Buying Horror Movies is Money Well Spent

by Moss Daley
(Lonely Plateau, MO, USA)

I was in my first year of Jr. high school and one Halloween night I decided to watch the Night of the Living Dead remake by Tom Savini. I knew there was an original to the film and that it was in black and white but I had no idea how dynamic and creative that film was for it's time. I also believe that Night of the Living Dead or "Night" gave birth to modern horror and is one of the cornerstones of classic horror. I decided to buy it from eBay along with Dawn of the Dead (the sequel) and from that day forward my horror movie collection has grown some.

A few months after my purchase of "Dawn" and "Night", I happened to catch Return of the Living Dead on a movie channel. At first I was kind of closed-minded to the film because it wasn't by George A. Romero but after the movie was over I had a good feeling that I don't get from most movies. The film is a fun ride and is very entertaining - there is a dark comical feeling to the movie and its very fun to watch. "Return" never ceases to amuse me every time I watch it.

I told my friend about "Return" and he said that he had already seen it and he told me about a group low-budget horror films by a film maker by the name of Sam Raimi. The Evil Dead series (Army of Darkness included) soon came to be must owns after I rented them a few hundred times. Evil Dead has something to it that even though the acting is bad and the special effects are really cheap, the movie still works and that makes it a true classic horror movie.

After that I looked at my Horror movies and decided that I wanted to expand my collection. I figured that I wanted to have some classic slashers so I purchased the big four: Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th-Friday the 13th part 2 (they should be watched together), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I watched all of these movies more than 30 times a piece and I couldn't get enough, so I purchased all the sequels as well.

I was bored of slashers and started getting back into zombie movies. I rented Lucio Fulci's Zombi and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. I loved the gore in both movies, Zombi is more a cheap spaghetti splatter film but it is still really entertaining none the less. Dead Alive just blew me away. It had the same feel as "Return" and the gore is more than plentiful. Both films are worth catching.

When I was younger I was a big horror fan but I never really remembered the names of the movies. I was more into Tales From the Crypt TV series and Twilight Zone TV series, though two films that stuck out in my mind as a younger kid were The Exorcist and The Shining, both films scared the crap out of me and even though no movie scares me today, these films still give me the un-easy feeling that takes me back to the good ol'days when even Chucky scared me.

I still continue to collect classic horror movies today, I usually buy them two or three at a time. I just picked up Phantasm and The Thing today. I've seen them both before but it's been awhile so I'm pretty excited to get the time to watch them. For me, any classic horror movie is money well spent.