BECOMING THE BEAST: My reflections on collecting horror and cult films

BECOMING THE BEAST:

My reflections on collecting horror and cult films
 

I'm going to start off by apologizing. I know in my latest post I mentioned that I was going to post walkthroughs of my favorite horror anthology as of late, HI-8, and the ridiculously infamous Things from Canada. And trust me, I still plan on doing just that. But, I think now is a good a time as any to sift through some pieces of my past to figure out not only for myself, but for you as well as to when, why, who and what I was doing that led me to become a beast. Figuratively speaking of course. Get on with it then.
 

The earliest I need to go back is probably when I used to watch movies and tv with my father. He used to be a mechanic, working a normal 40-50 hours a week and sponsoring the almighty Snap-On tools. He had weekends off, and before I even started going to school, I have some slight memories of my closet in my bedroom being stuffed from shelf to ceiling with random vhs tapes. Movies like A Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Re-Animator, David Cronenberg's The Fly and many, many other cult and 80's horror, action, sci-fi and whatever else my dad loved that he could gets his magnetic mitts on at the time lined that top shelved area of my bedroom closet. Those weekends he didn't work were spent with me watching him play Atari 2600, NES, and lots of movies on vhs. I loved it growing up.
 

I would say the movies that we watched the most would have to be Gremlins, both Ghostbusters films, Wanted Dead or Alive with Rutger Hauer, Die Hard I & II and Aliens. To this day, Aliens is still one of my favorite movies of all time. Trudging that disgusting ventilation system on the LV-426 with Newt has always been a staple to me from that movie because even as a small child, I felt sorry for Newt. I wanted to be her hero. My other two saving graces as hobbies that kept me sane growing up were being an integral part of the second rise of the video game industry through my dad buying an NES and a Sega Genesis when they were both released, and heavy metal. Yes, the music. I didn't see that movie until I was in Jr. High. My dad had that on vhs as well.
 

My parents always rented random movies from either Blockbuster (can't believe most of those are closed now) or Hollywood Video. If I was the age I am now back when my parents were renting movies, I probably would've went ape renting and buying as many big boxed vhs horror movies as possible. Sona Video in Bolingbrook was amazing as well. It kind of reminded me of Hollywood except it had a deeper well of cult and horror that the other two did (from what I remember). Makes me wish I had this as a hobby about 15 years ago in high school because when Hollywood by my parents closed down, I'm pretty sure they had a ton of gems in their store that I would love to have in my basement right now. Too late.
 

Another piece of my movie up bringing is my good friend, Matt. Wish you were here, son. Arizona is not where you're supposed to be. During my grade school days, many of my weekends were spent at his house watching his dad's vhs and laserdisc (yes, his dad had a pretty size-able laserdisc collection). Matt recently acquired his whole collection, including the Pioneer LD player his dad had setup with a pretty badass Bose surround sound kit. And Attack of the Killer Tomatoes on LD. What more could you ask for. But we used to watch all sorts of tapes including Nutty Professor, Bride of Chucky, Joe's Apartment and whole sleepovers that were wasted on muting the tv at 3am and doing our own over-dubs of Howard Stern, shitty infomercials and music videos. We LOVED the music video of Pink's "Just like a pill." Gee, I wonder why.   
 

Something happened after I graduated high school, however. I never really cared about collecting movies in general, let alone horror or cult. While I was in college for fire science, I dated a girl for two years. This is the part I really didn't want to try to remember, but unfortunately this is a main part of it. During the course of us dating, we went to the theater ALOT. I mean, pretty much everytime we went on a date, a movie was always involved. We saw Napoleon Dynamite, Anchorman, Taladega Nights, both Michael Gay (oops) Texas Chainsaw Massacre re-makes, The Ring 2 and the first 3 Saw films. I won't lie to you, I wasn't used to any sort of horror aesthetic because at that time, it just wasn't in my blood. She LOVED it. I was uneasy about it. I tried to like the Saw movies, but I just couldn't. My thinking at the time was "how the hell could any one like a series of movies where people just get mutilated in a bunch of elaborate traps for 80 minutes?" I just didn't understand. 
 

I went to U of I for two summers in a row with the Naperville Fire Department as an explorer to get my fire science hours. When I came back, she decided to break it off with me and I honestly didn't know what to do. I put everything I could into it, but it just didn't work. It was for the better. The one (main) thing I had left from those two years was her love of horror flicks. I researched anything I could online about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. At the time, I had no clue that there was an original put out by Tobe Hooper in 1974. I saw the trailer on Youtube and I immediately had to find a way to see the original. It looked so much more brutal and gritty than the re-make (even though the re-make is pretty gory in its own right) and it "was based on a true story." Holy shit. That's when I found out about Ed Gein. And my side interest in psychology and serial killers was born.
 

After that, I pushed horror movies out of my life altogether for about a couple of years to try to re-collect myself after her breaking up with me. I moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico to be Matt's roommate for a while. It was a blast. I don't think I've ever been so drunk before in all my life before that. I was depressed mostly and I had some solid friends to help me along the way. Including my wife to be, Nicole. She's been there with me through alot of things. Alot of great things and not so great things. But that's life. Her movie collection included the first two Saw movies. Every time I was at her house (after I moved back from NM) she always asked to watch Saw II. I would always promptly refuse. It reminded me of my girlfriend that I fled the state from. 
 

One weekend we decided to visit my brother Kevin in Champaign. He has the collector's box set with the billy doll face on it that has Saw I-III. I told him "I want to give this horror thing another go. I want to watch this whole Saw box with you back to back, and I want you to explain the story to me because I just don't get it." He gleefully obliged. We watched Saw. I didn't even think about my ex. It was a very different experience. For some reason, I loved the traps and the gore. The story is pretty prominent until you get to about midway through Saw IV. Then it's kind of just about the traps and the gore. Which is really what Saw should've focused on in the first place. 
 

I was ready. I watched Saw II with Nicole and enjoyed it. I finally felt part of the club. But it was only the beginning. I had NO CLUE what was going to happen when I got a job in Champaign. We moved down there. I started working at DSC, and I met my now long time cult/horror collecting buddy Steven. About a couple weeks go by and I still kind haven't gotten used to his quirky sense of humor and sarcastic demeanor. He asked me in my office one morning, "Ever seen Trick or Treat? It has Ozzy and Gene Simmons in it!" I replied "no" of course. He brought it to me the next day at work. I FUCKING LOVED IT! He also let me borrow such classicks (heh) as Don't go in the Woods, The Last Slumber Party, Puppet Master I-III, Troll I & II, Messiah of Evil, The Thirsty Dead, Freaked and many, many others. The list is too long. 
 

I became a film-trash fanatic after that. Steven introduced me to Fangoria magazine and the almighty Gods of 70's/80's trash cinema, Bleeding Skull. I freaking love those guys. They collect and watch some amazingly shitty movies. I wish I were them. Now I have a pretty decent collection going on in my basement. My wife has even been subjected to watching some of the turds in my collection including Things and The Janitor. She laughed her ass off at Things. She dislikes The Janitor. She still likes Saw. Maybe I shouldn't have written this. Actually, I'm glad I did. It saved me one more day from watching that Brony documentary on Netflix. God Save the Queen.