Why are we so serious? I tend to think it’s because we as horror fans are consumed by this one, relatively irrational, fear that one day all good horror will die out on us. I know a great independent horror director, and I’d like to think a friend of the site, thinks it is dying. I’m talking about Parrish Randall, who went head to head with me in a debate regarding the role of the MPAA and the way it impacts (or doesn’t as I argued) horror films. It was during this discussion on our radio show that I realized just how much horror matters to many of us. We take it very seriously, in a way. And since we’re the serious devoted fans that we are, with our own communities and our own entities, I thought I’d like to share a thought with you all. The Dark Knight is killing our precious horror. I don’t mean this literally, Heath Ledger hasn’t come back from the grave to snuff out every horror director or burn every horror film we have access to. That would make for a great horror film. No, the truth of the matter is that Batman and his cohorts, Iron Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry “butthole” Potter (thank you Cartman) and many other of our big blockbuster films. I would mention Spiderman, but I hate it too much to think about it for long. These films, these massive grossing films, are slowly killing horror.

This kind of a revelation is not one that we couldn’t all see coming. When we spoke to the great Dr. Uwe Boll a month or two months earlier, he was trying desperately to get Postal to get a wide release. Turns out he was having a lot of trouble releasing Postal. The public was craving Indiana Jones on 12 screens, so they could watch it 12 times in different locations at their local cinema. Now the thing that he impressed me the most with was his resolve to get Postal released, and the cold hard fact that he was being shafted by the major cinemas in favour of less entertaining films that were perhaps less ‘high risk’ as it were. Herein we see the problem for Horror. Note now that I am not saying Uwe Boll is a metanym for horror, nor is Postal the poster-child for Horror. My point is more that what Uwe Boll went through may become more and more common. Horror may find itself out in the cold more and more.

The reason I make such an assertion is one which is painfully obvious, and Batman this past week has epitomised this trend. In fact, it really has become over the past 3 days the only thing I can hear about. Even horror forums are talking about it more than I Spit On Your Grave, and that is just rude. Now then, let me break down what I’m talking about a bit more. First things first, what is the problem with The Dark Knight for horror? First of all, it’s the greatest evidence of how much emphasis is being placed on opening week attendance and the large-scale. I know that York will carry it in two cinemas, and one of those will have it in many screens. This is York, Olde York, as in the town I live in. Not some massive metropolis, just a good old english town. I have heard the stories from the US, and the news is not good. The marketting departments have been working overtime trying to sell this like heroin to the homeless. And the cinema chains are picking up on it, and are agreeing to it. Why is this a problem? Because very rarely are there many films that can manage these kinds of a promotional blitzkrieg followed by a sustained hype-machine. These are the tools of blockbuster films the kind of which I enumerated earlier. They are almost exclusively the owners of the big marketting tools. When was the last time you saw a good independent horror film getting a massive release? I doubt you can find one.

Now, as per usual, I love to stop myself and check to see if my theory holds up. I have my doubts as to whether Batman alone is capable of killing the horror genre with its opening week blitz. But this is where the longevity comes into play. The biggest blockbusters seem to be carried for an incredibly long time. I’ve managed to travel from country to country and back and have a chance to see a harry potter film in all countries involved. On the other hand, even bigger horror films like Shrooms or Captivity were gone in the blink of an eye. And that is the films that get released at all. They don’t get nearly the kind of playtime that the big ones get, but then you get films like Midnight Meat Train and Postal, where you can’t even get a chance to show the film because of the blockbuster love.

This problem is compounded further by the emphasis that a film needs to have to be credible, created by the current cinema. When was the last time you heard talk of how popular a film was a year later, when all the DVDs were sold? Every time I read about films its new-releases, and its box-office numbers. So many millions this and so many millions that. Is that really a good indicator of how much love a film gets? In a way I suppose it is, but to me I think there is a lot more to film-love than that. I’d like to think that opening-weekend blockbusters are the whores to the familiar lovers that are horror films. Batman will fuck you six ways from sunday this next month, but I Spit On Your Grave will love you tomorrow.

Is there really a lesson to all this? I hope not, I don’t write lessons, I tell it as I see it, which is through my jaded Socialist glasses. But let me say this much. Batman is one of the many films that is putting a gun to horror’s head and threatens to pull the trigger. The current trend means that fewer and fewer films will bother being made for cinemas as they won’t be able to compete with the gargantuan blockbuster films. There should be a system that allows for both. The current one does not.

I suppose I should point out that the title of this article really is a shameful piece of propaganda. Batman did technically kill two, a stuntman and Heath Ledger. I used that news to make my own story, that of Batman killing Horror, have a little bit of a hook. My own literary prostitution knows less bounds than that of the block-busters. I want to point out that The Dark Knight is not an evil film, nor does hollywood and the cinema system go out of its way to piss on horror, but that is the obvious byproduct of it. Sad but true. If we want to find a way to make horror come back out of the cold, we have to find a way to make movies less about the mainstream blockbusting bureaucracy and more about the dedication to good film. How that will happen, I am sure we each can envision. I for one intend to keep writing editorials that glorify horror and make it an acceptable subject for the intellectuals among us. Keep an eye out for my book on the subject, due to be published a year or two after I start writing it. I’ll keep you informed. Until then, I shall have to hope that Batman hasn’t killed horror just yet. I think I can still hear that ominous heart-beat from The Shining, signalling horror is still around and ready to jump back into life.