Some things are becoming clear to me. As some of you may remember, for a very long time, Dario Argento's Phenomena was my favorite horror movie of all time. I spent a fair bit of time thinking about it. I really never put much thought into how that movie entered my life. It was just there. However, while I've been sorting through my strangely disjointed childhood horror movie memories, something revelatory happened. I remember very distinctly going straight to my local video store looking for Creepers, the truncated form of Phenomena. I found it, rented it, and there you go, end of story, right? WRONG, duder, WRONG!
The night I rented The Creepers, I was supposed to be renting Creepers. Since I was such a young idiot, I didn't know anything about anything and rented a totally different film. So I'm sitting there in my room, watching schoolgirls getting sexually assaulted and strangled by a madman (who I thought was French) and I kept thinking "This ain't right, y'all. This very, very ain't right at all, damn it!" The next day, I took the tape back and was able to get Creepers. Finally, I was able to witness my first Dario Argento film.
But wait, there's more! Man, this is boring. Anyway, not only had I found out that I did not enjoy watching women being raped; I also discovered my first taste of Euro-sleaze. Thank you, The Creepers AKA In the Devil's Garden AKA Assault AKA Say Goodbye to Your Innocence, Richard. But wait, didn't I get a free rental out of it? That's true, I did. Okay folks, my memory is coming to life here. The Creepers was in the Creepers box at the store. So I got to rent the proper film for free AND I'm totally blameless for the mishap. This is my primal scream therapy. AWOOOOOOO!
So there you go. Forget everything you know about how I came to find the magic that is Phenomena. Seriously, forget it. I did. Gee, do you think something may have led me to go searching for Creepers in the first place? Could it have been a little something called Stephen King's World of Horror AKA This is Horror? OMG! Will I be talking about that very program at length this month? ROFL! Thanks, this has been very fun.
I want to say CREEPERS was my first Argento as well, long before I knew who Argento was. There was this video in the store, it had the chick from LABYRINTH, in, so why not rent it? I was kinda thrown off, if I remember correctly and didn't revisit until much later, when I had the vocabulary, so to speak, to appreciate Argento. It's still not my favorite thing.
ReplyDeleteI love hearing others' childhood memories of horror discovery/VHS watching/renting/nostalgia. That is so awesome! Great post.
@Jenn - Thanks! I wish I had kept a dang diary when I was a kid. There are so many films I'm forgetting about from back in the day.
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