Horror comes real … and virtually real

There are many ways to be afraid . And that goes for real life as well as the movies.

Since real fears – whether we’re talking about facing down a mean teacher or someone holding a gun – permeate our actual existence, we use movies to assuage those real fears in a virtual realm.

Cases in point: two movies that open tomorrow. Jodie Foster, as I pointed out below, plays a gun-toting Charles Bronson-type character in the revenge flick “The Brave One.”

And in “Mr. Woodcock,” Seann William Scott plays a guy who has to once again take on his hated junior-high gym coach (played by the type-cast Billy Bob Thornton ).

Turner Classic Movies will tackle fear as a theme all throughout October as it uses Friday nights to broadcast a series of horror films by such directors as William Castle , Jacques Tourneur and Tod Browning . Then beginning at 6 a.m. on Halloween itself, the cable TV channel will hold a 24-hour “Halloween Movie Marathon.”
Some of the films that will be broadcast include “The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb,” “House of Usher,” “The Ghoul” and “Die, Monster, Die.”

To quote Count Floyd , “Ooooohh, kids, scaaaarrry.”