From Zombos' Closet

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Planet of Terror

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Cortez the Killer and Complaint Dept. from Planet of Terror tag team all the horror and the personal stats for us.

Cortez the Killer Speaks

I was born in 1978 in San Diego, CA. Aside from a horror geek, I’m a corporate desk jockey, a rabid fan of heavy metal music, love to cook, and I’m not afraid to admit that my first concert ever was Billy Ray Cyrus. In my defense, I had no say in the matter.

Complaint Dept. and I met while working at the same company and became friends after learning of our mutual love of horror films, heavy metal, and over-the-top soft rock songsters (he, Michael McDonald, and I, Phil ‘The Man’ Collins).

My initial exposure to the world of horror started at a young age when my parents would stay up late until after I had gone to bed and turned on the VCR and popped in a flick. My dad has always loved horror and my mom would go along sparingly with his film selections. The memory of them watching Aliens 2 is still ingrained in my mind. After I was put to bed one night, I went out into the hallway and peered out from the corner, catching a side glimpse of the TV in the living room. The opening scene where Ripley wakes up after dreaming about an alien popping out of her belly immediately elicited a scream from me. My parents lead me back to my room and scolded me as this was something clearly not meant for the eyes of children. This feeling of something ‘for my parents eyes only,’ coupled with that initial scare and burst of fright, is what kept me coming back for more. I liked the element of danger and I kind of liked pissing off my parents.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Zombies Are Magic

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Jennifer from Zombies Are Magic tells us how how a zombie helped her escape hearing Tevye sing in Fiddler On the Roof, leading to a life-long passion for sleeping with the lights on.

My first “horror” memory is rather embarrassing, but pretty accurately sums up my love/hate relationship with the genre. I was 4, and my Mother had dragged me to the movies to see the re-release of Fiddler on the Roof. While standing in the lobby waiting for her to get popcorn I became captivated by the poster for Dawn of the Dead. It was the classic poster, with the head emerging from the earth and the tagline “When there’s no more room in HELL the dead will walk the EARTH.” The image thrilled and terrified me. As my mother dragged me into the theater tears started streaming down my face; not because I had to watch Fiddler, but because I knew the bad monster from poster was going to come and get me. I remember staring at the floor of the theater, just waiting for that head to pop out. The fit I threw was so epic we were asked to leave before Tevye got to singing “If I were a rich man.” As my poor Mother apologized to the Manager I remember thinking: I want to go back. I want to go see that monster. This was the start of a life-long fascination with Zombies and a good ten years of sleeping with the lights on.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Black Hole Reviews

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Mark from Black Hole Reviews reveals his appetite for horror, yokai, anime, and more.

I feel a little guilty sneaking into the pantheon of horror bloggers. While horror is my favourite genre, my blog isn’t that specialised. Probably a bad thing, because it’s not easy to describe or categorise. The Black Hole is me devouring as many movies as possible. It’s also the well that Sadako fell into in Ring. But I once considered splintering the blog into different subjects. I don’t think that many people live exclusively inside the genre all the time. I want to suggest a wide range of relatively obscure movies as an alternative to the big three in the cineplex every week, those that will live on endlessly repeated on TV. Whether they’re good or bad. I want to offer up weird, unusual, shocking, dark, mad movies – that are interesting and entertaining. Why don’t you watch some of these instead?

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Dr. Gangrene's Tales From the Lab

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

As a special treat for Thanksgiving, noted horror host Dr. Gangrene of Tales From the Lab mixes up a wonderful formula of weirdness with all the dressings.

It’s hard to say exactly when the horror bug bit me. For as long as I can remember I just always seemed drawn in that direction. I know for a while I worried my parents. I seemed obsessed with the dark side of life. If I went to the library I came home with books on ghosts, or Poe, or the supernatural. If there was a Horror or Science-Fiction movie on TV I always wanted to watch it. My best friends were comic books and cartoons. I just wasn’t “normal.” But then who is, really?

Thinking back on it, the biggest influences on me were things that I encountered in my youth. When I was a kid I was in Boy Scouts (this was in the early seventies). At one Scouting event we met local Nashville horror host Sir Cecil Creape. I have some vague memories of this (I was probably around 7 or 8 years old at the time (1^st or 2^nd grade). Everyone there received a patch that said “Sir Cecil’s Ghoul Patrol.” I still have that patch to this day, and in fact the first thing I did when I started my own horror host program was to sew that patch onto my lab coat in homage to Sir Cecil Creape. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Meet the Horror Bloggers: The House That Dripped Blog

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Jake from The House That Dripped Blog tells us why he never watched a horror movie to be scared.

Let me begin by asking if any readers out there have any knowledge of a film called Mole Men of Morocco. This film featured blue hands reaching out from cave walls and grabbing unsuspecting explorers. It was the scariest film my grandfather ever saw. Or it was a figment of his imagination. Stories like that created a world of horror entertainment that I could only dream about.

