Horror Movie Romances

In anticipation of Valentine’s Day tomorrow, I bring you my favorite horror romances. I often scoff at Valentine’s Day, but, admittedly, I don’t mind the occasional chocolate treat. I also love the horror genre so why not combine the two? Maybe my love for the one will color my meh for the other. (This coming from a romance writer 🙂

Nightbreed and Candyman. Two Clive Barker stories made into movies.

Clive Barker does an amazing job touching upon a human’s relationship with his or her own flesh and how that toes the line between pain and pleasure. He did it brilliantly in Hellraiser (which could also be included here). Nightbreed and Candyman are especially gothic tales, dealing with so-called demons and or boogeymen. I’ve written before in my blog or somewhere I can no longer find, how Nightbreed is an underappreciated, misconstrued movie. It was marketed as straight horror by the studio, but it’s more a tale of the island of lost misfits except these misfits are demonic in nature. Anyway, I loved the romance between Boone and Lori. She sought him out in Midian and was not repelled by his demon nature. Personally, Nightbreed would make a great urban fantasy romance!

Candyman was a slave’s son, raised among the gentry as an artist. He fell in love with a white woman and impregnated her. His lover’s father hired a lynch mob, who cut off his hand and replaced it with a hook, covered him in honey, and left him to be stung to death by bees. Helen, a student researching urban legends, comes across the Candyman urban legend, but it’s not, and through her obsession with him, becomes his new love and her own urban legend. Candyman has a knack for horror seduction. He says to Helen: The pain, I can assure you, will be exquisite. As for our deaths, there is nothing to fear. Our names will be written on a thousand walls. Our crimes told and retold by our faithful believers. We shall die together in front of their very eyes and give them something to be haunted by. Come with me and be immortal.

Warm Bodies. While the premise was a bit hokey, this movie was funny, surprisingly heart-felt (especially loved Rob Cordry’s zombie). I wrote a brief review a while back: http://wp.me/p3aUdm-2V

The Fly. Tragic. Sad. If, instead of seeing Jeff Goldblum transforming into a fly, you view him as someone being ravaged by a disease and watch Geena Davis look on in horror and sadness knowing she can do nothing but watch him waste away, it’s truly a traumatic movie-going experience.

The Crow. It’s even more tragic to watch this movie, knowing what happened to Brandon Lee, and his father before him. The cinematography is eerie, fever dream-ish, dark, and wet; the soundtrack is fantastic with songs from The Cure, Violent Femmes, and Rollins Band; but it’s the story of how Eric Draven comes back from the dead to avenge the death of the woman he loved that is classic, oh, and the crow is cool.

Let the Right One In. The end of this movie damaged me, oh, who am I kidding? The entire movie damaged me. When we discover that Eli’s human protector, the old guy, was, well, maybe we don’t want to go there, but Oskar ends up taking his place. I wanted to both cry and cringe at the same time. Not many movies inspire such contradictory emotions. If you read a little bit about the book, it tells you that Eli was supposed to be an androgynous boy, and the movie kind of plays on this some. There are definitely themes the movies touches upon that make it horrifying in a very sublime way.

Lastly, my ode to the bromance:

Shaun of the Dead. Sadly Shaun’s best bro succumbed to the hordes, but that didn’t keep them from enjoying their favorite past-time: video games. Have a wonderful day and eats lots of luscious chocolate!

shaun