The Horror

I love Horror Movies. Sometimes I think back to when it all began. Both my life and fascination with Horror films. I saw my first of the genre when I was no older than five years old. There are four of us kids in my family and the easist way for my father to keep us quiet was for him to take us to the movie theater. For some reason my dad had no grasp of what type of movies were ok for us kids to watch. (At the time the oldest was Michael, at eleven, and I was the youngest, at five.) As a result he'd take us to all types of movies.

On this particular Saturday my dad must have looked into the movie listings haphazardly. Maybe he was in a fight with my mom or perhaps it was just a movie he really wanted to see... whatever the reason, he took all four of us kids to a movie by the name of "Creepshow."

For those of you who don't know, it is truly one of the great and classic pieces of scary cinema and it will always have a special place in my heart. First of all, it's a Stephen King movie, AND it's one of the good ones. Both in thrills and execution. The movie is a series of five short pieces, each terrifying and horrific in their own right, one scarier than the next. I didn't make it past the first.

The film opens up with a kid in a fight with his father because he wants to read a horror comic book. His father doesn't want him "reading garbage" so he slaps the kid's mom and throws the book in the trash. (I'm glad I never had to worry about that.) Then the kid is visited by a skeleton in his window named "The Creep." The Skeleton starts to tell the boy all of the stories from the comic in such detail that they go from illustrations to real life. The first story is called "Father's Day."

"Father's Day" paints the picture of a truly dysfunctional family. They meet every year on father's day to celebrate the day that they murdered their crazy, old father. The old man was not a nice guy and treated everyone in his family not so very nicely. Thus the celebration. Now what happens is: the family is waiting in their inherited mansion for the elder daughter (Bedilia) to arrive so they can party. It seems that Bedilia has her own plan, which is go drink out at the old bastard's resting place... While she's out there boozing it up she goes bananas and pours whiskey all over his grave. As she's doing this her father's arm punches up out of the ground and chokes. Bedilia. to death. Then her sister's boyfriend (played by Ed Harris) comes out looking for her and gets his head smooshed in by a grave stone...

... leaving me with the impression that whiskey, poured over a grave, brings dead corpses back to life. A belief I hold to be true until this very day.

Oh, and the only thing the father says through all of this is, "I WANT MY CAKE!" Over and over and over again. Creepy. Showy.

The story ends with the zombie corpse father coming out of the kitchen with his daughter, Bedilia's, head on a cake and saying, "I got my cake."

There were many indications that this was not a movie for children. Nay, toddlers. The R rating, the title, the language, the zombie, the grisly murders... at any point my dad coulda pulled up stakes and booked but he didn't. The final straw for me was the sight of the zombie dad with finely baked cake in his hands. Also, it was the last hint that maybe a horror movie wasn't for us kids. At the sight of that monster in the doorway, I staRTED SCREAMING and didn't stop until we were well out of the theater.

For some reason my memory plays tricks on me and I remember him immediately taking us to the next theater over to see "Doctor Detroit" with Dan Akroyd. A movie about a banker who turns into a pimp. Full of drugs, explicit language, sex, and boobies... All no nos according to Pops. Even though leaving "Creepshow" screaming and entering "Doctor Detroit" is impossible since the two movies were released a few years apart and all... I, however, like to imagine it that way because eventually my dad did yank us out of the good doctor's movie too. I love the idea of my dad going two for two on movies kids shouldn't see... on the same day... Even if it didn't happen on the same day, that's how I choose to remember it.

And if you remember it that way, that's the way it is forever.



























My original intent was to talk about Stephen King's new movie "The Mist" and walking home in a real live mist in Los Angeles. It's a great movie and made me think about a lot of things and helped me realize once again how horror movies parallel the times of society, but I don't want to write too much. My brother says that folks tend to lose interest on long blogs. Maybe he's right. Maybe I'll have to make this into a series of blogs. "Moments in Chris's Horror Movie History." So, my makeshift Horror Movie Philosophy will have to wait for another time. And since I can't seem to stop muh fingas from a-typing, I'll leave you with a quote. A good one from a great friend of mine.

"Just remember what old Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big old storm right in the eye and says, 'Give me your best shot. I can take it.'"
-Jack Burton

Gobble, gobble, gobble,
-Chris