Categories
2013 Archives Women Of Horror Week

Oh The Horror – Suzanne Bell

When I meet people and the subject of interests come up, I instinctively reply with, “I’m a huge horror fan.” Reactions are varied, from the subtle eye roll to shock and surprise. My favorite reaction has to be, “But you look so normal.” I still have no idea what that means. I guess there is a stigma attached that will never go away. Apparently, people who are into horror dress all in black, listen to death metal, worship the Devil and Charles Manson. Well, I do wear a lot of black. Hello, it’s slimming! I listen to Tool, but that’s about as hard as I roll. I don’t worship anything. As an Atheist, I don’t believe in God or the Devil. As far as Charles Manson goes, well, I am interested in true crime stories of all kinds, but I’m not about to carve a symbol in my forehead or anything.

So just how does an intelligent girl, from a middle-class family, who grew up in the suburbs become interested in the macabre? Well, I had a lot of help.

I’ve always loved a good story. As a kid, books, TV, movies, anything that kept my imagination rolling was better than a new bike or toy. I think my earliest memory of getting interested in the scary was a book the neighbors had. Their daughter used to babysit me and they had a book of ghost stories in the house. I remember loving the artwork on the cover and in all the years I spent in that house, I must have read that book a million times.

We lived in the country and cable TV hadn’t been gifted to the farmland yet. My excitement for the week was Saturday morning cartoons, so when my parents wanted to deny me that pleasure to spend the day at my grandparents, I was one unhappy camper. Then one day, while my parents were playing Yahtzee in the kitchen with Gram and Gramp, I stumbled upon what was to be one of the greatest loves of my life… Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. My grandparents had cable. I think HORROR EXPRESS was the first real horror movie I ever saw and thus began my love affair with Hammer. Saturdays at Gram’s turned out to less of a hassle after that. Many afternoons I spent on the floor watching old movies with handsome men, terrible special effects, fake blood, melodrama and funny accents. I was hooked.

I had this other babysitter, another neighbor, who was my idol. I wanted to be just like her. She loved Stephen King. She introduced us. King became an addiction and she was my enabler. Not only did she give me The Shining to read, she took me to see it at the theater. That moment, after watching Kubrick’s interpretation, I knew I was a King purist and hated the movie. But that’s another story…

She gave me The Exorcist to read, with the disclaimer that if my mother found it, she’d say I took it from her room. I also used to spend weeks during the summer with a family friend in Connecticut. There I had access to a treasure trove of horror paperbacks. She, too, was a fan. There was a lot of female influence in my addiction.

I was actually pretty lucky that my parents never censored me. They were impressed about how much I read, but never monitored what I was reading. My mom caught on to the Stephen King thing pretty quickly and started buying me every new hardcover that came out. To this day, she clips every article she finds about him and sends them to me. The only time there was ever an issue was when, after we got cable, I wanted to stay up and watch CARRIE on HBO. My mom said I could, but she was not going to stay up and watch it with me. If I got scared, it would all be on me. Well, I watched it alone and it scared the shit out of me AND I slept with my light on for a month, I was OK with that. My parents also took me to see JAWS at the drive-in, with pretty much the same conditions and same results. I was OK with that too. I still am.

With the introduction of the VCR, my best friend and I spent every Friday night at any and every place that rented movies, picking out every horror film we could find. We saw a lot of crap, but we also saw movies like THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. I’ve spent a lot of time, as an adult, trying to track down a lot of those awful films, as well as the made-for-TV horror films they used to show on the network Saturday night movies and amassed a sizable collection. Maybe I’ll discuss those in another post.

To be perfectly honest, while I love horror, I don’t love all of it. Anything made after 1990 is subject to serious scrutiny and I don’t run to the theater every time a new version of an already pretty bad film is remade. Very few remakes make it into my schedule. And while I support independent horror, let’s be honest, not EVERY film is a winner. Just because it doesn’t have big studio backing doesn’t mean it’s gold.

If you want to impress me with your love of horror, throw foreign films at me, especially Spanish and French films. I dig that shit and I know I haven’t seen everything. If you really want to to be friends, talk to me about British horror films made before the 80s. At least be willing to give them a try because THAT is where it all began for me and will always remain my first love.

I guess this post is a little scattered, but to go through every memory of what got me hooked would take a novel. This is just another little insight into what makes me tick.

I’m always willing to talk about a movie, even if I think it’s shit. I like a lot of stuff others don’t so who am I to judge? The horror community is vast and everyone’s tastes are a little different. That’s what makes it so amazing and accepting, whether you’re an emo goth or a “normal” girl, like me.

