Don't you NEVER turn your back on a fuckin' clown when he's talkin' to you!

     One of my earliest memories is one of being about 4 years old and waking up in the middle of the night. My father was awake in the living room watching TV and let me sit with him while he watched Trilogy of Terror starring Karen Black. I only really remember one segment, where a little tiki doll comes alive and chases her around the apartment. I remember being enchanted, not only by the puppetry, which I'm sure would look primitive by today's standards, but by how menacing and evil the little bastard was.
     Around the same time I became fascinated by the old Universal black&white monsters: Bela Lugosi's Dracula, Boris Karloff's Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Phantom of the Opera and the Wolfman, the latter two being played by Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces. I had the action figures, and I had the books, and I had a killer-cool Frankenstein t-shirt, but I didn't have the actual movies. In fact, I don't think I even saw them until I was much older. It didn't matter, because I loved those characters. I played with the action figures for hours, and read the books over and over because I loved the characters. I loved Chaney's Wolfshead silver cane in Wolfman, and Dracula's cool dialogue: "I never drink...wine." I liked them because they were creepy, and because they were of a world I knew didn't exist but still believed in.

"I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy!"

     1984: HBO: I'm 9 years old, once again my dad lets me watch a scary movie with him, only this time it's A Nightmare on Elm Street. My little brother watches with us; he's 5 and goes absolutely bonkers when Nancy answers the disconnected phone and Freddy's tongue comes out of it.
     And then there was Creature Double Feature, Saturday afternoons on WLVI. And Ghostbusters. And lots of kids' books with ghost stories. And Cat's Eye, Fright Night, Videodrome (yes, I was a little kid when I saw Videodrome,) The Fly, The Toxic Avenger, House, and of course, The Twilight Zone.

You do not want to know where that head has been.

     I guess what I'm saying is that my brain was warped from go, and I really can't be blamed for tastes that range from slightly demented to batshit brutal. I'm a grown-up now, supposedly, but I still love ghost stories, monsters, and things that make me squirm. I believe that good art makes you feel something, and if it's horror movies, that something is fear. I'm a lot more forgiving of a movie's shortcomings if it scares me. I must have seen Haute Tension a dozen times, and it scares me every time. I absolutely love it, even though, according to Roger Ebert,  the "movie's plot has a hole that is not only large enough to drive a truck through, but in fact does have a truck driven right through it." (I have the utmost respect for Roger Ebert simply for his review of my favorite movie of all time, The Devil's Rejects. The man does not fuck around.)
      So anyway, this is my new blog. I watch the movies and tell you what I think. You might see a review of one movie, you might read a discussion of a topic, like why I hate the term "torture porn." I'll probably stick to horror because it's what fires my imagination the most, but I could branch out into sci-fi, superheroes, or even comedy. (Due Date was HILARIOUS!) I would like to say I'll post 3x a week, but realistically, it will probably be once a week, by Monday morning. I'll try to include as many links as possible, so you can check out the movies if you haven't seen them or read an article I'm quoting. If you see one good movie you've never heard of before coming here, or if I can get you to think a different way about one of your old favorites, I will have done what I set out to do. Have fun, and tell me what you think!