Novelist Scott Sigler's horror column appears every Thursday.

Zombies, werewolves, and ghosts can be downright frightening, and entice us to toss down $11 for a movie ticket, but we all know these creatures aren't real. We can watch those flicks and know we are safe -- Dracula isn't going to kick in the back door and feast on Aunt Mabel. There is, however, a certain strain of horror that gets us where we live, because it has happened before and will happen again.

Microbes. The Black Death whacked 75 million peeps. Let's see Jason beat that body count. The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed an estimated 100 million people -- around five percent of the entire world population. Bird Flu, SARS, flesh-eating bacteria; the media constantly tries to fire us up about "the next plague." I referenced microbial terror in Monster Taxonomy, Chapter Two, but only in the context of zombies. Here's a professional opinion:

"Microbes are probably related to somewhere around 25 percent of all fatalities worldwide, whereas the undead are probably only responsible for heart palpitations," says Dr. Kirsten Sanford, Ph.D. "Microbes are scarier than imaginary monsters because they are really here, and we don't know nearly enough about them to protect ourselves. The next big killer could be lurking in the shadows of the jungle waiting for its chance to spread. Or, it could be in your bathroom..."

That gestalt of fear makes for great movie terror. A comprehensive list of microbial horror movies would be too long to list, so I've thrown down a few interesting flicks along with a "plausibility rating" to show if the movie's concept could actually happen (that is, make you literally puke your guts out until you die a very nasty death).

Continue reading "Scott Sigler - Werewolves? No. Ghosts? No. Microbes? Now That's Real Horror" »