Scary is sexy

In some ways, when we experience fear it is very akin to sexual arousal. We experience a sudden surge of emotions, adrenalin pumps through our bodies and our heartbeat elevates as our eyes widen and our pupils dilate. Both are extreme emotions prompted by some signal or other, but whether the physical response had anything to do with it I am not one hundred percent certain - but for me scary is sexy!

One of the first books I read that frightened me and yet titillated me at the same time was Dracula by Bram Stoker. To me, the novel definitely had erotic undertones that equated vampirism with sex. The hero Jonathan Harker travels to Count Dracula’s castle in Transylvania and while he is there falls under the spell of three wanton female vampires, to be rescued just in time by Count Dracula himself. Harker eventually returns to England and his fiancée Mina but Dracula follows him and begins to prey on Mina’s friend, Lucy. Night after night Dracula visits Lucy in her bed and drinks her blood. There is something very mesmerising about this mythical (I hope!) undead creature roaming the night desperate to drink blood from the neck of a warm red-blooded mortal.

I don’t find all scary movies sexy - gore-fests like Friday 13^th and the Jason movies don’t press my buttons but a very good friend of mine tells me that she finds Hannibal Lecter sexy in a bizarre kind of way.

The sexy but scary images I like best hail from TV. When I was small I found Doctor Who scary, but of course I was too young to equate that with sexy. Nevertheless there is definitely a hint of sexy now that David Tennant has made the role his own. Now add into the mix the omnisexual Captain Jack and I get some seriously sexy thoughts when I see them together.

To me, Buffy really started the trend of sexy and scary. We were given an innocent, pretty teenager who somehow morphed into this awesome vampire slayer, who also killed demons and other creatures that invade our nightmares. Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, probably prompted any number of ‘wet dreams’ for a lot of adolescent boys. The programme really came into its own when Angel appeared on the scene. At first we saw a good-looking rather secretive guy, rather inappropriately called Angel, who seemed to want to help Buffy, and then we learned that he was a vampire who had had his soul restored to him by gypsies as punishment for the murder of one of their own. Angel was doomed to wander the earth trying to make retributions for the crimes he committed when he was Angelus, one of the most evil vampires to roam the earth.

The sexual attraction between Angel and Buffy changed the show and then one day they slept together. In this one moment of true happiness Angel was doomed to lose his soul again and he turned into his evil alter ego Angelus – how sexy is that? For me the evil Angelus baiting and taunting Buffy was a little scary and yet also incredibly sexy. Then Spike came on the scene and the pheromone count rose.

The show proved popular in the ratings and Angel (David Boreanaz) was given his own show, a grittier version set in LA. This Angel was darker and most definitely more of a turn on for his female fans. Thank you, Josh Weedon, for all the pleasure you gave me over the years.

Other vampire series have come and gone but one of my particular favourites was Moonlight. It wasn’t that frightening because in this show vampires weren’t all soulless creature: many of them were successful people living among humankind, scared that their secret might be discovered. Some had acolytes and allowed them to drink blood from their veins, as if the experience was almost orgasmic in its intensity. Mick St John was a vampire with a heart, not as angst-ridden as Angel but sexy all the same. His purpose in life was to recover his mortality and become human again. Mick fell in love with Beth Turner and eventually the show turned into a love story with a dark edge to it.

However, the show I now love best of all is Supernatural. It follows brothers Sam and Dean Winchester played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles respectively. They travel across the US in a black 1967 Chevy Impala investigating and combating paranormal events and other unexplained occurrences, many of them based on American urban legends and folklore, as well as classic supernatural creatures such as vampires, werewolves and ghosts. One of favourite episodes is about shapshifters, but they don’t just change their shape: when they morph from one person to another they shed their skin like a snake, but in a far more gory fashion. One becomes a copy of Dean and, when it is discovered, it slowly peels off its skin, one of the scariest images I’ve seen on TV, as the sexy Dean turns into this foul creature.

Angel, Buffy and Moonlight may have left our screens, apart from the ubiquitous repeats, but Supernatural is still in full flow. Try and catch if you want to watch something both scary and sexy at the same time.

Deanna