Childhood

I just finished watching Poltergeist for the second time in over 25 years. Myself and Poltergeist have a long history. When I was young dad was stationed in Hessich Oldendorf, Germany It was the 80's, dawn of the VHS tape. There was some entrepreneurial folks stationed there that took it upon themselves to start their own video rental shops straight out of there military supplied housing. I can remember that membership cost a couple of donated movies on VHS tapes. Mom donated some rather innocent titles like Swiss Family Robinson and Elephant Man (before I knew who David Lynch was).
Dad was the base commander and along with mom were always being called way for some official function or some boring ball with the local German townsfolk leaving my brother and I with the sitters.
Rob rented Poltergeist one night when mom & dad were away. We had this great VHS player set up in the living room. It had a "remote" control that was a little play/rewind/fast forward/pause control tethered by a cord to the VHS deck. It was cutting edge back them believe me...
So Rob gets this movie and watches it. In it there is a scene where one of the characters has a pretty traumatic experience in which he sees a small cut on his face, starts to peel it and eventually peels most of his face off. Being maybe all of 8 or 9 years old at the time this freaks the crap out of me. Seeing my traumatic reaction to this what is an older brother to do but rewind the thing a dozen times.
I had nightmares for weeks after that. And not just nightmares but well...daymares? I'd see this poor wretch peel his face off in my mind throughout the day sometimes.
This more less started my obsession with special effects make up. One day perusing the base exchange's book store I stumble across Fangoria Magazine. I am amazed to see that it shows make up effects from all sorts of movies and gives some detailed explanations about how it is all done. Some strange therapy, but I come to the realization that it is all fake! And that there is some real art in making the unbelievable believable.
Flash forward 25+ years. I've avoided Poltergeist like the plague for all the years. That face peeling scene still stuck in my mind after all these years. Creeping into my nightmares even though I know it is not real. I see the movie sitting on the shelves in glorious Blu-Ray at my local Best Buy. I finally decided to face my fears and watch the darn thing. I get it home, wait until it is nice and dark outside and pop the disc in.
My oh my, how times have changed. First off I don't remember jack about this movie. The first quarter of the movie I don't even remember. Second...were we really that badly dressed in the 80's? I remember the kitchen chair repositioning themselves... I remember the paranormal crew getting there. Then the guy that decides in the middle of the night to look through the fridge only to find a maggot ridden chicken drumstick and a steak that vomits itself up. Poor chap goes straight to the bathroom to barf a bit. Then it dawns on me that this is the moment I've been waiting for. After 25 years I can finally face my fear of this face peeling.
So the poor chap enters the bathroom and vomits a few times...looks up in the mirror and discovers this small cut on his face and proceeds to peel his face off... Only now I can dissect the scene... Guy enters the bathroom, vomits a bit, cut to the sink, back to the mirror.... holy crap! that appliance looks like sh!t! Suddenly the left half of his face has turn into really poor looking foam latex. You can tell when he presses up on the gag a bit to ooze the blood out the little "wound". Then cut to the sink again. Then back to the mirror to a horribly bad looking "head" with too hands in front of it ripping apart some poorly done foam latex to reveal a stock skeleton skull.
At this point I'm dumb founded by the fact that I was so traumatized by such a crappy gag from so many years ago. My how times have changed. Now I think to myself, Meredith could of done a heck of a lot better job and would have made it much more believable.
I have no idea what I was scared of all those years ago.

Unfortunately, the same experience hasn't been able to cure my fear of creepy clowns...