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, Corey at Evil On Two Legstalks about what makes his blog unique and fun to read as well as write.
I’ve always loved horror. My earliest memory is of the first day of pre-school and finding the 2-XL robot hidden behind the nap mats and Legos. One of the multiple choice 8-track quiz tapes dealt with vampires, werewolves and other classic monsters. I don’t believe I ever put in the tapes on sports or history, but I must have played the monster one a 1000 times.
As soon as I could read I was lost in the public library searching out books on UFOs, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and horror story collections like “The Headless Roommate and Other Tales” and “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” Early exposure to the films Halloween, An American Werewolf in London and The Prowler set me up for what’s become a life-long love of the horror film genre. My happiest memories of childhood involve roaming the endless horror aisles of oversized VHS boxes at Encore Video (a local mom & pop video store), looking for something that sounded scary but whose name and cover would be acceptable to my parents… and dreaming of the day when I could have my own video card and would finally be able to rent some of the titles that featured really graphic cover art and enticing names like Faces of Death, I Spit On Your Grave and Slumber Party Massacre.
There are thousands of sites and blogs where you can find film reviews, so when I started my own site I decided I wanted it to try to do something a little different. When I was a kid we’d argue for hours about who would win in a fight between Jason and Freddy or we’d try to rationalize exactly how Michael is walking around killing people in part 4 after clearly having his eyes shot out in part 2. Those are the kinds of things I wanted to write about. Our site also features less original things like lists of the week’s horror DVD releases and the occasional, highly biased review of the latest slasher remake; but I’m most proud of our site when it features articles that do things like analyze the fashion sense of the teens in the first Friday the 13th or pit Eli from Let the Right One In against Edward from Twilight to decide who would be crowned vampire of the year.
I created a horror blog because I needed a place to vent my love of the genre, to exercise my creativity, and as a fun project to work on with my best friends turned co-writers (Jon & Cara). My site has grown to mean far more to me than that, though, because of the people I have met thanks to it. Through email, Twitter, comments, and in person at conventions, I’ve come to meet some of the nicest people in the horror community and, through their encouragement and advice, to come to feel a part of it myself. I know that my co-writers feel the same.
I think we’ll be writing about horror for a long time to come.
Great look at a wonderful blogger.