Yes, even the flat-out terrible ones. Some of them, you've even watched twice. Now you're just frustrated that they don't add new ones regularly enough. On the plus side, your Netflix profile has finally learned that you like horror films and has stopped recommending Richard Curtis movies.
If you're really honest, the names Rick Baker (American Werewolf in London), Rob Bottin (The Thing) and Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead) were more important to you growing up than the names of John Landis, John Carpenter and George Romero. Even today, if you see a film with effects by Baker et al, you can at least be guaranteed of some decent gory moments.
In fact, you're a veritable mine of Nightmare on Elm Street facts and you also know that the words “Elm Street” are never once spoken in Nightmare on Elm Street. And that Freddy has less than seven minutes of screen time in the original film. (Freddy's glove, incidentally, is hanging above the tool shed door in Evil Dead 2).
Nothing by Goblin though. You have never really recovered from Suspiria.
Every year, around the end of August (Thursday to Bank Holiday Monday), the organisers of FrightFest stage a five-day horror film festival in a Leicester Square cinema. It's an event you look forward to every year, as it's both a rare opportunity to see horror movies on the big screen and a chance to meet up with like-minded horror obsessives you've met off Twitter. You're not doing “the sleepy queue” (when fans queue through the night to be first to get their seat of choice when passes go on sale) again though. Once was enough.
Most of the horrible stuff was left to the imagination, so it's not like you actually saw anything, not really. Surely it was more of a black comedy than a horror, no? In fact, you found the whole thing oddly touching. OK, so that one scene was pretty gross, but still...
You have also resigned yourself to the fact that it's only a matter of time before somebody makes a movie with the same killer premise as your genius screenplay, at which point you will go into the mother of all sulks.
You also know that said cameo (“Fred”, the high school janitor), is an allusion to Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy, due to his red and green jumper and his very un-janitor-like hat. Craven also plays a doctor in Scream 2, a tourist in Scream 3, and a coroner in a deleted scene in Scream 4, but that's more than enough Wes Craven cameo trivia to be getting on with.
In June 1983, amid the Video Nasties furore, the Director of Public Prosecutions released a list of 72 films the office believed to violate the Obscene Publications Act. The films were subsequently banned and it quickly became a must-see list for obsessive horror fans everywhere. You spent several years trying to see them all and it gave you an enormous sense of achievement (which you couldn't share with anyone who cared) when you finally managed it. You're secretly annoyed that the rise of the internet has made tracking down obscure films that much easier, though you're relieved that you don't have to trawl car boot sales at weekends any more.
Basically, you plan to dim the lights, load up on Italian food, play horror soundtracks at full blast and watch Argento's entire filmography back to back. You just can't decide whether you should invite anyone else or not.
It's got to the point where even the regular members of other quiz teams know you as “the horror movie guy”. The quiz master now makes it a point to try and stump you every week, but he hasn't managed it yet. Your finest hour was a picture quiz round where you correctly identified all the scary clowns.
This is, in fact, your favourite piece of horror movie trivia. You also know that the original title of Scream was going to be Scary Movie, that E.T. was originally written as a horror film and that the mask used in Halloween is a modified William Shatner Star Trek mask.
Just because the real ones were cheaper.
You're also enjoying the hell out of Bates Motel and you don't care who knows it.
You might not manage to book train tickets until the last minute or know what you're doing for Christmas or New Years yet, but you have a detailed plan for when the zombie apocalypse happens. You've already identified the most secure location to head for, noting that it has good sight lines, a water supply and easy access to fresh food. Also, you never leave the house without a healthy supply of duct tape for fashioning anti-zombie weapons or restraining friends if they turn. Needless to say, you've never missed an episode of The Walking Dead.
Obviously, your horror movies also have an entire shelving unit to themselves, separate from the rest of your DVDs. For appearances' sake, you've organised everything else alphabetically.
You've got the hat, the razor-fingered glove, the stripy jumper, everything. The make-up takes ages to put on each year, but it's totally worth it. However, you've secretly been working on a Hellraiser/Pinhead costume for the last five years and are itching to try it out. Especially now you've blunted all the nails.
OK, so maybe you have a sneaking regard for Jackson's remake of King Kong, but in general, you much prefer the Peter Jackson of Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, Braindead, Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners to the Peter Jackson of The Hobbit, The Lovely Bones, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is your dearest wish that Jackson would return to his roots and make a low-budget splatter horror comedy again, but you know it will never happen.
They then reversed the shot to make it look as creepy as possible.
You can do every Scream movie, too.
The first season of American Horror Story is packed to the gills with horror movie references to everything from classics like The Amityville Horror, The Shining and Rosemary's Baby to '90s movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer or more recent films like The Strangers. Unfortunately, everyone was so annoyed with you pointing out EVERY SINGLE REFERENCE that you had to watch Seasons 2 and 3 on your own.
Also, you're no longer afraid of sudden loud noises in the night, because you realise it's probably just your cat knocking something over. That's also pretty much why you got a cat in the first place.
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