How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 4 - The Random Stuff

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 1 - The Books

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 2 - The Television

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 3 - The Movies

We've talked about some of the basics thus far in this series, but now's the time to dig a little deeper into the things that led The Mike to where he's at today.  After all, not EVERYTHING I've ever known or done was directly inspired by a book or a movie or the TV.  I know it's shocking, but it's true.

Sometimes, it's just the little things in life that have a random yet profound impact on someone.  And for me, there's no way to deny that these are some of of the things that inspired me to love the seemingly dangerous side of life that is horror.

(If you missed the explanation behind this series, you should know that all credit for this idea belongs to the wonderful Mrs. Christine Hadden over at Fascination With Fear, who does lists better than anyone in the Western Hemisphere. For that, I salute her.)

 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

 This could have gone under books or movies, but I couldn't remember which came to me first - so I listed it here.  The point is, I'll be darned if the idea of the Headless Horseman wasn't one of the very scariest things in the world to me when I was a wee-Mike. I remember reading and/or being told the story as a kid and being totally afraid to be out at night, but most of my fear comes from the harrowing vision of said creature shown in Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, which I still think might be one of the most horrifying visions ever shown on screen.  Proving, once again, that Disney movies know everything there is to know about making little kids pee their pants in fear.

My Great-Grandparents' Basement Stairway

I don't remember being too afraid of going in the creepy Silence-of-the-Lambs-style basement in my childhood home.  I don't remember being scared of most basements, either.  But I remember the stairway that led to the basement at my great-grandparents' home.  I still believe that the open stairway at the end of their entryway, with no door to protect us from whatever lied below, always seemed to hold nothing but the darkest darkness I've ever seen.  At one point I think us kids said we were brave enough to go down there, which I think was about the point when we were told there was a bear monster down there, right before someone jumped out and scared us.  In the end, I never went down that stairway. Ever.

The Black-and-White TV

This one applies as much to my love of classic cinema as it does to my love of horror. I love the fact that I was one of the last kids ever to grow up with a black-and-white television set.  Now, don't worry too much, we had color in the living room...but I was somehow blessed enough to get the old black-and-white TV in my room and it. was. awesome.

Remember when I told you about how scary Unsolved Mysteries was? It was so much scarier in black-and-white!  And when I got lucky and got the VCR hooked up to this TV, I had a heck of a lot of fun.  My first viewing of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds happened on this 13 inch screen - and a confused me forgot about that and spent a few years wondering why I couldn't find the "original" black and white version of that movie when he grew up.  You think an army of angry birds (not the video game kind) is creepy? You shoulda seen it in black-and-white!

Audio Horror Chillers

If you're like me, you hated the stupid art classes you had to take in elementary and middle school. Man, I was the worst art-er of all-time. I was so bad, I made up the word "art-er" to avoid calling myself an artist.  It was kind of embarrassing to realize how unartistic I was.

Luckily for me, one of my favorite things about school lived inside that art room.  Behind his desk, our teacher kept a tape player and a selection of short audio tales that today remind me of The Twilight Zone.  Alongside these audio chillers - which I have almost entirely forgotten at this point, though I think he may have had some Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark tapes - he had one of the stories that most made me in awe of what horror can do.

As alluded to in the picture, that audio tale was Orson Welles' infamous adaptation of The War of the Worlds.  First of all, the story was engrossing.  Second of all, the presentation of a "real" radio broadcast was thought provoking.  And then, when I learned about the nationwide panic that surrounded Welles' performance of this story - I was in awe.  This might have been the first time I really understood the showmanship that a horror storyteller could possess. I was enamored with the fact that a dramatic presentation of a horror tale could incite such widespread fear - and I wanted to find more stories/presentations like it.  

My Pet Monster

If I was going to approach monsters as a child, I'd be better off if I had a little bit of monster on my side, right?  Enter My Pet Monster, which has to be the coolest toy ever created (except for the Cabbage Patch Doll that my mom turned in to Mr. T. and put an Iowa State outfit on).  While us children of the '80s were being bombarded by the unforgettable advertising of My Buddy and Kid Sister, I took the logic that applied to those toys - namely, "Wherever I go, he's gonna go" - and applied it to My Pet Monster.  Even after his big toe was ripped open and he started to smell, I was attached to him. Probably to the point that I got in trouble for trying to take him everywhere, or maybe just to the point when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles happened. Either way, My Pet Monster was awesome and I wish he was still here with me now.

