Time to join in on the homework fun/ find a way to procrastinate, so here I am to tell you all about my favorite horror movies.
Fun fact about me: up until I was about 13, I was the complete opposite of a horror fan. I scared way too easily, and had an overactive imagination.
To begin, here's the movie made me a true believer.
Sam Raimi's cult classic, the ultimate experience in grueling horror. I saw this on basic cable when I was 13, and the next day I was at school telling all of my friends about this incredible movie I'd watched the night before. That was it. I was hooked. I also learned from this creatively- even when you're starting out, throw everything you've got into whatever project you're doing, no matter how odd or even possibly alienating it is. Because that makes it unique, and it creates your voice.
I don't know what order the rest really came in. My high school years were spent watching movies of all kinds (I actually had no interest in drawing comics at that point and had my sights set on filmmaking). Here are the ones that I still watch today:
Because John Carpenter understood the power of simplicity and understatement.
Because Stanley Kubrick is a god of filmmaking.
Because I've seen Lionel take the zombie baby to the park way more times than I've ever seen Sam and Frodo walk to Mordor.
Because George A. Romero perfected the zombie story decades ago. And no one has ever topped him (though he rivaled himself with Day of the Dead).
Another fun fact: once I was a senior in high school, I was back into drawing comics. I still preferred film as a medium, but I was drawing storyboards and never actually making movies, so I realized I was better off trying to make comics. I was in an advanced art class that year, and we had a year long assignment. Any medium, any subject. So I decided on doing a comic book. And being the horror fanatic I was, with a particular taste for zombie stories, I decided to do a zombie comic. This comic was to be seen during the senior art show at the end of the year, in a gallery by the school's main office. There was a snag- I'd created a comic that was very faithful to the movies that inspired it, and thus had made something very gory, and very violent, and so it was censored. The whole thing. Apparently, even drawings of just zombies was considered too violent. Needless to say, I was not happy about that.
Sadly, now that zombies have over saturated the mainstream, I view them much the same way I do vampires. They've lost the point really. That being said, I still have a zombie comic in mind I'd like to do someday. Maybe when the current zombie phase has officially died. We'll see.
