It’s end-to-end movies this week as Dara recalls his most vivid memories of the film scenes that shocked, scandalised and horrified him from as young as six up to his mid-twenties. It started on TV with the 1980 adaptation of James Clavell’s Shogun. In that memorable mini-series, the beautiful Richard Chamberlain was subjected to an unimaginable indignity that made young Dara blush to his socks. Surely there weren’t worse things still to come…
From Jaws (1975) through Happiness (1998) to Irreversible (2002), featuring directors such as Tarkovsky, Aronofsky, Clarke, Coppola and Cimino, as well as provocateurs like Verhoeven and Stone, there’s something grim and gross for everyone. This isn’t lascivious wallowing, it’s a reckoning with innocence and shockability – two very finite experiences.
Dara concludes that the scariest stuff was the least horror-coded, and the things that are more likely to disturb and upset him now are connected to love, grief and family.