Horror fans of all ages. I Implore you! Watch out! The EGG-HEADED DESTROYERS are among us and determined to extinguish you and every horror movie you love. They’ve decimated the once vital indie/art house movie scene with their endless overanalyzing and have set their beady, pretentious eyes on what used to be the most unaffected, loose and free genre of filmmaking left. The horror genre. And we are to blame for their infestation of our ranks.

You know the type. You’ve met them at horror film festivals, in line at the movie theater, they may even be a friend of yours. Their the ones who blab on about on about how they prefer “smart” horror films and despise the “slasher film cycle” or “torture porn” or some other bullshit term. They expect every horror film to have some socio/political aspect to discuss. They assume that any sequel to any horror film is inherently worthless. They read books and watch documentaries on horror movies instead of rolling up their sleeves and actually watching some. They go along with whatever the standard opinion is of movies they’ve never seen. They hate the trashy, pulpy type of cinema that has entertained fans for years. And they hate YOU.

These EGG-HEADED DESTROYERS are on a quest to justify their Liberal Arts degrees or something. How did they become this way? So innocently, really. They took a few cinematic studies courses in college, saw a classic movie or two, some foreign films , read a Ray Bradbury book, watched a Takashi Miike film and it made them feel special. Superior, if you will, to the millions who don’t do these things. So now they must prove how much more intelligent they are from you because they understood the twist ending in High Tension. To them a movie can’t simply entertain, it has to be the subject of a thesis paper.

The EGG-HEADED DESTROYERS constantly lecture about how the conventions or cliches of the horror genre are what is killing it. I beg to differ. I believe what’s killing horror movies are the conventions and the cliches of the criticism aimed at horror movies.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to enjoy a good horror movie. It’s genre filmmaking. Genre filmmaking is supposed to cater to a specialized audience, an audience looking for something specific to their own tastes. Action. Romance. Comedy. Sci-Fi. Fantasy. Whatever the genre they all offer something specific to the audience drawn to them. And lets not forget that within each genre there are a jillion sub-genres that cater to even more unique tastes. Romantic Comedy. Romantic Drama. Sci-Fi Comedy, Sci-Fi Action, Action Comedy. Dramedy. Sci-Fi Drama. Horror Comedy. Horror Sci-Fi Comedy. Zombie Comedy. Zombie Rom-Com. Horror Western. Romantic Zombie Western Com…you get the point.

Lets go to our dictionaries egg heads.

Webster’s defines Genre as : a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.

It’s all in the particulars folks.

Genre films are not supposed to play by the rules that govern mainstream movies. Mainstream movies must appeal to the broadest possible audience by offering characters and storylines that are easily relatable to most people. Genre filmmaking can be unique in it’s presentation. Those things that your average movie needs to do so that you, your parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbors, Uncle Joe and Aunt Ruth can all share and enjoy it, a genre film doesn’t need to because genre knows who it’s audience is and expects it’s audience to already know where it’s going. You, your parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbors, Uncle Joe and Aunt Ruth all liked E.T. right? That’s mainstream. Popular. You expect your parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbors, Uncle Joe and Aunt Ruth to all like The Hills Have Eyes Part 2? Really? That movie wasn’t made for them. Unless, of course you have the coolest circle of family and friends on earth.

For example the truly tiresome and ever ready criticism of “there was no character development” or “characters that I could relate to” is gratuitous. Sure it’s a great thing when a genre film can surprise you with an unexpected depth of character. But the point is that it doesn’t need to. Genre films, especially horror films, are allowed to concern themselves with one thing; the effect. Not special effects, mind you. But the effect of trying to frighten you, disturb you, gross you out, horrify you. All a fan of horror needs to know is who the bitchy girl is, who the nerdy best friend is, or the crazed doctor on a vengeful quest, or the long suffering mother hiding a secret, or the worn out old sheriff, etc etc. Usually they just hire some actor who has played that type of character before and let them do all the work. Example, Aldo Ray. How many damn sheriffs did this man play in his long exploitation career? And how many twitchy psychopaths have we seen Jeffrey Combs embody? Same goes for Brad Douriff, the scumballs of David Hess, the evil head nurses of Priscilla Pointer and, yes, the virginal final girls personified by Jaime Lee Curtis. The actor brings all the character development an audience needs with them in a genre film.

