Word: frightener
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...seems intent on undercutting the distinctions between normalcy and abnormality. The unsettling results seem to totter between a sinister vision and a deceptive festivity. Such ambivalent reactions suit Dubuffet fine. He long ago stated his own criterion: "Art should always make us laugh a little and frighten us a little, but never bore...
...move his party in from the left, blur distinctions between the parties on a range of issues, and, at the same time, demonstrate that Labour can, after all, govern with prudence and responsibility. Even the Tories have ceased to raise the spectre of socialism's red ruin to frighten the electorate...
Physicist and Amateur Historian Harvey Einbinder declared in 1963 that it was just a gory story to frighten voters with, an atrocity invented by the British to justify their conquest of Bengal. The British bristled, and this brief but masterly report by a correspondent for the London Daily Mail assures any doubters that the atrocity actually occurred. It occurred, in fact, at the anticlimax of a comedy of horrors scarcely paralleled in British history...
Bond's dry-land conquests were somewhat zingier type in Goldfinger, but in Thunderball he manages a change of pace by joining Largo's seaworthy French playmate (Claudine Auger) for an amorous exploit down among the corals. "I hope we didn't frighten the fish," he quips afterward, wading ashore. Alas, even subaqueous sex cannot keep the formula entirely fresh. Yet, if Thunderball's gimmickry seems to overreach at times, Actor Connery gains assurance from film to film, by now delivers all his soppiest Jimcracks martini-dry. He is hilariously astringent when he drops a limp...
...before, by local belief, demons of death stalked the village of Sotouboua (pop. 500) in northern Togo. Streets were deserted, and only the throb of a tom-tom broke the still ness. Next day the men of the village sallied forth to perform the ritual that is supposed to frighten demons away. Some wore fluttery feather headdresses and grotesque carved masks; others chewed the bark of a native bush until the drool stained their chins a deep orange color. Several of them gripped snakes and rats between their teeth...