Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The Horrorsphere: What We Have in Common

I ran out of horror movies to watch.

That's a first. Don't worry, my dealer sent me a new flick to review and it should be up before the week is up. In any case, after reading this post from Freddy in Space I too got inspired to chime in on the awesomeness of being part of the horror blogging community.

Taking a cue from BJ-C from Day of the Woman who lists 7 things on why the horror blogging community is the coolest I figured I'd go on a different tangent. I'm going to list the things I think we have in common. These may be dead on or waaay off. But here it goes. I'm doing my best George Carlin "little things we all have in common, universal moments we share..." impersonation.

-We visit Bloody Disgusting, Fangoria and Dread Central every day
-We have Blogger all tabbed up and ready to go
-We have comments e-mailed to us and reply within 15 minutes
-We check our traffic every 2 days
-We skim the RSS feeds of other horror blogs and click on only our faves
-We IMDB a movie of a trailer we've just seen, then click on Trivia (if any), check out the user comments and/or click on external reviews
-We constantly add our reviews to external reviews on IMDB
-We check on Google Followers we have
-We check on how many Twitter followers we have
-We read each and every comment posted on our site even if its a comment on a post we did like 3 years ago
-We write our best posts way late at night
-We are easily encouraged when somebody likes our review and want to eviscerate Voorhees style anybody who disagrees with our reviews
-We write reviews with at least 2 quotable lines so just in case, a distributor may use it on the back of a DVD box
-We use horror slang in our everyday conversations like we're vocally blogging
-We've all been visited by a user from a country we cannot pronounce
-We are shocked when Hollywood actually comes out with a good hard R horror film
-We all moan when Platinum Dunes decides to rape our collective horror childhood and remakes yet another horror classic
-We all know who Adam Green is
-We have all written a retro review (which all came from some late night viewing of something in our DVD collection)
-We have all attended one of the following (or all of em), Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, Chiller Theater, Fantastic Fest, NY or SD Comic Con, Cinema Wastleand, Horrorhound, Fantasia, Rue Morgue's Festival of Fear, etc.
-We have all got e-mails from filmmakers, directors and writers hoping to give some press to their flicks
-We all have a bootleg version of Night of the Living Dead
-We have all read Max Brook's World War Z
-We have at least 3 t-shirts of our favorite horror movies
-We get excited when we get a screener in the mail
-We have seen one of the After Dark Horrorfest movies and regretted it
-We think some of the monsters or animal/insect movies gone wild on the Sci Fi channel are funny good but will never admit it
-We have all met Kane Hodder
-We have all met Tom Savini
-We have all met George A. Romero
-We all went to see at least 1 3D horror movie and kept the Real D glasses
-We are constantly looking for classic horror or exploitation trailers on YouTube
-We all secretly love Judd Apatow films
-We all comment on each others blogs because we genuinely have something to say
-We all hope the next leap, will be the leap home

One day, I hope too meet other horror bloggers (any horror bloggers from NYC or the tri state area?) It would be awesome to talk about horror and whatnot. Be sure to check out all the horror blogs from all the links to the right. All these blogs are probably way better than mine, but not one of them covers Van Damme like I do. :-P

I'll finally conclude with this. They're listening.

The directors, fimmakers, distributors, studios and even some mainstreaminess media listen to what's going on in our corner of the web. I've gotten e-mails from directors, writers and studios who thank me and the horrorsphere for giving their indie horror flick some press or reviewing their indie movie via a screener. It's exhilarating to hear that praise and gratitude from the industry you cover and write about.

The horrorsphere is not dead.

It's growing and it's a shacky cam flick away from being remade.


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6 comments:

  1. Awesome post, thanks for the mention and link. Most of those points you make do in fact apply to yours truly! As for the "they're listening" thing ; it is the truth. Joe Lynch (director of Wrong Turn 2) actually e-mailed me a while back saying he reads my blog and at the end of the e-mail told me to keep on doing what i'm doing because "people are watching....". It's been that very quote that has inspired me to keep going for the last year or so. I am so proud to be able to call myself a horror blogger!

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  2. Im easily guilty of 90% of those, but I love the horror community to death, Ive never seen a closer knit fan base and accessible group of filmmakers than at the horror conventions each year

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  3. There should be a gathering of horror bloggers at a horror convention or festival. If we showed the industry how big we are (I honestly think horror sites make up most of the movie sites out there) we can twist their arms in making some more original flicks.

    I'm glad you guys liked the post. Johnny - Your post got me revved up about the horrorsphere

    Carl - Your quick, witty reviews are ADD ready and awesome.

    Thanks guys.

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  4. Wow, I'm guilty of most of those things that you listed. I just love horror and the horror community. I honestly believe we're the most honest community in all of movie reviewerdom. It's just sad that we don't get the respect we deserve, especially when we're fed remakes that none of us want but watch anyway to keep horror alive.

    People are definitely watching what we're doing. The director of RED VICTORIA actually sent me a comment on my blog where I reviewed the film, praising me. I also had one of the siblings of an horror film actress berate me because I dissed her sister's performance in a film she was in. That's why I keep doing this because I know people are reading and people are caring what I do. And it feels great.

    I think horror bloggers should get together and just shoot the shit. Horror parties every weekend. Sounds like fun to me!

    By the way, that Tracey Gold film is called FACE OF EVIL. Just letting you know.

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  5. Fred - You rock. Face of Evil! Now I gotta YouTube some clips from that. Thanks.

    That must have been surreal to have somebody call you out on a review you wrote.

    When does a director/filmmaker or actor in any other genre other than horror e-mail or contact you to praise you for reviewing his/her movie?

    (and badmouthing you for saying it sucks)

    I don't think Judd Apatow or Peter Jackson are telling movie review sites what they think.

    You're dead on about the respect. If somebody from Platinum Dunes read half of whats on these horror blogs, we might not get another umteenth remake from my horror childhood.

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