Reviewerverse Free Press Splatters Blood with The Horror Guru!

In the ongoing quest to bring you interviews from around the Reviewerverse, I tracked down Josh Langland, also known as The Horror Guru, last month.

Mehe:  Hello and welcome to Reviewerverse Free Press! Today, we are glad to be joined by The Horror Guru, host of Blood Splattered Cinema!

Josh Langland:  Heyo everybody! Glad to be here.

Mehe:  We usually start around here by asking a little about you. So tell us about yourself!

JL:  My real name’s Joshua Langland, but I go by the handle Horror Guru for obvious reasons. I’m a film school graduate who spends his days thinking way too much about the horror genre and one day decided to make a show dedicated to those thoughts. Thus, Blood Splattered Cinema was born!

Mehe:  Horror is a genre near and dear to many hearts, not least of all my own. What led you to it?

JL:  When I was but a wee lad – of about eight or nine years of age – I was tricked into watching James Cameron’s Aliens by my Grandfather. If I recall, his exact words were “You think you can handle a REAL movie?” With a challenge like that, how could I resist? Unfortunately for the next few months I found myself ducking under doorways and peaking around corners in fear of the Xenomorphs, but the thrill of that challenge stuck with me. After that I started doing it to myself, seeing just how much I could or couldn’t handle and spend many hours at the local video stores renting whatever it was I could find. The rest, as they say, is history.

Mehe:  So one great movie led to another, and a love was born?

JL:  Pretty much, yeah.

Mehe: What led to video reviews?

JL:  Back in 06 or 07 when I was in college my roommates introduced me to two video producers – The Spoony One and the Nostalgia Critic, in the days when both could be found on YouTube. I honestly can’t remember what my first video was for either, but I do remember that after the first viewing of both I couldn’t get enough of it and would marathon what they each had until I had watched them all. After that because I was too impatient to wait every week for a new entry from either of them, I searched the interwebs for new producers and that is when I found The Angry Video Game Nerd. Between those three I found myself thinking, “You know what, I could totally do this but for horror movies. But if I do, I want to create a slightly more positive environment and celebrate the genre rather than trash it.” However, I was knee-deep in college short film productions at the time so my time was too limited to start the show then. Flash forward to 2011, after I’d graduated and sites like thatguywiththeglasses.com were formed, I found myself having a hard time finding a job and as a result of that I had a lot of free time. So I watched tons of Internet Reviewers and while I was in the middle of one of Kyle Kallgren’s videos – I think it might have been The Man Who Fell to Earth actually – I remembered how I had wanted to make a show like these guys and that’s when I resolved to do so. A couple months later I would release my first episode of Blood Splattered Cinema.

Mehe:  Your show has a slightly more structured flow than many of the reviewers out there. How do you plan out your reviews?

JL:  The first thing I do is I pick a movie I plan on tackling, usually from my own DVD shelf as I have a pretty extensive horror collection. Then I watch the film once allowing myself to get lost in the film, watching it as it should normally be watched. Then I watch it a second time, taking notes – usually simple joke ideas or something specific want to go more in depth about in the review itself. Then I make sure to watch all the special features I can find, and read interviews with the creators online if I can find any. After all that research is done I sit down and start writing, usually going through the movie scene by scene as I do so. After the rough draft is done I let it sit for a day before coming back to it and ironing it out, finding a structure or flow that feels natural or at least as natural as it can be. Sometimes I might do a third or fourth draft if the review is more extensive than usual. I went through about six when I was working on The Mist, for example. As a side note, it should be noted I write all my reviews in Final Draft rather than Word as many other reviewers do as I find with the traditional screenplay format it’s much easier to plan pacing. After the writing’s done I’ll shoot all my on screen footage, and during that time a little mini-rewrite will always occur as I’m shooting because sometimes the words don’t flow out of my mouth as naturally as they felt on the page, so I fix it then. Then I record my voice overs and go through the same process there. After that, I start editing and this is where I feel the final re-write occurs as I put everything together in an extremely rough cut to see if everything’s working. If something obviously isn’t, it’s cut out or replaced. I then iron out a second cut, which usually is paced and feels more like what the final cut would be. Then, if need be, I do my third and usually last cut followed by a balancing of the sound. Then I release video and a fellow contributor watches it and notes an typo or an issue I for some reason didn’t catch, and I upload a fix. Because there’s always something.

