Happy Halloween!

I thought I would wish everyone a Happy Halloween today wherever you may be. You may notice that I talk quite a bit about horror films on my blog or on Facebook.  I've had a love affair with horror flicks since I was a young child (and like some of you) that was the time when one or two films really scared the crap out of me, what are those two films you ask?  Easy as pie, the first film to scare me was Jaws.  Understandingly so, great white sharks are real.  They can eat you.  Just like in the movie and also in real life.  Nothing scarier than that. Now that I've said that I need to let the World know I own all four Jaws films.  Yep, even Jaws: The Revenge (which I saw in the theater when I was a young teen). What can I say I'm a glutton for punishment.

The other film to really scare the living daylight out of me was The Howling, and no, it's not because Werewolves are real, but we lived on the edge of the desert, and there were coyotes, and that to my young fragile mind (I was seven or so) those could have easily been Werewolves howling outside my bedroom in the dead of the night.

My love of horror also comes from my early comic book reading habits, you see, I was one of those lucky kids where my parents didn't restrict what I read growing up, so I remember at the age of six or so (which puts us at 1983, roughly) I would go down to the lower arcade into the little convience/grocery store and purchased this pack of gum that had a rocket on the cover and a grape jelly-like substance in it and a comic book (for a shiny quarter!), and those comics were the Alan Moore run of Swamp Thing (2nd Series, early 20's issues).

Besides comics, books played a big part in the Gorehound I proudly call myself today.  At the age of eleven (that explains a lot I am sure) I read Clive Barker's The Damnation Game.  I would continue to read Barker for many years (and still do), I read (Stephen) King as well.  But then my friend, who is now my beautiful wife, in my teenage years turned me onto this writer called H.P. Lovecraft. If you know me, you know I love Lovecraft. The Cthulhu Mythos is like my madness inducing security blanket. It's like a found a writer with a kindred spirit whose realms of terror still make me cringe and gibber like a ghoul in a morgue with fresh meat.  Okay, I'll stop being "balls deep" in HPL.  Don't worry, I will never write that phrase again, Dear Reader, oh the images!  The HORROR of it all!

Okay so to review.  Jaws, werewolves, Swamp Thing, Barker, King, Lovecraft... and have a Happy Halloween, get scared, and EAT CANDY!