I've always been a horror fan. And being a kid in the '80s was a great time for a horror fan's development -- you had the slasher craze holding the box office in a headlock, you had VHS taking over homes and bringing easy access to a variety of movies, you had directors and writers in Hollywood like Spielberg, John Landis, Richard Donner, Joe Dante who grew up loving monster movies and would find ways to spice up their own films with dashes of horror, if not outright produce and make full on horror movies. One of the biggest things when I was a kid? Ghostbusters. It was a time when Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees ruled, and they could be merchandised, products of theirs greeting you at nearly every store's corner. When I think back to malls of the time, one of the things that comes immediately to mind is Freddy Krueger. All of the different Freddy products -- VCR tapes, shirts, posters, the glove, figurines, the stickers, the sticker book and on and on. A Nightmare on Elm Street is my favorite of the slasher franchises, and it's funny to me just how aware I was of Freddy before even seeing one of the movies.
Horror's in my blood -- my mom and one of her sisters were horror nuts and had a big influence on me. My mom likes all kinds of horror (her favorite is John Carpenter's Halloween), but one of the main things I credit her for is getting me into the Universal Monsters, which she had loved when she was a kid. I remember her taping things like the 1931 Frankenstein, buying me the awesome Imperial figures, buying the Remco figures, checking out those super cool Crestwood Monster Series books from the library, getting Pressman's Doorways to Horror VCR game that came with a tape full of clips from old horror movies... I also remember watching The Munsters, which not only got me into that show, but also furthered my liking for the Universal Monsters-styled look. Oh, and I used to really love Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and even stuff that barely qualified like Transylvania 6-5000. So, I'm grateful for my mom getting me into the Universal Monsters, because I'm not sure I'd like and appreciate or even be into them as much without her introducing them to me. It sounds superficial, but I just love the look of those old monster movies, and I get a kick out of seeing the Universal Monsters on products around Halloween-time.
But my aunt, she was horror obsessed, and she's how I was introduced to a lot of the modern horror movies, like the slashers, she rented a lot 'em. Although I had been aware of Freddy, her house is where I first saw a full Freddy movie, the original Nightmare on Elm Street. A lot of the movies of the time I remember seeing at her house; the Creepshows, Christine, The Hitcher, The Blob remake, Waxwork, Chopping Mall. (Not all of those are gold, but they still made an impact.) My aunt and her daughters is how I first heard of Jason Voorhees -- I wasn't allowed to see those movies yet (nor the adventures of Leatherface; Hellraiser was A-OK, though!), but they were always talking about those movies, referencing them, they had the video tapes laying around. At Halloween, they'd have a home-fashioned stuffed Jason out in the yard. (My aunt also lived in an isolated, kind of boonies-type place, which is pretty reminiscent of the early Friday the 13ths.) My aunt had Stephen King and Clive Barker novels littering the place -- I associate a lot of Stephen King's works with her -- and a cardboard cutout of Pinhead in her basement! You could always talk the latest and greatest in horror with her, so it was disheartening when she abandoned all things horror as she got older.
I know a lot of fans in my age range have a story similar to mine, where thanks to the VCR, we were watching horror and action movies that some would argue we shouldn't have been watching. It's probably unimaginable to kids today, but the VCR's importance can't be overlooked. One of my favorite places when I was a kid was the video store, and I would pretty much always head to the horror section, which was often hidden in the corner. Just being surrounded by horror tapes, wondering what certain movies were about. (Sometimes picturing movies being scarier, judging from their artwork and still photos, than they ended up being.) It was fun, it was a thrill, as a kid, you felt rebellious standing in the horror section as other kids were checking out goofy comedies. Horror's a genre that's not always treated with respect, and people can still treat you funny if you're a horror fan, but I take my horror seriously. That's not to say I can't enjoy a movie that's dumb fun or poke fun at it, and heaven knows there's a lot of bad horror movies out there (it's a little sad that the genre is nothing more than a cash-grab for a lot of filmmakers), but I'm not one of those people like Alice Cooper who's all "Horrors are comedies, theater of the absurd." If that's your take, more power to you, but I've always...taken things too seriously, I guess.
So, basically, I'd like to think of this blog as a virtual recreation of standing in the horror aisle at a video store. I'd like to reminisce, provide an opinion on the highs and lows of the genre, discuss merchandising, the good old days -- talk the latest and greatest in horror. Do I think what I have to say is that important? I decline to answer that. Some topics I just don't feel comfortable clogging a forum with, but my brain will swell with a thought and it needs to bleed somewhere. Somewhere where I can do what I wanna do, say what I wanna say, live how I wanna live, play how I wanna play, dance how I wanna dance, kick and then slap a friend -- Horror-Fu.
