By David Weiner
I’ve loved horror movies for as long as I can remember.
My fondness for genre entertainment goes back to a ‘70s childhood full of TV reruns (Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Batman, Lost in Space), Saturday morning cartoons, Godzilla movies, Universal Monster matinees at the local library, Planet of the Apes marathons, and Hammer Horror classics brutally trimmed to fit the 90-minute running time of The 4:30 Movie. At that time, I never called the genre “horror.” These were “monster movies” to me, supplemented by a steady diet of gluey Aurora monster models from my local hobby shop lined up by a stack of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazines nabbed from the newsstand.
Radically sidetracked in ’77 by a little flick called Star Wars, I happily spent my time entering the ‘80s with my head in space and Sci-Fi. Still, the horror genre made sure to steal my attention with the TV broadcast/zeitgeist stirrings of The Exorcist, The Omen, Carrie, and The Amityville Horror. Even if I didn’t see ‘em in the theater because I was too young, everyone talked about these frightening films at school and I had to know all about them.
Cut to October 30, 1981 and the broadcast premiere of John Carpenter’s Halloween on NBC Friday Night at the Movies (“Parental discretion advised. This film contains elements of shock and suspense,” the deep-voiced announcer warned). I was 13 years old, and my world was about to shift on its axis. This was no “monster movie.” This was pure horror, a high-tension experience with a relentless boogeyman that put Dracula, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon to shame.
I was frightened beyond belief watching this film all by my lonesome on our tiny black-and-white television. But an interesting thing happened to me. Instead of letting that unsettling feeling of fright in the pit of my stomach deter me from watching more horror, I let my resolve define me. I became obsessed with seeing Halloween again and again so I could deconstruct it, understand what made it tick, and face my fear.
From that point on, my appetite turned to consuming as much horror as I could, from Stephen King novels to Friday the 13th to Phantasm to Humanoids From the Deep, usually by watching them on cable TV at a friend’s house during a sleepover. My interest in practical effects shifted into overdrive after seeing An American Werewolf in London and The Howling. In addition to recognizing stars and directors, I learned the names of the makeup effects geniuses: Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Tom Savini and Dick Smith. My Famous Monsters mags made way for the more in-your-face Fangoria to pore over photos and breakdowns of everything from The Shining to Motel Hell.
My trips to the local mom-and-pop video store became research missions to work through the titles my friends would rave about, and I spent hours browsing the aisles to determine if the nudity, sex, creatures, and violence depicted on the VHS exploitation cover art were indeed the real deal, or a bait-and-switch ruse just to get me to rent the movie. Video stores were the Cinema God’s gift to eager fans like myself looking to tumble down the proverbial rabbit hole. And I truly tumbled.
There was no turning back at this point. My obsession with genre filmmaking was unwavering, and I set my sights on film school and a career in Hollywood. I wanted to make movies just like the ones I had watched my whole life.
In 1990, I graduated from Ithaca College in upstate New York with a degree in film production and theory and drove straight to Los Angeles. In short time, I found myself working for Charlie Band’s Full Moon Entertainment. I had to pinch myself. I get to work for the guy who gave us Re-Animator, Ghoulies, and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn in 3-D? I bounced around in various capacities (P.A., locations, 2nd unit assistant director, unit production manager) for such films as Demonic Toys, Netherworld, and Puppet Master III. As a production freelancer for other subsequent companies, I’d sometimes find myself back on a monster movie set, and occasionally end up on-screen as an extra or a stunt-double, such as on the micro-budgeted Project Vampire or the straight-to-video sequel The Hidden II. You just have to be in the right place at the right time when they need that extra body.
Fast forward about 25 years: This is where In Search of Darkness comes in.
Like so many of us who have had the tenacity to stick around in Hollywood, a place that likes to chew people up and spit them out daily onto the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, I decided that whatever I ended up doing, it needed to be entertainment related. My career path took me from a nomadic freelance life of movies, television, commercials, and music videos to film development, dot-com startups, and 13 years at Entertainment Tonight as an online senior editor interviewing filmmakers and celebrities. That position led to a serendipitous connection with the executive editor of Famous Monsters magazine, Ed Blair, who offered me a dream opportunity to write for the mag. By fall of 2015, Ed departed for greener pastures and I suddenly became executive editor of the magazine I loved as a Monster Kid.
It was never my ambition to run Famous Monsters, but I knew I had found my calling. I was once again steeped in the horror world.
Two years later, I reluctantly departed FM when the magazine folded due to subscription struggles in an online world. That detour allowed me to write film reviews and entertainment pieces for L.A. Weekly, and long form film anniversary interviews for The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision (with the likes of Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, Philip Kaufman, Ralph Bakshi, and many more).
Then in 2018 I entered the orbit of Robin Block, a U.K.-based creator who had produced In Search of The Last Action Heroes. Robin was keen to make a new documentary that would tackle the great horror movies of the ‘80s, and all of my formative career experiences led me to the perfect storm of opportunity: writing, directing, and co-producing In Search of Darkness.
Collaborating with Robin as executive producer, the talented Samuel Way as editor, and the small-but-tenacious team at CREATORVC, what resulted in October of 2019 was an intense labor of love: a four-and-a-half hour superdoc that tracks the wildest and most memorable horror films of the decade year-by-year, with larger-context, topical chapters in between that discuss everything from the socio-political 1980s setting to the VHS revolution to special makeup effects, marketing, film scores, sound design, and fandom.
The In Search of Darkness format is driven by interviews with 50 icons of the era sharing their candid thoughts on the horror genre, their on-set industry experiences, and their favorite ‘80s fright flicks as fans that kept them up at night. I got to sit across from my horror heroes, like John Carpenter(!), one-on-one, and pick their brains. I was enlightened, entertained, and moved by what they had to say. Their passion for the genre was palpable. And I learned that so many of them simply stumbled onto the horror fast-track more by opportunity and circumstance than by any specific career intentions.
In Search of Darkness is nothing without the incredible oral history delivered by the likes of Joe Dante, Heather Langenkamp, Barbara Crampton, Stuart Gordon, Keith David, Cassandra Peterson, Tom Atkins, Doug Bradley, Kane Hodder, and so many more authorities of the genre.
And the film series has become a horror community effort. After the surprise success of Darkness, both critically and with a tight embrace from the fans, we got to dive deeper into the ‘80s catacombs of the genre for Part II and Part III. More legends joined the conversation, including Robert Englund, Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Savini, Nancy Allen, Dee Wallace, Charles Band, Linnea Quigley, Felissa Rose, Gene Simmons, Rubén Galindo Jr., Jackie Kong, Screaming Mad George, and Shin’ya Tsukamoto. And fans let us know what they wanted to see.
As the ‘80s moves further away in our rearview mirror, more and more horror giants are no longer with us. This underlines the importance of the In Search of Darkness trilogy as a time-capsule collective of the masters who stretched their imaginations and broke the rules in order to turn the decade into arguably the greatest ever for horror filmmaking, if not the most prolific. Their voices live on in these documentaries, and in their legacy of work.
I’ve come to realize that these particular movies that we love so much, no matter how great or arguably terrible, represent more than just entertainment. They are collectively invaluable to us because they remind us of important moments in our own lives: Where we saw it. Who we were with. What we were like at the time. Moments that we may not have recognized as important then, but ones we cherish now because they’re gone.
These are more than just movies. They are us.
Now, stay tuned for In Search of Darkness ’90s…
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