(And yeah...if you didn't know already, watch that My Buddy ad and see who you think looks like him. I guess you could say he's one of the Good Guys when it comes to dolls.)

The Iowa Countryside at Night

Y'all know we have ghosts in our cornfields, thanks to Kevin Costner and that darn baseball movie. But I'm here to say that there's something about a full moon over acres and acres of fields and dirt roads and no other houses within running distance that is totally creepy.  (Even if I never did live out of running distance for normal people. But I was fat, so there's my excuse.)

Even as I grew up, I still remember being outside the house at night and looking around at miles of open ground and just feeling so much unease about the world around me.  Nowadays it's creepier because I think of films like Inside or The Strangers where homes are invaded by real people with real sicknesses, but back then I was mostly worried about more pressing dangers - like aliens or werewolves.  Ah, it would be great to be a kid again - but I ain't goin' into no field after dark anyway.

(On an aside, one of the side effects of this fear is that I never got around to seeing and/or reading Children of the Corn. To quote a wise man - "I don't have to see it, Dottie. I lived it."

Monstervision

I've already written at length about how much Joe Bob Briggs inspired me to become the host of my own online horror hotel, and I could have talked about his stint as TNT's host of Saturday night entertainment earlier in this series.  Since I didn't, I feel compelled to mention it one more time, because Monstervision was the first thing that really pushed me to learn more about horror cinema and not just grab things off the rental shelf because they looked cool.  Without this program and Mr. Briggs' leadership, I'd have never started this blog. I know that for sure.

The Haunted Hayride

When my parents decided that I was ready to experience the Haunted Hayride in my home town at a young age, it quickly became the scariest night of my life.  To this day, I will swear under oath that a real chainsaw was right above my head sticking through one of the slots in the back of the hay rack. I was made to sit in the middle and the back - with warnings that I might be grabbed on the edges - but I was not safe enough, apparently. Oh, and remember that time when I told you I was afraid to watch Pumpkinhead because I was afraid of creatures with pumpkin shaped heads? Yeah, that came from the haunted hayride too.  I can picture that image, with the strobe lights and the fake fog and the piped in sound effects still - and it is scaring me as I think about it.

I'm pretty sure the night ended with my parents bringing over the guy who ran the chainsaw or grabbed my foot or did something else that made me scream like a banshee so I knew that it was just someone in a disguise and not a normal demon or whatnot. I think they were playing me. I was too scared that night to not have faced at least a little bit of real evil.

And - after I checked my pants for wetness - I wanted more of it.

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By now, you probably realize that I was a scaredy cat once.  Heck, I still am at times.  But all of these creepy experiences and the thoughts that they put into my head only made me more fascinated in what horror stories had to offer.  And I never looked back in fear.  

There's something to be said for the cathartic effect of horror. The fact that you can experience something horrific - whether it's a story about a killer scarecrow or a man in a costume swinging a chainsaw or images of people killing in the name of killing - and come out the other side knowing you survived is a heck of a feeling. I've always loved that in horror, and even when I tread lightly around some things horror has to offer I'm always a little interested to see if my resolve can hold up. And I can test that strength more successfully because I had these random fears in my life since I was a young pup.

Here endeth the lesson regarding How The Mike Met Horror, but the comments are as open as ever for you to share your own inspirations. Thanks for reading this October, and keep coming back for more horror - you'll be stronger if you do, I promise.

After all - monsters need friends too!

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 3 - The Movies

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 1 - The Books

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 2 - The Television

While the first two parts of this series may have been familiar to most horror folks of my generation, the movies that sent me to where I am as a horror fan will be more familiar to the kind folks that read this here blog.  Most of the movies I'm about to talk about have been covered here numerous times, so coming up with something relevant and useful to say in what follows has been a strong challenge for me.  But as I look at this list of horror movies that inspired me in my path toward horror, I am taken aback by how totally random these movies seem to be. 

I've covered some of the movies that inspired me in my currently running Top 50 Horror Movies Countdown - and I've chosen not to repeat my position on many of the films on that list.  I'd be completely wrong to negate the impact films like The Shining, Fright Night, Happy Birthday to Me, and others had on me, but there's something about each of the movies I'm about to mention that just feels incredibly special to me.  I know I'm not the only person that likes them, but it's kind of like these movies just happened to be in the right place at the right time for me.  And that time and place was, for lack of a more intellectual word, awesome.

