31 Days of Horror - Day 17

Over the years, my Dad and I watched many movies , but our adventures led further than those limited walls.  Growing up, I tended towards pockets of obsession where I would think comic books were the best option for story telling available.  Other times it was the paperback or the movie.  It was my dad that taught me that a good story was a good story, despite it’s format and that was all that mattered.

As cable TV became more common in our town, our options opened up before us on what to watch.  Combining this with my father’s new girlfriend and her fondness of genre TV, we soon learned about television shows that we had either ignored or never knew existed.  It was through here that Saturday evening classic Star Trek episodes became the norm, which was a surprise to me.  How could something so old, exist for so long without my knowledge?  It was the first hint that that there were oceans of untold stories that existed, waiting for me to discover.

Where Saturday evenings used to be my father and I with a stack of video tapes when Sue, my dad's fiance moved in, our weekend ritual began to change.   It was a good change though that expanded my horizons even more.  Instead of blood and guts, monsters and terror, I was introduced to mystery, more science fiction and the strange.  All of them subjects that fit in well with my already existing obsessions.  Many of them were shows that were already older by the time I had found them, even in the mid-eighties.

The Twilight Zone was a show that many genre fans have cut their teeth on.  It was a show packed with the weird and strange, bringing that age old daydream of “What if?” to life.  Rod Serling looked straight laced on the surface, yet his voice conveyed a dark side that lay beneath, the stories he shared serving only to confirm.  

As I approached my early teens, that delicate stage that would be considered pre-teen in today’s parlance, I found The Twilight Zone an experience more than just a show.  I loved stories dearly, but up until them most of the tales I enjoyed were straight forward in subject and tone.  The Twilight Zone showed that the conventions I had known could be turned upside down, broken and and undone.  

Up until this time, I felt fairly confident when I sat down to watch a show, I had a decent idea of how the story would play out.  With the Twilight Zone, I never knew what I was in store for.  Anything could happen and anything often did happen.  My excitement would grow every week as it got closer and closer to the time for the show.

After the Twilight Zone would come Ray Bradbury theater, a show not completely unlike the former.  This time around we’d see the congenial visage of Ray Bradbury himself, sitting down to work in his study that looked dusty and magical, full of treasures and secrets beyond anything I could comprehend.  He’d smile at the screen, say hello and introduce that week’s story.   I was filled with happiness as I let the weirdness of the nights early shows fade and prepare for whatever far flung happening Ray would present.  Sometimes these stories were light and fantastical, other times there were dark and spooky, leaving a mark. To this day, Something Wicked This Way Comes remains one of my favorite horror stories to date. 

As the evening wound down, we’d find ourselves sitting in a pitch black living room, basking in the glow of the TV, the remains of popcorn and soda spread about the coffee table.  The channel would change and the evening would shift gears as we settled in for the Saturday night showing of Columbo.  “Crumbo”, as he was affectionately known in our house, was something entirely unknown to me.  I was familiar with Ray Bradbury through my forays in literature, murder I was accustomed to through the movies I watched with my dad.  The subtle art of the murder mystery and the hard boiled detective was a yarn I had not yet been introduced to.

Columbo made for a good primer for the genre.  It was an early version of the million different police procedural shows we have today.  It wasn’t too violent and had a great lead in Peter Falk and weaved its stories through the obvious and the red herring, schooling me in an all new art of storytelling.  It took me time to warm up to it; again, I was used to my murder up close and obvious.  It didn’t take long to get wrapped up in trying to guess the killer or the bad guy before “Crumbo” could beat me to the punch.  It’s an art I still haven’t quite mastered to this day.

Family time was different in those days, at least in my family.  Not labeling one era as better than another, but it was a simpler time.  We didn’t have multiple TV’s in the house at the time, so a young person such as myself was limited to watching what everyone else in the house wanted to watch, or you simply didn’t watch anything at all.  Today most families, including my own, have more than one television at play, each with their own Bluray players, online services and the like.  It’s easy for a child to go off and watch his own shows instead of what mom and dad want to watch.  It’s easier for a child of today to form their own tastes and unravel the world of storytelling in their own way.  But, that doesn't mean we can't share our favorites from time to time. 

Afflicted

I won't go too in depth on my opinions of Afflicted, as I just wrote a full review today! I'll give you a spoiler though;  I enjoyed it a lot. 

WNUF Halloween Special

WNUF Halloween Special is a wholly unique experience in modern film, in that it mimics film of the 80's to near profection.  The story here is a bit light, but you have so much with the whole presentation, it's still a ton of fun.  Keep your eyes peeled for a full review of WNUF on Monday! 

Stitches

For a low budget direct to video flick that I happened to stumble upon on Netflix, Stitches is actually a pretty good time.  The story is somewhat weak, but the laughs are solid and the kills are great.  There's some good creative gore going on here that will garner some laughs, so it's definitely worth taking in over a few beers! 

Slugs

Slugs is...something.  It's very 80's.  It's very gory, which was a surprise!  It's also very slow and very corny.  It has it's charm though.  Also, a few movie logic oddities are taking place here.  One, this is presented as a very small town.  This very small town, has a giant sewer system that runs for miles under the town, filled with raw sewage.  And slugs.  I don't know if they eact a lot of broccoli and fried foods in this town or what, but they're prepared for any bowel shaking contingency.  The second observation?  The people in this small town are REALLY horny!  These people have sex a lot!  Good for them.  Too bad for the whole slug and snail tracks thing though.