My First Encounter With a Horror Movie

by Joshua
(Washington)

Sion Sono's (Suicide Circle) Strange Circus

I am 14, and my parents were (and to an extent still are) extremely protective (although not necessarily the most traditional, did you receive "the talk" when you were 6?).

They used to tell me horror movies were evil (and so was Halloween, I was robbed of a proper childhood, God bless 'em!). Well, after a while (at 7 years old to be exact), I wanted to see for myself, I was at my Grandparents and they had cable, while I was channel hopping the guide to see what would be on later, I saw the title NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (the 1990 remake) and went "I... HAVE... to watch this!" It was going to be on at 3AM so I decided to wait.

I snuck out of the room I was in at the end of the hall, tip-toed past my Grandparents open door and swiftly walked towards where the TV was located... at around 1:30 (I never was a patient person). Once the film came on at 3:00, there was no stopping me!

Except for the part about 10 or 15 minutes in when I turned it off, the scene where BEN drove the screwdriver into the zombies head was "it" for me. I was freaked as fuck! I tiptoed back to my room as fast as I could and "jumped" back into the bed, for fear that zombies were going to reach out and eat my head (among other things, I was, and still am, a rather foul little child, maybe it was the sex talk), for the next six-months I had to go to sleep saying "There's no such thing as zombies" until I wasn't scared anymore.

Now, 8-years-later, I have finally re-watched the remake of NOTLD and determined it is a shitty piece of trash! But I still find it has one of two (three if you include one of the most horrid films of 1990) special places in my heart as the first horror movie I ever tried to watch and the first to scare me, but I don't count the second because I was 6 - SESAME STREET can be scary at times!

I didn't watch a horror movie again for about 4 years, then I began getting interested in STEPHEN KING, and then I watched THE FOG on TNT at 3AM-5AM (while at the beach, a perfect setting considering once I was done I looked out and saw a fog drifting over the water in the grey morning light). I now am I horror freak and just finished watching the remake of HALLOWEEN (which was fuckin' rad by the way) and my two favorite horror films ever are THE DESCENT and ALIEN, I have raised myself good!