(If you missed the explanation behind this series, you should know that all credit for this idea belongs to the wonderful Mrs. Christine Hadden over at Fascination With Fear, who does lists better than anyone in the Western Hemisphere. For that, I salute her.)

The Mike's Horror Trinity

In January of 2009, From Midnight, With Love was born. And when I started putting this little blog together, dreaming that someday someone might read the ramblings I had to offer and maybe even consider an opinion of mine as a reason to check out a genre film, I put together a simple bio for the sidebar of the site that explained what I stood for as a genre fan.  That same bio still sits in the right hand column of this site - and you can still see these three films listed there as the movies that awakened the monster that I now am.

I can't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure Phantom of the Opera came to me first.  I remember being told about silent movies and realizing that this was kind of like reading a book with pictures, and I don't know if I had the attention span to finish the whole movie, but I do remember getting to the part where the unmasking happens and I remember being really freakin' excited.  Whenever people ask me about my first horror movie, I mention this one.

Creature from the Black Lagoon came next, I think.  I remember being in awe of the green dude on the cover when I first had the VHS tape brought to me, and I remember taking it to a friend's house when I was in second grade to watch during a sleepover. It didn't go as well as I wanted it to - I'm pretty sure I watched the whole thing alone - but at least I was in love with it.  Was this the first time I tried to push someone I know to watch a horror movie against their will? It may very well have been.

Considering that it's the one of these three that I mention the most, it's slightly funny to me that I don't have any vivid memories of my childhood encounter with The Blob outside of the question mark that pops on screen at the ending.  I didn't fall as in love with The Blob as I am now until a little later in my life - but I do remember thinking it was a ton of fun and talking about The Blob all the time whenever I had a reason to make a reference to it. (And sometimes when I didn't.)

As I look at these three VHS tapes now - and that's them, in their original glory, as they look tonight - I am completely in awe of how much what these three movies meant to me before I was even 10 years old. Maybe it was a brilliant design by my parents, or maybe it was just dumb luck - but whatever the reason, I can't help feeling that they gave me the three perfect films to push me to the love of horror I have today.

The Monster Squad

Remember that time in part one of this series when I talked about "those orange back monster books from the library?  (If not, you should go read it and stuff.) Well, The Monster Squad was the film adaptation of those books - and the library had it too.  Again, this was one of those things that kind of got lost in my memory except for parts - "Wolfman's got gnards!" is part of my philosophy on life, obviously - but it was my gateway to the monsters that I hadn't really seen outside of those books.  Fred Dekker got me in the door with his monsters-for-kids film, which is probably exactly what he wanted to do - and I applaud him for that.

Pumpkinhead

There's a very simple and not very exciting reason that Pumpkinhead is on this list.  When I was 8 or 9, I was ready for all the "scary" movies I could get.  I'd seen the trinity, I'd seen the Monster Squad, I'd seen Dracula, and I wanted more. And I thought a monster with a pumpkin for a head sounded like a creepy idea, for reasons that I will elaborate on next week.  Well.....

It was NOT a good idea for little me.  I have a vivid memory of about 12 seconds of Pumpkinhead carnage when I was a kid.  And I remember being instantly shocked and terrified and completely uninterested in seeing any more of that. Did I act cool? Yeah, I was a cool little pimp. But I was terrified. I went away from the screen and I did not come back.  I wasn't completely ready to go where I wanted to go, but I learned from the experience.

Clownhouse

There it sits, alongside the plastic protector from Freedom Video Superstore in Marshalltown, Iowa that protected it (poorly, as you can see) for over 10 years in store and over 10 years in my hands.  On sentimental value alone, this would be the absolute first thing that I would grab and run to safety if my lair was on fire. 

I've long ago written a detailed rant about how much Clownhouse meant to my sister and I as we became old enough to watch horror movies.  But I couldn't talk about movies that contributed to my horror love without Clownhouse. I must have watched it 50 times between the ages of 10 and 15, and I always knew it wasn't a good movie.  But I loved it.  And it led to every bad horror movie I've loved, and every horror movie I've watched and shouted at with friends, and every stupid grin I've ever given during a stupid movie.  All of that can be traced back to how much fun I my family had with Clownhouse.

When that Freedom Video store went out of business, my mother rushed to town and ran through the store to grab it before anyone else even had a chance.  You know how that watch was Bruce Willis' birthright in Pulp Fiction? Clownhouse is like that to my sister and I.