Mehe:  That is a fairly in depth process!

JL:  That it is, probably more in depth than it needs to be. But I feel it helps the video out in the end, and I enjoy every bit of that process so no need to streamline it any time soon.

Mehe:  With your focus being horror, is there a subgenre that scares you more than another?

JL:  That is a tough question, as I think when done well most of the horror subgenres can be terrifying. But I think what scares me the most – and I’m not entirely sure there’s a specific subgenre for this, the more I think about it – is when a movie is able to make the audience empathize with an extremely horrible person or when it’s able to have a character make an extremely horrible choice and the audience is right there with them. I discuss this a little bit in my Mist review, how the ending of that movie effected me so much because I was right there with David despite how horrible his final decision is. Two examples of movies in which the creators were able to make the audience feel for horrible people are The Devil’s Rejects and Hard Candy. And I will fight tooth and nail anyone who argues Hard Candy is not a horror movie, because the mere fact it’s able to make the audience for a split second feel bad for a pedophile makes it one of the most horrifying movies of the last decade.

Mehe:  I’m not sure that subgenre has an actual name, now that you mention it.

JL:  Definitely not and that’s most likely because it’s an element of a lot of horror movies from varying subgenres. So, I suppose it’s more a trope of horror than a straight up subgenre.

Mehe:  Has a movie stumped you yet?

JL:  I haven’t been stumped yet, though there have been a couple movies I’ve planned to review where I realized my normal format simply will not do it justice. I’m planning a review of the French horror film Inside, about a pregnant woman dealing with a home invasion. That review will require a little more in-depth analysis than my usual Cinema episodes because it’s a bit more meaty and the trick will be to manage the analysis with the humor. I find it a lot harder to be both humorous and analytical, which is probably why my Adaptations episodes are usually absent humor. But it’s a goal of mine to find the right balance between the two, because I believe my videos would benefit from it.

Mehe:  Recently the horror genre has shifted more towards the use of 3D as a gimmick. As a fan, do you feel this has added or detracted from the movie going experience?

JL:  3D is a tool and as with all other tools it entirely depends on how it’s used. Movies like My Blood Valentine 3D and Piranha 3D were able to accentuate their over the top humor using the technology, while I feel movies like Fright Night suffered because it added nothing to the picture. Then there are films like Texas Chainsaw 3D or My Soul To Take which were just awful regardless of the 3D release. I do not feel horror as suffered too much as a result of the recent 3D boom, because for every bad thing that came from it there was a good thing. Joe Dante’s The Hole, for example, was an excellent 3D picture it’s just too bad it didn’t get a wide enough release for most to see it that way. I will say this though, I am waiting for someone out there to use 3D in a horror movie the way Ang Lee or Martin Scorsese did in their most recent pictures – As I think the more atmospheric approach to 3D would benefit horror more than any genre if someone out there’s able to master it.

Mehe:  What’s the Horror Guru’s favorite film?

JL:  Battle Royale. Hands down. One of my greatest regrets, regarding my own show, is not including it back in Top 10 Horror Films of All Time video simply because I was unwilling to argue with those who feel it’s not a horror movie. But regardless of the argument, it is my favorite film of all time.

Mehe:  Battle Royale is one of the best films I’ve ever seen, but recently The Hunger Games series has called in nicer terms “an homage” and by others “a ripoff”. Any thoughts on that, personally?

