views and profiles with thoughtful analysis of neg- lected fare such as Don’t Go in the House, Mi- crowave Massacre and The Love Butcher. As with Caelum Vatnsdal’s They Came From Within: A His- tory of Canadian Horror Cinema (2004) and the late Bill Landis’ Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square (2002), Nightmare USA explores regional relevance and distinct personal styles. “I wouldn’t claim that [Michelangelo] Antonioni’s


L’Avventura and George Barry’s Death Bed: The Bed That Eats deserve the same critical respect, but I do think they both deserve respect of some kind,” ob- serves Thrower, who is presently working on a book about filmmaker Jess Franco. McDonough cautions, however, “[Academics]


drain the fun out of everything. It’s like your parents showing up at the drive-in and exclaiming, ‘Hey, kids, this Debbie Does Dallas is not so bad!’ Some things are better off left drawing flies in the gutter. But you can’t stop ‘progress.’” This compulsion to delve deeper into the trash cin-


ema well has widely expanded and reshaped the cult film canon. The Golden Turkey Awards branded Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space as the worst film ever in 1980, but few would still agree with that claim. Similarly, in their 1983 book Midnight Movies, critics J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum fo- cused on four cult sensations – El Topo, Night of the Living Dead, Pink Flamingos, and Eraserhead, a list that seems almost quaint next to fresh rediscoveries such as Manos: The Hands of Fate and Werewolves on Wheels, or even more recent delights such as Troll 2 and Birdemic: Shock and Terror. This nostalgic celebration of trash has not only


manifested itself in numerous DVD grindhouse trailer compilations and in films such as Grind- house and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, it’s even led to a fake historical account, in the form of Stephen Romano’s Shock Festival book and com- panion DVD, both of which feature a “history” (in- cluding movie posters and trailers) for exploitation films that never existed. “I wanted to write a novel in a way nobody had


ever attempted before, and I wanted to fall back on this old idea I had as a thirteen-year-old kid to do a book of fantasy-world movie posters for films that never were,” explains Romano. He adds that celebrating trash cinema is more


than just a fad. “Late-night creature features and shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Elvira have always been really popular. It’s juvenile and sexy and outlaw. It’s just that new generations come along and make it their own in new ways. We have YouTube and Blu-ray now, iPhones and stuff, and it ain’t never gonna go away, man. Once you get the fever, it hooks in and hangs on!”


JULY 2007 Tim Lucas’ Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark is pub- lished – the most lavish study of a genre director yet.


AUGUST 31, 2007 Rob Zombie reinvents Michael Myers as a white-trash serial killer with a papier-mâché fetish.


ent niche, from vampires to gialli and every- thing in between. It was a close-knit group that encouraged discussion. “I was dying to fill up my sidebar with links


It goes without saying that the internet has had a pro-


found effect on the lives of virtually every horror fan. Whether it’s tracking down a copy of a long out-of-print gem or looking up the name of that guy who played that guy who got killed in that movie, if you’ve got access to a computer, then you’ve got access to anything and everything that has to do with the genre. Over roughly the last thirteen years, that access has transformed the world of horror movies, from the most bloated Hollywood productions down to the micro-budget backyard affairs.


Once upon a time, fans had to wait for new issues of their favourite


horror publications to hit the stands before they’d be privy to insider in- formation on films. Today, it’s difficult to walk into a theatre and see a movie you know absolutely nothing about – there are daily reports from film sets, countless production stills, and forums full of rabid fan activ- ity. Sometimes, even scripts and work footage are leaked online. When it was announced that writer/director Rob Zombie would be remaking John Carpenter’s Halloween, fans immediately began frothing at the very idea of it. “Protests” were organized before a single scene was shot, fake posters were created, and casting call sheets and drafts of Zombie’s script soon made the rounds on the ’net. “I think it ultimately is a bad thing,” says Zombie. “I think a lot of the


fans ruin the experience for themselves in advance. They go in, they go, ‘Well, I already read the script and I know every plot twist and I know every possible thing that could happen!’ Everybody’s scrutinized. At least half the information that you read all the time is completely false. But what are you gonna do?” While a script review and behind-the-scenes footage may be what


