Come Dancer, Prancer, SLASHER and Vixen

7:05PM, January 28th, 2006

Oh, I’m so torn! I really want to rip into my DVD collection, yank out Friday the 13th, Part 4 “The Final Chapter” (yet it was followed by some 6 or so sequels) and have a good night in front of a cheesy horror film, but I am holding out to see Parts 2 and 3 before 4. Apparently Part 3 is when Jason dons the hockey mask.

You see, I’m a bit of a fan of horror films. More precisely, “slasher” films. Not the horror films of today, because they use nothing but gore and pointless orchestral stings to scare you, but the ones of the 1980s that were just pure trash for teenagers. I think this is mostly due to my age. During the 80s when these films were coming out, I was a very young kid, and was always told by my parents that the films were far too scary to watch. In fact, I even have a distinct memory of seeing a cut-out of Freddy Kruger at the video store we used to frequent (which is no longer there, and, to give you some context, had a section for Beta tapes). Constantly being told these films were far too scary for me, my imagination was set alight thinking of the gruesome things the films might contain, and I always liked hearing about how the ‘bigger kids’ had watched the latest movies at midnight. Meanwhile, I would run out of the room when the X-Files came on, and I had to close my eyes during the decapitation scene in Clash of the Titans (I have another distinct memory of closing my eyes in one of the last years of primary school when watching this film in class).

When I got a bit older, I loved the Scream series, which is of course responsible for reigniting the genre after it got a little stale in the early nineties. I even watched the I Know What You Did Last Summer double, but never went back to the Jasons or the Freddys because they were still instilled in my mind as far too scary.

Just recently I’ve been going back and have started with the Friday the 13th series. I think I love them most because they hold memories of my childhood I never really knew I had. Hearing Fred Mollin’s heavily synthesised scores of the late 80s (those so beautifully parodied in the Simpson’s Halloween specials) takes me right back to being 5 again, and I enjoy the unnatural feeling that the films are far scarier than they actually are.

Is there anything wrong with meeting half a dozen characters, aware it will all be over by dawn, but knowing it’s going to be one hell of a night?

Now, this is the stuff of (thoroughly enjoyable) nightmares!

PS: If anyone from Australia is feeling similarly “slashy”, both EzyDVD and Atlantic DVD have each of the first 8 films for around $11 each, which will make them about the same price as buying the box set.

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A twenty-two year old ex-student, musician, performer with a degree in creative arts with little idea what to do with it.


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