———————————————————————————————-

Suzanne is a friend of the website, she lives somewhere on planet Earth and has a fantastic blog

She has a Twitter that we recommend following.

Categories
2013 Archives Danica Deering Guest Articles Women Of Horror Week

Dear Horror Fans – A Love Letter by Danica Deering

Dear Horror Fans: A Love Letter

 

Spoiler alert: this letter is going to be an internal struggle. A horror fan mustn’t ever reveal their soft side!  I am chomping at the bit to rattle off a string of obscenities on this page. I don’t know if I can censor myself. I will try. I might fail.

So… we’re highlighting women in horror this week. I suppose I can now consider myself a “woman in horror”, perhaps through my treasured title as the resident “Monster Honey” over at The Horror Honeys . Or maybe as a result of my twisted after-hours job producing the horror films of Night Walker Cinema. OK, there was the shameless promotion, but really, hop on over and check them out. You won’t regret it.

Still with me? Thanks for sticking through that.

In reality, I jumped on the horror bandwagon from a very young age. I wrote a bit about this in another article featured on this wonderful site several months ago. In that article I posed a question: is there a “profile” of a horror fan? Is there something about us that is sick, or wrong, or just plain crazy?

Wait- don’t answer that.

Since writing that article, I believe I have found an answer. YES, we have a “profile”. This profile is in stark contrast to what many have conjectured in the popular media. I wrote this very early in my tweeting career, but I still believe it to be true: horror fans FEEL deeper, play HARDER, love FIERCELY, give COMPLETELY, and are THE most supportive people I have EVER met. Many of us also struggle harder with our own torturous demons.

But WHY, or more importantly, HOW? How can we go from cheering on a dismemberment by chainsaw one moment, to gushing about our beloved children and pets, offering praise (and sometimes honest criticism) to peers, donating to a worthy cause, or listening to a friend in need?

Because we fucking CARE.

I told you I would fail.

Whether it is loving or hating something, you are going to know our stance. Male or female, we will fully and systematically defend ourselves and others. We are not for the faint of heart. We really should come with those warning signs you see at roller coasters.

Horror encompasses every single genre of film. Drama, comedy, action, adventure, romance- you name it, horror has covered it. On TOP of all of this, you then have to SCARE the audience, or elicit another raw emotion. It’s not easy to do, and it’s a sad fact that horror doesn’t gain more praise in the industry.

THIS is why I love horror, why I love what I do, and most importantly, why I love all of YOU.  I hope you do too.

——————————————————————————————-

As mentioned, Danica is a producer for Night Walker Cinema, “Monster Honey” for The Horror Honeys and a great friend of the website. You can and should follow her on twitter

Categories
2013 Archives Women Of Horror Week

My Favorite Final Girls

In honor of Women of Horror Week, I thought I would put together a list of my top five favorite final girls.  It was a fun list to put together.  It was also nearly impossible to cap the list at five.

With that in mind, I give you Dusty’s Five Favorite Final Girls, With Four Extra.
(It should be said that, due to the nature of this post, there will be spoilers for each one of these.  So, if you haven’t seen the movie in question, just skip to the next one.)

 Nancy Thompson

1. Nancy Thompson [A Nightmare on Elm Street 1 & 3]
(It’s worth noting that Heather Langenkamp – the actress who played Nancy – defeated Freddy in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare)

I wrestled long and hard over who should get the top spot.  In the end, it was Nancy by a very small margin.  She watched her friends die.  She was haunted by the bloody corpse of her best friend.  She was called crazy and locked in her room with barred up windows and forced to watch her boyfriend explode into a geyser of blood.  And still, depressed and sleep-deprived though she was, she was still able to figure out a way to drag a man who haunts dreams into the real world and defeat him (no easy feat, when that man has a glove of knives).

After that, she taught a group of ragtag crazies how to defeat the monster in his own world of dreams (pretty amazing, considering some of the powers these kids brought with them into their dreams were things like, “talking” or “just being kinda strong”).

And then, of course, Heather Langenkamp had to defeat a demon who had taken the form of Freddy in her own life.

Nancy Thompson 2

She fought Freddy Kruger – child-killing, dream-hunting Freddy – three times.  Sure, she only survived twice, but the lessons she taught those kids allowed them to live, and pass those lessons on to others.  Were it not for Nancy, there would be no Alice, and that would be a real shame.

