For most of my teen years, movies were pretty much my life. That may sound sad, but the truth is I was a victim of circumstance. I look like the bastard child of Don Knotts and that bald banjo playing kid from DELIVERANCE, so I certainly didn’t have a girlfriend to waste time with. When you haven’t had pussy since the pussy had you, a guy has to have some kind of diversion. And you can only rub one off a few times a day before your hand starts cramping and it hurts to pee. So movies filled the void.

It was ALIEN that started what became just short of an obsession with horror films. My sister took me to see it at the Mexia Theater and I knew next to nothing about the movie beforehand, except for the spot that ran on TV showing a big egg cracking open. Bright light poured from the crack and you heard this otherworldly screech. The commercial scared me almost as much as that fucking clawed baby hand coming out of the crib in that IT’S ALIVE ad.

I sat in the front row of the theater because I’m blind as a damn mole rat. As those huge letters burned onto the screen (A L I E N) and Jerry Goldsmith’s score oozed and crept in the background, I began to slowly sink down in my seat. I knew right away this wasn’t going to be familiar territory. This wasn’t a modern wham-bang space serial like STAR WARS. The setting here looked and felt cold and distant. It was a feeling that set into my bones almost from the very beginning of the film. When John Hurt gave birth to a hissing serpentine creature bursting from his chest, I was petrified. What the fuck just happened?! I looked over at my sister who was sitting next to me and was my guardian for the showing. “Did you see that?!!” I pretty much screamed. She was too busy sipping her pickle juice on ice to notice. She was no frickin’ help. I was all alone here. Shit on me, I needed someone there to remind me it was just a movie! ALIEN was the first film since JAWS to genuinely frighten me, but unlike a killer shark, here was something I had no internal reference for. This creature was truly alien. It hid in the shadows and struck without warning or mercy. A moldy old theater was a perfect place to watch such a thing. It was dark and cold and damp, like the interior of the starship NOSTROMO. It was almost like living inside the movie as it played, at least for a 15 year-old.

Ever since that summer afternoon of 79 I’ve searched for the kind of visceral experience ALIEN gave me. I’ve had brief moments of it throughout the years. John Carpenter’s THE THING came damn close. Here was yet another alien, but this time one that could replicate your co-worker, your dog, or yourself. I watched that one alone, sans older sister, in that same old dark theater with perhaps three other people in attendance. Those films changed me a little bit. They were examples of how a horror movie could be more than time killers. They got under my skin and lived there long after the lights went up. The filmmakers knew what scared me and weren’t satisfied with delivering a cheap thrill. They wanted to fuck with me a little. They seeped into my safety zone and festered there. I’ve slept with a night-light ever since I saw ALIEN, because as much as my adult rational mind tells me there are no monsters, the kid that sat wide-eyed in that theater knows better.

What happened to horror films actually scaring you? Who will make the next EXORCIST or HALLOWEEN? Who’s going to genuinely frighten us, instead of tossing off hollow torture-porn “shocks”? Sure, there have been some decent horror movies over the years. There have even been a few really good ones, but I’m talking about films that grab you and hold you down in your seat, daring you to move. I’m talking about stories you’re almost afraid to watch, but compelled to seek out just the same. The movies your friends said you just had to see when you were a kid. Remember walking out of a movie theater after a good scare and whispering “shit” under your breath? Remember that sigh of relief when you were back in the real world after seeing the most fucked-up thing ever? I do, but the memories are fading.

And yes, I’m not a kid anymore. The things that scared me at 15 don’t affect me the same way at 41. But there has to be a producer/director out there that can give us a good scare at any age. Label this article a call to arms if you will. Someone find a way to scare us without copping out with the umpteenth remake. Sure, THE THING was a remake, but it was a story ripe for updating. There’s someone out there with a scary story to tell, and the talent to tell it right.

The search continues...