The ’90s Horror Kid Starter Pack

Kris 0:00

We are right in the middle of spooky season and this year we've been spending a lot of time looking backward. We're talking about nostalgia, revisiting the things that we grew up with, and trying to recapture some of that feeling of what Halloween and horror used to be like. As a fun general note here, Shine and I are both technically children of the 80s. I managed to experience the 80s for about five minutes before the universe deposited me directly into the 90s. That's what happens when you're a New Year's Eve baby. But because of that, I think discovering horror is specifically tied to growing up in the 90s. And it wasn't just the movies, it was going to blockbuster Hollywood video, it was wandering through the horror section, staring at VHS covers for movies you had absolutely no business watching. It was catching something on TV halfway through and having no idea what the hell you were watching. It was goosebumps, it was Are You Afraid of the Dark? It was Halloween episodes, it was sleepovers, video games, it was hearing some completely unverifiable story about Freddie Krueger from another kid at school and just accepting it as fact. So tonight, Sean and I are going to attempt to reconstruct that very experience. And together we're building the 90s Horror Kids Starter Pack. Spookies and Greetings and Salutations, and welcome to Hagger Splash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. My name is Chris, I'm your friendly neighborhood Splasher enthusiast, and this week I'm joined by the classic horror connoisseur, Sean.

Sean 1:19

I had to wait 300 years for a virgin to light a candle.

Kris 1:23

Here's how this is gonna work. We've come up with a series of categories that represent different parts of growing up as a horror fan during the 90s specifically. Together we're gonna discuss what best represents the experience of growing up with horror during that era. So something from the 70s or 80s can still qualify if you discovered it during the 90s. And I want you to really ground yourself in this is about what was on television. This was what was available to rent at the store, this is what kids were talking about, what scared us, what we weren't supposed to be watching. And essentially the goal here is if you hand this starter pack to somebody who didn't experience the 90s and say, hey, this is what being a horror kid felt like. What would have to be inside of this? Now we have a few categories, but I think a really easy place to start is Sean, what was a movie you watched when you were far too young and had no business watching it?

Sean 2:17

Oh man. You know, I've heard some really wild things out there from people that have watched some probably, if you're reflecting on it, way gnarlier things in their young age. Uh, however, I think for me, um, really it was just in and just specifically thinking of 90s, I oddly just remember watching it's like either a toss-up between the Tim Curry it or uh it was the original Pet Cemetery. And I just say for two specific reasons. One, that clown fucked me up when I was little. That shit, I was actually scared of the VHS tape for a little bit, like, but I still put it on. Like I had to watch it, but then I was like, you know, it's like almost like torturing myself. And for some reason, in Pet Cemetery, only the part where like the you know, sister that's dying scared the shit out of me. Like when she's like spoon feeding the medicine or the soup to her sister and she looks all like wrinkly and decaying. Uh, that I just couldn't do. I don't know why.

Kris 3:23

You know, you're not the first person that has said that. I think every single thing I hear about that movie, if it's not gauge, it's specifically that it's Zelda and looking like that. I remember we actually talked about that during our episode, and Alexis, who used to be on the show, freaked out at that part of the movie. But man, you're really sending me back with that it VHS. You remember how thick that thing was?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, was it a double VHS?

Kris 3:47

I think it was a double VHS because it was a three-hour-long whole thing start to front. So an hour and a half on one, an hour and a half on the other. You know, I have such a stupid final memory of that VHS, and I know that it still exists, it's it's in my childhood home right now. But Sean, when I was young and deeply closeted, I well, separately from being closeted, I owned that VHS, that double VHS. And when I had my first beard boyfriend, so my first illusion, my first um distraction case, I lent him that VHS. And I remember there was a day where he broke up with me via text message. And the only thing I said back to him was like, Can I get my VHS back? That's it. I haven't watched it. Well, I watched it with the community on like HBO or whatever it's streaming on right now. We did that in honor of Tim Curry's passing, but that VHS I never watched again. It was last played in that dude's fucking VCR somewhere.

Sean 4:52

Terrible, but you got it back.

Kris 4:55

I did get it back, it's still in my home. So that's wild. I need to actually I need to go through and pick out all those VHSs because I could put them on my shelf behind me. I would agree that that movie can fuck you up. It never fucked me up though. And actually, I don't think it ages super well. I mean, Tim Curry's iconic, of course. John Ritter was great in that movie, Olivia Hussey, great cast. But my god, the ending of that movie, it just was little much for me. However, my first movie that I have a distinct memory of watching, Children of the Corn. It's super tame as far as everything else goes, right? Like I grew up watching 80s slashers, I was probably too young to be watching any of that. But specifically, Children of the Corn was something that I just thought was so much more brutal than it really was. And I had this like stigma about it in my brain of like how fucked up it was, only for us to review it in like the first year of having the podcast. And I was like, oh damn, this ages terribly.

Sean 5:56

You know what this screams up? Well, first of all, yes, Children of the Corn, uh classic, but yeah, I think a lot of these movies, when we look back at them now, especially those movies that were like always on TV, not holding up, especially maybe it's also because of how much crazy horror we've watched since then. But what this is screaming to me is that Stephen King lives rent-free in our heads.

