Horror: the gateway drug to movie-geekdom

You make some good points. Seeing these horror flicks (when maybe we shouldn't) at a young age makes them all the more impressionable. Horror films tend to have a "forbidden fruit" quality to them; the stories tend to be very archetypal, visceral, sensational. Mix together a rebellious nature, the sense of discovery, a desire to conquer your fears, and certain tempting/taboo vhs covers at the video store.

It's hard not to turn geek when you've had that kind of experience.

I was roped in by visions of the fantastical. It was scifi (space opera), animation, adventure, and horror (monsters) all at the same time that pushed me to want to learn more about movies and how they were made. Especially the creature FX. How did these wizards bring that thing to life???

ILM, Rick Baker, Ray Harryhausen, Jim Henson, etc.

I was originally a Euro-horror geek, and that's a whole different ball of wax. With Italian, French and Spanish horror films, hot chick female leads provide the gateway to highbrow fare and serious critical analysis.

In other words, once we've matured and turned up our nose at the cheap thrills of Edwige Fenech, we put on berets and pretend that we're intellectually stimulated by Monica Vitti and Anna Karina.

I can only speak for myself, but it's definitely true. I became a film junkie through the Creature Feature every Saturday afternoon. That, coupled with the '76 version of King Kong (the big event that year), made me a film geek at age 8. Star Wars the following year just kicked it up several notches.

Yeah, I belong in this group. I have to admit that it was actually seeing Scream when I was in high school that made me think about movies in any sort of intellectual sense. Before that I just taped movies off television and rewatched them without thinking about it too much.

Horror definitely started me on the movie geek path. I blame, for those in the States, USA UP! All Night for it. Gave kids everywhere access to tons of horror films all weekend long, and it was easy to learn what worked and what didn't. The gore and chance at some side boob always brought us back, and eventually you learn the difference in affective scares, fx, plots, etc. Then you get your hands on something like Dawn of the Dead or Evil Dead 2 that just blows the lid off what you learned from these crappy basic cable horror films, and it creates a full fleged geek that starts pouring through Fangoria.

I can actually remember the movie that turned me into a movie geek. Well, I think 2 movies. Basket Case 1 & 2, back to back on UP! All Night. I went out the next day and bought my first Fangoria.

Absolutely, and your points make complete sense, even though I arrived at film-geekdom through my discovery of many foreign films and different opinions of film upon moving to Los Angeles from the podunk South.

Then again, my girlfriend mentioned that it's interesting to look at the opposite end of the spectrum - horror films being looked down upon by the rest of the film community as trash and not being held in such high esteem by many filmgoers (obviously not counting the genre geeks here).

Horror can be a double-edged sword for those of us who hold it as a serious medium when we try to present valid reasons as to why horror films can and should be taken more seriously - they're seen as inherently campy by many people, which can be a definite roadblock in getting those same people to see more interesting and engaging horror films and getting them to discuss the themes at work within those films.

EDIT: YES. I totally loved this when I was growing up - it was the first recurring film event that broke me of being "that pussy kid that covers his eyes and whines during horror movies".

I never moved out of the horror genre to become an all around film geek, so I can't say for sure if this theory holds, but Ratty's ideas make some logical sense. But I wonder: does the tendency of a horror fan to be forgiving of the flaws in a film (bad acting, effects, script, or whatever, all of which run rampant in many horror films), help or hurt their transition to film geekdom on a more widespread scale? Are they likely to label a film as "good" from another genre that doesn't maybe deserve it the same way they are w/ a bad horror film?

Edited to add: Much Rep for the thread starter!

Definitely true in my case. These books got me started as a kid:









From horror I started to become interested in individual directors (Romero, Cronenberg), and from there non-genre auteurs.

Holy shit, I think I used to own that "Monsters from the Movies" book. I borrowed it from the library and never took it back. :/

I owned that book with Nicholson on the cover. It was a pretty slick book, too, if I remember.