My grandfather, like everybody else I am related to, grew up in a small town in Virginia. Mike Starr’s great explanation of marketing in Ed Wood was accurate—the South loves crap like this. My grandfather would tell stories about seeing Tana leaves brewed up for Kharis, about the English policeman squishing a mewling half-Canadian/half-fly, and about Raymond Burr in the original-ish Godzilla. This last drive-in tale particularly captivated me because Godzilla had been an obsession since I can remember.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Monster Land

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, monster scholar Jeanette Laredo of Monster Land reveals how she overcame her fear of horror movies and discovered the rich vein of horror literature.

My love affair with horror cinema is a fairly recent one and unlike some of my fellow horror bloggers, I wasn’t really exposed to horror films as a kid. I was never traumatized by Linda Blair’s spinning head or haunted by nightmares of Freddy Krueger and his nifty bladed gloves. Instead I was raised on Nick at Night’s weekly lineup of wholesome shows like Mork and Mindy, Dick Van Dyke and I Dream of Jeannie. The nearest I got to experiencing horror in my youth was watching Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and the odd episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

I got my first real brush with horror my senior year of high school. I was taking dual credit courses at a community college when I met my best friend Stacy. Stacy was a theater student and an avid fan of horror, something that struck me with awe and admiration. I remember once she was reading Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls back stage when another actor asked to take a look. She handed it over cool as anything at a time when I was embarrassed to be seen reading Laurel K. Hamilton in public.

Stacy tried many times to lure me to horror’s dark side with films like Re-Animator, Evil Dead and Night of the Living Dead, but I refused to watch anything more hard core than Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie.

That was until we went to a screening of Rob Zombie’s House of A Thousand Corpses. I fought the urge to bolt as the lights went down in the crowded theater and the screen in front of me filled with bloodthirsty psychos, rotting corpses and killer clowns. I watched the movie from between clenched fingers and tried not to scream uncontrollably as Dr. Satan vivisected his teenage victims. I don’t remember getting home or crawling into bed, but I lay awake half the night petrified that the Firefly clan was going to get me.

Needless to say, my relationship with the genre was one of love/hate, and for the next few years I avoided horror with exception of a few films like Saw and Hostel. Nerdily enough, it was my academic career that turned horror around for me.

My current appreciation of horror stems from my academic experience with two fantastic professors. As an undergrad, my interest in monsters flowered thanks to Barbara Vielma and her classes on the Literary Vampire and Monsters in Literature. I had hit the monster jackpot and I devoured the works of Frankenstein, Varney the Vampyre, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde and The Beetle. I made up my mind then that I wanted to study monsters and I immersed myself in exploring their stories and the fears they represented.

This love for monsters in literature was translated into film when I took a graduate class with Harry M. Benshoff, author of Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. The class was Gender and Sexuality in the Horror Film and it made me realize that there was so much more to horror than just fear. I think the light bulb went off when we were watching Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive as an example of a postmodern horror film, complete with in-jokes and over the top gore. As I watched the scene where Lionel dispenses of the zombies with a lawn mower, it was like the magician’s trick had been revealed and I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

In that way my analysis of horror texts can be considered my own special coping mechanism. When I found that I could examine horror instead of simply being scared by it, I felt I could face the monsters instead of losing sleep over them.

Monster Land was born out of this impulse, as well as a desire to think critically about horror films and literature. Through the wonders of the Internet, including e-mail and Twitter, I have become part of a large community of devoted horror fans who have made me feel at home in my study of the genre. The amount of support I’ve received from readers and other bloggers is staggering, and I’m constantly amazed that other people care about what I have to say. So stay tuned monster devotees, because there’s plenty more where that came from.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: The Drunken Severed Head

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Max Cheney of the Drunken Severed Head proves he's more than just a pretty face when it comes to horror.

I am a Siamese, or conjoined twin. My other half, separate--and certainly unequal--but seamlessly connected to my self via an e-thereal broad band, is a drunken severed head named Max. We share that first name--I am Max Cheney, Jr., and I love the weird and macabre.

My love for horror started when in 1964, when I was three. I was given the 5-inch high monster figures "Pop Top Horrors" to play with. Cast in Halloween-orange plastic, they were different from other solid figures, as they had detachable heads that could be popped on and off. I had great fun switching the heads! Making an impression on me that same year was being taken to see The Evil of Frankenstein which featured a toy-like makeup design for its Frankenstein Monster. I learned from watching that film that being scared could be fun. Being born (prematurely) into a blended family, with parents whose marriage was always filled with problems, I was always an anxious kid. Finding a form of anxiety that was thrilling was a revelation!

The following year, I was watching the programs "Milton the Monster" and "The Munsters," both featuring Frankensteinian monsters, and I adored both shows. As a present for my birthday in 1965, I was given a Herman Munster talking puppet. That set me for life as a fan of monsters, but of the classic Universal Frankenstein's Monster especially.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: No Room In Hell

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Matt Hersh of No Room In Hell reveals the deep dark truth of good horror: it's all about the high from fear.

