An Introduction
Hello and welcome to my 31 Fall Frights blog, in which I will be reviewing 31 horror/thriller movies during the month of October.
A little bit of my history with these movies
As a child horror movies scared me quite a bit. All of the kids in my neighborhood were horror movie junkies and talked about them all the time. Even though I was not watching the likes of Friday the 13th part 6, I could probably tell you exactly what happened just by listening. And despite being afraid of seeing the movies, I loved horror stories, particularly those of Edgar Allan Poe. I still remember the night my uncle Donnie read me "The Tell Tale heart" and how scared I was...but giddy at the same time. And this love of the stories is what led to my eventually seeing my first horror film in the theater. I would read the novelizations of the horror moves I was interested in, rather than actually go see them. The first was Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and I enjoyed that book a lot, but it took a long time for me to get the nerve to actually see an actual movie in the theater. In fact, the first horror movie I ever saw in the theater was The Lost Boys...and I have to confess that I read that novel first so I would not be scared watching it. I guess I was afraid of the gore effects and how seeing that would affect me. To combat this, I learned how the effects were made by reading magazines like Fangoria, and it gave me a completely different perspective. Oddly enough, the comedy "Summer School" with Mark Harmon also eased me into seeing the gore for what it really was; elaborate foam and latex special effects. I realized the work that goes into making these horrific scenes come to life and as it turned out, I actually really enjoyed my first real horror movie in the theater, and that day a fan of the genre was born.
The idea that we can be entertained by things that scare is, is (in and of itself) an odd notion. However, horror movie fans are some of the most die-hard of all fandoms in geek culture. And there are so many different genre's and interpretations of what scares us in different countries, that you will never exhaust all there is to offer. This however is also one of the biggest downsides to this genre. Horror movies are by and large cheap affairs to make and sometimes suffer because of it. For every "Halloween", you are going to get a ton of cheap knock-offs with bad acting, directing and thin story lines. A lot of well known actors actually got their start in horror films. Jason Alexander (who you know better as Seinfeld's George Costanza) was in a little camp slasher flick called The Burning. Brad Pitt was in a slasher film called "Cutting Class". Everybody has to start somewhere.
So, what do I hope to get out of this?
Honestly, there are a ton of horror movies out there, but not a lot of them are very good. Most of them depend on cliches you have seen time and time again. It takes a special "something" to make them stand out, and I think that is one of the appeals to me for this genre. I need to see something that makes it stand out, or leaves me with something to think about afterwards. That being said, I will be mindful of when these movies were made and be as subjective as possible. I'm not going to trash a movie because it has "dated" special effects for example, but take it for what it was at the time it was made. If I see anything relevant to the time of the film, I will definitely point it out in the reviews, as well as what I think the director was trying to accomplish and how well he/she succeeded. Hopefully during the course of these 31 days I will find some genuine diamonds in the rough. There really are some horror movies that have something to say about society, you just have to find them. And I really enjoy watching these kinds of films, so it's going to be fun for me.
The movies I watch will come from various sources, including Netflix DVD's and instant view, VOD, and I will probably catch a few in the theaters before the month is out. I choose the movies based on horror movie reviews from sites like Bloody Disgusting, Shock Till You Drop, Rotten Tomatoes, Ain't it Cool News, and IMDB among others. All of the movies I am reviewing are new to me, or I have not seen all the way through. They will cover a wide range of horror, but the furthest I am going back is to the 1960's. There will be slashers, ghost movies, foreign movies, monster movies, and some that cross genre's.
I will try to keep this schedule of a horror movie a day, but things happen. In the event of sickness or some other delay, will do my best to have 7 movies watched by the end of the week and catch up on reviews during the weekend if I have to.
So I hope you will all join me tomorrow night for the genre-bending Kill List. I have heard good and bad things about it, so it's a perfect way to start off. :)
