Days of Horror Past

how my love affair with horror movies has ended

When I was in my late teens, I worked in one of the first video stores on Long Island. This was when you paid an exorbitant yearly fee to join, then paid added rental fees on top of that. People were so eager to watch their favorite movies that they gladly shelled out the money. Being able to see films on demand was new and exciting, and we stocked the store with every imaginable title, from major blockbusters to cult films. We even had in our horror section something purporting to be a snuff film (it wasn’t).

Bruce, the owner of Video Vault, was a horror movie fanatic and thus our horror section was enormous. There were movies I had seen before on late night tv or in the theater, but a ton more that I’d never seen. I wasn’t new to horror. My mother raised me on that genre, taking me to see the horror trilogy Asylum when I was just ten, and sitting me in front of the tv for Vincent Price marathons when I as a child. We stayed up late and watched Chiller Theater together, she took scary books out of the library for me. My love for horror started early and was bolstered by Bruce and his video collection which gave me greater access to those movies.

For as longs as I worked there, I would take home a different horror movie every night, staying up late so I could be scared and horrified and entertained. Sometimes I watched with my mother, sometimes with friends, but I always liked watching horror movies alone where no one could hear me gasp or see me put my hands over my eyes.

I had no specific type of horror I liked and, until slasher films came about in the 80s, I devoured psychological thrillers, films full of gore, ghost stories, revenge flicks, massacres of all kinds. I remember one Halloween seeing a double feature of Last House on the Left and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and loving every moment of it even if Last House repulsed me.

Once slasher flicks came about, horror movies were everywhere. I could finally share my love of this genre with an expanded group of people because it was no longer weird to be watching these movies constantly. Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Slumber Party Massacre, the list went on and on. We ate these movies up and begged for more. When we weren’t in movie theaters devouring blood and guts, we were at the video store renting more horror titles.

I kept my love of horror movies active and intact for many years. Eventually I had kids and when they were of an appropriate age I introduced them to the genre and they were all in, especially my son. He loved zombies and jump scares; my daughter loved films that dealt with the occult and supernatural things. We spent many nights watching scary movies together.

I don’t know when it started specifically, but my love of horror movies started to wane at some point. Maybe it was when things in my own personal life became harrowing, maybe I just got busy with other hobbies and interests. But somewhere along the line, I dropped out of the horror scene. And now I find that here in my 60s, I can no longer watch scary/gory movies.

I’ve tried. I tried revisiting some of my old favorites. I tried new titles (the only one I enjoyed was Cabin in the Woods). The jump scares were too much for me. The taut psychological terror bothered me. The gore was unwatchable. I was now unnerved by it all, and the thought of sitting through two hours of horror, of people being slashed and burned and hunted was just too much. In 2013 I attempted to go see the Evil Dead remake in the theater and I walked out twenty minutes in after having an anxiety attack in my reclining seat.

Perhaps I feel like there is so much horror in the world that I don’t need to see depictions of it on film. There is so much turmoil in my life that I’d rather seek out the comfort of “nice” movies, ones where no one dies and no one is maimed and people live happily ever after. I’d rather not have my heart in my mouth and my hands over my eyes while watching a movie anymore. I need benign. I need safety. I need comfort. I need laughs.

I miss the fun of watching horror movies. I miss the October rush to watch 31 scary films, culminating in a movie marathon on Halloween night that always ended with Night of the Living Dead. I miss Freddie and Jason and Michael. But not enough to attempt to watch again. I know what my mental state at the moment can handle, and they’re not it. They are old friends, the kind I can talk about with a kind of wistfulness, but whose relationships I don’t wish to revisit.

I hate cutting out what was a huge part of my life, but I no longer have a place for horror. I can look back and think of the good times I had watching people get murdered in increasingly bizarre ways, but the softie in me has taken charge and I will find my October entertainment elsewhere. Halloweentown, I am ready for you.