Horror isn't my favourite genre in movies. I remember catching "Alien" for the first time at my friend's house on VHS, and I had a sofa cushion fully planted over my face during the infamous chestburster scene. Ironically, I guess that I was reenacting the facehugger scene.
Then during the late 1990s, when I was on my second tour of duty in Japan as an English conversation teacher, the horror movie "Ring"（リング）came out which suddenly became a big thing, followed by other spooky mindbenders such as "Rasen"（らせん）and "Chakushin Ari"（着信アリ）, and Hollywood came on knocking to adapt them. One of my good friends actually caught "Ring" at a theatre in Tokyo and he's one that doesn't scare easily at all. And yet, he admitted to me that when that scene arrived of Sadako crawling out of the television, he completely freaked out.
The commercials for the original "Ring" had all of the creepy scenes but there was also what sounded like a haunting techno jingle to advertise the movie. The female vocalist seemed to be singing "It's surely coming...it's surely coming...". People were probably terrified and had that urge to get onto the dance floor at the same time.
Well, I only found out recently that the song was titled "feels like 'HEAVEN'" and it was by a unit called HIIH which released it as a single in January 1998. With very little information on it, I still don't quite know whether the name is pronounced "Hiiiii" like a Japanese shriek or "H to H". I actually had to dig deeper into the search engines to find out that the female vocalist was identified as Rie Takahashi (not to be confused with the seiyuu). Not sure who her partner was either, although maybe it's the songwriter TOMO TETSUAKI SAWACHI. I found the English translation for "feels like 'HEAVEN'", and the lyrics seem to describe Sadako's search for that long-sought happiness...and a really good Lux conditioner, while slaughtering as many viewers as she can.
The above performance incidentally sounds warmer with a Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）touch.
August 15 2020: The JASRAC database has listed the songwriters as Tomo Hirata（平田知昌）and Hiroto Otsubo（大坪弘人）.
I liked "Ring" when it first came out, but one that will really make your skin crawl is Takashi Miike's "Audition." I don't know if you'd consider it more thriller than horror, but it's one of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen. It's great, but you might not sleep for a week or so after.
ReplyDeleteHi, Scott. It's been a while. As I mentioned, I don't watch horror movies since I do appreciate my sleep.:) However, I did hear about Miike's "Audition" and never saw piano wires the same way ever again.
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