All Hallows Geek turned three last month, and as I began looking ahead at my plans for 2020, I realized that I probably haven’t done enough to really let my audience get to know the person behind all the posts. Sure, my About Page has a decent rundown and my first post showed a bit more of my creepy and geeky creative side, but over the years I haven’t really shared a lot personally beyond small tidbits here and there in larger stories. Sharing more about myself was also a theme that came up more than once in my recent reader survey, so I decided I’d share five random facts about myself that tie in a bit to my love of horror and Halloween.
1) Despite a lifelong love of the Halloween holiday, I didn’t really discover my love for horror movies until much later in life
While all my friends were allowed to watch R rated movies at a young age my parents were a lot stricter about my movie viewing, which meant most if not all horror material was off-limits until my teens. I do recall seeing parts of the 1990 “IT” miniseries on television when it aired because my mom watched it, but other than remembering watching some, if not all of it, I don’t have much memory of it.
Really, my first foyer into horror was at age 14 when my friend’s dad took us to see Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight in theaters. A few months later he took us to see the R rated thriller Hideaway starring Jeff Goldbloom and Alicia Silverstone. Both films, as well as their soundtracks, remain favorites of mine.
My love for horror didn’t really blossom until a few years later when I was able to regularly start seeing films on my own in theaters and while 90s horror tends to get a bad wrap, franchises like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legend were really the horror gateway drugs that lead me to my lifelong love of horror.
2) My first love was and continues to be music
I mentioned this briefly in my recent review of “Monster Jukebox: A History of Spooky Music,” but my first love will always be music. As a kid, music was part of everything I did and then going into middle school I became part of the music as I learned to play guitar and sing. I would go on to front a number of bands through my early 20s, but the only band that really gained any traction was my alt-grunge band in high school called Another Alternative. We played a number of local shows and ultimately recorded a six-song demo with producer Bob Moon of MxPx fame. If you’re interested in hearing it I have it housed here. (Apologies for the quality on some of these, a few of them were recordings of recordings.)
These days I’m no longer making music, but I’m still an avid music fan, which is why I love to incorporate it into a lot of what I do. Like creating themed playlists for All Hallows Geek. If you’re wondering what kind of music I’m into these days, I don’t really discriminate and listen to everything from country to EDM, emo to folk, goth to rock and everything in between.
3) I wrote a horror movie in my late teens
While I was a few years too early for the YouTube generation my friends and I did play a bit with video late in high school. We once made a stop motion animation video using LEGOs to try and earn seats on a class board, but my most ambitious project was to film a horror movie.
The film’s formula followed that of late 90s slashers and of course would have a bunch of teens (my friends) being the bulk of the victims. The film was never made due to the logistics of it all and I don’t remember much about the plot, but I do remember titling the film “A Night Like This” inspired by The Cure song of the same name (Hey look another music tie-in).
The plan was to have the track off The Cure’s 1985 album “The Head on the Door” play when the credits rolled. I always felt the way the song faded in would be perfect for playing over movie credits and the song is peppered with so many lyrics that are perfect for a horror movie like “Say goodbye on a night like this if it’s the last thing we ever do,” “It goes dark, it goes darker still, please stay,” and “I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night.”
4) I was a Knott’s Scary Farm Monster
I began attending Knott’s Berry Farm’s annual nighttime Halloween event Knott’s Scary Farm with friends when I was in middle school. We attended annually through high school so when some friends suggested we try and get jobs there I applied and was fortunate enough to score the role of a scare actor in of all things, their “Tales from the Crypt” themed maze “Tales from the Inquisition.”
My position wasn’t sexy. I wound up being nothing more than a head and arms in a wall atop a disemboweled torso, but I got to experience the rush of scaring the crap out of someone first hand. I also got to experience first hand the physical repercussions of being a scare actor when one night a guy I scared punched me square between the eyes…you’re kind of an easy target when you’re nothing more than a head sticking through a wall.
5) Michael Myers is my favorite horror movie icon
Remember the first fact I shared about not getting the horror bug until I was much older? Well, one of the things I did after getting hooked on mid-to-late-nineties slashers was go back and watch all the classics. I “binged” franchises like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween before binging was even a thing. I loved Jason, Freddy, and Michael but there is just something about Halloween and Michael Myers that I always connected with more (and no, it’s not because we share a name).
As a lover of the Halloween holiday, I fell in love with the aesthetic and score of John Carpenter’s original Halloween. I felt Carpenter perfectly captured the essence of the Halloween season in the film and after learning that Carpenter himself scored the film the musician in me appreciated the film and its score that much more.
I also found the character of Michael Myers more unsettling than the other characters. There is just something unnerving about his white expressionless face, those dark inset eyes, and of course that curious head tilt. My viewing of the Halloween franchise sparked a lifelong love for Myers as well as John Carpenter as a filmmaker and a musician.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse into who I am and learned something new about the man behind the curtain over at All Hallows Geek. I plan to do some additional things throughout the year to help you all get to know me more, including potentially a YouTube video focused on my horror movie likes as well as opening up questions on Instagram, until then, keep it creepy!