JL:  The only similarity The Hunger Games has to Battle Royale is the initial premise of young kids forced to kill one another. Other than that, they’re completely different stories and they both tell them well. Battle Royale is a harsh metaphor for the highly competitive nature of the Japanese school systems, combined with the increased generational tensions between the young and the old. The Hunger Games is more a battle of classes, rich vs. poor, those who have vs. those who have not. They’re different battles, just being presented with a similar premise. People like to act like that idea was created solely by Battle Royale, but it has it’s roots in many past works. The idea of people being forced to kill one another dates all the way back to the Roman Gladiators, and has been featured in many modern works like The Running Man for example. And the idea of it being kids forced to so comes from mixing that history with Lord of the Flies.

Mehe:  Where would you recommend a newcomer to either the horror genre or your own show start?

JL:  A newcomer to the horror genre is probably better off looking in the familiar places – The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween – because those films and ones like them have all stood the test of time and are regarded as classics for a reason. They’re all super effective at what they do, while also being among the safer horror films you could watch if you’re not ready for the truly gnarly stuff. As far as my own show goes, I am not quite sure. I’d probably go with Chopping Mall for Cinema, as that’s one of my favorite riffs, and The Birds for Adaptations as that’s when I feel that show really hit it’s stride. Also if you want the more skit-based humor of Friday Night Fright Flicks, my collaboration with Count Jackula, then I recommend starting with either our review of Resident Evil: Retribution or V/H/S as those are two of our stronger first season episodes.

Mehe:  Have you got any upcoming collaborations or projects you’re looking forward to releasing on an unsuspecting public?

JL:  ALL CRITICS MUST DIE! A feature-length film about an evil cult that worships bad movies trying to kill a rag-tag group of internet credits. The film stars myself, Count Jackula, Stephen Krosecz, Spazzmaster, Some Jerk with a Camera, Il Neige, The Wire, Chris the Nerd, Mikey Insanity and Arthur Knowledge and is coming this summer. Stay tuned.

Mehe:  What advice do you have for up and coming internet reviewers looking to join this crazy world we inhabit?

JL:  I don’t necessarily feel I’ve been at this game long enough to be dishing out advice, but if I were to say anything I’d say trust your gut. If something sounds wrong, or feels wrong, then it most likely is wrong and needs to be reworked. I also recommend reading… Lots and lots of reading, because there’s always more things out there to learn.

Mehe:  What’s been your best experiences as a reviewer?

JL:  I thoroughly enjoy writing and putting together the reviews, but definitely the best part of the whole experience is fan feedback. Hearing that people out there were touched by my work or that it got them through a bad day makes all the hard work and sweat completely worth it.

Mehe:  And which of your reviews do you feel is your best so far?

JL:  Hmm. I try to improve a little bit with each new video, so my natural inclination is to say Silent Night, Deadly Night for Cinema and The Mist for Adaptations. But if I were completely honest, I love my Evil Dead Trap video even if I cringe every time I look at how close I put that camera to my ugly mug in that video. That video feels like such a fun time, and it was one of the few videos where everything clicked immediately and from start to finish I got it out in 4 days.

Mehe:  As a fan, where do you want to see the horror genre head in the next few years?

JL:  I have no clue what direction I want it to go, as I’m actually quite happy with the place it has been the past few years. The big mistake a lot of people make is looking purely at all the main stream releases and thinking that’s all the horror genre is now, when that shit’s merely the tip of the iceberg. The underground and foreign markets are bigger than ever these days, and truly horrifying flicks with unique visions are coming out every year. Occasionally one or two of those flicks will garner mainstream success based on shock value alone – like A Serbian Film or The Human Centipede – but there are others, many others. This year, for example, saw the release of Park Chan Wook’s Stoker which I hope people will check out when it hits DVD because it is truly amazing. I’m also definitely looking forward to the wide release of American Mary, because I’ve heard great things. I guess what I’m trying to say is, the direction I want horror to go is to keep on pushing the boundaries and kicking ass as it has been the last decade.

Mehe:  This has been a very enlightening and interesting interview, and I want to thank you for taking the time out today to talk with us. Before we wind up, any final words for the readers?

JL:  Keep on rockin’, my fellow gorehounds! Til next time!

Mehe:  We’ll catch up with you again soon!