Day One: Horror / Supernatural Movie Month

This will be a blog a day for the month of October. As usual, every year I watch a horror movie a day from the two milk crates of horror films residing in my basement. 

When I was about 13 1/2 back in 81 I was lucky enough to have my own video rental card. The world was opened to me, it was the equivalent of a library card except for the fact that I had to pay for my rentals. People these days seem ridiculously over protective, but back then I could rent anything from rated G to R, and did quite frequently.  

Here is a quick example of how things were different back when I was growing up. In 1979, I was 11 and my little brother was 8 going on 9 and we walked the eleven blocks or 22 short blocks from our house to the the Benson movie theater to see the movie “Hair” which was rated PG. Now I am sure I did not understand half the words in half the songs, but I was also not dumb enough to go home and ask my parents the meaning of the words in the song ‘Sodomy’. 

But back to my video card, these were simpler days when people had a little more freedom, and in my opinion, parents were a little less nuts, at least in Brooklyn. Well I took my card to the video store and rented, at the age of 13 1/3, two R rated films for a wonderful fall afternoon double feature in my basement. I invited my best friend - also named Chris - as well as friends Tammy and Eileen from Jr. High. Before they arrived I made traditional pot-popped popcorn and we always drank pitchers of ice water. 

My friends were excited to see my movie selection: “The Blues Brothers”  with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd  - one of my musical favorites. 

The second movie was the first horror movie I ever chose for myself and I feel it was a very good choice for my first horror movie for this year, John Carpenter’s “The Fog.”  It opens with with a wonderful quote from Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Dream Within A Dream,”  to set the mood for the movie.  It is a wonderful supernatural zombie / ghost story.

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow-

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand 

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep- while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?