readers expect on a daily basis from horror news outlets now, it took years for these genre-based websites to earn the kind of clout to en- able them to deliver it. Even the most well-known ones were estab- lished by fans who simply wanted to talk about the genre they love so much. “The Three Idiots Guide to Horror,” for example, was born in 1996, changed hands over the years and slowly became the venerable Horror.com. Staci Layne Wilson, who has been writing for the site for more than five years, experienced the growing pains of online journal- ism. “I had to beg and plead, send stats, promise first-born sons, etc., just


to get a video interview,” she recalls. “Publicists wanted to have noth- ing to do with online writers and reporters. They did not see that on- line was not going away.” Ryan “Rotten” Turek, managing editor of ShockTillYouDrop.com, ini-


tially had to resort to creative means to get what he wanted. He recalls, “There was a renegade sense of how I went about gathering inter- views and information. Companies didn’t want to talk to me? Okay, I’ll find a friend of a friend who knows the director and request a chat. Or, I’ll hit up a horror convention and talk to the guests there for a retro- spective piece and to gather scoops on upcoming projects.” Fans such as Turek began blogging about horror to begin with in


large part because the mainstream genre sites didn’t meet their needs. Groovy Age of Horror (groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com) began when owner Curt Purcell scoured the web for vintage horror paperbacks. Dissatisfied with the scant information available, he simply began his own site. Groovy Age was part of a small but strong group of horror blogs that sprang up in 2004 to 2005, each concentrating on a differ-


OCTOBER 19, 2007 30 Days of Night makes vampires nasty, a year before the Twilight film transforms them into glittery BFFs.


JANUARY 10, 2008 Maila Nurmi, a.k.a. Vampira dies at 85. Rue Morgue publishes final interview with her.


to other horror blogs, but there just weren’t any!” recalls Purcell. “The few horror blogs huddled together and interacted pretty closely, mostly in each other’s comments, and necessarily interacted much, much more than today. After that, horror blogs seemed to spring up in waves. All of a sudden, there’d be another five or six going like gangbusters that everyone scrambled to welcome to the neighbourhood. Now there are a zillion.” While it’s not surprising that PR firms


would now want to use blogs and websites to promote their products, a strong web pres- ence for the films themselves is essential. This is thanks, in no small part, to the massive success of The Blair Witch Project. Everybody knows somebody – or, perhaps, is somebody – who fell for the viral marketing campaign of the film. The simple website from the days of dial-up was presented as 100 percent truth: three documentary filmmakers had gone missing in the woods of Maryland, but the footage they shot in those woods had been found. “It immediately caught on,” remembers


Eduardo Sanchez, Blair Witch co-creator and builder of the film’s original site. “We had a discussion board and got a lot of traffic there. I don’t know the specific numbers but this was 1998, this was way before YouTube or Facebook and the size of the web was prob- ably one percent of what it is now. We didn’t have any money, so we basically paid $10 a month to host it and that was our marketing budget. By the time the film got into Sun- dance we had a mailing list of about 10,000 people.” Since the 1998 launch of blairwitch.com,


audiences have gotten a lot more savvy and cynical. We’re no longer apt to believe the “true stories” just because they’re online. Still, websites have become the bedrock for movie marketing and no film, no matter how large or small, can go without one. (As Turek notes, “Studios and indie filmmakers will try anything to get your attention to promote their film.”) The internet has remixed the nature of in-


teraction between artists, fans, journalists and companies, making it more difficult for many print-based outlets to compete. But is the fu- ture strictly digital? “The web is shaping journalism and I don’t


necessarily know if I dig the changes or not, but I do have to adapt to the demands,” ad- mits Turek. “I love big articles that reach deep and I love to write them. No one wants to read that type of stuff on their computer screen.” You’re holding evidence of that in your hands right now.


JUNE 27-29, 2008 The Alamo Rolling Roadshow presents a celebration of Troll 2 in Morgan, Utah.


NOVEMBER 17, 2008 Left 4 Dead is released, putting all discussions about what you’d do during a zombie outbreak to the test.


37RM


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