Horror Drive-In Archives - Cemetery Dance Online

Horror Drive-In: Preserve Our Heritage – Collect Physical Media

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 9, 2022December 5, 2022Horror Drive-InHorror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

DVD hit the world of movie distribution like an atomic bomb. I got my first player in 1998. Few others had them at that point. By the turn of the century almost every home had at least one DVD player.

It was a frenzy. People no longer settled for renting movies. They wanted to own them, and DVD was the perfect format. The storage capacity of a Digital Versatile Disc allowed supplementary materials and all kinds of bells and whistles.

Horror fans embraced the new technology with a never-before-seen ferocity. Distribution companies were springing up and we were finally — finally! — able to see the movies we craved as they were meant to be seen. In glorious widescreen format, with vibrant colors, and endless background information.Continue Reading

Horror Drive-In: Scaaaa-REEM!

Cemetery Dance OnlineFebruary 4, 2022January 30, 2022Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber, ScreamLeave a comment

I am the perfect age to be a slasher fan. Halloween was released when I was seventeen years old — roughly the same age as the victims in John Carpenter’s masterpiece. I saw it in a walk-in theater and the experience was truly transformational. I was on the verge of adulthood and this movie, which was based on an oft-told urban legend, felt like the beginning of something entirely new.

Halloween was a runaway success and along with the inevitable sequel, imitator movies were quickly made and released. The biggest of them is, of course, Friday the 13th. I was eighteen years old.Continue Reading

Revisiting T.E.D. Klein, The Ceremonies, and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 30, 2021December 19, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber, Rod Serling, T.E.D. Klein, The Ceremonies, Twilight Zone, Twilight Zone Magazine1 Comment

I like to read something special for a holiday. In 2020, deep in the pandemic, I spent a long week whiling over The Cider House Rules, a novel I read and absolutely loved when it first came out. I was considering what to read this year, when it occurred to me that I had not read T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies since it was originally published. That was quite a few moons ago, and my memories about it were vague. The Ceremonies is a book that requires attention and a little patience, so a week off is the perfect time to indulge in it.Continue Reading

We Thought We’d Always Have the Drive-In

Cemetery Dance OnlineSeptember 3, 2021August 29, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

If you had asked me if I knew that life was constant change, and that none of the things I loved would last forever, I’d have surely shrugged and said, Sure, everyone knows that. But when you get right down here, where it counts, I believed it all was permanent.Continue Reading

Horror Drive-In: Reflections of a Sixty-Year-Old Horror Fan

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 25, 2021June 7, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

We all have our number of days in this world. Stick around long enough and you become the old guy. I certainly miss being young, but I could not be happier about the time of my life in the horror genre.Continue Reading

Horror Drive-In: To Vomit or Not to Vomit

Cemetery Dance OnlineMarch 19, 2021March 18, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

I’m a member of the Books of Horror Facebook page. They are mostly a good crowd of modern readers, but I have been feeling alienated. Out of touch with the new trends. There is so much talk of grossout fiction. People crave disgusting, perverted, vomit-inducing horror stories.

I’m not pointing fingers. How can I?Continue Reading

15 Years of Horror Drive-In

Cemetery Dance OnlineJanuary 20, 2021January 18, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

It was early 2006. Before Instagram. Before Goodreads. Horror fiction fandom was a very different thing than it is today. I had been heavily involved in message board moderation, and extraordinarily successful at it, but I wanted something more.Continue Reading

Horror Drive-In: Preserve Our Heritage: Collect Physical Media!

Cemetery Dance OnlineJanuary 8, 2021January 4, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

I have a bad habit of thinking that the things I love will always be there. Like drive-in theaters. We had three of them in my hometown. I went as much as I could, but I thought they were forever. I should have been out there every damned weekend.

It seemed that the cool bookstores would always be there. I had no idea Amazon and their Kindle would tear the guts out of our communities.

It wasn’t that long ago when I used to see great old VHS tapes at the thrift stores. I’ve been buying a lot of genre stuff up as interest in them has risen. Mostly I find later things from the latter half of the ’90s and first half of the 2000 decade.Continue Reading

Horror Drive-In: A Loving Look at The Monster Squad

Cemetery Dance OnlineMarch 20, 2020March 15, 2020Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber, The Monster SquadLeave a comment

I look back at the nineteen-eighties, which some consider the Golden Age of Horror. I was a rabid fan at the time and I continue to be one. There were milestones in the genre in this renowned era, especially, I’d say, from 1984 to 1988.

Stephen King’s It certainly qualifies. Clive Barker’s The Books of Blood brought a baroque aesthetic to horror fiction. John Skipp and Craig Spector’s The Light at the End ushered in a new breed of horror and a new breed of fan. Robert McCammon’s Swan Song would make the list.Continue Reading

Horror Drive-In: Ex-Library Books from Hell

Cemetery Dance OnlineSeptember 27, 2019September 27, 2019Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

Ex-Library books. They are the bane of collectors. You can hear howls of rage from sea to sea when secondary market sellers pawn them off as “Very Good” condition. Ex-Library books are the red-headed stepchildren of the publishing world. I think they deserve a lot more respect.

Horror Drive-In: Seems Like Old Times

Cemetery Dance OnlineNovember 9, 2018November 6, 2018Horror Drive-InColumns, Deep Red, Fangoria, Grady Hendrix, Halloween, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber, We Sold Our SoulsLeave a comment

I readily admit that I spend much of my horror ruminations on days gone by. Many consider the 1980s to be the Golden Age of Horror. It was an unparalleled time of creativity and fun in the genre. Horror fiction was going crazy, with many old masters still crafting great stories, and brash newcomers were shaking the foundations of traditional horror storytelling.Continue Reading

The Spirituality of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Cemetery Dance OnlineJune 22, 2018June 20, 2018Horror Drive-InA Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Columns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber3 Comments

Wait a minute. Let’s get this straight. The idea that an eighties slasher sequel is somehow spiritual? Can even I make such a claim with a straight face?

Well, yes and no.Continue Reading

Doc Savage Forever!

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 15, 2017Horror Drive-InColumns, Doc Savage, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber4 Comments

I often tell people that the first book I ever read was (Robert) Heinlein’s Have Space Suit-Will Travel. It’s sort of true, and it sort of isn’t true. In one sense Space Suit is the first novel I read, yes, but that does not count Doc Savage books.Continue Reading

The Endgame of an Era

Cemetery Dance OnlineJuly 7, 2017July 6, 2017Horror Drive-InBill Pronzini, Columns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber, Nameless DetectiveLeave a comment

Me and the Nameless Detective go way back. I’ve been reading these books since, oh wow, probably 1983? My Lord, that’s a long time.

I was never a mystery/suspense/noir reader in my youth. Science fiction, mostly, and what horror there was to be found. Which, honestly, wasn’t very much. SF won most of my reading time by default.

Yet by the early eighties I was getting very tired of the weary clichés of science fiction. Continue Reading

The Horror Bust (That Didn’t Seem Like a Bust)

Cemetery Dance OnlineMay 26, 2017May 23, 2017Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber1 Comment

We were talking about the great horror boom of the 1980s at the Horror Drive-In message boards the other day. Most seem to think that it was the greatest era in the history of the genre. I happen to agree. I was there, and as big a fan of all things horror as you’d have been likely to find. It was an exciting time, for movies and for horror fiction. I could go on about it indefinitely, but I have something else on my mind today.Continue Reading

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