-- and it's changed for the better. I was thinking of what it was like to be a horror fan in 1983. When I was a kid, it was very hard to see a movie like Plan 9 from Outer Space. I knew about it because it was written about in Michael Medved's Golden Turkey Awards, a snarky book from before the Internet invented snark. Maybe the movie would show up on TV around Halloween, and if so, you might see it, if you were lucky. We got our first VCR in 1983, but generally watched rented movies on it.
But Plan 9, awful as it is, was famous in a way. All fans knew about it because we'd all read the same books. Books was all there was. And think about this-- the books were the only way to know about or even come close to some of these movies. It's not like Werewolf of London came on TV all the time.
Today I can go to the Internet and watch a 1928 silent film version of House of Usher. The very idea is inconceivable to a horror fan in 1983. Danny Peary's Cult Movies was a great boon because it described movies like Black Sunday in depth, but where on earth were you going to see these things? In a sense, in 1983, all old movies were practically lost, or like astronomical phenomena, barely observable directly.
Hello there, I have to say I totally agree with what you're saying, I was into so much of this stuff when I was in grade school(no joke), and back then the closest I could get to some of these movies was these strange hardbacks(well, maybe that was the library binding), that retold a lot of the old Universal movies in a sort of story format. Looking back it was really strange that my "movie memories" were based on books. I have to say I'm loving this blog, keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteGreg
Thanks Greg! I have one request-- if you like it, pass it on! It means a lot to me that someone is reading!
ReplyDeleteI know exactly the books you're talking about-- you mean the Crestwood House books. That was actually my first entry! (see my blog entry on Crestwood books just last week. )
And you're exactly right. I kept those books on a mini-circulation with several other friends, and we could recite chapter and verse on Universal movies that never, ever showed up except at random-- or occasionally it would be Halloween, and some local college would play a Hammer movie, and how could you go? You're 11.