Dr. Giggles

Speaking of stupid and bad, there's Dr. Giggles.  I have to list Dr. Giggles here, for similar reasons to Clownhouse.  We didn't watch this movie religiously, nor did we necessarily like the movie, but Dr. Giggles became a cult figure in our house very quickly when we first encountered him.

And so it came to pass that my father would torture my sister by cackling like Dr. Giggles. And it's still funny.  Heck, I'm pretty sure he somehow mentioned Dr. Giggles while she was in the hospital after giving birth a couple of weeks ago.  Dr. Giggles was our home's Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees or Cropsey, and that still makes me smile. 

Night of the Living Dead

The VHS Tape shown above demands your attention.  First of all, anyone who's worth their weight in horror immediately realizes that the image that has been chosen - completely spoils the final moments of the movie.  Then they might notice that they even spelled Duane Jones' name wrong on the cover.  I'm laughing about that little yellow spot that denotes the guarantee on the 1986 VHS release of Romero's film, and the back of the box promises a "lifetime commitment" that you can call 1-800-VHS-Tape for details of.  Oh, and the blurb on the back of the box reads EXACTLY as follows:

"Possibly the greatest low-budget film of all time filled with non-stop action. From the opening sequence, in which Judith O'Dea is terrorized by the first living corpse in the twilight cemetery, to the last slow dissolves and pans of still pictures, depicting the hero's death, the film is filled with ghoulish undertow that pauses only now and then on the thread-line to reality."

I'm sorry you guys, but I just got really distracted by that blurb. It's....so bad.  Does that make sense to anyone else?

OK, back on topic.  This VHS tape.  This VHS tape may have been in my parents' VHS cabinet as long as the rest of the trinity.  Yet I was strictly told that I COULD NOT watch it. So I didn't. I told you guys I was a good kid. Now do you believe me?  I'd like to say that I didn't watch it because I was that respectful of my parents - never mind the fact that I snuck several viewings of my dad's copy of Brian De Palma's Body Double as soon as I realized what boobs were - but honestly I was kind of terrified of this movie. If they were that adamant that I couldn't watch it - it must be the scariest thing ever, right?

I'm pretty sure I saw the remake on Monstervision before I finally got the guts to put this VHS tape in the player. The spoiler on the video cover wasn't a big deal, because my dad had already explained the differences in the endings when we watched the remake with Joe Bob Briggs.  Heck, when I finally did put in the VHS, I'm pretty sure I was like 16 and my parents came home with groceries with like 6 minutes left in the movie and started yelling for help and I had to pause right when it was about to blow up.  Night of the Living Dead and I were just not meant to have a perfect meeting.

Did I love the movie anyway? Of course I did! It's bloody brilliant, and the hype and the distractions and the stupid VHS package only make me love it more.  The anticipation was worth everything that followed, and watching Night of the Living Dead for the first time was a key moment in my life as a horror fan no matter how it happened.

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Did I got long winded there? Man, I got long winded there.  Apologies to those who don't like rambling incoherence, but these are the memories of horror that give me goosebumps.  It wasn't the introduction to horror films that most had, and it wasn't always the best way to meet horror.  In fact, those last three experiences would almost push most people to avoid horror movies.  But these movies got to me at the right moment and it all just came together perfectly for me.

And now it's your turn - what movies got you in to horror?  How did you learn to love cheesy goodness or overwhelming zombies or big green gill-men?  Hit up the comments below, and then comeback next week for a the How The Mike Met Horror finale, in which i will present a "grab bag" selection of the other stuff that helped me fall in love with horror films.  

Until then, keep watching horror movies and having an awesome October!

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 2 - The Television

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 1 - The Books

Once I got through the books that my parents gave me to test my awesomeness, I was ready for the real gift to children of the '80s and '90s - the television.  And though most of my youth was spent with a combination of Transformers/G.I. Joe/Masters of the Universe/Thundercats/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (OMG, there were so many awesome things!) on the tele, there were a few things scattered into the mix that helped push me toward my budding affection for the dark and dreary side of entertainment.

Like the books I listed in Volume One, these are some pretty common picks for folks my age - but that doesn't mean they didn't pack a lot of punch for little The Mike.  So let's take a look.