Kris 6:20

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Pet Cemetery, it, Children of the Corn, Cujo was another one.

Sean 6:26

Yeah, he's just responsible for so much horror consumption as kids.

Kris 6:32

Especially in the 90s, absolutely. We're really he was really in his heyday getting all his films, all his novels adapted into books. Wild. Getting all his novels adapted into films. Damn, that is wild. You know, it's so fucking weird because I was so sheltered as a kid and I wasn't allowed to watch so much. I've still never seen American Pie. I didn't watch scary movie until a few years ago.

Sean 6:57

That's right.

Kris 6:58

So anything that's like super overtly like normal people sexual, for some reason I couldn't watch it. But if someone's fucking around in a horror movie, I guess because they get got, maybe there's like a little morality subtext there. I I was totally fine to watch it, but damn, too watch, too young to watch Black Christmas 1974. That's another one where the older I got, I wondered how the fuck was I allowed to watch this? Because man, he says some filthy things.

Sean 7:27

Dang, so many good ones, too. Yeah. I mean, I obviously feel like I've watched outside of like monster movies and stuff. I I feel like I definitely got into like the Halloween franchise, um, the Friday the 13th franchise at some point in there, but I don't rec for some reason don't recall them as being the ones that scared me. I don't know what it was.

Kris 7:49

Michael Myers was the only thing that scared me to the point where I actually had dreams about him. Regularly, I would have dreams that Michael Myers got into my house and killed my family, and like I woke up just before I was about to die. Wow. Only character I've ever had nightmares about. However, I watched Children of the Corn first, but Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Halloween with the fucking best of them so many times, the fog. And a lot of those things took up a lot of runtime in my childhood. Was there anything that gave you nightmares?

Sean 8:23

You know, honestly, honestly, I don't know what did actually. I definitely had maybe after the second, I think it's the second pet cemetery where they have the dog that comes back, right? And the dog like comes back a little bit evil. I think ever well after watching that one, I had this reoccurring nightmare as a kid of my dog with its eyes turning red and glowing and chasing me around the living room. And I had that dream maybe like a dozen times or more, and I think it stemmed from Pet Cemetery 2.

Kris 8:54

That sounds fucking terrible.

Sean 8:57

Yeah, I mean, you know, it is what it is.

Kris 9:00

I'm so glad I didn't watch Cujo until I was older.

Sean 9:03

Yeah.

Kris 9:04

Like I wasn't like a kid kid, because I also grew up with a ton of dogs, and losing any dog was just devastating. I wouldn't have been able to handle that.

Sean 9:11

That's true. It's tough.

Kris 9:13

Now, obviously, a big quintessential part of the era in which we grew up was the concept of just going to a store and borrowing some shit for a fee. A library, but for movies and video games. Not that libraries don't also give you movies and video games. You can still get it free there. But first, what was your video store of choice?

Sean 9:35

Uh well, to be honest with you, it depends on where I was at in any particular part of my life. But the closest and most convenient location I had to my house was Hollywood Video.

Kris 9:48

Yeah. 100%.

Sean 9:50

Yeah, Hollywood video for sure. But I've been to my fair share of uh blockbusters as well. Um, whenever I used to go visit my dad in Colorado, um, he lived like a block away from a blockbuster. Odd. But I used to like just walk down the street, grab a couple of movies, walk back, we'd watch movies at night. You know, I have very fond memories of like grabbing Jason takes Manhattan and watching that with my dad and things like that. I don't know why that I've I think I mentioned this before in the podcast too. That specific Friday the 13th movie is like one of the most memorable movies because of that specific time.

Kris 10:29

So very interesting. Listen, that movie is just fucking fun. It's not a great movie. We talked about this during that episode, too. It's it's not wonderful or stellar, it's arguably the worst-looking child version of Jason in some moments there. It's Jason takes a boat ride, hitches a ride towards Manhattan, and passes by. You know, I guess it's interesting because I rented more non-horror than horror because my family owned so much of it. Like we didn't really have to go out and rent a lot of it. I think we just committed to the bit. I remember Scream being a very popular movie picked up in our household. Um, I remember Hellraiser being one that we rented. That was again, okay, speaking of movies that you're too young to watch in the 90s, Hellraiser.

Sean 11:27

I don't even think I grasped the concept of Hellraiser when I watched it as a kid. I was just like, these guys are fucking weird.

Kris 11:34

How could you? And it was one of my favorite movies in the 90s when I was a kid, and I just little did I know I would grow up to be super not into that.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Yeah.

Kris 11:44

You think I would have way different preferences in my life, but I for sure going to Hollywood video was a huge thing. Going to Blockbuster was a huge thing. I'm thinking about okay, rentals. One of the things that I remember most is renting the leprechaun movies.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Oh.

Kris 12:04

Because no matter how much horror we bought, we didn't really want to own that shit. We just wanted to watch it.

