knew nothing about it, so I read it to see what the fuss was all about. He tried to prepare me - but I still didn't know what I was in for.

I got sucked in by the unique language on page one, and regrettably couldn't let it go. Once again I have to admit - it's very well written. An artistic masterpiece that justifies the content somehow - but there's no fucking way I'm ever watching the film. I've seen one too many snippets of it already just watching normal TV.

My wife had her first husband take her to the cinema to see it. He was sitting there laughing she said. And she was like, "Get me the hell outta here you sick fuck".

Oh, and I've never seen The Aristocrats film, but I looked up the joke to see what it was all about, watched a youtube vid - the South Park version because I still didn't quite understand, and decided I could have happily died without ever knowing that joke existed, or that comedians like Rita Rudner not only know it, but tell it.

I'm like, "Rita Rudner?!" :sadcheer:

[Javaman]

I couldn't find a 'Thread Necromancy' smiley. Do we not have one?

[livius drusus]

:live:

[Shelli]

:giggle:

[Javaman]

That's pretty close, liv.

[Julie]

But its been an interesting read.

Me personally, I find it more disturbing that I can read and watch anything and not be affected by it in the least. I've seen videos of sucides, murder, that beheading in Iraq a few years ago...

I've read so many books people find "disturbing" and they don't effect me in the least. Heck I started reading horror books when I was 7 years old (started with the Shining cause Mom wouldn't let me watch the movie)

I find that more disturbing.

[Eternal Sunshine]

When I was 6 or 7 I found a book about Denise Huber, my second cousin. That really messed with my head...I started reading it the other day. Lauri D. I thought you might be interested in it. The book is by: Don Lasseter.

[quiet bear]

Yes, this has been an interesting thread.

Book: Robinson Crusoe. I felt physically different about my place in the world after reading it. It was the first step for me, the realization that I am a person on the inside, whether people are around or not. I thought about what I got from that book every day for easily a year.

Movie: Sophie's Choice. I saw five minutes of it, once, maybe ten years ago. The SS guards tell her to choose which child she wants to keep, her son or daughter. It literally made me cry. It struck me so deeply, I don't know which child she give them, the son or the daughter. I honestly think i blocked it out. What a horrible, horrible thing.

[Watser?]

The SS guards tell her to choose which child she wants to keep, her son or daughter. It literally made me cry. It struck me so deeply, I don't know which child she give them, the son or the daughter. I honestly think i blocked it out. What a horrible, horrible thing.
I read about the same thing happening in the Lebanese Civil War: a (Christian) militiaman making a woman (I think she was Palestinian, but might have been a Lebanese Muslim) choose between her children and then when she couldn't choose soon enough shot all of them. I read somewhere else in the same book (can't remember which one, read a lot of books on that war, wrote my thesis on it) how one militiaman was defending killing children especially so as not to leave anyone who could take revenge for the others...

[Veritas]

But its been an interesting read.

Me personally, I find it more disturbing that I can read and watch anything and not be affected by it in the least. I've seen videos of sucides, murder, that beheading in Iraq a few years ago...

I've read so many books people find "disturbing" and they don't effect me in the least. Heck I started reading horror books when I was 7 years old (started with the Shining cause Mom wouldn't let me watch the movie)

I find that more disturbing.

Must be something about the age of seven...that was when I first read Dracula. My mother and stepdad never banned any book for me, or film. They let me read and watch what I wanted, and as a result I grew up unable to be scared of a film - I knew from the beginning it's not real.

Of course, you can read true crime accounts and the like but they only affect me if they're well-written. If it's written in bad English, I sit with an imaginary red pencil correcting all the grammatical errors.

Fiction can affect me if it's beautifully written, but that could be me falling in love with the language rather than the story. But I can recognise the universal truths in various novels, things that resonate with me and possibly many others, too. Books affect us all differently, I guess, and I've heard it said, though it might be a wanky phrase, that a good novel teaches or reminds us about the human condition.

It has to be a monumental lie that has the absolute ring of truth.

[Watser?]

We had a book at home when I was growing up that was non-fiction. Reports by Amnesty International on torture. There were stories in there from people in South America, the Middle East (Syria), Eastern Europe. It was very impressive because they were so cut-and-dry about what had happened to them.

[Sun]

The older I get the more books and movies affect me. When I was in high school I saw The Faces Of Death and it didn't bother me at all. Now I would have nightmares for days.

[Godwhacker]

When I was nine I remember watching "The Day After" on TV. When you are that age, you think the world is pretty solid. Really shook me pretty bad, and I wanted to move to Australia after watching it, because I was convinced that it was going to happen.