In the strange world of horror collectibles: “It’s a way of life”

“HE“One day I was complaining to my mom about there being no good horror fairs nearby,” says 16-year-old horror fan Annie. “I was looking on Google and saw this: For the Love of Fear. ‘I’m sure the guests will be bad because there are never good guests in England…’ I thought.

To his astonishment, actor Shawnee Smith was among the VIPs at the nightmarish kneeling event at Manchester’s BEC Arena earlier this month. Saw franchise “I begged my mother to let me go.” So the pair made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from their homes in Grimsby to the 12,000-capacity event, which featured speeches, book signings and some serious cosplay. “I absolutely loved it,” he smiles.

Annie is autistic and has a ‘special interest’ in everything; this is a common characteristic of people with his condition. fear. started watching Dead Meata YouTube channel that focuses on “kill counts” in horror movies before moving on to the real deals. “My mom is very supportive of my special interest, and I’m glad she is.”

He especially likes this Saw Films showing victims being caught in complex traps. “Fear changed me as a person. When I was little, I knew that I wouldn’t be normal when I grew up. “I used to get bullied a lot, and fear really helped me escape that.”

Annie’s may be a specific case, but horror fandom is more expansive than ever. Ultra violent indie bloodfest scary 3 recently broken down Joker: Folie à Deux at the US box office, take the top spot even though it was made for only $2 million (one percent of the budget) Joaquin Phoenix And Lady Gagacourtroom musical. Unlike most genres, horror movies have spawned a wide variety of collectibles and merchandise that fans covet and drool over at events like For The Love of Horror.

Bloody Disgusting was founded as a US multimedia company. editorial website In 2001, he recently opened the Horror Fan Store in 1,700 Walmart stores nationwide. Limited-edition items such as figurines, jewelry and masks were offered for sale in the blood-spattered store-within-a-store.

“You walk into any major retailer or you look at online shopping and there is fear everywhere,” says Tom Owen, VP of Network Strategy at Cineverse, parent company of Bloody Disgusting. scary 3). “It’s a type of lifestyle. This is one of the things we always talk about internally at Bloody Disgusting: being a horror fan affects every aspect of your life.

Speaking via video call from his office in Illinois, he points to the wall behind him, decorated with a skeleton, a Frankenstein bust and a poster of George A. Romero’s zombie classic. Day of the Dead. “(This includes) the clothes you wear, the bumper stickers on your car, the music you listen to.”

This lifestyle wrapped its bloody hands around the neck of the mainstream this summer, and hipster popcorn buckets became the must-have pop culture item. The most talked about thing could be a connection to the fantasy saga Dune: Part 2Which It went viral and even became an inspiration SNL sketch because – frankly – it looked like a sex toy, but the striking part was horror-themed or adjacent. There were buckets for Alien: Romulus, chucky, Bug Juice Bug Juice and of course scary 3.

Was it like seeing your favorite underground band reach Number One with all the envy? “No, I don’t think so,” laughs Owen. “The more the merrier. Fear is for everyone. We certainly don’t want to be gatekeepers to any of this.

So why are horror fans so in love with collectibles? Music fans often collect records, but less often figurines of their favorite artists. “Horror is a very nostalgic genre,” says Owen, who explains that Walmart was impressed by “the size of the market” for horror collectibles. “There’s been a renewed interest lately in many of the physical products you can use to immerse yourself in the genre, to live and breathe it.”

Truly the VHS of 2022 scary 2Featuring artwork and scratch-and-sniff stickers, this album proved to be a breakthrough success at the Horror Fan Store, selling out 6,000 tapes within a few weeks. He heard reports of fans driving for hours to get their hands on Bloody Disgusting videotapes. This is quite unusual, says Owen, “when you consider that VHS probably hasn’t been sold in a major retail store for 20 years.”

He adds: “Fear is a very visceral and intimate experience. Formats and collectibles like this capture the emotion you feel when you have a horror experience. It’s real: it’s something you feel. I mean, a VHS tape is a lot more intimate than clicking “rent” on your TV, right?”

Congratulations and congratulations to our radical friends at the great VHS. @WitterEnt And @brokehorrorfan!!

The new VHS release of TERRIFIER 2 is on shelves at Wal-Marts nationwide!

VHS is now officially back on shelves at major retail stores. It’s a surreal time to be alive! pic.twitter.com/9JOtvpyz7Z

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This month, US collectibles company Mondo unveiled ‘Nightmare Ark’, a plastic pumpkin head stuffed with fake pumpkin puree and a tiny figure of emotionless killer Michael Myers. Halloween movies. The $105 product looks suspiciously like a popcorn bucket, but the company’s creative director, Peter Santa-Maria, describes it as an entity to be enjoyed in its own right: “We decided to bring together our love of vintage, blow molded decorations of youth and the ’60s and ’70s.” The aesthetics of Japanese soft vinyl toys of the 1950s.

Liverpool native Neil Hibbert, 39, who hosts the For The Love Of Horror Live Show, agrees that nostalgia is a big part of horror fandom. He remembers overhearing his friends at school excitedly discussing an upcoming TV broadcast. A Nightmare on Elm Street. His mother, grandmother and grandfather were so against him seeing this that they removed the television from his room. “So who will sleep first?” he chuckled. “I’m grandma. I sat next to him like a little angel. It was five minutes past 10 on Channel 4: He was sleeping and I turned on Freddy Krueger. After that that’s it; I became addicted.

Almost 30 years later, he spent £550 on a full-size bust of Krueger’s misshapen head in this month’s For The Love Of Horror. Now the first thing he sees when he comes out of his bedroom is a evil Dead poster by actor Bruce Campbell: “This is a good start to the day; you think back to a happy memory you saw at the cinema.”

Some fans may want to recapture their youth with horror collections, but for 16-year-old Annie, it’s about a sense of community. He made “many friends” thanks to Saw: “I joined this Discord group chat for something completely unrelated, but then someone else joined and they got Adam’s profile picture from the first moment. Saw film. “We clicked immediately.” He now enjoys chatting with friends online about their favorite things Saw traps and characters.

Neil echoes Tom Owen’s dislike of ‘gatekeeping’ in the fandom, fondly saying that “horror people are weird people” and distinguishing them from “normal” people. “The fear crowd is the best. “You can walk into the convention on your own and – I assure you – you will leave with friends for life in the end.”

Annie only started collecting last March and is proud to have “a little piece of barbed wire and a bathroom tile” from the set. I saw 3D. He still experiences some bullying, but he recently started college, where he overheard a kid talking about Freddy Krueger, whom Neil had heard whispers of in the ’90s.

The boy could not remember the exact name of the movie in question. “I walked in, ‘Is this what you’re talking about? A Nightmare on Elm Street? And now we’re friends.”