For me, it was all about Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Became a loyal fan at around 8 years old and read it for many years. Then "graduated" to Fangoria which was kind of the "teen" version of FM. Fangoria, to its credit, was the first mag that concentrated on actual aspects of filmmaking, rather than just "cool pictures!".

When I hit about 3rd grade I was always getting make up, and film, and horror film books from the school library. I remember reading this series of books about nothing but the Universal classic monsters about 10 times over a school year. I was absolutely obsessed with Lon Chaney.

Edwige Fenech is so unbelievably hot, even to this day. At least from the looks of her in Hostel II. And yea: that is all.

True for me. LA has "Creature Feature" and I was there every single Saturday. All the Cheesey 1950's monster movies, especially the Godzilla movies. Even as a small kid I knew there were people in those rubber costumes. That got me curious as to how the movies were made, which led me to the school library, etc.

The first Director I really started to track was John Carpenter. Mostly because all his movies have "John Carpenter's X" above the title. After that I began seeking information on other directors outside the genre, like Kurosawa, because they infuenced Carpenter, Lucas, etc.

This book sits on my desk at work.

I still have my copy of this that I got at a school book fair in first grade.

I remember the Joe Bob Briggs show. Phantasm 2 and Savani's NOTLD remake positively shattered me. For some reason the Phantasm ball scared me on such a primal level I actually had nightmares about it.

I also own a copy of that Savani book. I think the moment I officially steped over to fanaticism was the day I bought Kim Newman's 'Nightmare Movies'. I still have my beat-up backlog copies of Gorezone and Fangoria too. I really never outgrown my love for horror, but I have matured to love non-horror movies as well.

I got mine on the Bookmobile!

I can agree with this idea on a personal level. One of my first papers I wrote in college was on my awakening to film being courtesy of Night of the Living Dead. During my time in school it was the Pete Tombs book Mondo Macabro (and later Immoral Tales) that made me capable of anything approaching a social and cultural criticism based on genre films. I may not be the most adept critic, but these things were points in my life where I took a serious look at the ideas presented and learned to apply some critical sense to the pure entertainment of art. Romero was my inroad.

Watched this a ton too. My memory seems to make me remember Briggs showing horror films that actually got theatrical releases. Friday the 13ths, Phantasm, Elm Street, etc.

Great thread guys. When I turned 14, I got sent to a Christian high school. I was a little more "worldly". One of my great thrills was to introduce THE EXORCIST to one friend after another. For a few it was traumatic! It then became like that RINGU tape. After one person would have the shit scared out of 'em, it was time to find the next victom! Ahh, memories!

Also, when I was twelve King & Spielberg were like equal gods. As, I grew older one fell off, but the other led me into a world of cinematic wonderment and treasures!

NICE!!!

I second Darkmite's point about the "adults only" cache of horror movies, and agree w/ Ratty that this is a good point, and possibly a main reason why horror movie geeks like me get made. I know when VCR's were still relatively new animals, and we joined the local video rental joint, I started renting every horror movie I could get my hands on. I had heard some stuff about "The Beast Within" being, like, the most horrifying film ever made, etc., etc. So I built up to that by watching all sorts of other stuff 1st, preparing myself for the test of manhood (to borrow Ratty's phrase) that was to come from watching this film.

It ended up being a let down. Enough digression, however. I just realized this point has nothing to do with the main idea of this thread, so I'll shut up now.

I spent hours upon untold hours reading those same exact books in the public library when I was a kid.

Another childhood horror memory: Walking into the local VHS rental place (pre-Blockbuster, of course. Mine was called 'El Cheapo Video') and reading the backs of the horror placecard boxes one by one. I did this on a weekly basis, and was kicked out of the store more than once for doing it.

My parents would NEVER let me rent these films, but checking out the boxes and imagining what the movies were like was almost better than watching them. Chopping Mall, for example, had box cover art that was better than the film.

I think, as a kid, when you're told by society that something isn't for you, it makes you all the more curious. When you feel like discoveries are right around the corner, especially if your sneaky enough, you begin to wonder what other kind of unknown film gems are out there.