Laurie Strode

2. Laurie Strode [Halloween 1, 2 & H20]
(I’m purposefully leaving out her brief cameo at the beginning of Halloween: Resurrection, because I’m trying desperately to purge that movie from my memory)

A bookish babysitter who endured the deaths of her best friends.  She ran and stabbed and put the safety of the children in her care above herself.  In the end, she defeated the bogeyman.
Well…kind of.
He showed up again and terrorized the hospital she was staying in after the events of the first film.  And she defeated him again.
Well…kind of.
She faked her own death, changed her name, started a family, and became the dean of a prestigious private school.  When Michael finally tracked her (and her son) down, she defeated him again.
(Like I mentioned above, I’m trying to forget about Halloween: Resurrection, so I’m choosing to believe she beheaded the real Michael Myers at the end of H20.)

Laurie is smart, kind, strong, and cares more about the welfare of those around her than herself.  Forget Final Girls: she’s one of the all-time great people in history.

Taylor Gentry 1

3. Taylor Gentry [Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon]
(It’s worth noting that this is one of my favorite horror movies of the last 10 years, and yet I rarely hear it mentioned.  Sad.  If you haven’t seen this, please do so immediately.)

Leslie played a nasty little psychological game with Taylor throughout this film.  In the first hour, he walks her through the steps he will take to kill a house full of teenagers.  Then, in the last half hour, she realizes that he was never scouting the teenagers for a final girl: he was scouting her.  And now she must survive this gauntlet of horror that she knows is coming, yet without a clear plan as to how to defeat him.  And then, if she does survive, she knows that she will have to kill Leslie; who, while still a murderer, is a guy who she has gotten to know pretty well over the past couple days.

None of that is easy.  (You ever try to crush a man’s head with an apple press?  Harder than you might think.)  And yet she pulls it off like a champ.

Ellen Ripley

4. Ellen Ripley [Alien 1-4]

She fought aliens, rogue androids, and corporation stooges, and she won.  She saved the life of a cat and an orphaned, possibly feral child.  She was able to overcome her (completely rational) fear of androids and was able to befriend a couple of them.  She was frozen in time and set hundreds of alien eggs on fire in front of their mother (you know what they say about getting between a mother bear and her cub?  It’s much worse with an alien queen and her eggs).  She even killed her very own alien baby for the sake of her crew. You know what kind of woman can do those things?  The best kind.

Ginny Field

5. Ginny Field [Friday the 13th Part 2]

The first girl to battle the mighty Jason Voorhees and survive.  She donned a death-scented sweater, stared Jason directly in the eyes and convinced him and she was his mother.  It doesn’t work for long, but it works for long enough for her to bury a machete pretty deep into his shoulder.

Since we never see her in another movie, I like to think that she adopted a child, named him Jason, and raised him to be the exact opposite of a vengeful killer.

Bonus Final Girls!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Tobe Hooper, 1986)

6. Vanita “Stretch” Brock [The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2]

Do you have any idea how hard it is to kill a member of the Sawyer clan?  Ridiculously hard.  I’m pretty sure the grandfather was 300 years old, and yet he was still trying to hammer-murder whenever he got a chance (sort of).  The only member we see die in the original was known only as “Hitchhiker”, and he was run over by a semi truck.  It’s pretty hard to recreate that scenario.

And yet, Stretch killed Chop Top using nothing but her wits.  And a chainsaw.  And a mountain.  Still, a kill is a kill.  Anyone who taunts a recently dead Sawyer by holding a chainsaw above their head and rocking the Leatherface Two-Step belongs on this list.

B33E1869.CR2

7. Sidney Prescott [Scream 1-4]

Sidney survived Ghostface on four separate occasions (which involved seven different killers).  Sure, she was aided by a set of rules not many victims are afforded, but no one else on this list even came close to besting a series of psycho killers four times throughout the course of their lives.  She also had to deal with a suffocating media that no one else on this list had to endure.  And yet, she just keeps fighting.  If Scream 5 ever happens, I would not bet against Sidney.  At some point, don’t we have to start feeling bad that Ghostface never wins?  (No.  No we do not.)

(Completely unrelated to anything having to do with Sidney, but have you guys listened to that new Ghostface Killah album?  Stunning.)

Lisa Webber 2

8. Lisa Webber [A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge]

She stuck by her pseudo-boyfriend through his disturbing dance moves (I actually think “disturbing dance moves” was the reason Jimmy and BJ Betty broke up), crippling nightmares, chronic flopsweat, snake-tongue, and various homoerotic adventures.  In the end, she saved his life by kissing a horribly burned child-killer as he tried to cut her.  That’s love.  That’s bravery.  And that’s the mark of a true final girl.

Dana

9. Dana [The Cabin in the Woods]

She survived (with the help of her stoner buddy) a zombie redneck murder family, let loose a horde of nightmarish monsters on the corporation that (prematurely) celebrated her demise, got attacked by a werewolf, and still had the presence of mind to make a decision about whether or not the world ends or not.  Whether or not you agree with her decision is irrelevant.  It takes an amazing amount of strength to pull all of that off.

