I have said it before, many times, and will no doubt say it again . . .my love for the genre began when I was somewhere between the ages of 5 and 7. I remember that the babysitter used to let me stay up late at weekends, recording as much of my parents' vinyl collection as he could, and buying my silence and good behaviour by allowing me to stay up and watch the double-bills that were being shown on TV late at night. I was drawn to all of the archetypes, anything undead and/or fanged was thrilling to me, and I was even more won over by the delights of the genre when I saw my first "evil buxom wench" in a film that I assumed was a Hammer horror. It wasn't. It was a film that evaded me for many years, until I could make use of the wonderful world wide web, a Tigon movie called The Creeping Flesh, and the fiery young woman who made me wonder what the world had in store for me in my adult years was the lovely Lorna Helibron.
I could also tell you about my parents renting a top-loading VCR, impressing visitors who gathered around the glow of Creepshow while I sat in the background, being quiet and pretending to sleep while I was being traumatised by the tales within the film (to this day, I have no idea how I managed not to scream and run out the room during the finale of "They're Creeping Up On You").
Or being an excitable ten-year-old when my mother finally got a VHS copy of A Nightmare On Elm Street. We watched it, I was terrified, I loved it. I went to bed and thought I could hear noises from outside, Freddy WAS coming to get me (even though I lived up on the third floor). 'I know', I though to myself, 'now that everyone else is asleep I will put my bedside lamp on and sleep peacefully, then get up before anyone else in the morning and turn it off. Job done.' The only minor problem with my cunning plan was that, as a child, I could easily sleep in until midday, if left alone. I NEVER woke up before the adults, apart from in response to that body clock alarm that would alert me to the Saturday morning kid show extravaganza, and I didn't manage it on that morning. My mother came in, her raised voice made her disapproval clear, and, worst of all, I was told that I wouldn't be getting to watch any more scary movies until I was old enough to handle them.
That threatened punishment never happened, thankfully, and I continued to fill my head with all manner of horrors, starting my journey seeking real frights and thrills and eventually growing to love the variety of entertainment offered up by the genre, from the thought-provoking to the simple gorefest.
You may wonder why I have written all of this when I could have delivered a review of Why Horror? Well, every horror fan has a story like this one. It is good to share those stories, especially when you are in the company of friends, old and new. But watching a whole documentary about one person trying to act as if the appeal of the genre is still some huge mystery isn't half as good as making a personal connection.
Nicolas Kleiman and Rob Lindsay direct, with the latter also being responsible for some of the writing, and there are a good selection of people offering their thoughts (George A. Romero, Alexandre Aja, Eli Roth, Don Coscarelli, etc), but it's a shame that Zimerman is a "host" without anything to separate him from so many other horror fans. He's not bad, he's just not in any way more interesting or unique than at least twenty people I could choose right now from my list of fellow fright fans.
Why Horror? It's a question that everyone who loves the genre already knows the answer to, making this a completely pointless exercise, especially when there are a number of better genre-centric documentaries that are worthy of your time.
3/10
Pick something much better from Arrow Films here.
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