Sean 12:10

Yeah, you just it was always like uh, you know, unless you're finding a new release of some kind, like a major blockbuster move release that you had to watch, you're you're like scouring the aisles, you find your way to like the horror aisle, you find the fun ones that you've probably seen a couple times. It's that uh, you know, maybe you're looking for the VHS art that looks the best. Like, you know, I've got Evil Dead VHS on my arm right here. I mean, it's not like very distinctive, but like that's an iconic cover, you know what I mean? So like you're looking for like the fun stuff like that. There's maybe the new releases wall. There's you know, there's the whole game of whether or not your parents were gonna let you rent the thing that you're trying to rent. That that that was a whole game to play. Um, just finding those weird straight to video movies and just playing the sh like the gamble of like, is this gonna be good or is it gonna be disappointing? And it was just that was part of the fun. Did you waste your money? Did you not? It was part of it. You had to be there.

Kris 13:07

Now you think about okay, we have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, you have so many other means of you pay a fee, you just watch this stuff. It feels like less of an investment, like you get more, you pay more, you get more, but also the the bond in that experience, like the actual social connection in that experience, somehow feels less tangible, maybe just because it is digital media versus physical media, which listen, I love the idea of physical media, but I also, as someone who moves around a ton, know that it's not super practical to move with. Um but I I think now looking at let letterboxed recommendations for covers of movies versus just going to the store and getting the movie, it's it's a very different experience.

Sean 13:58

Yeah, you didn't really have full access to reviews and things. Like you were just going off of the you know, the synopsis on the back, you're going off of the cover, you're just going off of maybe word of mouth, maybe you're just hoping for the best. Like it was it was such a time. It's crazy. I mean, actually, now that we're thinking of of video stores in general, we're like the generation that lit like 100% progressively watched the the whole change of where we're at from then to now. Like, literally, we went from blockbusters and like the the you know, some of some supermarket chains had the video section, you know what I mean? Like you had all these places where you could rent movies. You go into a physical store, there's a beaded curtain with some CD selection in the back, the private section, like there's all of that you had, and then all and then we saw the change with like Netflix being just literally mail-in DVDs at first, like literally mail-in DVDs.

Kris 15:00

Do you remember the last mail-in DVD you got? I do because I didn't return it.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

I don't remember. What was it?

Sean 15:07

God, I don't even know if I remember to be honest with you.

Kris 15:10

When I was in A school in the Navy, I got my own Netflix account and I rented Imagine Me and You, which is a lesbian movie. Definitely kept it, definitely watched it and wore the fuck out of that DVD. Netflix never said shit.

Sean 15:27

Dang. There's like we're calling it a loss.

Kris 15:30

You're right. We've seen so much transition in how we experience those things. It does make me think I feel like we're just less prone to taking risks now. I mean, you just put on a movie, you try it out, you change it in 30 seconds, like you don't give it the full attention. It's because we have too much access.

Sean 15:53

It's too much access. You have the ability to just turn it off and go to the next thing, or just or there's the worst part of that. You don't even turn anything on, and you spend an hour and a half scrolling through shit to find something. By the time you find something, you don't even have enough time to watch it because you're like tired or you're falling asleep, or you gotta go to bed to get up the next day. Like it's not a you know, it's sometimes it's not great. It almost you have to keep that old school mentality and be like, this is what we're watching for better or for worse.

Kris 16:21

Yes. It and if we hate it, then that's the memory we made along the way.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah, you watch some good, some bad. That's the point.

Kris 16:29

Something I feel, Sean, we could always do with less access and more shame in our lives. We've come a far, far away. Okay, so we talked about video store rentals. Obviously, movies, while we are a horror movie podcast, is very important, were only one type of media we were consuming in the 90s. Period, ever, but specifically when you were a kid, John, do you recall any of your favorite horror or horror-esque books?

Sean 16:59

Oh my gosh.

Kris 17:01

Um Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Sean 17:04

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was somehow the book. I don't know. Like, I I feel like I bought that every year at the bookstore, even though I feel like I probably never changed and I just had the book. I just always remembered the cover and remember getting that at the bookstore and just being like, this is way too creepy for a kid to be buying at an elementary school bookstore.

Kris 17:25

White cover, scratchy, sketchy, like figures like in in dark shading.

Sean 17:31

Yeah.

Kris 17:32

It looks fucked up. I remember buying it, reading some of it. I don't remember or have strong memories of reading all of them though. And if it was scary stories to tell in the dark, maybe I wore I read one scary story to tell in the dark and just one little excerpt of that book. But Goosebumps was a way bigger thing for me.

Sean 17:53

Oh, yeah. Goosebumps was a huge thing. I had a huge collection. I don't even know where that collection went. I wish I kept it. Like I wish I had half the shit I had when I was kids. I would probably be semi-rich with all the shit that I had.

Kris 18:06

But oh my gosh. My again, somewhere in my childhood room is my original Pokemon card collection. Apparently, you make bank on that now.

Sean 18:14

Yeah. What you you you need to figure out how to get your hands back on that if it's still floating around your family's house.

Kris 18:22

Yeah, it's just so my old childhood bedroom was turned into a storage room. 90% of it is just my stuff, and then some of it's like uh stuff that belonged to a storage unit. So I do just need to gut out that room, and I would eventually find it.

