Coming into the second half of our 30-Day Horror Challenge, I’m tasked with the question as to the “First horror film you watched.”
As I mentioned a few days ago, my earliest forays into horror was the “Chiller Theatre“program on WPIX TV in the late 1970’s. Chiller Theatre was a regular weekly broadcast in New York, from 1961 until its cancellation in 1982. The show started with a 6-fingered claymation hand rising from a lake of blood, spelling out “Chiller” in clay with creepy music and sound in the background. Super scary for a 2nd grader, right? Great stuff. Chiller Theatre played classic B&W horror movies every Saturday night at 8 o’clock (occasionally relayed the next Saturday afternoon). I know a fair amount of New York Gen-X’ers who cite Chiller Theatre as their entry into the genre.
I don’t remember my first horror movie from that standpoint. Probably something like “The Beast From the” something or the something “of Blood.” My first modern horror? That’s an easy one. It was the 1980 slasher film “Terror Train.” My dad showed it to me when I was 11 or 12, said he had some sort of connection to it somehow, not sure what that connection was (or how legit his claim was, but it was filmed close to our region and my dad had theatrical connection through his work so it’s not impossible) but whatever – I got to see my second-ever R-Rated movie and my first post-1960’s movie with stabbing and blood and chopped-off heads. I was, at that time, terrified of depictions of decapitated heads. Not sure why, it was just a button for me.
Terror Train was released two years after John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” Think of it like Halloween on a train. There was a big surge of slasher movies in the years immediately proceeding Halloween, everyone wanted a slice of that bloody pie!
…that statement turned out grosser than I thought it would be. Sorry about that.
I’ve never actually seen this movie as an adult, I only remember there were a few chopped body parts, David Copperfield was in it, and the baddy was the horror stereotyped “transvestite psychopath with a knife” trope that is not really used so much these days but was all the rage in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Until I googled it this week I hadn’t even remembered that Jamie Lee Curtis was in it… although since I hadn’t seen “Halloween” until a few years later I probably didn’t even know who Jamie Lee Curtis was.
I don’t recall it being very good, just a vehicle for chopping-up college kids.