Horror Guy

I'll Always Know You Made a Worthless Horror Flick

Stayed up late last night, really in the mood for a good horror flick, or at least an entertaining one, so I checked out the FEARnet on demand channel HD offerings and saw they had I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer listed as a new release. I didn't even know this thing had come out yet. That should have been my first clue.
It was a free view, so I thought "What the hell....it's only 86 minutes of my life....how bad could it be?"
Very, very bad.
I admit, I kinda knew what I was getting into...I'm no big fan of the first two I Know.... flicks, but this was just ridiculous. Did anyone actually make a dime off this crap? If so, they should feel completely ashamed of themselves and would be wise to score some karma points by donating that dime to a deserving charity. I don't know what the creators were trying to pull off here, but it felt like they were trying to turn the "Fisherman" (yeah, that's what they call the slasher in this one) into some cheap Jason Voorhees knock-off. And not the uber-cool Voorhees of Jason Lives or The New Blood; I'm talking imitation Jason Takes Manhattan. This guy pops in and out, teleporting around with such ease that one wonders why he doesn't just pop in, slash the deserving teen, then pop back out again, no muss, no fuss. I guess that wouldn't make for a very interesting movie, tho. Not that it would matter in this case. Should have avoided this one and spent those 86 minutes watching some Simpsons episodes. Would have been a lot scarier.
I think I'll go wash out the stain this left on my brain by reading a little of Boom! Studios Tag.

Horror Guy: The Beginning

I'm actually taking someone else's advice for a change and starting a new blog dedicated solely to a topic I slavishly adore. After mulling over a few cutesy-weird names, I chose to settle on something simple; Horror Guy will do quite nicely.
This is the space where I will put down my rants, raves, critiques and crap I have say about any and everything I can find in the horror genre. To get this whole carcass up and shambling, how about a little bit about me?

The first movie that I can recall seeing and comprehending what was happening on that little TV screen is George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. I was four years old but the black and white images of a handful of desperate individuals trying to survive a zombie holocaust were burned into my brain. I won't even get into the discussion of what kind of parents allow a four year old to watch such a gruesome spectacle; suffice it to say that from that moment on, I had inherited my mother's love of all things fun and terrifying. As much as I remember that flick, I don't really remember being frightened by it as much as I was just fascinated by the idea of dead people getting up and walking around. The earliest film I can remember actually instilling terror in my tiny little heart was the first movie my mom took me to see in a theater when I was only six; Steven Spielberg's JAWS. We were living in East Texas at the time, nowhere near a body of water that held any danger of Great White encounters, but I was scared out of my noggin....and loved it! It was around this time that I began discovering the plethora of horror-themed material available, even in the pre-Internet days, and I absorbed it all like a human-shaped sponge. Every weekday at 3:30pm I would be parked in front of the television for the "3:30 Movie", hoping beyond hope that I would be presented with a good old-fashioned black and white "monster movie" (whatever their subject material, all horror flicks were 'monster movies' to this youngster), it didn't matter which one or what it was about. Saturday afternoons were reserved for watching flicks presented and commented on by Madame Macabre, a sort of post-Vampira, pre-Elvira goth movie host. Saturday nights were the best; that's when I would sit, waiting agonizingly for end credits of "Hee Haw!" to roll because immediately after was "Creature Feature" hosted by the "cheapy creepy" Dr. Paul Bearer. Dr. Bearer would present us with a different low-budget horror film every week and for some reason, I remember enjoying those a lot more than the flicks shown on the 3:30 Movie or hosted by Madame Macabre. One in particular that stuck in my brain was a tale involving a possessed bar-b-que grill that mutilated its victims by spewing hot charcoal on them.

By the time I was seven years old, I had begun reading the horror paperback novels that my mom had around lying around. Ghost House by Clare McNalley was the very first one and its story of a family being emotionally torn to shreds by a jealous spirit sticks with me to this day. At the ripe old age of eight, I discovered and read my first Stephen King novel, The Stand...and was hooked. I've been a King fan ever since and will probably be reading his stuff until I lay down for my own dirt nap.

As I grew older, my interest grew stronger, to the point where I was devouring everything horror-related that I could get my hands on; monster toys and models, wall posters, the writings of E.A Poe, HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, Fangoria magazine, books by John Saul, Peter Straub and others, academic studies of actual occult practices, horror comics from Marvel and DC, and even crappy community theater productions of Dracula. Nothing was too low budget or chintzy to be outside my interest.

Getting to go to the theater was a rare treat for me when I was younger and I had to wait and catch most of the flicks I wanted to see when they aired on network TV. So it was in 1980 on a dark Friday night in October that I curled up all alone in our living room to watch the final movie of my life (thus far) that would actually terrify me to the point that I still have nightmares about it: John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. I'm sure that someone watching it for the first time today would find absolutely nothing scary about it, but bear in mind that back then there was no other movie of note that was anything like it. This was all before FRIDAY THE 13TH, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, SAW and all the other horror flicks that would become ingrained in the social consciousness. There was little plot and less acting talent, but the images of this faceless, emotionless madman stalking a group of teenagers and slaughtering them mercilessly, coupled with one of the most memorable horror movie music themes ever, was simply terrifying. What's more, this particular madman, Michael Myers by name, who seemed human by any other measure could not be stopped. Even taking a chestful of bullets from Donald Pleasence could do no more than slow him down. Fans of F13's Jason Voorhees would see this as nothing novel, but again, this was a few years before the summer camp slaughterer first donned his hockey mask. Multiple sequels would try to put a rhyme and reason to the machinations of Mr. Myers, but none of them would ever come close to the sheer fear invoked by the original film. This year, horror auteur Rob Zombie is remaking/re-imagining John Carpenter's classic with a promise that it will satisfy fans both new and old. I know this old fan is quite excited by the prospect.

And there you have it; the birth of horror guy. Gotta run now. Something creepy on the DVD shelf is calling to me.