Sean 18:36

Chris, you are probably sitting on a fucking gold mine. If you have like do you have like the original set?

Kris 18:41

The original set.

Sean 18:42

Chris, you're sitting on tens of thousands of dollars potentially.

Kris 18:46

It's just there in that house. Oh my god. It's just there in that house.

Sean 18:50

We need to do like a filming of you opening that again for the first time.

Kris 18:54

Oh my god, that would be insane. So actually, okay, remind me of this exact topic when we get into uh another section that we have later because I need to talk to you about how I've hunted for things before. Okay, specifically in that room. But damn, Goosebumps, absolutely. I didn't really read Fear Street at all ever. I wasn't old enough for that, I think.

Sean 19:17

Yeah, I don't think I ever got into Fear Street. Goosebumps was huge, 100%. I did like dabble into Stephen King books a little bit. Like I remember reading, maybe not like super young. I'm trying to remember. Maybe, maybe when I got to middle school. I don't know. I just remember um Carrie being an early book that I read. I remember um uh what's the other one? Um dun dun dun. Uh Salem's Lot, I believe. I read pretty pretty young. Um, so I did dabble in a little bit of the Stephen King novels back then. Um, but it was mostly goosebumps.

Kris 19:57

I love that you were reading the serious shit.

Sean 20:01

Yeah.

Kris 20:02

Because I was reading Goosebumps or Shakespeare. Like it there was no happy medium here. It was one or the other, actually the boxcar kids or the boxcar children. It was some book that my mom was obsessed with when she was a kid, and then we got that like in the box set that had like the boxcar style. But 100% loved those. Shivers? Do you remember Shivers?

Sean 20:24

I don't think I remember Shivers. Maybe if I saw it.

Kris 20:27

Yeah, I have this vague recollection of a book called Shivers, and I think it's something that I'm gonna have to dig into. Maybe in this collector era that we're all in, and we're just really trying to heal our inner children as millennials who have endured so much horror and trauma over the years. Maybe we just need to revisit all these things, Sean.

Sean 20:47

Oh wait, I just looked it up. I do remember these covers. Your mama's a werewolf? That's wild.

Kris 20:53

Your mom.

Sean 20:55

It definitely is screaming goosebumps. Like it was just the kids type of horror book for sure. I do remember seeing these.

Kris 21:02

Yeah, you can get a full set of goosebumps on Amazon.

Sean 21:07

Rest assured, like at some point, if I have a kid, that whole set is getting purchased.

Kris 21:11

I mean, listen, you might want to start now before AI keeps burning the books.

Sean 21:17

Terrible.

Kris 21:18

Books check. You were a scary story in a goosebumps kid. I was a goosebumps kid. I think we can align there. I was a goosebumps kid. I think we can align there.

Sean 21:26

Yep.

Kris 21:27

However, when you think back into just the movies of it all, and I guess this is where I find my love of horror books now. Because I started to discover that it wasn't just the goosebumps or like the completely fictional stories within books alone, but adaptations of horror movies and novelizations of horror movies is something that I grew up. So I obviously Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss, Goosebumps, all that shit when I was a kid, loved literature as a concept. But didn't like fully deeply connect it to horror until I was in my twenties, late twenties, early thirties. And now reading novelizations of horror movies is such a huge thing for me.

Sean 22:11

Nice.

Kris 22:12

Sean, this existed long before I was born, but I didn't know about it. And it's the original novelization of Halloween.

Sean 22:20

That's cool. What is it the experience like?

Kris 22:22

It's not like the screenplay, or it is the screenplay, or so typically with novelizations, they get a version of the script or a version of the screenplay. It may not be the final film. So they're writing the book while the movie's in production. That's why they usually come out so close together. So he's probably back here on the shelf. This huge Halloween book that I have for the 2018 Halloween. That was the same thing. So the author fleshed out the world around it while sticking true to that. This one is really interesting because obviously with a movie in 1978, this book is written by Curtis Richards. If you were to assume this movie this book starts somewhere, you would assume it's with Judith Myers and Michael Myers as a six-year-old. But I'm gonna read you uh just a brief excerpt here. The horror started on the eve of Sawin in a foggy vale in North Ireland at the dawn of the Celtic race. And once started, it trod the earth forevermore, wreaking its savagery suddenly, swiftly, and with incredible ferocity. Then it's lustated, it shrank back into the mist of time for a year, a decade, a generation perhaps. But it slept only and did not die, for it could not be killed. And on the eve before Sowin, it would stir. And if the lust were powerful enough, it would rise to fulfill the curse invoked by so many Sawans before. Then the people would bolt their doors. This starts, you know, like the Halloween franchise eventually gets to this cult of thorn and this like sacrifice type of thing. This book that was released close to the movie actually goes there before those movies ever did.

Sean 24:05

Interesting. Okay, so it does its own, it has its own liberties a little bit, like it can change a little bit of it or add a little bit of to it.