And the next time an EGG-HEADED DESTROYER goes on about a story being unbelievable backhand him in the face and tell him Gary G sent it. It’s fantasy, illusion, made up shit. A horror story can be anything it wants. Like all imaginative fiction horror starts from the basic “What if?” What if the dead came back to life? What if a doll could be a serial killer? What if a little girl was possessed by the devil? What if a vacationing family was attacked by a family of cannibals? What if? What if? What if? If you want to see reality watch the Discovery Channel. Movies are fantastic imaginings of the real world. Very few movies, even prestige Oscar winning character films like Crash and can be called realistic, even with all its predictable Syd Field screenplay guidebook approved character development bullshit. Why do these egg head destroyers suppose that movies should always adhere to the strict standards of reality? These types will always take one minor point to tear a movie down with. You know I could believe that Gremlins existed but when they started drinking beer it was totally unbelievable. Poor saps. They just cant enjoy anything unless it posses a mild intellectual challenge.

I know there is some twat reading this who is gonna trot out the well worn platitude “all films are governed by the same principles, story and character” BULLSHIT! Movies are visceral. Back to the dictionary egg heads.

VISCERAL : not intellectual : instinctive, unreasoning (visceral drives) 3 : dealing with crude or elemental emotions : earthy (a visceral novel)

Amen Mr. Webster! If that doesn’t say it all I don’t know what does.

What the EGG-HEADED DESTROYERS don’t get is that a movie is sometimes more than the sum of it’s parts. Even if a movies acting is shit, and the editing is crap, and the dialogue laughable and the storyline ridiculous or just nonexistent it can still provide endless pleasure for the observant viewer; meaning a viewer in tune with his or her own personal tastes. And I mean personal. Not what Richard Roeper thinks is good, not what entertains your mom, not what ends up on the American Film Institutes list of great movies. A film’s power can go deeper than any intellectual classification. Problem is these Egg Heads think that they are mini-eberts and as such need to quantify every single aspect of a movie in order to judge it properly. What they forget, and what most critics today forget is that when you pull something apart to see how it works you lose something of the mystery, the power, the enchantment of the experience. This post-film-school-dropout mentality has completely destroyed many filmgoers ability to enjoy a piece of pop art for what it is.

And what’s more, genre fans are not supposed to give a fuck what the prevailing attitude towards them are. Past generations of young horror fans went right ahead enjoying their “degenerative” “moronic” “immoral” horror products oblivious to any criticism. That is why the slasher films rule in the early eighties irked so many cultural and film critics at the time. These films were successful despite what was said about them. The quickest way to anger an Egg-Head is too ignore what they think, it makes them feel unpopular, which then brings up too many hurtful adolescent memories. So of course the likes of Siskel and Ebert, Joel Siegel, Leonard Maltin, Michael Medved, among others, had to pour on the vitriol. Nobody was listening to them. I see the same shades of this in all the gleeful talk about the demise of so-called “torture porn”. It’s the same old bullshit people just different assholes.

Genre movies are supposed to live outside the boundaries of the conventional critical barbs slung at them. They are not trying to do the same thing that a movie like A Mighty Heart is trying to do, which is the ever popular shine the light on the human condition thing your creative writing teacher told you about. Every professional critic seems to use this as their ruler to measure a movie with. Did it shine a light on the human condition? As if that’s the only reason people go to the movies. The millions of people, worldwide, who keep going to see the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, despite their increasingly befuddling plots, you really believe that they are looking for a deepening understanding of their world through the exploits of an effeminate pirate? No, they are looking for visceral, that word again, thrills. Whether it’s Commando, Ace Ventura, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Porky’s, Sudden Impact, Deepstar Six, License to Drive, Final Analysis, Soapdish, or whatever the fuck, genre films offer visceral, instinctive, earthy experiences. So they can exist solely by the rules of that particular genre. Whether it does well what other movies like it do should be the only real criticism.

