A Word From The Curator: Beginning at a Beginning

There are a lot of ways to begin a project like this one: A site designed to honor the classics of the horror genre. Where do you start? Do you start at the beginning? And if so, which beginning? Melies, and his early ghost flick, "The Haunted Castle?" Thomas Edison's "Frankenstein?" The German Gothics? The Universal Monsters? But ultimately, this will serve not only as an archive of the classics, but as a personal journey and tribute to the genre I've long loved.

 It was the Halloween season, my freshman year in college. Some cable channel or another (I no longer remember which) was running a marathon of horror movies. I had seen a few horror films, and sort of instinctively knew I'd be interested, but I hadn't really spent much time with it. Night of the Living Dead was coming up, so I sat down, alone in that dark common TV lounge, and watched.

 NOTLD was in many ways a personal revelation, just as it was a cultural revelation from its release in 1968. More than any movie I'd seen previously, it was blunt, it was visceral, and it was meaningful. It showed me, an impressionable college student, that film could have real power; that a simple story line could be used to convey deeper truths. It also made me deeply interested, both in film in general, and in the horror genre.

I spent my entire sophomore year devouring as much horror film as I could get my hands on. About halfway through, I'd added film studies to my education, one of four students that year to pilot that major at our college.

I could go on, but as much as this is a personal blog, it's also not really about me; it is rather a tribute to the people who pioneered a genre, who cultivated it, and who paved the way for future artists in every medium.

And so, I begin this tribute at a personal beginning: with Night of the Living Dead.