Kris 24:14

For sure. It does. And you when you get in here, obviously Lori, Tommy, Lindsay, Annie, Bob, Linda, they're all in here. The dialogue's very close.

Sean 24:23

Nice.

Kris 24:24

But I have started to find an appreciation. You can't get it's very, very difficult to get like an actual first edition of this. Uh I found someone on Etsy who was just selling copies of it, so I picked it up. Um, but I highly, highly, highly recommend, which actually I think is a huge reason why Michael Myers and Halloween as a franchise has endured so much for me. Like obviously, 90s franchise would be Scream, but Scream is only here because Halloween was before it, before an entire sub-genre of slashers were before it.

Sean 24:57

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's crazy.

Kris 25:01

So which franchise was it was doing it for you in the 90s?

Sean 25:04

You know, uh for a whole franchise, um, definitely I mean, obviously you have Halloween, you have the um nightmare in Elm Streets and uh Friday the 13th, but also I just want to say a franchise that I think was very prevalent was Candyman. Uh, I watched Candyman quite a bit. Uh the first I don't know how many were actually in the 90s specifically, but I watched I remember watching a couple few of them throughout my childhood, and that also, now that I think about it, had also frightened me as a kid is the Candyman.

Kris 25:43

Tony Todd was just terrifying, and it was specifically because of how deep his voice was. Yeah, very handsome guy. Candyman seems like a vibe.

Sean 25:53

But that voice, like it's the whole thing of like because then you psych yourself out and you're like, Well, I'm gonna go say Candyman, you know what I mean? In the mirror in the dark in the bathroom for like five times just to see if he shows up behind me or something, you know, and you just kind of psych yourself out as a kid.

Kris 26:11

Did you ever do it?

Sean 26:12

Of course, yeah. I did that and Bloody Mary, and nothing ever happened, but it was scary. So, yeah, I mean classic franchises.

Kris 26:21

Yeah, definitely classic. Man, Chucky was another big one in the 90s. Not just because of okay, child's play getting its start in the 80s, but Chucky really shining in the 90s and becoming the franchise it is today in the 90s. I can't wait until we get to Bride of Chucky in October. That's gonna be such a fucking wild ride.

Sean 26:44

It's coming, it's coming for sure. Yeah, a lot of great franchises that you can, you know, that I think we grew up in the era of great franchises. They started a lot of them, like you said, started in the 80s, but really solidified their uh their the their stature in the 90s, you know?

Kris 27:03

Absolutely, which you know, Sean. I don't know if you ever had any sleepovers or anything of that. I was very sheltered, so I didn't actually have sleepovers with a friend ever. I had some sleepovers with my cousins and we'd watch some horror movies. But I want to reinterpret the idea and the concept of a sleepover because every once in a while, when I was younger, and especially living in Texas, my sisters, my brother and I would stay up late watching horror movies in the living room with a bunch of blankets, and we'd all like basically fall asleep watching movies out there. Eventually transition back to the room, but like that had a big slumber party energy for me. I guess when you grow up in a big family, every night's a sleepover. And Scream was a headline there, and I will never forget the memory of watching Scream for the first time. I've talked about it a million times. I'll link the episode in the description here so you don't have to listen to me prattle on about it now. Classic watch scream in front of a sliding glass door in a cozy living room with some jiffy pop out in the background. 10 out of 10 experience.

Sean 28:11

100%. Scream was always like one of the go-to's for sleepovers, hanging out. What are we watching this weekend at whoever's house? Um, that I mean, you just think of like that time as a kid. Scream, I know what you did last summer. Like, those were just movies that you had to watch, especially. Those were the slashers that were happening in the moment, they were new as kids. So, like, yeah, we all 100% gravitated to those films.

Kris 28:39

Did you have any others that made some popular appearances at your sleepovers?

Sean 28:43

I mean, outside of just the franchises that we were just talking about, I think those were the two big ones that everyone always wanted to watch. Um, we had like Evil Dead was a big one for my buddy David and I. We were always watching, we were always searching for like the most absurd horror movies we could find, but Evil Dead was like our like uh that was our standard bearer. Like that was like this is the the vibe that we're looking for. Like, what can we find that matches that vibe? So yeah, it would be Evil Dead would be another one, that whole franchise.

Kris 29:18

I my god, I went so long in my life without even knowing that Evil Dead was a thing.

Sean 29:23

That's wild.

Kris 29:24

I just didn't know. Maybe if I had more sleepovers, it would have been different.

Sean 29:27

You got Dawn of the Dead. Those are, I mean, great, great movies to watch as as kids.

Kris 29:34

I'm just realizing how heavily bent towards slashers my family was. Just predisposed to that.

Sean 29:39

I mean, slashers are that's just a vibe. That's the fun, that's they're fun to watch. Like they're engaging, like you're interacting. I feel like you know, you react a lot differently than some other movies are just there to make you feel like nervous and anxious, and you know, all those different feels, you know, looking over your shoulder and whatnot, that stuff, but slashers are just fun because you're yelling at the screen sometimes.