I lay in my dark bedroom, paralyzed with fear and certain that Jason Voorhees was going to climb up the stairs at any moment and throw me out the window to my death. I was 10 - old enough to rationalize that this couldn't really happen but young enough to still hold on to my childhood fears. Maybe I shouldn't have watched Friday the 13th: Part V that day.  But that was pretty typical for me back then. I was both fascinated with and terrified by horror films for as long as I could remember. I played a game of limbo with them, avoiding them like the plague for fear of nightmares but also sneaking a peak with morbid curiosity whenever one was on television.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Dimension Fantastica

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, James Wallestein of the Spanish-language horror blog Dimension Fantastica tells us about his passion for a genre that knows no borders.

Hello, my name is James Wallestein and I live in Dallas, Texas. I write a horror cinema blog in Spanish. Maybe this sounds odd, but I always thought that someone needs to write in Spanish about fantastic cinema for a country with 40 million Spanish speakers!

Personally, I believe it a matter of my DNA to love horror and fantastic cinema. My dad taught me to read at four years old, and he is a fanatic for fantastic cinema and the comics. I grew up reading hundreds of comics (filling all the corners of our apartment) that my dad bought: The Fantastic Four; Conan; X-men; Flash Gordon; Superman; Batman; Spiderman, and more…I remember the great art of Jack Kirby with fascination.

At five years old my dad took me to see Jaws and it was a shock. I was terrified with this damn white shark. Later, in 1977, my dad took me to see Star Wars and Orca, the Killer Whale (pretty impressing for me was the scene of the abort with the baby whale). My dad has a big love for fantasy in his DNA, and therefore he transferred to me his passion into my genetic code.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Literal Remains

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, John Robinson of Literal Remains gives us the literal truth of his horror past and present.

"...let's face it... the Devil is a hell of a lot more interesting!"- The Fisher King

I was five years old when I remember seeing my first horror movie. My brother and two cousins (all older) were watching John Carpenter's The Fog on NBC, if I remember correctly. I was suffocating in a sleeping bag, hiding my face, because it was scaring the tee-total bejesus out of me. My brother and cousins didn't ridicule me, though, they just continued to watch, ignoring my pleas for them to switch the channel. I could have left the room, but I was five and wanted to hang out with the big kids. One other thing they did, for which I'm thankful, is they reinforced the fact that it was only a movie. Reluctantly, I peeked from my cotton fortress and watched what I could of it. I was addicted then- hook, line, and sinker. After nearly an almost twenty-eight year romance, me and Horror are still pretty tight. Almost every day is a honeymoon.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Lightning Bug's Lair

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, T.L. Bugg of the Lightning Bug's Lair reveals his initial distaste for the fear, his passion for a guy named Bela, and a rich background in horror.

As Bill Cosby once said back when he did standup and was funny, “I started out as a child.” like Mr. Cosby, I also started out as a youngster and a rather fearful one at that. While I was obsessed with images from the Universal horror films of the 1930’s and 40’s, I could not be coerced by anyone to see a modern horror film. I recall one afternoon when a next door neighbor recounted to me the story of C.H.U.D. It was enough to trouble my sleep for at least a week.

My parents fondly recall when they tried to show me the Disney approved horror film, Something Wicked This Way  Comes. I got about five minutes into the film, the kids saw their own heads getting cut off, and I was done. I have not ever attempted to see that movie since. The last early memory of my yellow steak was when Hellraiser came out on videotape. My folks called me in to see the part where Frank’s body rises from the floor and reconstitutes. It took me some time to recover from that as well.

At the same time that I avoided horror in Technicolor, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff were both great favorites of mine, and each year for Halloween I would request to be a vampire. More than being a bloodsucker, I wanted to be like Bela, or Dracula, the two almost inseparable in my young mind. He was intimidating with only a stare, suave yet dangerous, evil but sophisticated about it. It was around this same age that I discovered old time radio due to my love of Abbot and Costello films. (It surely did not hurt that they crossed over with the Universal monsters a few times.) While my tastes ran mostly toward the comedic programs of Fibber McGee and Molly, and Burns & Allen, there were quite a few nights where I clutched my Walkman to my chest in the darkness of my bedroom and listened intently to the horrors of the Inner Sanctum or (Shock Theater).

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Groovy Age of Horror

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Curt Purcell of Groovy Age of Horror reveals the influences, from Lovecraft to Eurotrash, that keep him in the groove of horror.

I guess having kids makes some people start going back to church. When my dad went back, pre-millennialist dispensational eschatology sank such deep hooks into him that his idea of a bedtime Bible story was reading me the freakiest prophecies and visions from Daniel, Ezekiel, and the Book of Revelation. Whatever religious lessons he meant to impart were lost on young me, but the frightful, bizarre imagery sure made an impression.  My enduring fascination for the weird and fantastic probably traces back in large part to that.

Two of the first books I chose for myself from the library and struggled through mostly on my own were companion collections of Greek and Norse mythology. They probably should have been way above my reading comprehension level, but they were treasure-troves of grotesque creatures and uncanny figures, and I was determined to mine them for all they had to offer.