I'm the second oldest of 5 kids, my younger brother and sister were the only ones to ever participate in movie night with me since my older sister hated the idea of scary or weird films and my littlest brother was still in diapers.
Our movie nights were not your usual movie night, we'd all gather round the great big TV that was sitting in a wooden box (you remember the kind) with a big bowl of popcorn and some cokes and my dad would pop in a VHS tape of "The Twilight Zone" he had been ordering them through Readers Digest I think, so they were really fancy chunky VHS tapes with readable opening front covers. All in Black and White.
While my brother and Sister covered their eyes I was enamored by all the amazing stories that unfolded after each monologue by Rod Serling.
I specifically remember being in love with the episode "The Living Doll" which later spawned my love for possessed toy films. I was so much so in love with it that'd I'd want to watch that episode over and over along with "5 Characters in Search of an Exit" and the story about the boy who could send people to the corn field.
After months of "The Twilight Zone" we moved on to "The Outer Limits" from there it was classic "Star Trek" with William Shatner and then "Wild, Wild West" my dad couldn't track down episodes of Rod Serling's "Night Gallery" so eventually he turned to his bizarre collection of VHS horror films.
The very first film we watched was "Island of Terror" which made my brother and sister scream in horror at the Silicates who lived off human bones. I remembering drawing scenes of the character who had his arm cut off with an axe in my notebook at school and my parents having to explain themselves to the school's guidance counselor.
Our next film was "The Killer Shrews" I remember that one vividly, and it had never occurred to me that the giant shrews were really dogs with shag carpet wrapped around them.
After we ran out of classic black and white films like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "The Incredible Shrinking Man" and other such films. after that we watched a lot of Kung Fu movies, "Blind Fury" and "The Seven Faces of Dr Lao".
But I was waiting to get into the real good stuff, I would sit in our family room and look at the cases of all these strange looking movies, with weird photo's on the back and even weirder synopsis's.
Finally after a lot of begging and pleading we started to watch the scary stuff...
I remember we watched "An American Werewolf in London". "The Howling", "From Beyond", "Poltergeist", "Re-Animator" and the "Phantasm" series my dad would always tell me and my sister to close our eyes when there was a nude scene or if there was a sex scene he would fast forward, it only occurred to me at a later age that he never told my brother not to look at the scenes where the girls were topless.
Then one night I reached to the very top of the shelf and picked out our film for the evening.
John Carpenter's "The Thing" I remember staring at the blue case, wondering why there was a light coming out of the winter coat. My dad plucked it from my hands and said "Oh this is an excellent film, but I think it might be too scary for you guys."
I remember whining and whining about why we couldn't watch it, since we'd seen Re-Animator (which my mom was not happy about) and that was probabley scarier than this Thing movie.
So my dad signed and put the tape on top of our VCR, we got our popcorn and cokes ready and all sat down to watch.
As the title burned onto the screen I sat on the edge of the couch, throw pillow clutched in my arms watching intently.
The music gave me chills I remember as the sled dog in the film started running from the helicopter.
My little sister had to leave right after Mac and the Doc found the strange body in the Norwegian camp because she was too little to comprehend all the dialogue (and was bored she was little so oh well)
But I stayed, I remember when the sled dog burst apart in the room with the other dogs how scared I was, my eye's were wide the whole time according to my dad. but I didn't hide like my brother did.
As the movie progressed, and got more and more intense, I tried to figure out who the thing could be and by the time the blood test scene came I had to cringe when the close ups of the thumb cutting was shown.
The only time I jumped was when the blood screamed from the petri dish.
By the end of the film where Blair is taking out the last of Outpost31's team unbeknownst to MacReady I was hooked. As the credits came up after the camp was burned and MacReady sat next to Child's I had this great sense of imagination fill me up.
From that point I was into everything horror.
I had loved horror films so much when we'd had our movie nights nut "The Thing" transformed me, I started to collect my own films on VHS with my allowance, and started designing my own T-Shirts. The only one I have left now is "Pumpkinhead" unfortunately.
"The Thing" once again got my parents a call from a school counsellor because I had drawn the scene where the dogs are attacked by the duplicate dog. and many many more graphic drawings.
As I got older I spent a lot of time writing my own short stories about creatures, killers and Ghosts. Which got me classified as a weirdo in school.
When I got my first Digital camera I combined my love for horror films and my new found love for photography and started doing my own amateur modeling which has become quite an art form to me. I have a boyfriend who is also an avid Horror fan, and to this day my mom still blames my dad for turning me into this weird horror movie nerd, with those first few episodes of "The Twilight Zone".
Horror is and always will have a special place in my fan girl heart, especially "The Thing" which set my fandom of the genre into full Swing.~B
