Horror has always been something I had a love/hate relationship with, when I was just but a young lad (5 years) my first confrontation with horror was made through movies. My brother watched things like Nightmare on Elm Street and other classic horrors when they were just horror movies. Nightmares visited me for nights, I was afraid that I would die in my sleep but this was not the biggest “shock” that I got from a horror movie.
At the time I lived in Spain and our apartment would look out on to an open air Cinema, every Friday and Saturday they would play 2 movies. First a child friendly movie and after that an adult movie, sometimes more movies where shown but my memory is quite foggy. One night we went to the movies and it would be Bambi first and Highlander after that, the cinematographer made a mistake and the first movie was Highlander, not an horror movie but chopping off heads, a scary Kurgan, yeah that was my first deep shock scar. Nowadays it is my favourite movie of all time, but more on that some other post. Lets move forward with the tale.
One night I was watching movies from the balcony and there I saw how Robocop was made which was quite visual, but on an other night I watched Poltergeist (of course the original) and it scared me so bad I was afraid of the TV (specially at night). But little did I know that years later I would gain a taste for the shock, macabre and gore.
Watching movies has been an hobby of mine my whole life, mostly watching Fantasy and Sci-Fi movies (which I still enjoy, specially Sci-Fi). But around my 19th year I started to like horror more and more, it started with the classics like Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street and many others but it was not my favourite genre yet. After years of tumult in my life I had gotten several depressions over the years and Horror movies started to be my rock to not go insane and even help me getting out of it, which has happened most of the time until my current depression but that is for an other time.
So now I started watching Horror Movies more and more, playing horror PC Games and even Hosting more Horror oriented Role Playing Games. It evolved in such a way that I could step over my dislike of older movies because they where so grainy or black and white and started watching those, it did not matter any-more I would watch all the classics, after that I started watching less known movies and it kept on going on. Nowadays I love horror and it is my go to genre when I want to watch a movie. The Audio-books that I listen are strictly horror, my comics went from Superheroes towards horror, The Walking Dead (Before the series), Crossed, Witch doctor and many more.
My favorites in the Horror genre are the old Hammer House movies with Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Curshing and many more. Ghost movies are also a favourite of mine because these are the rare ones that can scare me. Demonic movies the same love those too. Werewolves and Vampires are also some of my favourites, Stephen King stories are also extremely well, everything Lovecraftian is also high on my list (more about that in a separate post). But in the end my favourite Sub Genre must be Zombies.
Why zombies? Well it is difficult to explain but I will try; they where humans and are still made of flesh, they are dead and they keep on going on. For me they represent a part of the unknown after death and that kind of creeps me out. And it also helps that I like Post Apocalyptic stories, another favorite Genre of mine (more on that in a later post).
Some of my favourite movies have to be the one who brought a new view of zombies into the world; George Romeros Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the dead. That said a lot of excellent zombie movies have been made, the Spanish Rec 1/2/3/4 are very entertaining, The Dead was surprising and quite good. Some comedic ones are also quite good like of course Shawn of the Dead but Juan of the Dead is very funny and somewhat scary and Zombieland. Some movies are more a guilty pleasure than “serious”, Resident Evil fits that description. In my opinion there have been several misses, World War Z was very disappointing, the Day of the Dead remake was also not that “interesting”. But sometimes a movie comes by and in this case a remake like; Dawn of the Dead (2004). This one scares me quite a bit, Zombies are suppose to be slow but with many and easily outwitted but now we have Running, Jumping, Climbing and semi smart Zombies. Very scary but also a very needed boost the genre needed at that time. Even though it may be too much nowadays I am still glad that I have enough Zombie related movies to watch. I do guess that I have watched a lot, even very bad ones.
I think it is awesome that Zombies are main stream and series like The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead and Z-Nation are being made. Very entertaining and sometimes scary (The Walking Dead), sometimes they miss the ball so to say by trying to be too shocking or the drama is way too much. But still good for people like me that it is being made.
Comic wise I love The Walking Dead, Night of the Living dead and so many more. This medium can do so much more as a Movie because of the freedom of budget.
Audio-book wise I am not that experienced so to say but I think that the Deadland Saga written by Rachel Aukes is very good, if you want to start reading zombie stories (or listen to them), this is a good series to begin with, three books strong. I have enjoyed it immensely, if you want to hear the Audio-books you can find them on Audible.
At some point I started to watch reality shows like Ghost Hunters, Fact or Faked and many more. My favorite reality show in the paranormal genre must be Ghost Adventures, I know that it is mostly fake or even completely fake but it entertains me a lot and sometimes gives me the creeps what I love about horror.
But enough on Horror for now it is a great pleasure of mine and it will be something I will write more about.
Author: Federico
I have created this blog so i have a way to vent my random thoughts. It will be a journey without an end.