I remember back when I was twelve (and this was back in 1999) when I was looking on the internet for horror sites and movies and shit. I started watching horror movies when I was six and by the age of twelve I had seen Return of the Living Dead trilogy and Romero's Dead trilogy and Peter Jackson's Dead/Alive. I was mostly into Zombie and Slasher films around this time. So, I stumbled across a review of Fulci's Zombie and it sounded awesome. So I went to the local Video King near me that had a copy but it mysteriously vanished. It's a weird thing that I noticed where I would look up a movie on the internet and I'd go to Video King to rent a copy and the tape would disappear either before I rented it or shortly rented it. And I don't mean disappear in that someone had already rented it, I mean it was gone, off the shelf completely. This happened with Zombie, I Spit on Your Grave, Silent Night Deadly Night part 1, Cannibal! The Musical, Orgazmo (The Trey Parker comedy), and Demons and Beyond the Door 1 and 2 (AKA Mario Bava's Shock) I managed to rent and then the tapes just disappeared.
I have a theory that maybe there was another kid in town discovering these movies and stole these tapes and/or made boots of them and somehow fucked up the tape. Either that or a gremlin was working against me.
A little later I discovered that Anchor Bay had released Zombie on VHS. I remember being a little confused that it was an Italian movie and I thought maybe it was in Italian with English subtitles. But I thought that the movie sounded so awesome I didn't care about subtitles and just wanted to watch it. So on my birthday I got $20 and I was driven to the mall and went to the FYE and lo and behold Fulci's Zombie was there. Bought the tape and went back home and probably watched it twice in a row. I had seen gory flicks before but there was something to the gore of Fulci's film that made it stand out. It became my favorite zombie movie and it still is. This memory just came back to me but I remember taking the tape to school with me. Why I can't remember but I just kept idolizing the cover and reading the brief synopsis on the back.
I was very saddened when I realized that Fulci had passed a few years prior and wanted to see more movies by him. So I started looking up Fulci and came across The Beyond. The Beyond sounded even more amazing than Zombie and I had joined a horror message board at the time and asked if there was a way I could buy a copy. This is a ways before the Grindhouse DVD. So a dude who I haven't been in contact with for a while PM'd me and said he could send me a tape of the movie for free. My parents were worried and thought maybe potential pedo right there so I was forced to give the guy a P.O. Box instead and a while later I got the tape and had my mind melted.
And that was my gateway movie, because of The Beyond and Zombie I had gotten into Italian Horror and I wanted to see more and discovered European cinema, Art house films, experimental films, etc. Without Fulci I would never had known Werner Herzog and would have regarded Kubrick as just the director of The Shining. And because Fulci name dropped the playwright/poet/artist/madman Artaud in an interview, I became interested in him and read The Theater and It's Double. And it just spiraled form there and completely independent of school work I started reading poetry and philosophy and all that.
An Italian gore film altered the course of my life.
I have a theory that maybe there was another kid in town discovering these movies and stole these tapes and/or made boots of them and somehow fucked up the tape. Either that or a gremlin was working against me.
A little later I discovered that Anchor Bay had released Zombie on VHS. I remember being a little confused that it was an Italian movie and I thought maybe it was in Italian with English subtitles. But I thought that the movie sounded so awesome I didn't care about subtitles and just wanted to watch it. So on my birthday I got $20 and I was driven to the mall and went to the FYE and lo and behold Fulci's Zombie was there. Bought the tape and went back home and probably watched it twice in a row. I had seen gory flicks before but there was something to the gore of Fulci's film that made it stand out. It became my favorite zombie movie and it still is. This memory just came back to me but I remember taking the tape to school with me. Why I can't remember but I just kept idolizing the cover and reading the brief synopsis on the back.
I was very saddened when I realized that Fulci had passed a few years prior and wanted to see more movies by him. So I started looking up Fulci and came across The Beyond. The Beyond sounded even more amazing than Zombie and I had joined a horror message board at the time and asked if there was a way I could buy a copy. This is a ways before the Grindhouse DVD. So a dude who I haven't been in contact with for a while PM'd me and said he could send me a tape of the movie for free. My parents were worried and thought maybe potential pedo right there so I was forced to give the guy a P.O. Box instead and a while later I got the tape and had my mind melted.
And that was my gateway movie, because of The Beyond and Zombie I had gotten into Italian Horror and I wanted to see more and discovered European cinema, Art house films, experimental films, etc. Without Fulci I would never had known Werner Herzog and would have regarded Kubrick as just the director of The Shining. And because Fulci name dropped the playwright/poet/artist/madman Artaud in an interview, I became interested in him and read The Theater and It's Double. And it just spiraled form there and completely independent of school work I started reading poetry and philosophy and all that.
An Italian gore film altered the course of my life.
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