In particular the lower-budget offerings crossed so many subgenres of horror. There were satanic/witchcraft paranoia pictures, such as my personal favorite, RACE WITH THE DEVIL, insane biker movies like THE WILD RIDERS, and WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS, all the great mondo-style jungle sleaze out of Italy. Then there were the wacky mutant animal pictures, such as NIGHT OF THE LEPUS and FOOD OF THE GODS.

To men, watching a grainy 70s flick is like a warm blanket… It’s just something comforting about it.

Between British bands, J.G.Ballard and Hammer Films, I used to think England was the coolest place on Earth.

… that smells like pussy!

I love the Universal stuff, appreciate Hammer and its imitators (without really enjoying them per se), genuflect before Romero’s reinvention of the genre and the 70s school of hyperreal-horror-as-political-message-delivery-device that grew out of it, and I left my heart in the 80s (grainy fim stock, minimalist synth, and rubbery FX in service of a good story equals awesome; if the story sucks, there’s still plenty of fun to be had).

All that said, I’ve been blown away by the decade so far (we should probably come up with a name for it before it’s over). I guess that’s because today’s filmmakers tend to be right around my own age, so my cherished memories are their professional influences. Yeah, we’re still talking about 1 good flick for every 20 crappy ones, but such is film.

Geez, until I saw this post I forgot how much the 50s and 90s sucked. Tranquility has its upside, to be sure, but it kills our genre dead.

Hate the 90’s yet I continue to be fascinated with the early 90’s horror that killed off 80’s horror.

This past year, 2007, was particularly bad with me not liking a single theatrical release.

Not because the majority of films made & released today are better than the high water marks of those classic eras of the past ( though there have been a LOT of excellent genre films released over the course of the past several years ), but because we have such an unprecedented variety of ways to see so many of our favs, both old & new, in their best possible incarnations.

Think about how recently it was that we were limited to whatever it was that was shown on our local stations. Then, even with the advent of cable television & the VCR, we were stuck with often grainy, subpar prints either broadcast or released on horribly pan & scanned tapes. All of which we gladly accepted because the alternative was even GRAINIER or muddier bootlegs that we grossly overpaid for. Again, gladly, because the alternative was not seeing these obscure, usually foreign horror films that we’d been reading about in magazines & books for years.
I shudder to think of how much money I spent lining the pockets of a certain genre mag editor/author/T-shirt entrepreneur who shall go nameless for the opportunity to build a near complete bootleg collection of uncut Argento flicks & Paul Naschy’s wolfman movies.
All of which were always advertised in his mailings as “pristine copies from a Japanese laserdisc source” (LOL!). And ALL of which instantly went into the trash upon their legit release during the DVD revolution.
Not that I hold any grudges, though all of VERY suspect “first generation” status, those old bootlegs served their purpose for a few years, allowing me to see films that I otherwise wouldn’t have until years later. Sort of an appetizer for the “real release” on DVD a few years afterward.

But, back to the subject at hand, now many of our favs are not only readily available on DVD in their preferred forms, but also in spectacular HD versions via disc and/or on cable or satellite.

In my making a case for NOW as my favorite era for the genre film, I’m standing on the fact that we now have a greater array of films, pretty much instantly available to us in their best possible quality than we’d have ever dared dream about just a decade ago.