Comments on: Horror Roundtable - Week Fifty-Eight

By: zomben

zomben — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:38:38 +0000

I’m in agreement with Billy, above. I’ve found the horror films of the last few years to be exceptionally disappointing, with only a few rare exceptions. So, to combat that, I’ve been going ‘back to the classics’… rereading Lovecraft, Poe, Campbell, etc.; watching older horror films from the 40’s through the 80’s or so. Really, just trying to remind myself of why I got into it in the first place.

Couple posts about this stuff on my own blog, if anyone is interested:

http://zomben.blogspot.com/2007/03/on-subject-of-horror.html
http://zomben.blogspot.com/2007/03/again-horror.html

By: T Van

T Van — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:58:36 +0000

I’ve found myself disillusioned with the genre for a couple of months. It seems to happen from time to time. I think I just got bored of watching a lot of mediocre films.

I am looking forward to seeing 30 Days of Night. I’m hoping that it will bring me out of my horror funk.

By: Jeff Allard

Jeff Allard — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 04:22:53 +0000

For me, I hit the doldrums in the late ’80s. It was tough to keep the passion up in the age of Jason Takes Manhattan, Shocker, Deep Star Six, and so on. I didn’t even like the big hits of the time like Pet Semetery. The stuff that I liked was either real marginalized and hard to find - like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer or Santa Sangre - or else was categorized as “not really horror”, like Dead Ringers. So I felt that horror was on the wane.

Growing up as a kid in the ‘70s, I always saw horror as being a big draw with movies like The Exorcist, Jaws, The Omen, Halloween, and Alien – all these movies where it wasn’t just the horror crowd turning out for them, it was everyone – so to see horror so devalued by the late ‘80s was a drag. I mean, most people wouldn’t have be caught dead at most of the horror movies in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. It was just the real diehards hoping to glean a little pleasure out of, you know, Graveyard Shift.

What brought me back to really loving horror and feeling that it wasn’t going to go the way of the musical or the western was The Silence of the Lambs. It really revived my love of the genre. And it validated my feelings that in the right hands, the horror genre would always shoulder greatness.

Since then, my affection for the genre hasn’t really faltered. With a wife and kid I get a little out of the loop at times but I catch what I can. This year has been a real test of patience with way too many horrible movies but the ones that I have liked – like Zodiac, Vacancy, and 1408 – were all pretty strong, in my book.

By: jim allcorn

jim allcorn — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 22:48:58 +0000

Hmmm …

Interesting question. While ,obviously, my interest has waxed & waned a bit here & there over the years depending on what was going on in my life or what films & books were being released, shown on television etc., I honestly can’t think of a period of time when I actually lost interest and/or had to be “brought back into the fold”. I’ve loved genre films from my very earliest memories ( the first film that I can remember watching in it’s entirity is Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY when I was five! ) to now at 45. I feel like it’s just “hardwired” into my system. I just can’t imagine NOT loving horror/monster movies.

Even back when I was 17 - 18 years old & got involved in going to a born again Christian Church’s youth group with some friends for about a year & I had a shit load of people telling me that my love of horror was “satanic” & unhealthy, I never considered giving up watching genre films/TV or reading genre fiction. Not for a minute.

By: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short

solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:26:02 +0000

Jim, that’s funny, a friend and I were just talking about this today–I always knew that Christians, in general, had an aversion to horror movies, and I figured it was just what you’re talking about there, the idea that depictions of evil are necessarily evil themselves.

As I’ve come to know more and more cool, non-fundie Christians who don’t shun pop culture, I’ve found that, although they’re not contemptuous of the genre or of me for getting so much enjoyment out of it, they would no more go see a horror movie than I would go see “License to Wed.”

With quite a bit of effort, I talked a religious girlfriend into going to see one with me once, and it kinda screwed her up for a couple of days. Then I realized: Oh, right–Christians not only accept the existence of the supernatural, they accept it actively, so this genre is not a safe space for them the way it is for atheists or for people who don’t necessarily disbelieve but don’t give metaphysics a whole lotta thought.

I’m sure this insight’s way less trenchant than I think it is, but it makes sense on its face. Hell, if I found “The Ring” plausible, I’d never sleep.

By: jim allcorn

jim allcorn — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 20:38:34 +0000

Oh yeah, back then I had all sorts of folks trying to “minister to me” & “witness to me” the error of my ways. And, when I was resistant to them, some of them ( mostly some of my friend’s from the youth group’s parents & grandparents at this Pentecostal church ) actually chalked it up to me being “demon possessed. I kid you not!

And it wasn’t as if I were some sort of early “Goth”-type who dressed all in blackk or wore my own homemade precursors to Rotten Cotton-type t-shirts or some such thing. I was just an average teen that just happened to enjoy horror films & fiction during this period of 1979 - ‘80. But, my bringing along a copy of Robert McCammon’s novel BETHANY’S SIN to kill the time before the youth group meeting started got me “rebuked” by some of church “elders”.

In retrospect, all these years later it’s funny, but back then it was sort of a pain to deal with & drove me away from that particular group of friends. Especially when word got out that I actually owned a few issues of PLAYBOY & GALLERY magazine ( both of which I actually DID buy for the articles & the stories featured in them, including fiction by Stephen King & Richard Laymon, not that I didn’t also enjoy the photos of attractive naked women as well … ). Because, if there’s one thing that shocks & appalls Christians a hell of a lot more than horror does it’s SEX!