Hope you enjoyed this.  I’d love if you left your own lists in the comments.

Categories
2013 Archives Women Of Horror Week

My Fascination With Horror by September Carrino

 

My fascination with horror started at a very young age. I can clearly remember my parents taking me to see Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare in 3D. You had to watch the last minutes with the old school 3D glasses. (You remember those silly glasses with a blue lens on one side and a red lens on the other side? Yep, those!) After that I got into vampires and all things “scary” and it was all over for me.

Now as an adult I love the horror genre because of all the possibilities that the story could lead. I like that heart thumping effect those movies give where you’re on the edge of your seat wondering “Will they get away?”. How could you not get a rush out of the chase scenes, and a thrill from the character’s narrow escapes? On top of that, horror has the best special effects out there! (I am big on special effects!) Some of my favorite movies growing up where “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”(the original, of course) and all of the “Nightmare On Elm Street” movies, because they just had this “it” factor that did it for me and the effects where great for their time!

I like gore, I like messes. If you’ve got blood, I’ll take it! And for a woman to say that, now that is definitely unique!

If I were able to be in a horror movie today, I think like most women, I would want to play the part of a sexy vampire. I’d want a wardrobe with something like a satin corset, lace, (think very Victorian age), high heel boots, and a gothic choker around my pale neck but with perfectly sharp blood red lips that part to expose my pointed fangs. I would want to start off as a sexy vamp, then just before the kill, turn into the worst kind of monster and go all sorts of nuts on my victim! (Remember, the more blood, the better.) Kind of like Selma Hayek did in From Dusk Till Dawn. It is all about the element of surprise.

 

I don’t remember the first movie that I ever watched. But I sure in the hell remember the first horror movie I watched, where I was, and who was with me! It had that much of an impact on me. The everlasting effect a GOOD horror movie has on you, that is what I love! That kind of memory stays with you. I love being a part of the horror community! It’s important for me to be a part of something that I know is going to make those same memories for others the way it did for me. As an actress those are the type of movies I look for to be in and to be a part of.

September Carrino

 

September was raised in a small town with many scary locations which had a hand on influencing her love for horror today. She was active in drama and Community Theater in middle school and high school.  At 20 years old and at a crossroad in her life, she heard about a Playboy casting call at the Playboy Mansion. Next thing she knew she was in Florida shooting her first cover and pictorial. In an interview with Playboy T.V. she said, “I just wanted to go to the Playboy Mansion, I wasn’t expecting to actually get picked”. From there September’s career as a Playboy and pinup model took off. Now in her mid twenties she wants to return to her roots and pursue acting. As we watch September’s career grow, she won’t disappoint on the big screen. You can follow her on Twitter @September87

 

 

 

Categories
2013 Archives Women Of Horror Week

Why I Love Horror by Charity Langley

What got me into horror… I’ve thought about this question long and hard and have come to the conclusion: I have absolutely no idea.

 

My love for all things dark goes all the way back to my childhood. Now before you jump to conclusions, my parents didn’t immerse me into horror as a kid. I wasn’t raised to love it, but I wasn’t raised to hate it either. (Wouldn’t the world be a better place if more children were raised that way?)

 

I honestly don’t remember much of anything before kindergarten, but my mother swears I was addicted the suspenseful, bright and shiny HBO intro as a toddler. The moment I heard the music start, I would escape from my crib and sneak into the living room. My mother often tells a story about how she and my dad were halfway through “An American Werewolf in London” when she noticed me on the floor next to the sofa, sitting on my knees enthralled with the onscreen gore.

 

She swears it’s the quietest I’ve ever been.

 

I wasn’t inundated by rules, schedules, and curfews as a kid (I once lied and told a date I had a curfew just to end the date-from-hell, but that’s another story). I grew up in a home where we were all pretty much able to watch whatever we wanted, but when my sister and brother came along, mom and dad scaled back to save money. For most of my life, we only had 13 channels. Our viewing was limited to a couple of news stations, PBS, and a few religious stations. Rabbit-ears didn’t work well where we lived, so Dad bought the most basic cable package he could. Needless to say, I didn’t (and still don’t) watch much television.

 

We also had a VCR. My grandmother loved buying us whatever box-office hit was on the store shelves when she went shopping. To this day, I don’t think I could sit through another viewing of ‘Jurassic Park’. My parent’s copy has a few glitchy scenes (if you grew up in the VHS era, you know what I’m talking about). My younger brother liked to stop, rewind and watch the same sections of tape over, and over, and over again. His all-time favorite scene was when the lawyer was eaten by the T-Rex while sitting on the toilet. He thought this was hysterically funny. Did I mention that little bro wasn’t school-age yet?

