My life as a horror fan!

I thought a good place to begin would be a personal bit of writing about what the horror scene means to me and my thoughts on it. Stuff like that.

I have been a horror movie fan since I was a kid. I remember being scared out of my wits when I accidently walked into the room when my Dad was watching "The Fly" remake and being horrified by the walking insect on the television. I think I was about four or five at that time and I remember it clearly. My introduction to horror was complete.

Time passed and I found myself watching VHS tapes that had been taped off television and were flickery and bad quality. A thirteen year old sitting downstairs on a Friday night in the dark watching a fucked up copy of Dawn of the Dead. I think that was when I fell in love with the genre and found a movie that has remained one of my very favourite films since.

As I got well into my teens and high school was over I had seen my share of horror movies. It was around that time that my heart leaned in a different direction and I got deep into metal music, especially black metal. I went to gigs and bought underground EP's of the most obscure and raw recordings I could get my hands on. Black eyeliner, leather, satanic symbols and black hair dye was where the rest of my money went. It was a memorable and fun time and it became incredibly easy to mingle my two interests. Horror and metal music have always gone hand in hand. Punk rock and horror do too, so it was a natural combination. I remember listening to Emperor and then watching Last House on the Left and thinking, "wow, that really works"

I opened my mind as my teenage years gave way to my twenties, finding all sorts of music that I loved and movies that I felt I had alot in common with. Listening to soul and blues and other types of hard rock and metal while watching films not specifically horrific became something I truly enjoyed.

I went to Chiller Theatre in New Jersey in 2004 and while I prefer to forget what was a pretty negative experience, it was fun in the respect that I got to meet some iconic horror people and pick up some horror movies that were only available on Region 1 US releases. I had a terrible time in all honesty, for a variety of reasons, and I think that experience killed much of the love I had for horror films at that time. I eventually found that horror didn't really do it for me anymore, finding solace in science fiction, fantasy and other flicks that dealt with humanity on a real level. I fell out of love with horror for the first time since I was a child.

When I got to my mid-twenties I started watching more horror flicks again. I went back and watched alot of the movies I had enjoyed in the years previous. Watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Basketcase, Poltergeist, Evil Dead, I Spit on Your Grave, The Omen, Carrie, Street Trash, Halloween and others I found that I was enjoying it again.

I'd stepped away from the things that had piled alot of negativity on my personal life and changed a whole lot as a person in the almost-ten years that passed since I became tired of horror and in turn was ready to delve into it again.

I watched some of the modern horror flicks that I had missed in my time away and I liked some of them while also thinking that many of them were really unoriginal and boring to me. I am a fan of the atmospheric style of horror, that creeping terror that builds towards a horrific booming finale. To this day "The Amityville Horror" from the seventies is the scariest movie I've ever seen. Nothing will ever overtake it. It freaks me the fuck out.

Anyway, here we are. I missed alot out in this little article because I don't wanna bore you. Basically I was a horror child and teen who got bored and then returned home. Today I love horror while at the same time I love other stuff just as much. I can sit and watch a Woody Allen movie followed by a Dario Argento one. It's much nicer. As for recent horror movies that I like, well, it's a hard question when dealing with a nerd like me who puts too much thought into a simple quiery.

In the time since mid 2000 there have been plenty of movies in horror that I've enjoyed. Splinter, Dead Birds, Everything that Guillermo Del Toro has done, Grindhouse, The Woman, Hatchet 1 & 2, Zombieland, Tucker & Dale, Wasting Away, Human Centipede 1 & 2. I could go on and on and on. I've missed alot out. I am not the biggest fan of remakes though, even though I did like the Texas Chainsaw remake in 2003, the Evil Dead remake in 2013 and both the Last house on the left and I spit on your grave remakes a few years ago.

As for movies I haven't liked, well, how long do you have? That's why this blog is here, to talk about the good, the bad and the not-worth-the-blood-on-your-knuckles. But I will say this. I hated The Collector, I loathed Death Tunnell and I fucking detested The Loved Ones.

So please bear with me while I find my footing and forgive me if during my time here as a horror blogger I get some shit wrong, it's inevitable and so I beg your indulgence. I write alot and am working on a novel I hope to see in print in the next couple of years so I know that I wont be able to blog as much as I want to, but please keep your eyes out for the horror and other movie blog.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I'm happy to be a horrorhead again and excited to see what the genre has to offer in the future. It seems a bit slow at the moment and it appears to be exiting a phase of found footage and haunted house films, but I am hopeful. There are some amazing directors and writers out there with ideas as original as anything ever has been, so lets hope that this blood splattered, house haunted, demon infested, gut spilling, shit splashing, boob juggling genre we love succeeds in it's future years.

I'm on board the crazy train and ready for a bumpy ride.