I Was a Teenage Horror Fan...

I found a great article about what The Evil Dead meant to fans. And as Mark Kermode has said in the past; there is a fine line between us and them when it comes to horror (the ‘us’ being horror fans, myself included and the ‘them’ being everyone else). But what this also does is sort of justify what die hard fans see in video nasties (the majority and of course ruling out rape revenge films) and why we keep seeing more and more of these low budget films.

Item: I Was a Teenage Horror Fan or, ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love Linda Blair’ by Mark Kermode (age 36) – (Ill Effects: The Media/Violence debate – Second edition, edited Martin Barker and Julian Petley, 2001, page 131-132)

“The truth is simply that the experience horror fan understands the on-screen action in terms of a heritage of genre knowledge which absolutely precludes the possibility of sadistic titillation. Nowhere in The Evil Dead does the horror fan see the actual torture, mutilation or violence of the human form (as they would do in a John McNaughton’s solidly unfunny Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer). What they see is the playful trashing of a tradition of special effects work, in which the refining of various latex additives has opened up vistas of possibilities for enthusiastic armature film-makers everywhere. To the horroe fans, The Evil Dead is about as threatening as a pop group smashing up their guitars on stage – it’s stupid, but it’s huge fun none the less.”