S.G. Browne

My First Horror Movie

I started watching horror films when I was a little kid. At least at the age of seven, maybe earlier. Which might help to explain my warped world view. Especially when you consider that the first horror film I remember watching was The Horror of Party Beach.

As the Wikipedia link explains, The Horror of Party Beach was, and still is, a B-movie take-off on beach parties and musicals—only with monsters from the ocean made up of water plants and dead human tissue mutated by radioactive waste that coalesce into humanoid form by attaching themselves to skeletons from a shipwreck. Naturally, they immediately proceed to hunt down and kill mostly young women in bikinis or at slumber parties.

So I guess you could call them humanoid zombie pirate stalkers. Except they look more like a poor man’s Creature from the Black Lagoon rather than extras from Pirates of the Caribbean.

While definitely not one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen, The Horror of Party Beach had a significant impact on my fragile little mind, to quote Eric Cartman. I can still remember the creepy music. And to this day, the sight of nubile teenagers in bikinis at the beach and having a slumber party scares the hell out of me.

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Filed under: Movies and Books — S.G. Browne @ 8:01 pm

5 Comments »

  1. My first horror movie was Vincent Price’s House of Wax. My dad was a big Vincent Price fan and on channel 44 and 36 on the weekends he would always find one of his films on. House of Wax was my first memory of being scared watching something on television yet not being able to walk away. That anticipation of what might come next no matter how terrified it may make me was a new feeling. The thought of being kidnapped and turned into wax gave me a few sleepless nights. To this day I prefer the old style horror films over the psycho slasher films of today.

    Comment by Erin V — June 12, 2012 @ 7:01 am

  2. I loved House of Wax and saw a bunch of films on 44 and 36 starring Vincent Price, Bela Legosi, Boris Karloff, etc. And I agree…I’m not a big fan of the slasher films.

    Comment by admin — June 12, 2012 @ 7:36 am

  3. My first horror film, “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, was a slasher. I had been terrified/fascinated by it all through my youth in the 80’s. When I was 12, my parents allowed me to rent it. I prepped for it by reading the novelization. I watched it for the first time with my babysitter and insisted we watch it in black and white (I had read an article that said viewing violence in black and white is less horrifying than viewing it in color). After the first death scene, I decided it was o.k. to go back to color. When it was over I was as high on my first dose of adrenaline and I have been chasing that dragon ever since. I also fell in love with the heroine, Nancy Thompson. She taught me an early lesson about strong females and eventually became an archetype I use in my adulthood. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is part of my DNA. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

    Comment by Aaron — June 12, 2012 @ 8:49 am

  4. Nice blog post, Scott. Mine was a film about a severed hand that crawled from room to room killing people. I don’t even know the name…It did make an impression, though.

    Comment by Sally Bosco — June 13, 2012 @ 1:29 pm

  5. Sally, I’m guessing that would be The Beast with Five Fingers, starring Peter Lorre. Unless there was another film about a disembodied murderous hand that I don’t know about.

    Comment by admin — June 13, 2012 @ 1:35 pm

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