Horror’s First Kiss
Author and podcaster S. A. Bradley often talks about that first kiss with horror—that moment when it seizes you and doesn’t let go. Sometimes it’s a film, sometimes a story, but the result is the same: you’re transfixed. You’re a fan for life.
My moment came when I was six.
My mother had a dear friend who, along with her husband, ran a local pizza shop—the kind of place that defines what “real” pizza tastes like when you’re a kid—a rectangular pizza with medium thickness and tangy sauce. We always ordered pepperoni, mushrooms, and green peppers. But more importantly, she had a teenage son who loved horror. He owned a movie projector, and one night I sat down with him to watch Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)—or, not to be pedantic toward the filmmakers, but Frankenstein’s MONSTER Meets the Wolf Man.
I was transfixed. The black-and-white images, the creatures, the surreal sets—gothic buildings wrapped in rolling fog—it all reached something deep inside me.
Around that time, Chiller Theater was a staple of local TV, hosted by Bill “Chilly Billy” Cardille, a weatherman turned horror host who also appeared as a reporter in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). Every week brought a double feature. Conveniently, right before Chiller Theater, WWOR out of New York aired WWF wrestling, which I also loved. Saturday nights became sacred. I’d head down to the family room and often fall asleep in front of the console television in the early hours. The next day, my mother would remind me I should be sleeping in my room, but I never listened.
Over the years, Chiller Theater introduced me to everything from the Universal monsters to Vincent Price to Hammer Horror. Two films in particular stayed with me: Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964), which aired in 1973, and A Bell from Hell (1973), which I caught in 1979. Both were foreign, and both opened the door to a wider world of horror. Blood and Black Lace—one of the defining gialli—is strikingly violent for its time, and probably not something a six-year-old should have seen. (Though I suppose I owe my otherwise overprotective mother both blame and thanks.) A Bell from Hell remains a cult oddity, remembered in part for the tragic death of its director, Claudio Guerin Hill, who fell from the bell tower during production. What stayed with me, though, was the twisting, turning story and the cast of unsavory characters.
Over the years, life has often gotten in the way. Tastes change, the genre shifts, but I still remember falling in love with horror.
