Editor-In-Chief
The Black Glove Magazine
A huge Black Glove welcome to 2010 and to all who survived the previous year—in one incarnation or another.
Again, we saw one Hollywood remake after another. Some were older, much better made horror films from our past, but there were still plenty foreign steals as well, interspersed with some fairly lame attempts at sending new material up the entertainment flagpole. What continues to boggle my mind is where these shitty ideas for horror keep coming from? Who keeps funding them? What feces-colored glasses are these money people viewing these things through to think they’ve got something worthwhile to offer the movie going public? In the midst of such a dire economic crisis, how can studios continue to conscience these sub-par movies that keep popping up across mega-mall cinemas all around the country (hell, even the world!)
Still, to be fair, there were a few decent films this year. Even some great ones. Great enough at least to make our own 1st annual Top 13 Best Of list (link here). I can’t say that agree with all the titles my esteemed colleague, Brian Sammons, picked for the list, but I think he hit the nail on the head for 90% of them.
At least he did NOT place such teen shite fests as the 3-D remake of MY BLOODY VALENTINE, a film which I particularly abhorred in 2009. I was around when the original hit the big screen back in the day (which according to Dane Cook was a Wednesday, by the way) and I still remember the creepy frisson I got from it back then. It was a frisson that the remake didn’t even attempt to recreate. I was, quite frankly, insulted by the remake. It was so full of story holes you could have driven a Mac truck through, ala MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE style, baby. I am not an idiot. And I don’t appreciate filmmakers or studios who treat me as such when they try to pawn off their garbage as real horror movies. Do these morons even know what great horror is? Do they even watch the originals? I know for a fact that I’ve read interviews with directors and actors who say they don’t bother to see the original (or worse, even bother to read the book, if its an adaptation). That sort of moronic attitude of who-gives-a-crap-about-the-classics is what’s gotten us where we are today in this Beevis and Butthead society we live in now.
There were so many bad movies (mostly remakes) in 2009 that the mind reels at their seemingly ever-expanding power to subvert and destroy the American horror cinema.
What is really stunning to me is the fact that, as filmmaking technology has become increasingly cheaper and, thereby, more easily accessible to the general public, there doesn’t seem to be any young John Carpenters or George Romeros stepping from the homogeny of American youth to light the way for the new wave of American Horror Cinema.
Maybe we don’t have the balls for it anymore. Maybe in this country we’ve lost the ability to feel honest primordial fear. We’ve become too pampered, perhaps. Despite some truly horrifying everyday political and social terrors, we do not seem to know how to translate those into something abstract enough to make real honest-to-god horror films any longer. And to me, that’s the greatest horror there is: when a culture stops trying to use its fears to create. I mean, Jesus-jumped-up-Christ, what good is all the crap we have to go through with our government, the supposed wardens of our freedoms and liberties, if we can’t put those midnight existential terrors to good use, to expose the lies and deceit, and to pull the monsters from the mental and emotional closets in which they hide within our culture?
Anyway, don’t even get me started. I’m not even sure why I bother to get bothered by it anymore. One monkey don’t stop no show, after all.
So what do we have to look forward to for the coming year in horror?
Well, if you’ve been keeping up with our monthly Fresh Blood section (link here) in the past few issues, you’ll know we’re trying very hard to stay abreast of what’s new and exciting. Over the course of the last few weeks we’ve been getting some pretty exciting updates from the folks over at AfterDark Films and we can’t wait to share those with you in the next issue (they’ll have their own article, links and pics galore). Also, we’ve got some great interviews and articles lined up, and a few content changes as well, for the new year.
But most importantly, the 1st annual Black Glove Awards will take place in our August 2010 issue, in which we’ll devote the entire issue to the books, films, games, comics, and other horror culture and entertainment things we felt were the highlights of the previous 12 months of our publications. So, keep an eye out for the future ballot voting boxes on this site.
But that’s the future. Let’s see what The Black Glove has this month, shall we?
--Nickolas Cook
Editor-In-Chief
The Black Glove Magazine
