Are these the Good Old Days for you?
I can’t help but be very happy. It’s an incredible time to be a horror fan. Movie watcher and reader. Yes, I know that there is a lot to be desired from current horror motion pictures. But stop to think about it a minute. How many truly great horror films have there been? 20? 30? 50? Maybe more, but I don’t think there really has been all that many. There have been thousands produced and the vast majority are inferior productions. I’m not saying that I don’t like them…not at all. I tend to like most horror movies from the past. I like a lot of them for nostalgia or other feelings of affection.
And I really like a lot of the new films. Sure, they’ve ratcheted the violence up several notches, but so did the beloved films of my generation. Friday the 13th and the other slasher films of the early 80’s. Horror fans as well as other movie aficionados decried the overuse of explicit violence and lack of literacy in the screenplays. I see the same thing in the movies of Alexandre Aja and Eli Roth. I feel the same kind of excitement now as was going on then. And in both cases the films did big business, despite the critics.
And the horror fiction genre has gone off the charts. Never and I mean never has there been as much product out there for readers to choose from. Even in the fabled ‘boom’, it was nothing like it is now. Of course we owe most of our gratitude to the Small Press. When the New York houses stopped publishing our beloved genre, independent publishers took control of the situation and brought the goods to roost. It’s another boom, with slightly different rules.
As with any boom, the abundance of product out there varies wildly. There is some incredible stuff being published, and there is a lot of decent material too. And like in the old days, there are cases where the buyer must indeed beware.
In the late 80’s, when things were so good, I would sometimes have up to six or seven books piled up in my Read Me stack. Now I’ve lost count of the number of books I want to read. I’ll never get to them all and I continue to acquire more.
And the mass market is putting out horror in decent numbers again. The racks are filling up, if you go to a place like Borders that is smart enough to have a horror section. And there’s more than the very biggest names on them.
Of course, our world is filled with more real-life horror than ever before. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to read the news and not become overwhelmed by it all. Terrorists. Nuclear crises. Hunger. Violence. Disease. Environmental disasters. Economic Ruin. Killers and other assorted madmen and freaks that look just like we do.
The world, however, has always been a dangerous place. Having children has always been a risky venture. Stories in history books always look rosy from the victor’s point of view, but rulers have always lied and stolen from their population, I believe. Created war for greed or vainglorious reasons. Life expectancies were lower and a lot of children never reached adulthood in times past.
Your cup can be half filled or half empty, as that old chestnut goes. I think most of us have it pretty good these days. Not all, certainly, but most. People are gradually becoming more tolerant and respectful of others. Advancements in medicine and technology are surpassing the dreams of the old SF writers.
And we as horror fans have it especially good. Despite alarms of stripped freedoms, all manner of horror abound today. Books, movies, music and art; more great things than just about any of us can afford. More supply than demand, it would seem.
I’ve had a hard year. I lost my brother to cancer and we’ve had some extremely trying family situations that threatened to tear us apart. Yet we survived and persevered. Emerged stronger and happier than ever. It took patience, hard work and a lot of love.
I’m happy.
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