A Nice Hard Slap – Horror Sites Love the Blurbs!

Horror Sites Love the Blurbs!

You know what sucks? Not being able to trust a DVD case for a horror movie. It seems like every single horror release boasts a quote from some horror website that I’ve either never heard of or from a site I know but could have just been as easily culled from a message board post or modified to some great extent for the purposes of the blurb.

Of course, in the wake of Pete Hammond and David Manning this is no surprise. Blurbs are cheap and rarely indicative of what shows up on the screen but as a person who saw The Evil Dead as a 10 or 12 year because Stephen King urged me to, I kind of wish there was still that little bit of added assistance from the film critics of the world and celebrities who support a film for a real reason rather than a token of friendship.

Now there’s no one I can rely on as a litmus test for how I’ll receive a film, whether it be David Anson, my beloved Stephen Hunter, or even the other guys here on CHUD.com. The days are gone where the critics speak to the filmgoer, replaced by the need to be quoted or to outdo the last powerful jolt of cinematic literature. Even Roger Ebert, who is as mainstream as one can get while still having the credibility of his industry, has eluded me in recent years.

But horror takes the cake. No genre is as rife with shit as horror, unless you consider crime films a fully fledged genre. Anything and everything seems to boast some great new thing whether it be the next new face of horror or the next Jason Voorhees or the newest thing that will send chills down your nuts and ass.

And people undoubtedly buy into it.

I got these screeners in the mail today for the DVD review crew:

And though I’m semi-interested in Them, I’m also seriously wary of it. I know the premise. I know it’s digital video. I know it’s a foreign film, though people who browse the DVD case won’t. I also know that the days of me discovering horror gems through trial and error are long lone thanks to the amazing world of home video and the fact that every single organism on this planet is either making a zombie film or a slasher film or something that combines both. In fact, on my way to the mailbox I Terry Gilliam’d the set of the first all-aphid gothic horror film.

Rotten Tomatoes is great for big theatrical releases but when it comes to Slaughter of the Bread Goblin where is my one true source for the straight dope on quality? There is none. Not even CHUD.com.

Yet I have no doubts that someone on the forums at Dread Central finds Slaughter of the Bread Goblins “the arrival of horror’s next Orson Welles in the form of Davey Slunch, the film’s writer, director, editor, FX chief, leading actor, supporting actress, and chain smoker“.

Fuck a blurb in the mouth.

– Nick Nunziata recommends The Hills Have Some More Eyes as it is a ‘lightning rush of untapped terrorsauce and scaryjuice’.