Maybe it's just the fact that scissors are nothing more than two knives joined in the middle that make them so creepy. Edward Scissorhands, anyone? "Don't run with scissors!" we tell the kids. Must be the Halloween season that's got me thinking about this stuff.
Last week my barber killed his wife in a jealous rage at 3:00 am in the morning. Ok, he actually shot her, but I can't help thinking it was handling all those scissors all the time that allowed him to indulge in his homicidal rage. Barbers have a history of being a bit unstable, dontcha know -- Barber of Seville and all that.
But my all time fascinating scissor reference comes from a Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson film called Dead Again. It has a whole film noir/reincarnation theme working through the movie, but ignore that. The story is told in part as a series of flashbacks in which long handled scissors are the murder weapon. At the conclusion of every flashback, he holds the scissors in Psycho position and rasps, "These ... are for you!"
Queue scary music. Shudder.
What do you find creepy?
2 comments:
My only real fear, and it is a major one, is of error. Not even the consequences of making mistakes, but the mistakes themselves. And nobody knows better than I do just how inevitable that is. Error is part of the human condition in a fallen world.
Two words: Sweeney Todd.
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