What makes so many of us fans of classic horror films?  And what inspires a few of us to research and write about the classic horror films?  For some of us, like old Renfield, we could do nothing else once the World Weird Web formed to bring aficionados of the great fright flicks of the past together.  For at least one writer around here, though, it was really a family affair, which will be made quite evident once we take a peek inside...

By JOE ROMANO

(Note: Joe Romano writes "The HORROR-WOOD Reporter" column for this fine Webzine.)

I was rummaging through old boxes at Mom and Dad’s house last weekend, helping my parents clean out their basement, when a tattered pocket notebook caught my eye. You know the kind I mean, about three inches wide with a tiny spiral binder.

When I was a kid all of my classmates used them to write down homework assignments at the beginning of the school year. After a few weeks they were forgotten and stuffed in the bottom of a book bag never to be used again, most of the pages as crisp and clean as the day the notebooks were bought.

But not this one. I could tell right away that it wasn’t one of those assignment notebooks. Its ragged pages were too neatly filled with penciled handwriting on every page. Although some of the writing was smudged at the edges of the words, the gray charcoal letters were still legible.

"What’s this?" I asked my dad. He was sorting through his collection of old film magazines, separating the crumbling copies into two piles--one with magazines worth saving and the other with copies beyond repair.

"Nothing really," he said, looking up from his magazines and taking the notebook from my hands before I could read the writing inside it.

He quickly flipped through the book and smiled. "Just something I kept as a reminder of the movies I saw when I was a teenager. I’d write down the movie’s title, the stars who were in it, and the theater it played in. Sometimes I’d even write down what I thought of it."

He turned to the middle of the notebook, his wrinkled fingers grasping the paper like a delicate Egyptian papyrus. "Here’s one of your favorites," he said. "Dracula…Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye, and Edward Van Sloan. Saw it at the Kenyon Theater. Thought it was good and scary."

I chuckled a bit at the simplicity of his teenaged, thumbnail review. Good and scary. Tod Browning, the director of Dracula, would have been glad to hear that--one of horror’s classic masterpieces boiled down to three small words. But there was an adolescent innocence in those words that I had never heard from my Dad before.

"What else is in there?" I asked him, unable to contain my curiosity.

"Here’s another one I know you like, with Lugosi again--Island Of Lost Souls. It also starred Charles Laughton and Kathleen Burke. Bela was terrific as the Sayer of the Law. The movie played at the Novelty Theater when I saw it. Lugosi and Laughton were both real creepy."

"The Novelty was on the lower part of Federal Street, wasn’t it?"

"Yeah," he answered, "not too far from the Kenyon. The city tore it down in the sixties for an urban renewal project. It’s a shame we lost it. It was the nicest theater in the neighborhood when it first opened. I saw Charles Laughton as the Hunchback there, too. He was awfully convincing in the role, but Chaney still did a better Quasimodo."

Dad turned the page and I got a musty whiff of the old paper. "Here’s one with Boris Karloff," he said. "Juggernaut."

"I never heard of that one," I said.

"I don’t remember it too well, either." He looked at the faded writing on the page. "Boris Karloff, Mona Goya. Saw it at the Kenyon, too. I seem to remember that Karloff was some kind of evil doctor or mad scientist, but I guess that describes a lot of his characters, doesn’t it? Boris always seemed to have a lab coat on in his movies. I bet he wore one around his house."

Dad scratched his forehead, the way he always does after he’s made a bad joke.

"What did you think of it?" I asked, trying to ignore his joke.

"Apparently, not much. I didn’t write anything down. Karloff probably did a good job--he really was a great actor--but after Frankenstein, nothing he ever did satisfied me, except maybe for that other one you like. You know--the one where Karloff’s a general who slowly goes insane."

"Do you mean Isle Of The Dead?"

"Yeah, that’s it. When was it filmed? Must have been around 1945, or maybe 46. I didn’t see that one until I got back from the war. It won’t be in this book, these are all from the thirties." Dad closed the notebook, took a long look at the worn cover and handed it to me. "You better take this home and look at it later. I saw a lot of movies when I was a kid and we have a lot of work to do..."

"Werewolf of London," I said, opening the book for myself. "Henry Hull, Warner Oland. You saw it downtown. At the Penn of all places! That’s where the symphony plays now. The whole building has been renovated into a music hall."

I plopped on a stack of old newspapers and silently read the rest of the page.

"I remember that day" Dad said as he sat next to me on another stack of papers. "It was drizzling and the line wrapped all the way around the corner. I still like that movie, let me see what I thought of it back then…"

Thanks, Joe.  It's clear to see that reviewing horror films is a Romano family tradition, whether it's in the pages of a notebook or in the electronic "pages" of a Webzine.  We hope that's one "terror tradition" that remains forever "undead" in your family.

Article copyright © Joe Romano

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