VHS was my best friend for my teenage years.   Seeing pictures of Scott’s latest “Never Forget” tattoo reminded me of all the Saturday nights I spent with various VHS tapes.   For the majority of my middle and high school years, I would go to the Schnucks off of Butler Hill to peruse the horror isle.   The great thing about this Schnucks was their video store was separate from the grocery store and they had a wide selection.   Honestly, they had one of the biggest horror sections for the longest time.   They also had a special where you could Rent One, Get One Free.   The maximum amount of tapes you could rent out was 6 and I maxed it out every weekend night.   My family would order Pizza Hut and I would grab a couple of slices and sneak back to my room to watch whatever I picked up earlier that night.   Mini Marathons would play in my small room as I usually started around 9pm and finished all of them by morning in one sitting.   I could be watching anything from Toulon’s puppets wreaking havoc in ‘Puppet Master’ to a chainsaw appendage wielding hero to a ‘Faces of Death’ tape.   This was back in the day when some horror wasn’t released publicly.   There were bootleg tapes and non-rental tapes that one could acquire.   I would look through my recent issue of Fangoria to see if there were any ads to trade tapes.   This was back in the day when the only way to see Cannibal Holocaust was to get a bootleg and hope that it was the best quality.   Of course, at that age, receiving VHS tapes through the mail and having to explain or come up with an excuse to your parents was almost an adventure in itself.

By the time I was 18, I saw most of the mainstream stuff and was at the point where I knew there had to be more movies than what my local video store held.   Hell, I’m still discovering old horror films.   Thanks to the advent of DVD, the hunt is practically absent and films like ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ seem less potent.   Watching a film like ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ or ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ was also akin to watching a pornographic VHS.   I would pop the tape into the VCR, press down on the plastic holder (yeah, back when there wasn’t an auto feeder) and press Play.   While watching what would leave an imprint on not only my senses but my horror education, I always had to listen for my parents to make sure they weren’t coming to see what I was watching.   Sometimes, that feeling was scarier than the film I was watching.   I still remember to this day that every month, I would ask my mom if I could rent ‘HENRY: Portrait of a Serial Killer’ and she would reply back with “NO!”.   I know the last few times I asked her that I tried to defend the film since Roger Ebert was quoted on it so it had to be a meaningful film to watch.   The man gave it Two Thumbs UP, what more do you want from him, his big toes as well!?   The last time I asked my mother if she would give me permission, she used the whole guilt trip of “Get it if you want, but I don’t approve.”   Yeah, that not only took away some of the adventure and mystery, but I knew that I couldn’t watch the film and be satisfied with my decision.   No, HENRY would have to wait until 2005 for me to watch it as I waited for the DVD.   My mom was a horror fan, yet she liked the psychological horror.   The stuff that actually scared you.   Her favorite film was and still is ‘The Haunting.’   My father had tapes of films that he recorded from HBO like ‘Repo Man’, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Blade Runner’.   He was more of a Sci-Fi guy, but Sci-Fi and Horror blended so much that it worked out.

A few years ago, I wondered…”How come I like horror films so much?”   In a small town living 30 minutes south of St. Louis, I didn’t have many friends that had the same movie interest as I did.   Like I said at the beginning, most of the time I watched the movies on a Saturday night, alone.   Then I realized that Horror films were practically my best friend.   I know, it may sound lame… but hear me out.   We would both take risks.   I would feel the same feeling that I would if I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing with a friend of mine like sneaking out with our slingshots and trying to break the streetlights in my subdivision – something I did do with a friend.   I experienced some of the same emotions that I did with a friend during my childhood.   I also matured through film.   I started with the Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Halloween films and graduated to Horror Academy films like ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (thanks to my mom) and ‘An American Werewolf in London’.   I started out as a Slasher kid but became a totally different beast.   Horror is my life and I thank it dearly.

Horror News

• The Wolfman Remake got bumped until 2010 – I’m starting to worry
• Rob Zombie releases his millionth still from Halloween 2

(SERIOUSLY, Slow News Week in horror.   However, check out all the SDCC news)

DVD Releases for Next Week

Pick of the Week: 'Big Trouble in Little China' BLU-RAY

The Chaos Experiment (Weinstein) imdb | amazon
Demon Warriors (Magnolia) imdb | amazon
The Machine Girl Remix (Tokyo Shock) – This is just a re-release with the feature Machine Girlite – imdb | amazon
The Mutant Chronicles: 2 Disc Director’s Cut (Magnolia) – Also in single disc and blu-ray. imdb | amazon (1 disc) (2-disc) (Blu-Ray)
Trapped (Code Red) imdb | amazon

Adiós