Oh, The Horror!!!

I recently had someone ask me the million dollar question, "Why do you like horror so much?".
Hot damn! How do I even start?
When I was a kid, I was fascinated (and I MEAN fascinated) with the Loch Ness Monster. For some reason, Nessie appealed to my tiny adolescent brain. I even started a "Loch Ness Monster Club" at my daycare. The only thing that guaranteed you entrance in this exclusive group was to answer a question about Nessie correctly. If you couldn't, you were automatically deemed a stupid doo-doo head and forever banished to the sandbox. The love for the Scottish beastie branched off into interest in Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil's Tramping Ground, you name it! I couldn't get enough.
The real fascination with horror came later, when I started engrossing myself in novels. In doing that, I met a man............named Stephen King.
When I was in 5th grade, I had this thing about reading movie novelizations. I read the books for Terminator 2 all the way to Gremlins 2. One day, I visited a bookstore and noticed a book called Pet Semetary. I had seen the previews on TV and the book had a little sticker, "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture". I was curious. It looked kinda spooky.
Needless to say, I plowed through that book. I had never read anything so terrifying, so vivid, so......GASP.....adult! I remeber being home from school one day, both parents at work, when I finished the book. You know, where Gage comes back from the dead and terrozies his family and a poor old man named Judd?
Scared.....the......s@#t......outta me.
I calmly closed the book, sat it down, and decided then and there that I was not moving from that spot until my parents got home.
But I was hooked.
A book had never actually SCARED me before that. The rush of feeling the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and eyeing the closet door gave me a feeling like no other. I needed that feeling again. I then developed a ravenous appetite for King's books. Any I could find, I immediatly read. The Shining, Christine, Cujo, the list goes on and on. In all these books, I found moments where I was purely frightened. I LOVED it and to this day, King is my warhorse author. Any new book of his that comes out, I gladly look forward to. Some are hits and others are misses, but I love the experience just the same.

When I was a kid, my dad would take me to the local video store to rent movies. One major rule was that little Steven could not, WOULD not walk past the horror section. The covers for those early-mid 80s movies were HORRIFYING! I clearly remember seeing the cover for Creepshow (which incidently included a Stephen King story and the man himself has a role in it) with it's leering skeleton covered in rags and cobwebs. In the those days, the covers for horror movies were often a hell of alot more scary than the actual movies.
It wasn't until 2001 that I really started getting into horror movies. Loved to read it, but was a late bloomer in watching it. I read an article about Asian horror movies. They kept dropping the names Ringu, Ju-on, Audition..........I was intrigued.
I moved to Greensboro and discovered College Hill Video (sadly, it is no more), where you could purchase VHS copies of foreign films. The first time I walked in, I about fainted. Here they all were, along with hundreds of other freaky-looking flicks. I bought the 3 mentioned above.
Once again, I was hooked.
I developed a taste for foreign horror. They were immensly more frightening than American horror movies (formula: credits, BOO!, teenagers, BOO!, scary crazy killer guy, BOO!, titties, BOO!, the end.........just kidding BOO!)
These Asian flicks actually took their time. They weren't concerned with all the BOOs. Sure, they had them, but they mainly established a creepy vibe that just steadily gets more and more intense until you can't take it.
The Asian films then branched off into other countries.
France......oh my God........they are the masters of horror right now. The nail-biting Them, the blood bath of Inside and, most recently, the genius of the revolutionary Martyrs. They know what they're doing and it shows.
But we as Americans couldn't sit still for long. The Spanish gave us the great REC. We f@#ked it up and called it Quarentine. Sweden gave us the beautiful Let the Right One In. We're making Let me In.
Sigh.
Don't get me wrong.....America has it's horror greats obviously (Romero, Carpenter, Raimi, etc.) Rob Zombie has proven himself to be a modern horror master. And the brilliant Trick R Treat has entered the canon of best Halloween movie ever.

Most people hate horror. Or they like it, but they like the s@#t that's just NOT scary. But, hey! Who am I to judge? What scares me may not scare you and vice versa. My love for horror is because it thrills me. I get a rush out of being purely scared or even mildly creeped out. It's my thing. Its why I get more excited about Halloween than I do Christmas. Things that go bump in the night will always intrigue me.

The end
Just kidding BOO!