Happy 30th Anniversary, Fango!

The occasion of Fangoria's thirtieth anniversary is likely to make the magazine's old-school readers aware of their own encroaching mortality more dramatically than any horror movie could. After all, thirty years is a serious chunk of time and I'm sure I'm not the only one old enough to remember Fangoria's 1979 debut who feels as though the last thirty years have gone by impossibly fast. But even if thirty years is a sobering number to process, the good news is that three decades later, Fangoria is still the premiere horror mag in the world and their anniversary issue (on sale now) celebrates Fango's vast impact on the genre with new interviews with a Who's Who of Horror.

The first Fango I bought was issue #22 (pictured above). I had been aware of Fango since the beginning but was forbidden by my mother from buying it. I would always thumb through issues, though, when I saw them at the local supermarket (we lived in very different times back then, clearly, as I can't imagine seeing Fango at any supermarket today. For awhile even the Jane Alden convenience store at the end of my street proudly carried Fango and I vividly remember seeing the cover for issue #12 - featuring the severed head of Mrs. Voorhees from Friday the 13th Part 2 - in their small magazine section next to the likes of US Magazine). Although I eventually would come to own all the back issues I missed, it was agony at the time to see the Motel Hell cover (issue #9) and have to leave it behind just because my mother believed that a magazine with a man in a pig mask wielding a chainsaw wasn't appropriate for her eleven-year-old.

By the time issue #22 came out, though, I was thirteen and way too old for my mother's backwards attitude (the fact that it took me until I was thirteen to grow some balls about this is sad in itself). While on my own at a local magazine shop (part of a now long-defunct chain called The Newsstand) I saw #22 and with its articles on Creepshow, Halloween III and Friday the 13th 3-D, I wasn't going to pass it up. I was my own man, damn it!

I haven't missed an issue since then and I still consider Fangoria to be the single most valuable source in keeping the horror community informed. Its Canadian rival, Rue Morgue, seems to get more love from younger fans but with respect to the good writing featured in RM, I think it's not as essential as Fango. Fango takes a lot of flak for covering the kind of mainstream offerings that RM usually avoids but if Fangoria had been as particular as Rue Morgue is, just think of how many horror films over the last thirty years that would not have received the coverage they did. Certainly franchises like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street wouldn't have been granted the same kind of attention. Some might see Fango as 'selling out' everytime they cover a major studio release but whether they're writing about Maximum Overdrive or Hellraiser or The Unborn or Drag Me To Hell, Fango is doing what it's always done - keeping horror fans in the know on everything that's out there. Not just what might considered cool, but everything. And to complain about the attention that Fango pays to studio films is to ignore the tireless championing Fango has done since their start on behalf of independent and foreign fare.

I love that when you look through Fango, you see that the same regard is given to the likes of C.H.U.D. and Mirrors as to Blue Velvet and Martyrs - every film, regardless of its pedigree, is treated fairly. To me, it's that equitable attitude that makes Fango indispensable. Fango continues to celebrate every corner of the genre without prejudice and that's something every fan ought to applaud them for. When it comes to horror, Fango doesn't discriminate. They show respect to all genre films, even when it's not considered fashionable to do so.

Thanks, Fango - here's to the next thirty years!

FANGORIA

At some point it may come to pass that FANGORIA's editorial staff will adopt a discerning, wait-and-see attitude before giving an unknown quantity like The Unborn their big cover shot (by the way, doesn't that whatever-it-is look like the Zuni Fetish Doll from Trilogy of Terror reborn as a creation from Carpenter's The Thing?). After all, it can't always feel great to be caught lavishing attention on the likes of Cry Wolf or Dreamcatcher but I'm grateful that they do.

I like the fact that Fango can always be counted on to pimp whatever genre film is around the corner no matter how promising or unpromising it might look (I also like the fact that even classy films can be rendered cheesy by a Fango cover, like Videodrome being accompanied by the cover blurb "TV With Guts!"). You'll never catch Rue Morgue with egg on its face from covering the likes of, say, Mirrors but I think I'd respect them a lot more if they did. I always get the feeling that the people at RM are pleased with themselves for putting out such a classy product, that they're raising the bar for genre mags or whatever. And while that may be an accomplishment to be proud of, I have more affinity for Fango. I've always liked that the tacky and the timeless have an equal chance of being on Fango's cover.

One month it could be Maximum Overdrive or Resident Evil: Extinction and the next it could be The Shining or Pan's Labyrinth. That feels right to me and more accurate to what it is to be a lifelong horror fan in that part of being a fan is getting stuck watching your share of duds. Yet often times those duds - and the occasional spectacular failure - can represent some of your fondest movie-going memories more than most classics. When you're a horror fan, shitty, disposable films (I'm looking at you, Leviathan!) can mean as much to you as the exceptional ones. And not just old shitty movies that've had a few decades to gain their following but the new ones, too. Whether it's good or bad, The Unborn has just as much chance of being important to some horror fan as Let The Right One In does.

And even if what ends up on Fango's cover is a commercial appeasement to one studio or another rather than a matter of personal taste, that's ok. After all, the people at Fango need to pay their bills and put food on the table the same as every other working chump. The real world is always pounding on the door - that's why we need that shared outlet of horror to escape to.