Welcome

Welcome to what is the temporary home of the future www.deadteenagermovies.com. I own the domain but won't get it up and running for a month or so but I want to start talking at least.

My name is John Popa, I'm 34 years old, live in Ohio and I freakin' LOVE what are unaffectionately called 'dead teenager movies.'

Slasher movies.

I'm the youngest of three kids and my big brother is 4 years older than I am. Which means when I was eight or nine he was turning 13 and watching scary movies with all the other kids in the neighborhood. I'm sure parents nowadays would wig out about their kids watching scary movies before the appropriate age but, well, my parents never worried about that stuff. If we were dumb enough to want to have the crap scared out of us by a movie, they weren't about to stop us. Besides, we were mostly good, smart kids.

We lived in a neighborhood that was surrounded by woods. Today most of those woods are gone, of course, having been made into houses and shopping centers and what not. In 1980, though, if I wanted to watch a scary movie at the neighbor kids' houses, that involved a looooong walk/run home through a neighborhood seemingly built for a stalker -- lots of woods, lots of darkness and lots of teenagers. Had a boogeyman wandered into Canton, Ohio looking for a group to terrorize, we probably would have qualified. I can clearly remember lots of nights sprinting home from the neighbors certain that there was something unsavory following me over my shoulder.

See, here's the thing. Horror movies scared the piss out of me, but I watched them anyway because that's what the big kids were doing.

Like a lot of us, "Halloween" was the movie that really rocked my world. Not in a good way, it scared me down to my bones. For a kid probably under the age of 10, it was horror overload. Like Roger Ebert said in his review of that flick, "Halloween" isn't a movie we watch, it's a movie that happens to us. It really is an assault on our fears and senses.

But you all know that, of course. And the last thing we need is another person sitting around explaining why "Halloween" works. I think it's been covered.

As much as "Halloween" kept me up and restless night after night and made me the one kid who rarely wanted to be left home alone, it wasn't until I went to a slumber party in seventh grade that my life was forever linked to slasher movies -- that was the night I met one Freddy Krueger. My friend Mike had a sister a year older than us and a couple times a year they'd have co-ed slumber parties, the centerpiece of which were always a handful of horror flicks grabbed from the local video store. This is how I first saw "A Nightmare on Elm Street," huddled in a sleeping bag trying to look cool to a girl a year older than me, while, deep down, I was scared to DEATH. I lost a lot more sleep in the wake of seeing the first "Nightmare" but, most importantly, it was the movie that sent my imagination reeling. It pushed every button imaginable -- Freddy was horrifying but still likeable in his weird way (and this was before the sequels would dilute the character,) I naturally had a huge crush on Heather Langenkamp's Nancy Thompson character and I discovered the movies of one Wes Craven.

From then on I spent most of my weekends emptying the local video stores of their horror sections -- I watched 'em all, good, bad or otherwise. As puberty kicked in, the game became more sophomoric sure -- the more boobs and bondage a movie could throw at me, the happier I'd be. I plowed through Wes Craven's back catalogue, saw "Nightmare 2" at the theater (with my dad chaperoning of course, otherwise a thirteen year-old would never be allowed in.) I watched all of John Carpenter's movies, I could find, started reading Stephen King and Clive Barker books.

There was a core of us who became the horror kids, looking for big scares and big laughs and really anything that could entertain us. But it was the slashers that hooked me. The plots were the same, hell, most of the time the movies were just remaking "Halloween" with dumber heroes and heroines, but I didn't care. I could always find something memorable in even the most simplistic of the "Sorority House" terror types of movies. But we weren't the black-haired gothic kids, we were smart kids, with bright personalities and ideas. We had fun with this stuff and never wiped the grin off our faces watching or talking about these movies. Oh our parents and teachers thought we were wasting our time and brains but since when do kids care what adults think?

And here, twenty-odd years later, I'm the same way. Oh, sure, I appreciate good horror and understand the more substantial works of horror out there. I spend my winters in the theaters taking in the years' Oscar contenders. Still, when I have a night free there's still a basic, indescribable thrill in just grabbing a handful of whatever direct-to-DVD horror movies out there and throwing them in for kicks.

I'm not here to apologize or elevate Dead Teenager Movies. Yeah, I get that "Scream" added a layer of subtext and irony to the concept but, I'll be honest, a slasher movie does NOT have to be clever and self-referential to amuse me. Not everything has to transcend the genre. Maybe that makes me the lowest common denominator or something. Regardless, this site is to CELEBRATE Dead Teenager Movies in all their glorious excess.

I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I do.

:)