 

See, I’m not completely alone in my creepiness. It clearly runs in the family.

 

Since there wasn’t much television to watch, I resorted to books. I did (and still will) read almost anything I can get my hands on, but most of my books were handed down to me. My grandfather, on my dad’s side, was a locksmith and was a serious reader in his downtime. He always had a huge box waiting for me. Every visit was like Christmas morning. He liked dystopian sci-fi, and psychological thrillers. The best part, and something I’ll always be thankful for, he never edited the box. I got every book he’d read, kid-friendly or no.

 

One of my more memorable hand-me-down reads, was a book called “Mercy” by David Lindsey. For some reason the simple red and black cover with a feather in the center of it caught my attention. I read this book near Thanksgiving of 1991. I might be telling my age a little here, but I was in the fourth grade. I won’t go into too much detail, but the book revolved around a series of rather interesting sex-killings that prompted me to ask my mother many, many strange questions about reproduction. I’m very lucky my mother’s philosophy was: “If you’re old enough to ask a question, then you’re old enough for the answer. Otherwise, you’ll probably be getting it from your idiot friends.” Interestingly, I don’t remember my mother ever asking where I’d heard of, or why I wanted to know these things.

 

While most little girls in elementary school were infatuated with the New Kids on the Block, or busy crimping their hair. My friends and I were writing and illustrating our own ghost stories. Sometimes we each had our own, and some we started, swapped and finished each other’s endings. By middle school, I was writing my own ‘choose your own adventure stories’ as part of my daily journal writing.

 

Yep, I was that kid.

 

By high school, I was writing full-length novels (really terrible ones that will never see the light of day). No matter how mundane I started, my storylines always wandered off into the craziest, macabre, most bizarre places.

 

I surprised myself on many occasions.

 

At some point, I came to the realization that my writings came from my overall perspective on the world. When most people are posed with the glass half-empty or half-full question, they have an immediate answer. I, on the other hand I believe the answer cannot be derived from the glass itself, rather the action that put it into its current state… was an empty glass filled halfway up = half-full, or was it full and poured/drank = half-empty. Everything is subjective, beauty and ugliness can exist in the same space, so can love and hate.

 

With that said… it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Dark/Horror Comedies are my preferred film genre 😉

 

I know that I’m about to upset a whole group of movie watchers, but I hate average slasher-flicks. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. I always wait until they hit cable and fast forward to see if the deaths were imaginative. What irks me about these movies is that many of them don’t flesh out the guy with the chainsaw.

 

I find actual serial killers endlessly fascinating. Unlike flat antagonists in slasher flicks, there’s always more to an actual serial killer than the one track mind of death and destruction. We know the glass is halfway, but was it empty and filled with distorted ideas, or was it a whole glass worn down by a string of horrible life experiences?

 

Ed Gein is one of my favorites. With a suffocating, downright evil mother like Augusta Lehrke the poor kid didn’t stand a chance.

 

I’m also a very logical person, so studies of the mind greatly intrigue me. As someone who could never needlessly hurt anything (I’ll carry snakes from my garden, put crickets back outside when they accidentally bounce in), I am drawn to the inner workings of a person so twisted and broken that they are compelled to inflict pain and commit such gruesome acts.

 

If the fictional accounts of the silver screen give you nightmares, just wait until you delve into the realm of history. Read up on HH Holmes and his ‘Murder Castle’, and you’ll probably never think of a hotel the same way again.

 

I also love a good zombie movie. The original “Night of the Living Dead” will always be one of my top ten. It delved into what an average person is capable of in times of crisis. Some rise to the occasion, some are cowards, but does any of it actually matter in the end? In the same fashion, “28 Days Later” also probed the darker parts of human nature. From where Selena hacks Mark to bits, to the soldiers ready to repopulate the earth, it’s clear that humanity is its own worst enemy.

 

Fashion, celebrities, and ‘reality’ television seem to dominate everything these days. The world has become a wasteland of useless idleness that numbs us to true reality. Most of our daily lives are devoted to outside forces continually inundating us with reasons to be beautiful, cookie-cutter, fluffy bunny, cupcakes. Personally, I prefer to observe our species as a whole.

 

While most choose to wear sequined blinders and pretend that we’re all inherently good, it’s the mysterious, unknown, mangled and unspoken recesses of the human psyche that will always hijack my interest.

——————————————————————————————-

Charity is the author of Wicked Intentions which is available for purchase on amazon.com

You can follow her on twitter

@Charity_Langley