The treasure hunting can be very addictive. The escapism, the knowledge, the thrills... all this stuff snowballed for me. First it was quantity (I needed to see everything), and now that I'm older I have enough film-geek savvy (debateable) to seek out quality.

Flicks are so much more readily available to me now (and not just because I'm an adult with a credit card and a Netflix subscription), but because of the tech-advanced digital era. It makes me wonder what the next gen of film-geeks will be like.

Horror geeks are also a tightly knit band of brothers. When I hear someone (chud or otherwise) talk about liking Demons, Stagefright, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, or Tombs of the Blind Dead, it's like we belong to the some obscure, fun, semi-retarded fraternity. The obscurity of the film is geometrically proportional to the amount of brotherly-ness I'm going to feel toward you.

^^ This.

I've definitely met a few dozen people (here and IRL) where this describes how a friendship got started.

I remember having membership cards for something like seven different Mom-and-Pop video stores in my hometown, simply because they each had different horror videos I wanted. These kids today with their Netflix . . .

Truth. And man, oh man, those old video boxes! Miss that.

Once again, this was a part of my story as well. I don't miss the struggle to find the stuff I wanted, but I do miss the opportunity to find something I didn't know I was looking for.

Hell, yes! Between Famous Monsters, Creature Features, Chiller Theatre, the Jackson Cinema, and the occasional Monster Movie week on Channel 7 (NY) 4:30 Movie, I was mainlining monsters by the time I was in first grade. It was American Werewolf in London, however, that got me interested in special effects and make-up, which served as the gateway to more mainstream films.

Anyone remember this series of books from when they were a kid? I checked these things out so many times that I could probably still recite them word for word all these years later.

SEMI!?

God, we really are a strange close-knit brotherhood. I did the exact same thing (courtesy of a library in Coldwater, Mi). It's weird to see those again after so many years, I'd always borrow those and some cryptozoology or ghost story books from the library.

I still have this one. Maybe Gus Van Sant does too.

I agree, at least in my case I started out as a Friday the 13th worshipping 2nd grader, who wanted nothing more than hockey masked madmen (and the occasional guy with knives on a glove), but the more I watched them, the more I wanted to see other things, first horror, then sci-fi/fantasy. After that point genre became meaningless, and I just decided I wanted to see as many great films, as I possibly could (and potentially make a few myself).

Oh man, my school library had those, I remember going through everyone they had, and the Encyclopedia of Monsters, which was like a review/plot synopsis book that had so many movies, that at the time I hadn't seen, but really wanted to. I remember begging the school librarian to let me check it out even though it was reference, and being pissed when she said no.

Part of courting studios like Blue Underground, Anchor Bay, Synapse, and sellers like xploitedcinema.com was so I could write everything I knew about these obscurities and get involved with just this kind of thing with readers. Unfortunately I only get three or four guys replying to these reviews, though 'one' of them is the Wilson Brothers from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, so that's cool.

When I went to 'art school' (read: tech school), I actually avoided making friends for the first time in my life because I was having so much fun watching horror movies all night every night. I probably saw something like 600 horror films from 1998 to 2000, seriously. I watched at least five over the weekend. It got to the point where I was driving 45 minutes to Chandler, AZ because there was a video store there I hadn't bled dry yet. I think back and it feels like I should somehow be asshamed of this, but I actually end up feeling nostalgic.

Interesting thread. Though I think a distinction should be made between true horror geeks, and cinephiles who dabble. I mean, lots of people like horror- it's hard to not like. But mere knowledge of genre obscurities or having a quaint little guilty pleasures list on the desk next to that John Carl Buechler instructional video from 1989 does not make one a horror geek. I think true horror geeks are those people who may not always be the most discriminating or well-rounded individuals, but they know they love horror pretty much exclusively, they seek it out actively, and they tend to be very forgiving of a horror movie's flaws if it just has that one good bit. They're slightly scarred inside, and thus only drawn to the dark, the strange, the morbid, the monstrous, the repellent, the macabre, the supernatural, etcetc. And they stay that way their whole lives. Such people will probably never make the leap to full blown movie geek because the mindset is just as insular as that of the stereotypical sci-fi nerd, and their tastes never mature, which means that trying out new genres and new things is not on the agenda.