They seem to think there is something to fear when one sub-genre among many becomes so popular. The horror genre has always needed a sub-genre to pull the rest of it along. Most mainstream audiences simply cannot veer from the Saw films to Shaun of the Dead to The Others, to The Hills Have Eyes to the Blade series to Seed of Chucky to The Ring to House of a 1000 Corpses to Eight Legged Freaks to Land of the Dead to Slither to The Descent to Freddy vs. Jason to The Grudge to Hostel without completely misunderstanding one if not most of them. A true fan of the genre can veer between these disparate genre creations and appreciate them all for their particular entertainment value. That’s not to say that you should like them all. You just have to be a bit more understanding than your average Saturday Night Mutiplex Drone who just wants to see whatever is popular that week. Other wise, can you call yourself a real fan of the genre? Things that make you go hmm….

If not for the success of Hostel, Saw, The Devils Rejects and other targets of the EGG-HEAD set would we have gotten the Masters of Horror series or been allowed to see the likes of The Descent, Shaun of the Dead and High Tension on american movie screens or see the publication of so many new magazines devoted to horror or the growing horror comics boom or see the long out of print works of authors like Jack Ketchum and Thomas Tessier make it to the check out isles at Target or the popularity of a website like this. No. No. No. It happens every ten years or so and it’s almost always the movies. If horror is popular on movies screens it’s popular everywhere. and if one sub-genre (slasher, torture porn, zombie comedy, splatstick, possession film, gothic vampire story, ghost story, serial killer thriller, etc) has to do all the heavy lifting I say Thank You. Sure, a lot of rip-offs will get produced but there’s always something different, something unusual, something atypical that will slip under the radar. If there is no radar then nothing gets by, on radar or under it.

Remember the mid-nineties dry up of all things horror? Do we really want a return to that? That’s what happened when the EGG-HEADS were through beating down eighties horror because they didn’t like the “slasher film cycle”. They forgot that’s also when we got Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator, Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series among others. All classics. All helped getting through to audiences because Friday the 13th was banking cash like mad.

The EGG-HEADED DESTROYERS aren’t satisfied with ruining our good time either. It’s funny watching the same type of people wring their hands over the ridiculous success of movies like Wild Hogs or Norbit and other such Hollywood bile. Now honestly I would rather rip my eyeballs from their socket than see either one of those movies. But somebody found them funny. Whoever the millions of poor, sad fuckers who packed the multiplexes to see the horribly racist turd-water that was Norbit, or the obnoxious mugging of John Travolta and Martin Lawrence in Wild Hogs were, they have the right to enjoy their crap without me interjecting. Just like I have the right to enjoy mine.

Now lest you believe that I am simply some idiot who only wants to see dumb horror lets just get this straight; only the most backwards, idiotic type of filmgoer doesn’t appreciate the horror genres unique ability to reach for artistic and dramatic heights that no other type of film can. Because horror explicitly deals with the forbidden, the uncanny, the unbelievable, the deranged, the repulsive and so on it can hit an audience where it really hurts. The point is, it doesn’t always have to do that, it can simply use all of those ingredients to entertain. Do we need to keep trying to prove this to non-fans by tearing down anything with nothing on it’s mind but entertainment? Whether you are entertained by a particular film or not is your own problem, that doesn’t mean that if I liked it I am any less intelligent or that a mindless, fun ride like Wrong Turn, or Bride of Chucky, or Alien vs. Predator doesn’t have a place within the genre. The genre is big enough to hold both Street Trash and May.

We’ve been led to feel ashamed of our own tastes because some need to use pop culture products as a ways of asserting their fragile egos. Because I like this band, or that book, or this television show, or that whatever it may be, I’m better than you! Tell the EGG-HEADED DESTROYERS to go fuck themselves. It’s actually pretty entertaining, because once you rip that cover of self importance off they get all fumbly and nervous and start acting like you’re attacking them and getting teary eyed and shit. By yanking their unearned arrogance away they are left standing their looking like the insecure, needy, geeks they were before they discovered who Akira Kurosawa was. Don’t let another EGG HEAD take your enjoyment away from you. Stop being a pussy when someone attacks you for actually enjoying Halloween Part 3. Attack back! It’s our genre. We can defeat them if we try.

by. Gary G

Discuss BEWARE THE EGG-HEADED DESTROYERS!!! HERE!