Today is the 1st of April! Which as you probably already know, means it’s April Fools Day.
April Fool’s Day is a day celebrated each year with practical jokes and hoaxes, it has permeated all aspects of work and life, and the horror genre has not escaped. With that in mind today I want to talk about the 1986 classic horror film, April Fools.
While this is a horror film it is a black comedy. It was directed by Fred Walton and centres around a group of college students whose vacation is disrupted by a killer.
With the festive season being upon us, I am writing to talk about one of my favourite horror films that I feel I cannot talk about at any other time of year.
A Christmas Horror Story.
First of all, this is an awesome film, a perfect blend of Christmas cheer, black comedy and blood-curdling horror. It’s perfect.
The story, or Stories if you will. SPOILERS AHEAD!
This film is an anthology, made up of four short stories tied together by Dangerous Dan a radio host, played by William Shatner. He continuously receives news updates of the horrors going on during the Christmas eve and relays these to his listeners in the form of the stories.
This letter was inspired by a conversation with another friend of mine.
We were discussing films and videogames, a common topic of conversation in my circle. I naturally spoke about horror films and games that I enjoy, only for said friend to begin talking about slasher films. I had to confess that slasher films are not my preferred choice, to which my friend was surprised.
In a nutshell, my friend was of the mind that horror was limited to hack and slash with the occasional zombie thrown in for good measure. This triggered one of my favourite topics of conversation the versatility of the horror genre.
Horror as a genre has so much variety, there are almost limitless directions to go with it and today I wanted to talk about some of those directions. I could cover the majority (I doubt I could cover them all as new ones pop up all the time) but I will stick to the less obscure sub-genres otherwise this blog would be an insane length or a series in its own right.
I would also like to add that a lot of these sub-genres overlap, so you might have a dramatic horror with body horror thrown in for good measure, or an action horror with a monster genre mixed in.
Letters from a Horror Writer 