Contrast that with the discerning intellectuals, the lovers of all cinema for whom horror is a phase, a quirk, an occasional indulgence. They might like to think of themselves as ex-horror geeks, but all they were really doing was testing the waters as horror fans, waiting for metamorphosis into beautiful multicolored movie geek butterflies.

Reading that, I'm having visions of SUMMER SCHOOL.

I had visions of this thread.

Is it not possible, then, to be a horor "geek" and still have mature tastes? I'd argue it is. Sure, there are some who fit D72's stereotype to a T, & love even bad horror movies. But there are plenty more of us eho can enjoy a less than stellar film on a certain level, enjoying it for what it is and not expecting too much from it (such as being in the mood for a good slasher or monster flick, even if it's not a cinematic triumph), but have enough sense to disregard TRULY abysmal films, and genuinely loving only better quality horror films. True, there's pitifully few of these latter to be had, but there are enough of them, and more coming down the pike all the time, to keep us in business. I'd think this type of horror geek may dabble in other forms of cinema, and not prefer them to horror, but can still appreciate a good film when they see it, regardless of genre, as an inverse of a cinephile who dabbles in horror and can appreciate a good horror film, whilst preferring other genres mainly. But the question remains, and may never be answered here, in the horror film board, IS horror a gateway to movie geekdom in general? fewer of CHUD's general movie geeks prowl here regularly than you'd need for a good sample, I'd wager.

Curious: why not take the next "mature" step, and become a total cinephile? Why limit yourself to one genre? I was once in your shoes-could never imagine enjoying a John Wayne western as much as "The Thing". Now I could never go back. There's a lot of amazing films out there. (Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side.)

It's not that I see it as limiting myself. It's just what I enjoy the most, and consequently what I gravitate toward. Do I enjoy other genres? Hell yes. Horror actually makes up a very small part of my fairly sizable video collection. I love horror films, but there aren't many that I like enough to own. Most of the ones I do are some of the greats. Not really a John Wayne fan, but every time I happen to see "The Magnificent Seven" or "Tombstone" or "The Karate Kid", or "Caddyshack" or "Animal House" just to name a few, on cable, I'll watch them the rest of the way thru happily. I own the last two, along with a few Monty Python flicks. But I just enjoy "The Thing" or "The Mist" or something like that more. I read Civil War history or John D. MacDonald "mysteries" or True Crime like "Helter Skelter" and "Mindhunter" (I used to want to be a prosecutor when I grew up, and appreciate them from the law enforcement aspect as well as the terror/fascination one), and love them. They're among my favorite books. But I ENJOY a good zombie novel, or a Stephen King opus, or a Jack Ketchum book, more. Am I scarred? I don't know. But I'm definitely attracted to the dark side in my entertainment. I see nothing wrong with that. I don't begrudge film aficionados who don't really like horror their stance; it's not for everyone, I'll admit. But I do get a bug up my ass when THEY look down their noses at horror fans (not that that's what's being done here - I hope). Like I said, there's great horror films as well as crap, and I & others like me can tell the difference, thank you very much.

Get where you're coming from. (Definitely not lookin' my nose down at ya) I just don't get the horror geeks who'll watch Friday the 13th pt. whatever multiple times (to the point they have every kill memorized), but never even consider watching "The Quiet Man" or "Only Angels Have Wings". Isn't that just shutting the brain off & settling for comfort food? A teenager, I understand. An adult, time to reconsider.

Same here. I loved those books.

These things were the holy grail at my school's library. It was truly a great day when I got the Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman edition.

Ditto. It' s great to see those book covers again after so many years.

Started off as a horror movie geek and i still am. Give it time though, im still young.

Seeing all these books your guys are posting made me remeber a magazine my dad had that i used to read. For the life of me i cant remember what it is, but i just remember viewing it as some holy artifact. Too bad my brother destroyed it and put it into a collage.


Edit:From what i can take from the piece of "art", it was an old issue of Famous Monsters.