Horror Blog Of The Month: HORROR MOVIE A DAY

Autumn arrived, Halloween is near...

October's "Horror Blog Of The Month" is here!! :)

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, yes!

It's a real honour for me to present you this month's horror blog, especially because this was the very first Horror Blog I've ever stumbled upon on the Internets.

"HORROR MOVIE A DAY", the uber-amazing and almost insane definition of a daily-updated blog, created by BD-writer and Twitter-addict Brian Collins who watches a horror movie a day - yep, every single day since 2007!!!

I love this blog, not only because of the insanity behind it (my goodness, that's at least 365 horror movies a year!!), but also because of his awesome writing style. His reviews are sharp and to the point; easy-to-read, informative and entertaining.

Oh, and he also has a great taste in horror, especially because he's a HUGE Carpenter-admirer.

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Maynard:

Hi Brian! Who are you and why do you blog?

Brian:

I am BC, aka Brian Collins. I write www.horrormovieaday.com and contribute to BadAssDigest and Bloody Disgusting. I blog because I enjoy it; while it's great to watch movies just for the fun of it, when I really care about a topic (i.e. horror films) I like to put those thoughts out there for others to read and hopefully open up a discussion.

Which movie made you a horror fan (and why)?

Poltergeist I guess... I know I saw it when I was like 4 or 5 because my first horror movie in a theater was Poltergeist II, which came out when I was 6. And all of my other horror/childhood memories are from when I was 7 or 8.  It's not a personal favorite or anything (though it's quite good and easily my favorite haunted house film, a genre I don't care much for on the whole), but that was certainly a gateway.

Who is your favorite horror director (and why)?

Carpenter. Now and forever.

Even if he never makes another great film again, his run from Assault on Precinct 13 to They Live is pretty much spotless.  Even though it's not all horror, it's an amazing run of classic films - Halloween, The Thing, Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China  - and no one else has ever been that consistent.  

Like, I love Wes Craven too, but he's never made three great films in a row, let alone 10 or whatever Carpenter did. Halloween being my all time favorite film (not just horror) doesn't hurt, either.

Your alltime horror favorites are...

Originals unless noted:
Halloween, Dawn of the Dead, The Thing (82), Texas Chain Saw, Tourist Trap, Blair Witch Project, The Descent... and Shocker.

What's the worst horror movie you've seen so far?

Toss up between 'Murder Set Pieces' and 'Beneath the Mississippi'.  Each represent half of what's wrong with modern horror filmmaking: 

in MSP's case it's a guy who thinks being super violent and "shocking" is all you need to make a good horror film, 

and for Mississippi it's a horrendously made, self-indulgent bore that they clearly didn't even finish editing (it doesn't even have a consistent aspect ratio) before sending it off for distribution.  I even wrote an article for BadassDigest about these indie filmmakers who are putting their films out without actually taking the time to do a proper post production job, and Mississippi was the one that inspired me to do so.

Most of my friends don't like horror movies. What about your friends?

When I was growing up, not so much.  Went to a catholic school and apparently my parents were the only ones awesome enough to let me watch this sort of stuff.  I went with a bunch of 8th grade classmates to see The Crow and it was the first R-rated movie for some of them PERIOD, let alone in the theater (whereas I had lost count by that point).  

Met my hetero life mate Jeff in high school though, and he loved horror as much if not more than I did, so that started changing things around. 
And now in LA, pretty much all of my friends are fellow horror site writers or even horror filmmakers/actors.  So now it's the opposite, I have very few friends who DON'T like horror.

Choose:

Freddy? Leatherface? The Tall Man? Michael? Other?

Michael all the way.  Even though more of his movies are bad than good, he's always been the most interesting to me, and apart from Friday the 13th 4: Final Chapter, the only movies I've genuinely been afraid to watch alone as a kid were Halloween films.

Choose:

US horror? European horror? Asian horror? Other?

Hate to sound racist but US.  It offers the most variety.  Asian slasher or zombie films are very few and far between, but you can toss a rock and hit a dozen of them about vengeful ghosts.  And on the other hand, how many haunted house or giant monster films have you seen from Italy? 
Not that I don't like foreign horror - I'm hitting up Fantastic Fest next week and pretty much everything I want to see comes from European countries - but when I'm watching stuff every day I feed on variety so I don't get sick of it.  That said, I can probably count on one hand the number of French horror films I haven't liked, with fingers left over.  I don't know what it is, but they are consistently delivering terrific films.

Dou you prefer watching horror at home or at the theater?

Depends.  Theater for the most part, but like, I watched two movies nearly back to back at a festival last year that were about agoraphobic characters, and thus the entire movie was set in their house.  Movies like that would probably play better at home. 

That said, if a local revival theater is showing a classic like Evil Dead 2 on 35mm and you claim that you don't want to go because you have the DVD, you're as good as dead to me.

What music do you like?

Maybe because I spend so much time watching people getting killed, my brain needs to balance - I listen to a lot of what music critics would dub "radio friendly rock".  Lifehouse, Daughtry, Tonic, 3 Doors Down... that sort of stuff. I have Staind on right now, in fact.  I won't defend it to music snobs, and I get why most folks of "taste" don't like this stuff, but what can I say, I love it.  

However, my two favorite artists are Meat Loaf (specifically his work with Jim Steinman, i.e. the two Bat out of Hell albums and various other songs over the years) and Blue October, who fits into that rock category a bit but not very radio friendly, I don't pay much attention to the radio but I think they've only had one radio hit in over a decade of releasing albums.  

I also love film scores, not too many horror ones, but action/adventures - scores by Hans Zimmer, Trevor Rabin, those guys.

What do you read?

Lately? Nothing. Rarely have time; I've been reading Del Toro's THE STRAIN for the past year, I get through like 5 pages a week (mostly on the can).  I try to keep up with Rue Morgue and Fangoria but I have an unread stack of those too.   Used to read a ton when I commuted to work (while living in Boston), I'd get through a book every week or two.  Not a bad trade for a ten minute drive like I have now though.  More time for HMAD and Xbox!

Tell me the first 3 things that come to your mind when you think about Austria:

Um... the Dumb and Dumber bit, Schwarzenegger... and this question. Sorry!

Anything else you wanna tell us?

Just to your LA readers - come out to the monthly Horror Movie A Day screenings at the New Beverly!  Great movies, lots of free DVDs for easy "trivia" questions ("What movie are you here to see?" was one recent question), and frequent Q&As all for only 7 bucks.  Last month we had Dean Cundey out to talk about Psycho II; got Wes and a few cast members for Shocker a while back, and pretty much everyone from the Hatchet movies for a double feature of those earlier this year.  Good times.  

And if you're on Twitter and don't mind a LOT of daily tweets, follow me there at @brianwcollins.

Thank you Brian!

http://www.horrormovieaday.com/

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