(And, if you missed the explanation behind this series, you should know that all credit for this idea belongs to the wonderful Mrs. Christine Hadden over at Fascination With Fear, who does lists better than anyone in the Western Hemisphere. For that, I salute her.)

A Pup Named Scooby Doo

Most kids love Scooby Doo (I do too) and loathe the many knock-offs of the show that occurred later in Scooby's run.  I agree with most of them - because, let's face it, NO ONE EVER liked Scrappy or that weird white version of Scooby with the goatee - but yet there was something about A Pup Named Scooby Doo that just enamored The Mike from day one.  I guess it's kind of the Army of Darkness to the original Scooby's Evil Dead.  And I'm OK with that.

Perhaps the thing that made me laugh most about A Pup Named Scooby Doo - and I did laugh at it often, still do on occasion - is the ridiculous monsters put forth on screen.  I'm not saying they were great, but I still love to draw my version of the "Totem Pole Monster" (which is LITERALLY the only thing I know how to draw) and can still sing the "Cheese Monster" song.  (Because any song with the lyrics "Mozzarella...nasty fella....here comes the Chhhhhheeeeeeeesssssseeee monster!" is worth singing.)  Was it a cheesy show? Absolutely, and literally at times. Did they introduce a character named Red Herring who was always accused but was only once the monster? Yes they did. Did it make little me smile and make me want to watch more monster mysteries? You betcha.

Disney's DTV Monster Hits

This thing was something special.

A one-time-only presentation that aired sometime in October of 1987, this one hour (with commercials) special featured Jeffrey "Mr. Rooney" Jones as the magic mirror on the wall that hosted a collection of animated music videos featuring some awesome music and plenty of Disney's favorite characters.  There was Michael Jackson's Thriller, Monster Mash, Ghostbusters, and plenty of other great tunes.  Even today, I still picture images from this special whenever I hear Stevie Wonder's Superstition or the Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams - which was definitely the most bizarre and engrossing segment of the show.

Luckily for little me, my grandmother happened to tape this special when it aired, which means I watched it as many times as I could when I was at her house.  Sure, I could have watched any of the other videos she had - and there was one that I'll cover when we get to movies later this month - but this was the "scary" movie of the bunch.  So I sat, and I stared at the old Disney images, which had been matched up perfectly with pop music - and I loved every second of it.

And, like all good things, you can now watch it on You Tube. Ain't life grand?

Count Floyd

Horror hosts were a big deal a lot of places in the '80s, but little The Mike didn't get to see a lot of them.  I certainly knew who Elvira was, mostly because her breasts face were all over the place, but I never was up late enough to see her show.  No, the first horror host I really knew was the undeniable Count Floyd - and I'm still pretty excited to have viewed him.

Though the character originated on the sketch comedy bonanza SCTV, my experience with Count Floyd was due to Joe Flaherty's appearances on the animated spin-off The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley.  On most episodes, Count Floyd would promise a "real scary story", though his show-within-a-show never seemed to turn out the way he wanted it too.  Count Floyd didn't necessarily teach me anything about horror - but it's another one of those things that kept horror in my mind and made me smile.

OK, now we're getting to the real stuff.

What, you're telling me a Nickelodeon show isn't the "real stuff" when it comes to horror? Boy, you're missing out.

It was a much simpler time in my life when SNICK was destination television for The Mike and family.  There was Ren and Stimpy that got me in the door, but then there was Are You Afraid of the Dark.  And this show, to those of us where were 9-11 years old, was basically The Twilight Zone with awesome early '90s kids telling the stories.

Unfortunately, Are You Afraid of the Dark has been a hard show to find on home video, so my memory of the show is pretty bare at this point.  But I remember the excitement, mostly that joyous feeling that seemed to run through the house every Saturday night as we sat down to watch the horror show that was completely OK for us to watch.  I'm not sure that I've been that excited about a TV show since then.

(And, now that I've written this, I find that tons of episodes are on YouTube.  I was dumb for not checking, wasn't I?)

Unsolved Mysteries

I don't think I'm overstating myself when I say that Unsolved Mysteries might have had the biggest impact on my sense of wonder than anything else I watched as a child.  If you don't believe me, talk to the counselor that I had to talk to after I emphatically claimed I saw a UFO at a high school football game.  In retrospect, I may have been a spaz.  But I was not afraid to believe.

