By Mark Squibb/October 21, 2021
As Halloween creeps closer and whispers of ghosts and goblins fill the air, some folks might find themselves watching a few horror movies over the coming weeks.
For others, like Emma Felix of Mount Pearl, it’s a year-round hobby.
Over-and-above watching the films, she’s taken to collecting horror memorabilia, and boasts an impressive collection of old horror flicks on VHS.
She estimates she has about 400 tapes — about 300 of which are horror.
“If it’s horror, I want it, if it’s not, I’m more selective,” she laughed.
Felix buys the old tapes wherever she can come across them – thrift stores, eBay, or online marketplaces — and even bought an old TV with a built in VCR combo in Fermeuse two summers ago, so that she can watch them.
She started watching horror movies when she was young. “I was way to young,” she admits with a laugh.
The first horror film she remembers watching was the 1989 adaption of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, which had been brought home by her older sister.
It was the first, but far from the last.
“And then, when I was still way too young, I was still a child, I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street, and I became obsessed,” said Felix.
The 1984 Wes Craven slasher followed heroine Nancy Thompson, as she battled against fiendish serial killer Freddy Kruger, who stalked his victims in their dreams.
“I was really into a lot of fantasy movies when I was really young,” said Felix. “And when I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street, it had a little bit of that fantasy feel.”
To this day, the film remains her favorite.
“A Nightmare on Elm Street is my favorite, hands down,” she said. “But I also have a really soft spot for A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4.”
Plenty of other fans loved A Nightmare on Elm Street — eight more films followed the original 1984 movie, grossing almost $500 million worldwide, besides spawning video games, novels, a TV series, and an endless line of memorabilia from plush toys to coffee cups.
As a child, it was the grotesque video cover art for films like A Nightmare on Elm Street that drew Felix to the genre.
“I grew up around the bay, so we didn’t have a Blockbuster, we just had convenience stores that had tapes to rent,” she said. “I remember going to this one that was probably about a seven-minute drive from my house, and they had a huge horror selection. And I just remember standing in front of all these VHS covers, and I still remember them. Sleepaway Camp 2 was there, and some of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and really random stuff, like Savage Streets with Linda Blair. I remember seeing all of those covers and being drawn in. I think it was that artwork that drew me in as a kid, I was just fascinated with the covers.”
Folks in the horror community often joke that the fantastical, campy VHS artwork were sometimes better than the movies themselves, and Felix jokingly agreed with the sentiment.
Her favourite movies are slashers, but she also loves a good ghost story.
As a kid, most of the VHS tapes Felix owned were the classic Disney clamshells.
But that began to change when she bought her first ever horror VHS when she was nine years old — Wes Craven’s 1996 meta slasher Scream, which revitalized the tired genre by poking fun of its many cliches.
“That was my first one, and I bought a few more after that, but I didn’t start heavily collecting until about seven years ago,” said Felix.
The rest, as they say, is history.
If you’re looking for a scary movie to watch this Halloween, Felix offered a few recommendations.
If you’re a little squeamish, she recommends either the 1982 classic Poltergeist, directed by horror meister Tobe Hooper and written and produced by blockbuster king Steve Spielberg, or the 1988 ghost story the Lady in White.
If the kids are tucked away in bed and you’re looking for more gruesome fare, she recommends Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses or the horror comedy Bride of Chucky.
John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween, she said, is of course the quintessential Halloween flick.
