To quote Bushwick Bill, this year Halloween fell on a weekend. I’m sorry that I’m a few days late on my annual essay, but it’s like I always say: the veil should logically be just as thin a couple days after Halloween as it was a couple days before. So if we’re celebrating all October there should be no problem doing it in November.
This year I decided to write about not only one of my favorite horror movies, but the one I credit with making me fall in love with the genre in the first place. I can’t pinpoint when the fascination started; I remember watching THE SHINING at a friend’s house in elementary school without thinking of it as “my first horror movie” or anything like that. But I have this memory of hearing ads for A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS on K-Plus FM when I was in sixth grade. Around this time I was also fascinated with Gumby, who had been revived as a surfer in the medium of puff-paint t-shirt, and I remember drawing a picture of “Gumby Krueger.” I think I got it wrong and gave him blades on both hands.
I didn’t see DREAM WARRIORS until video, but those ads must’ve been what inspired me to rent A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. I know I had seen and loved the first three by the next year when A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER came out, because that one was a theatrical event and a formative experience. (read the rest of this shit…)
Every Halloween if I’m able to I like to write an essay on one of the great horror movies. This particular one is very important to me in part because it’s the specific movie that turned me into a horror fan. I’ve written about it before but here I try to get at both why I still love it and how it speaks to me about the world today. Hopefully I’ve done it justice. Happy Halloween, everyone.
It wasn’t much more than two years ago that I finally bit the bullet and reviewed the entire HELLRAISER series. I’d always had an attachment to the four theatrical ones (
When I moved a few months ago I found a box of VHS tapes deep in my closet, and on one of them had been taped the 1994 NBC Movie of the Week TONYA & NANCY: THE INSIDE STORY. I offer no explanation except that 
These days most horror fans have heard of the concept of the Final Girl, whether or not they know where it comes from. But they at least know it’s the heroine of a horror movie, the one that’s left standing at the end, like Laurie in 
I’m not sure why I’m okay with the title WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE. It’s one of those dated titles, because it’s not new anymore. And is the actual title supposed to be “New Nightmare” and it’s presented by Wes Craven? Because I always think of Wes Craven as being part of the actual title, that it’s about his nightmare. I don’t know. Anyway, it fits.