And so it came to pass that I hid out in my childhood bedroom with a 13 inch black-and-white TV, listening to Robert Stack tell me about terrible true stories and fantastic tales from people that belonged in looney bins.  I was in awe of this show, and I - because I was about 8 or 9 years old when I started devouring every episode - kind of let myself believe everything I saw.  Seriously, I think this show is about 90% responsible for how insane I am now. And I kind of love that about it.  Robert Stack, you complete me. 

Tales From The Crypt

Like Stephen King was in my post on books, this was kind of my graduation from being a kid with horror.  My parents might not know it, but I was up way later than they thought on most Saturday nights during my teenage years.  But unlike others in the family - *cough*my sister*cough* - I wasn't out partying and missing curfew.  I was laying in bed and watching syndicated episodes of Tales from its first few seasons on network television.

By the time I got around to Tales From the Crypt I had already seen a lot of horror cinema - more on that next week - but there was something about the Cryptkeeper that made me feel like an official horror freak every time I watched Tales.  Did I still change the channel every time he unleashed his blood-curdling laugh in the opening? Well....I'm going to plead the fifth on that one. I'm not going to tell you that I was a giant scaredy cat who was tucked safely under the covers with his feet nowhere near the edge of the bed.  That would be too much incriminating information.  I'm not saying it.

But it might have happened.
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Television played a big part in leading me to horror, even if there was a heavy dose of comedy and  plenty of cheese involved.  It wasn't the biggest piece of my horror fandom, but these shows definitely filled some of the gaps and reminded me how much I loved the spooky and macabre in my entertainment.  But movies were always where I felt horror lived....which means we can talk about them next week.

As always, join in the comments and let me know what kind of TV shows inspired your love of horror.  Next week I'll talk more about my horror birth via movies. I promise you'll be a little surprised by what you learn.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm watching some Are You Afraid of the Dark.

How The Mike Met Horror, Volume 1 - The Books

I told y'all it was coming, and now it's here.  As the main course of From Midnight With Love's October festivities, I offer up an autobiography in four chapters, listing the inspirations that led me to become the dude I am today.

The first of four categories might be a surprise to some, as I discuss how books influenced my path to blogdom.  I often crack wise about books, because I'm lazy now that I'm old and mostly watch movies, but it would be a bald-faced lie if I told you all that books aren't important to the growth of anyone.  Do you think I could sit here and type these semi-sentences and use words that are probably too big for the point I'm trying to make if I hadn't read a butt-load of books? Of course I couldn't.  (Though, to be fair, few of the books I've read use words like "butt-load".  That's a different story for a different day.)
Not all of these books are exactly works of art...but they all had a special place in making The Mike happen.  And that's why I'm here tonight. So let's do this.

(And, if you missed the explanation behind this series, you should know that all credit for this idea belongs to the wonderful Mrs. Christine Hadden over at Fascination With Fear, who does lists better than anyone in the Western Hemisphere. For that, I salute her.)

The Spooky Old Tree

The legend may have grown over the years - I think one version of this story has me wrestling a bear - but one of my very first memories is "learning to read" The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree when I was not yet three years old. It was my absolute favorite bed time story, and it was read to me so many times that my parents and I claim that I could pick up the book and re-tell the story to myself while I was still two years old.  Again, I'm not sure if this actually happened - I don't believe I've ever been that smart - but I know that the first thing I remember loving to pieces was this horror tale for children.

It's been a long time since I was that little boy who (pretended to) read a book for its horror contents, but I'm relatively sure I can still recite the book word for word.  (It starts with "Three little bears. One with a light, one with a rope, and one with a stick.")  At my current age, I'm not sure there are many chills - or as the book calls them "shivers" - left for me in The Spooky Old Tree.  But I'm pretty sure that this was the first horror story I learned, and that makes it extraordinarily special to me.

Those Orange Back Monster Books from the Library

These books actually have a name - the Crestwood House Monsters Series - but if you ask any monster fan who grew up in the late '70s and early '80s they probably know what you mean when you mention "the orange back books".  At least in my neck of the woods, they were kind of a big deal.

As best as I can remember, each book focused on one classic monster and retold the story of their films in a matter of fact way.  Even though they were re-telling fictional events, the way they were presented made them feel like they were basically research books for monster nerds.  In fact, I did a project on monsters for a school fair when I was in 2nd grade, and these were my main source of information.  I'm not saying I was the star of the show - that'd be boasting - but I don't remember anyone else from that 2nd grade fair whose booth was as popular as mine. I don't remember anything else from that 2nd grade fair, actually. But I know that I was awesome, and that (at least according to my mother) I've been a superstar ever since. (My mom never actually said that. But I know she would say it.)

