You get old. Can't help it, unless you die young. You change as the aging process proceeds. Maybe your tastes aren't as hardboiled as they once were.

I've always been a gorehound. A died-in-the-wool, deadicated, howlin' at the moon gore lover. It's fun.

Some people don't, can't, and won't understand it. That's OK, there are a lot of things out there that I don't understand. Like why people get all worked up watching grown men fight over a ball. It'd be awfully boring if we all had the same tastes.

Other than the thrill of watching an effective gore sequence, one of the attractions of being a gorehound is how offensive it is to so many individuals. That's a great way for a rebellious lad to thumb his nose at the world, and especially his dreaded parents' generation. Wearing an offensive tee shirt did more than just demonstrate to the world my love of all thing splattery. It rubbed their noses in something they found detestably .

But, as I said, age creeps along. You can't stop it, unless your heart stops. And maturity is a good thing. We can't be kids forever, no matter how badly we fight it.

I still love horror, but I find myself watching fewer gore movies than in my past. In the 80's and 90's, I devoured them. These days I'm much more apt to watch a comedy or a indie drama. Or relive the glory days of my youth by putting in the beloved 80's comedies that I loved so much.

But, dammit, I don't want to grow old. We can't stop the aging of our bodies, but we can try to keep our minds fresh, youthful, rebellious. I still consider myself a gorehound, even though I don't watch as much as I used to. I still appreciate a great Giannetto De Rossi or Tom Savini effect. I still want to be a serpent in a swamp on a Saturday night, as The Cramps' anthemic I Ain't Nothin' But a Gorehound deliriously proclaims. I want to break out Cannibal Holocaust or Don't Answer the Phone now and then. I still think Fulci is a God of Horror, and that Ruggero Deodato is criminally underrated. I think there is raw power in those crude old Herschell Gordon Lewis movies.

Still, there's that aging, maturification thing. Many newer horror movies make me feel hopelessly out of touch. I didn't care for The Collector, and I don't see the attraction of the Saw movies. Even though the series is the most successful the genre has seen since the good old days of Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger. And I certainly do not see the entertainment factor of movies like The Human Centipede and A Serbian Film.

Then again, I like the oft-despised Eli Roth and his Hostel movies. I loved Piranha 3D. I hated the Friday the 13th remake, but I found the Elm Street redux enjoyable enough. I adored the highly controversial The Last Exorcism.

But maybe we don't need to love everything. An undiscriminating gorehound isn't much better than those that thing themselves too sophisticated to enjoy a bloody good movie. And I think age can enhance one's taste. Still, I liked the genuinely juvenile and cretinous Piranha 3D, which I hope proves that I haven't lost my youthful enthusiasm for high-spirited, lowbrow fun.

People that don't get why we love movies that focus on human misery and death will almost certainly never understand why we have devoted so much of our lives to them. I used to try to explain it to people, but I no longer bother. It's like trying to explain why we love rock and roll. It's something you feel in your bones and to the depths of your soul.

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