Kris 30:04

100%. Okay, so summer parties, movies, slashers be damned. I want to also take a moment to just acknowledge a very important category, which is horror television, and specifically the feeling of after school horror, because oh my gosh, what a great time we grew up in for that. You had X-Files, Tales from the Crypt, Are You Afraid of the Dark, Goosebumps, Buffy. Which ones did it for you?

Sean 30:33

It depends on the year. Like Goosebumps obviously was fun, but specifically, I rem I recall like getting off of school and going home or out or going to a friend's house and we're having snacks. And I always remember Are You Afraid of the Dark being a thing? Like that was always the thing to watch. That was that Nickelodeon era of you know, just kids that just is gone. It's lost in time. So I even tried to revisit it because the whole series is online somewhere. I forget. That's hard to watch as an adult, but it's still kind of nostalgic. Um, I feel like somebody should like reboot this and make it like even like more adult-y would be kind of cool, but we'll see. Um, but yeah, Are You Afraid of the Dark was a big one. Tales from the Crypt was that was just something that like I don't want to say after school thing, I want to say just it was just something that that was a show that my parents watched at night, and I would like beg to stay up to watch. So, like, knowing that it would freak me out, and they told me it would freak me out, and I didn't care, but like Tales from the Crypt was the thing to watch at night that I literally begged for to stay up late and watch.

Kris 31:43

And I loved watching Tales from the Crypt when I was a kid, and I actually can't wait because in our spooky season in October, we are going to have sleepover or slumber party Saturdays, and we're gonna do late night streams. One of the streams that we're doing is Tales from the Crypt.

Sean 31:59

So good.

Kris 32:00

Because all the original episodes are out now. Yeah, did you ever watch the animated Tales from the Crypt?

Sean 32:04

Oh no, I never watched the animated version.

Kris 32:07

Oh my gosh, okay. We're gonna have to show you that. I believe it's available on Tubi even, um, but it's also very, very cute. It's again after school horror. So if you felt like your kid was too young to be watching Tales of the Crypt, enjoy the animated version.

Sean 32:22

We had cartoons too. I feel like we had there's like a a Beetlejuice cartoon that was floating around out there that I thought I, if I remember correctly, that was.

Kris 32:31

That was a really good one too. Mortal Kombat also had a cartoon as Defenders of the Realm. Do you ever watch that?

Sean 32:37

I think I did watch that a little bit. Yep.

Kris 32:39

I have such a distinct memory of waking up one day, watching Mortal Kombat, Defenders of the Realm, watching the movie Matilda, and then watching Nightmare Before Christmas right after. I don't know why it's like these little vignette in my brain uh when I was in Texas, but holy shit, what a great animation we lived through.

Sean 32:56

That's so good. Uh kind of on the cusp of like my childhood going into like when I was like a little bit maybe getting too old to watch you know cartoons, if you will, and then my but my brothers were young enough, so I still watched them, and that was Courage the Cowardly Dog.

Kris 33:14

Oh my god. I actually was not into Courage the Cowardly Dog at all. I feel silly and almost like Sacchariches saying that, but I love Rocco's modern life and all real monsters.

Sean 33:26

Okay, all real monsters is another one. Brocco's was fun. Um oh, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That was definitely an after school TV show or evening growing up TV show on the you know, whatever it was called, KTLA 5WB, whatever it was at the time. I don't remember. Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Man, we had all the Halloween stuff, it was great.

Kris 33:53

We also had all the Halloween versions of shows, and also, oh my gosh, so Disney as a whole, Hocus Pocus, yeah, Halloween Town in 1998.

Sean 34:03

100%.

Kris 34:04

But the Disney Channel original movies, remember Under Wraps?

Sean 34:08

Which one was Under Wraps? That was with uh Okay, yes, yes. That one was good.

Kris 34:15

Phantom of the Megaplex.

Sean 34:16

Yeah, there was like it was like one of those Ernest movies from Halloween. There was a Halloween Ernest movie that was hilarious.

Kris 34:24

Also, also a classic Simpsons tree house of horror.

Sean 34:28

Oh, and those are all available for streaming too. I tried to dabble back into The Simpsons, and there's like, should I just like put this on? You know how many there's so many episodes to just go back and watch The Simpsons.

Kris 34:40

It's like a John, it's literally a lifetime of episodes.

Sean 34:43

It's impossible. It's the longest running cartoon ever, probably.

Kris 34:48

I just got through re-watching Six Seasons of Glee earlier this year. I don't have time for the Simpsons. I mean, you can just put it on in the background, but you're not absorbing that, you're not meaningfully watching in the entire back catalog of The Simpsons.

Sean 35:03

No, it's impossible. I'm I'm sure of it. It's impossible. Man, so many good ones, so many good TV shows. That's incredible.

Kris 35:10

Really, really good ones overall. I can't wait again to get into our spooky season and get some of these Discord streams going. And I also can't wait if you have heard of and experience a 90s TV show that really scratched the horror parts of your brain, even if it wasn't explicitly horror. Please comment, let us know. We're looking forward to that. Now, I think obviously, especially with a movie that's coming up that we're going to be reviewing, horror games and just toys overall were such a staple of our childhoods. I mean, if Binks were here, she'd talk about Resident Evil 2.

