By Andreas Kessaris for Curtains Up! (@AKessaris)
“As a general rule, horror fans embrace their status as cultural outsiders. In fact, many define their identity solely by opposition to the mainstream. We tell ourselves we don’t need, or even want, casual endorsements-not from the public or the critics, and especially not from Hollywood suits.”
-Adam Rockoff (from The Horror of it All)
Few motion pictures are more polarizing to the public than so-called “slasher films.” With their over-the-top violence and gore, people getting butchered during or immediately after sex, and scantily-clad damsels in distress running through the forest evading crazed vivisectionists or brain-eating freaks, most people just dismiss them as exploitation no better than hard core pornography. But for fans they are not simple pictures for simple-minded, twisted individuals. To them they are a serious class of cinema that deserves respect. That is the subject of The Horror of it All: One Moviegoer’s Love Affair with Masked Maniacs, Frightened Virgins, and the Living Dead… the new book by screenwriter and splatter film journalist Adam Rockoff.
In The Horror of it All, Rockoff goes to bat for his beloved genre and how he feels it has been overlooked and misunderstood for all the wrong reasons. Knowledgeable, intelligent, witty and passionate, one can`t help but root for him like the underdog as he cleverly defends the films that have been written off as low-class trash. His ideas are well thought out, his reasoning is solid, and some of his facts are quite surprising. He includes interesting anecdotes, and reveals that horror fans, as well as the artists who make the movies, are for the most part regular, everyday people you wouldn`t look twice at if they walked past you on the street. I found myself agreeing with many of his points and opinions, especially about how a number of popular film critics and reviewers often judge, or misjudge, or prejudge, a movie by its category rather than craftsmanship.
Where the author goes wrong is the pedestrian way he writes, using terms like “are you f***ing kidding me” and words like “s***tload” and “bulls**t.” If one wants to defend their beliefs and communicate easily with others, especially the uninitiated, it is not wise to drop the f-bomb several pages per chapter and making the effort read more like a blog than a book. The author complains about not being taken seriously, but how is that possible when you come off sounding like a poor man`s Howard Stern? (I do give Rockoff credit for having the courage, honesty and integrity to be himself. This is not a critique of him personally, or what he has to say, just his writing style.) He even has two separate references to Pee Wee Herman, quite a feat for a work that is 250 pages long.
The book contains numerous digressions, most of which are entertaining and informative, but a few, like an inexplicably long section on Werner Herzog, go so far off topic one would require a road map to find their way back, and a couple are a little on the offensive side.
The Horror of it All is ultimately a fun read and makes a good affirmation for lovers of stories about axe-wielding lunatics, but if it was intended to win over those not already a follower of Michael, Jason and Freddy, it misses the mark.
