A Full Moon #TBT Post from November 1993
Jon Condit
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I grew up loving horror movies. Big surprise, right? Like most of us, I had my favorite slashers and franchises growing up. Just like some kids were Pepsi kids and some kids were Coke kids, I was a Full Moon and Freddy kid. Though over the years I have come to favor Jason slightly more than the others (emphasis on slightly).
When my mom and dad divorced, we lived with my grandparents for a while; and even after she was on her feet in a place of our own, I would go on to spend my summers off from school at my grandparents’ house watching horror movies and playing video games. Like in any average household of the time, my grandpa read the newspaper every day and would clip out what he and my grandma called “Jon jokes” from the comics section and leave them out for me with my breakfast. My grandma always made the best fucking pancakes, and they bought powdered jelly-filled donuts just for me. It was the best of times, it was the worst FUCKING BEST of times.
But I digress. After reading the comics, I would always read the Arts section of the newspaper, looking for movie showtimes and keeping up on what horror movies were out. This was still probably 8 years before the internet would really take off so this section of the newspaper was like my lifeline to the horror genre. My friends and I would rent horror movies on VHS or work our asses off to get enough allowance money to go to the movies, which was often. Do kids even get allowances anymore? It seems like every toddler waddling down the street has their own iPhone these days; I can’t even imagine explaining half the stuff we used to have to put up with. I saw a picture recently of some dumbass shoving his phone into a cassette deck thinking it was a cell phone charger. I hate to think what they would do with an 8-track deck.
This was the golden era of HBO, by the way; you could turn that channel on any time of the day and wind up catching The Goonies, Monster Squad, Big Trouble in Little China… no matter when you looked, something amazing was either on or coming on soon. Kids today have no idea how awesome movies were in the 80’s and 90’s. Films like Turbo Kid bring a huge smile to my face because it is such a throwback to the films I grew up on as a kid. For me, though, nothing really captures the essence of being a fan like the early Puppet Master films do. They were such a pivotal part of my life at that time. I am not kidding when I say we basically lived for horror movies and video games then.
One day I flipped to the Arts section to see a huge picture of Charles Band with his creations. I was so stoked. I LOVED the Puppet Master movies by that time, but the franchise only had 4 films to its credit then. I would dig through every tape on the shelf at our local video rental shop looking for Full Moon titles I had never seen and pestering the owners about getting new Puppet Master movies. They would argue with me about when the next movie was coming out and I would come back again and again looking for part 5. My friends and I spent our summers for the next few years eagerly awaiting new entries in the Puppet Master series. Any time I would find one, it was fucking on, man. Pizza. Soda. SNES. Lights out. VHS player in full effect. No matter how good a movie is today, it pales in comparison to watching Puppet Master 4 on the living room floor with Bagel Bites and Top Ramen. That to me will always be what horror means.
My grandparents and my mom have all passed at this point. My grandpa was the first to go, and then my grandma a few years later. Then, in some odd circuitous turn of events, my mom actually moved back into my grandparents’ house after her mother passed away. It wouldn’t be too long after my grandma’s passing that my mom would have a stroke that would take her away from us in March of 2014. She wasn’t even old enough to retire yet… Probate is coming to a close, and we had to pack up her belongings along with some of my grandparents’ belongings that she had kept at the house. That’s why I found myself at their old house this week going through boxes of my old stuff in the garage. Much to my amazement the first box I opened had that article I saved with Charles Band and his machinations in it sitting on the very top of a bunch of old newspapers I kept for various reasons.
We have been helping Full Moon get the word out about their crowdfunding campaign this month for their new films, and I had been thinking of this article since I first spoke to Charles last year when we did the Full Moon Box of Dread in July ’14. I thought it would be cool to find it again having actually met Charlie several times now. This article is from 22 years ago and I could still have told you what it looked like without even looking at it. Somehow the very first box I opened had that clipping sitting right on top as if to say, “Here I am.”
Categorized:Editorials News Retrospectives