The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Series

As I got a little older, things like The Spooky Old Tree just weren't scary enough for little The Mike.  So, I asked for more "scary" stories...and I literally found more scary stories.  In this case, I found scary in three books of folk tales compiled by Alvin Schwartz, which retold urban legends and ghost stories that have been passed down through the generations and complemented them with spooky illustrations.  I feel like a lot of my respect for horror history came from these books, because this was about the time when I started trying to remember these horror stories so I could re-tell them myself.  I understood the idea that these were passed down through time, and that really lit my horror fire.

One of the first horror tales to truly corrupt my mind came from one of these books.  It follows two farm brothers and an abused scarecrow named Harold, who - naturally by horror standards, but surprisingly by young The Mike standards - rises up and gets revenge on the farmers who torture him.  I forgot the details of this story for years - even lamenting my inability to recall the "perfect" scarecrow story I once loved in a review once - but I always had the image of the scarecrow atop the farmhouse in the distance stuck in my brain.  And then I remembered that everything is on YouTube and found the audio of the story. And it was good.

The Amityville Horror

My relationship with The Amityville Horror is kind of like that line from The Royal Tenenbaums. To paraphrase - "We all know that The Amityville Horror isn't true...but what I'm presupposing is: Maybe it is."  I mean, I'd seen the movie, I'd heard how it wasn't real, even though a bunch of money grubbing folks tried to say it was. I was smart enough to know crud when I heard crud.

At the same time, I must admit that the presentation of this tale - at least to a middle school version of The Mike - was quite convincing.  I know it's hard to explain, just like that circular Tenenbaums quote that was intended for comedic purposes, but the part of me that knew this was all bollocks also wanted to believe that it wasn't. I sat there and I read the book and I was like "This isn't real...but it could be." I guess I just wanted to keep the horror dream alive, and The Amityville Horror at least gave me a chance to talk about a horror story and say it was a little bit true.  (Even though none of the horror parts were.)

The works of Stephen King

There's not a lot I need to say about why Stephen King is important, and I already said most of what I could say about King last October.  Yet I'm sure that many other horror fanatics out there can relate to the feeling I had when I first read King's work.  It was as if I had graduated from childhood horror fan to adult horror fan.  Y'know that feeling you got when you first got to watch R-rated movies or got to drive the car without your parents? It was that feeling, but with horror stories.  I was in the horror big leagues.

My first King novel was Insomnia, his over-long tale of geriatric fright that isn't the best representation of his talents.  But I was too pumped up by the fact that I was reading Stephen King to care.  I kept reading his works throughout my teenage years, and my love for horror only continued to grow.  As I learned more about The Shining and The Dead Zone and all these other King tales I'd seen in movies and on TV, I learned that there's a lot that can be done for horror in print that can't be done on screen.

Frankenstein

I thought I loved Frankenstein from the moment I read those orange back books and even more when I saw the Karloff movie. But it wasn't until I went to college that I randomly picked up a copy of the book, mostly because I was buying textbooks and saw it on the shelf for an English course that I wasn't taking and bought it anyway.  And while I was sitting in the laundry room waiting for my laundry to get done (What? I'm from a small town, I didn't know if I could trust a tower full of 500 18-21 year olds), I read the whole thing over two nights. (This might be why I didn't have many friends, but that's OK. I'm an introvert anyway.)

Going from littleville to college was a big culture shock for me, but it was this reading of Frankenstein that reminded me of something great about horror.  People sometimes give horror a bad name by pointing out examples of the genre that aren't exactly high art, yet Mary Shelley's novel - which makes the monster a more introspective being than even Karloff could - reminded me that horror can tap into scholarly and artistic avenues as well.  I planned to grow up and be an intelligent adult, and Frankenstein was a reminder that I didn't need to leave horror behind to do so.

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I'm not sure that "intelligent adult" thing has worked out yet, but at least I still love my horror.  And next week I'll share another few items that strengthened this love of horror in Volume 2 of this series. So come on back then, and if you have your own favorite horror books from times in your life as a horror fan, please do share them in the comments below. Until then, enjoy another selection from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which presents a scenario that you may recognize from a horror film of the '70s.  Until next time!