Sean 35:44

100%.

Kris 35:45

Did you play it?

Sean 35:46

I loved it. Yeah, that was I didn't play like a ton of video games growing up, but Resident Evil 2 was one of them that I played and distinctly remember playing back in the day. Very frightening game to play.

Kris 35:58

I distinctly remember watching my cousin play.

Sean 36:01

Yeah.

Kris 36:01

Because I was terrified of that game. And I dabbled playing with it a bit when I was younger, but I've never completed the game. And actually, it's funny because I mentioned my nephew, who's 20 years younger than me, he's played through the game and the remastered one, and he wants me to do like a playthrough of it with him. He was schooling me on his first night here about Resident Evil 2.

Sean 36:20

That is awesome. I don't know if I ever played through the whole game either. I do remember distinctly playing that. There was like another really distinctive uh Resident Evil, but I think it was much later, like in the 2000s, where you're like in a like a in like a plantation or something, which was also a pretty crazy game. But yeah, like horror video games, Resident Evil was definitely one of them. Doom was always fun, like Doom was like that first person kind of funness. I remember playing that quite a bit, even on the computer. That was cool. Um, yeah, good stuff. Good stuff.

Kris 36:55

I remember Castlevania being a huge thing. I didn't find a love for horror video games until much later in my life.

Sean 37:02

Same. Yeah, I didn't play a lot of horror video games. Castlevania had a lot of friends that played 100%.

Kris 37:09

What I did fuck around with though was collecting figures already at a young age. I want to present to the council uh two figures. Let me do I'll do I'll do an order of chrono uh chronological order. So I have here released in 1998, very dusty, very old, a McFarlane figure of Jason Goes to Hell. So good. Bloated Jason, you kind of see the the roundness of his mask there, a chrome blade looks cool. So we have that one, and then we also have from 1999 McFarlane, and you know this is my original one because his nose is fucked up. Uh a action figure of the 1978 Halloween Michael Myers. His nose is missing a little bit of the paint there. I've always tried to figure out how to like cover that up and touch it up a little bit. But we're talking about that room, Sean. Yep, that storage room.

Sean 38:06

Yep.

Kris 38:07

I spent hours one day. And it was specifically when I started collecting the NECA figures, and I was like, damn, where the hell is my original Michael Myers? Because the licensing for NECA starts with Halloween 2. And then they have Halloween, Halloween uh ends, Halloween kills from 2018, the David Gordon Green trilogy. But this was at the time the only representation I had of the original 1978. And my brother and I spent hours just tossing boxes out of the room, cracking them open, just trying to find this toy. I cannot believe I found it.

Sean 38:40

That's wild. How long did it take you to find it? Do you think? Hours?

Kris 38:43

Hours. It was basically like half a day's worth. Dang. And then putting everything back.

Sean 38:48

Yeah, I feel that. I've done that before. Looking for not for figures, but specifically just trying to find something and having to go through like a million boxes. Crazy. Dang. That's awesome. Very cool to still have that stuff. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't collect any figures back then. That started much later in life. Toys-wise, uh, from a 90s kind of nostalgic point, I just remember like creepy crawlers, like always having to have those making little little you know, gooey spiders and stuff. It was just kind of a fun. I remember the commercials.

Kris 39:19

The commercials are so good.

Sean 39:22

Oh my god. We just had such great. I mean, even just that's the thing I feel like I don't know. Maybe I just don't watch TV anymore. Maybe it's a lost thing because who's watching TV anymore? But like horror commercials in the 90s was legit. It was legit.

Kris 39:38

Oh my gosh, Sean. So the ones where you can make the lab of like the making your own horror gummies. Yes. Love that. McDonald's also had its horror Halloween commercials.

Sean 39:50

Yep.

Kris 39:50

You remember the little McNuggets dressed as Dracula and Mummies and shit?

Sean 39:54

I'm sure, yeah. That's awesome.

Kris 39:56

Yeah, the McDonald's kids' meals back in the 90s obviously had like the boo buckets or the pails.

Sean 40:02

I remember those.

Kris 40:03

And then there was a little like nuggets that were dressed up as them.

Sean 40:06

Yeah, I remember always getting, yeah, the boo buckets and the toys.

Kris 40:09

Yep, there it is. So there was the classic little nugget with the um purple suit with the McDonald's arch on it, and then the green Frankenstein hat. Yeah, the one that was a there were Halloween McNugget buddies. You had Dracula, you had a witch, you had a mummy, you had a ghost, and you had a jack-o'-lantern.

Sean 40:27

Yeah.

Kris 40:28

Damn, we really lived in a different era.

Sean 40:30

I know. I'm telling you.

Kris 40:31

When did we lose our whimsy?

Sean 40:33

Just a different time. Maybe it was because that was also like the end of an era in just the timing. Maybe it was just all just the in that realm of time.

Kris 40:42

Yeah. McDonald stopped making the original Halloween McNugget buddies after their final seasonal run in 1996. So they did '92, '93, and '96 is the major releases. And then they brought back boo buckets later in the year. But I think we lost our whimsy, and I think we lost our love of Halloween.

