Not that we ever really went anywhere, but like that overgrown cemetery on the edge of town, HORRENDOUS! has lain fallow for far too long. The grass is overgrown, some of the headstones have toppled over and there are beer cans everywhere.

The spirits of the dead won't stand for that kind of neglect, though, and they've grown restless. I'd been meaning to revamp HORRENDOUS! for awhile now, but the state of the horror film industry had left me broken, disenchanted, and suffering from a mysterious rash.

It all started about a year ago. Against my better judgement I paid to see Urban Legend when it arrived at the local multi-plex. I knew it had been one hell of a long time since a decent horror movie had gotten a theatrical release. I also knew that Urban Legend was made to cash in on the success of the Scream films, which were in turn designed to create a sense of fluffy nostalgia for the slasher movies of the seventies and eighties, a creatively bankrupt sub-genre if there ever was one. Still, I went in wanting to like this movie. Who knows, I thought, maybe the director had scene a Dario Argento movie or two and actually knew how to make this kind of movie interesting. What I got for my money was a tepid little piece of filmmaking loaded with those cheap fake scares and a complete lack of respect for the audience's intelligence. This was the new wave of horror?

Now I know slasher movies have their admirers. I myself have enjoyed one or two of them, particularly Friday the 13th Part 5.1: Jason Goes Online. If this stuff works for you, fine. For my money, though, the quiet horror of the original version of The Haunting, the visceral excess of Lucio Fulci's The Gates of Hell, or even the utter sleaze and ineptitude of Jess Franco's Vampyros Lesbos are infinitely preferable. I'll take something imaginitive, eerie, or even offensive over a vacuous group of twenty-something actors appearing in a string of rip-offs disguised as homage. I began to despair that theatrical horror had become a thing of the past.

Then along came the summer of 1999 which has brought more theatrically released horror than any movie season in recent memory. Some like the CGI-ed to death remake of The Haunting have fallen short of the mark, while others like The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense I daresay have been brilliant. It is now possible again to walk into a theatre and get the living bejesus scared out of you. Hallelujah.

With my resolve restored, it seemed time to breathe new life into this web site's withering carcass. I've added some new features like HORRENDOUS Radio and the official HORRENDOUS screen saver for Windows. Linkage of the Damned has been overhauled as well. I hope you'll have a look around.

I've crazy glued the broken tombstones back together, and I've trimmed the grass and raked it into a big pile over behind the crypt. I've also dug a fresh grave so passersby will know we're open for business again. The empty beer cans continue to pile up. Hey, I'm only human.

Matt Bradshaw
Keeper of the Necropolis