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| Uncle Forry's Clubhouse - cover of the first Famous Monsters Of Filmland |
Way back when I was a youngster, in the dark days before the
Internet, I could never have imagined what horror movie fandom would one
day become. It used to seem a solitary endeavor, a perception
reinforced by the sense that the horror movie fan was a rung further
down the ladder than even the often mocked and marginalized science
fiction fan. The fact that the horror movie hosts were usually
relegated to the tail end of the broadcast day seemed to support this
notion, as did the almost complete absence of any kind of serious
critical examination of the kind of fare these programs aired. Sure,
there were enough twisted insomniacs to warrant your local station's
choice to offer up cheaply obtained horror fare in the wee hours of the
morning, but any sense of a horror community was mostly relegated to the
circles of kids on the playgrounds excitedly discussing the details of
whatever hoary old chestnut had been offered up by the local rendition
of Shock Theater over the weekend. Grown-ups just didn't bother.
Horror movies, just like bubble gum cards and comic books, were for
children.
I realize now, of course, that there
existed a huge horror community back then. We just weren't sufficiently
connected or organized to be entirely aware of it. We had Forrest
Ackerman's
Famous Monsters Of Filmland as a sort of national clubhouse
for the horror fan, we had the aforementioned late night television
horror shows, and we had a seemingly never ending stream of horror
content to catch where we could, but we didn't really have a meeting
place that legitimized our private obsession. One need only look to the
legion of Monster Kids like Stephen King, Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg,
or Tom Savini that went on to careers popularizing the form in the
mainstream to realize that the horror fans were everywhere, we just
didn't know it then. We were legion, even though it seemed a bit like
our obsession was meant to be indulged behind closed doors - a
burgeoning fascination analogous to the joys of masturbation. We all
did it, we just didn't talk about it much lest the straights of the
world look down their collective nose at us. Funny, then, how the
Internet age has facilitated both obsessions.
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| Doin' some yardwork - Trick 'r Treat (2007) |
Even now, within my own circle of friends and acquaintances, I feel like
a bit of an odd duck. In any
given social circumstance I'm almost
always the resident horror authority. I take pride in that designation,
and I do my best to encourage any spark of interest that my "normal"
friends display in the topic. Still, it's a designation that usually
finds me on the periphery and left with the sense that my friends are
only mollifying me, offering up the occasional bit of feigned interest
like a figurative pat on the head to assure me that my strange obsession
is o.k. Maybe they're all just trying to forestall that moment in the
future when I finally decide to add them to the ever growing pile of
corpses that they're certain I must have stacked up in my crawlspace. I
bury the bodies, of course, since the smell would be horrendous, but it
still feels a bit like condescension.
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| Freaks (1932) - . . . in case you didn't get the reference. |
On the
Internet, though, it's easy to see that I'm not alone. I'm astounded
anew on an almost daily basis by not only how many of us there are, but
by how eager we all seem to proudly proclaim our love of horror to the
world at large. In this company, I am but one voice in a multitude. In
fact, I often feel less "hardcore" than many of the people I meet here,
as though I'm not obsessed
enough. Even more encouraging than
sheer numbers is the fact that almost everyone I've come in contact with
in this forum is unfailingly supportive, knowledgeable, tolerant, and
friendly. Sure, there's the occasional troll, but not as many as you
might expect. This is a community of which I can be proud to be a
part. Horror fans are good people. I can say, "One of us! One of
us!", and you'll all know exactly what I'm referencing. If I did that
at work, I'd be sent for a drug screen.
So the
next time one of your non horror loving acquaintances refers to your
love of horror with smug condescension, remember just how large the
community you belong to actually is. Also, remember you can only bury
so many of the haters in your back yard before that starts to smell, too.
Posted by Brandon Early