Sean 41:05

Yeah, it's I feel like Halloween's making a comeback though. I feel like it's getting more and more popular now, and I don't know if it's because like our generation is having more kids, you know, right now. Like we're seeing like a spike in like, oh, we're just like nostalgic for our Halloween, so now we're getting like kind of a resurgence of that. So I don't know. Hopefully it's on the up and ups, you know, because I'd love to see more Halloween stuff. Right now, what's really depressing is you go anywhere and it's like September, mid-September, and they're like, Well, our Halloween stuff is pushed to the side and we're putting Christmas stuff out.

Kris 41:42

Oh, yeah, that's so fucking disrespectful that it needs to stay until November 1st.

Sean 41:46

It should be illegal. Literally.

Kris 41:48

Yeah, it absolutely should be illegal. But I can't wait, especially because this maybe that's what I'll do. Because my nephew loves Chucky. Our spooky season theme is all about nostalgia. I think I'm gonna run him through our starter pack and try to find those classic Halloween traditions that we all know and love and see if I can convince a Gen Z kid to really be a 90s kid.

Sean 42:13

Interesting. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

Kris 42:16

We will see how it goes. But John, obviously, looking back at the significant amount of incredible shit that we got to live through as horror fans who were children of the 90s, if you could go back and bring back anything, what would it be?

Sean 42:31

If I can bring back anything, I would generally love to see like somebody re like revitalize the Tales from the Crypt series, bring back the Crypt Keeper, you know what I mean? Like if you could just start the show again, because that character's iconic and timeless. So I think that would be cool if we can make that successful. Other than that, I think we just need to bring the I mean we're starting to get it. Like some of the some of the stuff you can get now, like has that like vibe, and maybe it's just what I'm looking for is that old school kind of Halloween vibe, and just we just need more people participating in in kind of that festivity.

Kris 43:07

I'm right there with you. I would love, love, love to bring back just that good old school Halloween vibe. I think that's something I'm gonna commit to trying for myself this year. I'm really reflecting back on what we were talking about with like the video rental stores. It's not necessarily that I want those physical stores to come back, but I think I miss what is tangentially attached to them, which is the risk taking, almost tracing our brains back to before a time when we could just turn something off after 30 seconds and just switch to another movie or spend two hours trying to find something digitally and never really commit to it. All of these ways in which we've increased our technological access to things, we've also diminished our ability to commit to things in different ways. And I think that's something that maybe just in my old grumpy age, I'm reflecting on. I'm feeling very back in my day right now.

Sean 44:01

That's what happens when we get old.

Kris 44:03

Yeah. So I need to figure out a way to restore that kind of vibe in my life. But I think what's really special is the time in which we grew up forged us in such a way, and the rapid advance of technology, what we've seen and lived through just in our lives, and the backdrop that we've lived in historically is just absolutely fucking insane. But we've had, in spite of the real life horrors, a incredible genre of fun and brutality and social commentary and messaging that is uh almost helped us cope through all of that.

Sean 44:39

Yeah, 100%.

Kris 44:41

Now, obviously, we have had a lot to discuss here, and we have shaped up our 90s horror kid starter pack and thinking about the things that we loved the most growing up. But if you grew up with horror during the 90s, there's a pretty good chance that you're thinking of things that we didn't even discuss. Maybe you're a goosebumps kid for sure, or watch Tales from the Cribs, but also I'm sure you probably can think of specific 90s Halloween toy commercials that we couldn't conjure up ourselves. Maybe you spent Friday nights walking through the horror aisle at your local video store trying to convince your parents that an R rating was really more of a suggestion. That's also possible. And again, there's probably tiny pieces of growing up during that era that Sean and I completely forgot. And that's what we're trying to tap into with the spooky season this year. When we talk about nostalgia, we're obviously talking about the movies and shows and games that we loved. But what's important here, especially this month and then next month in October, we're also remembering how we found them, who we watched them with, the places that we went, the things that scared us, the stuff that we weren't supposed to see, and how it changed us after, and all those weird little rituals that eventually turned us into the horror fans that we are right here, right now. And somewhere right now, there's also a kid we know discovering horror for the first time in a completely different way. Obviously, 20 or 30 years from now, Sean, they're gonna be sitting around talking about how much better horror was in 2026, and that means you and I are fucking ancient.

Sean 46:10

Yeah, that's just the way time goes, you know. I mean, there's a lot to really look forward to this spooky season. Uh, if you had fun listening to us kind of banter around uh 90s nostalgic horror as kids growing up, be sure to stick around and just like check out some of the awesome uh movies we're gonna be talking about this season. Uh, we've got a lot of great stuff, new and old, revisiting some fun franchises. You can consider supporting the show by visiting patreon.com/slash hackerslash. You can enjoy a lot of cool stuff, including bonus content with early access, extended episodes with our B sides, which are free sides for the spooky season. You can participate in movie nominations and of course catch some live shows.

Kris 46:58

We'll see you next time, folks. And remember, we are the weirdos, mister.

Sean 47:01

Being normal is vastly overrated.