Tonight, I’m reflecting on and remembering my Uncle Charles. It’s his birthday today. He died in 2021 and would have been 63. He was a great dude. Everybody loved him. He was a writer too, and he taught me plenty. Hell, I dedicated my second book to him. Chuck meant that much to all of us.
There’s so much I could say about him but, for the purposes of this post, and, given that it’s spooky season, I’m thinking specifically about how he’s singlehandedly responsible for my love of all things horror.
See, my folks kept a pretty tight handle on what I watched as a kid. They did it because they wanted to keep me from the bad stuff. Same reason any parents would do this. I appreciate them trying.
Thing is, when I went to hang out at Uncle Chuck’s house … yeah, that rule didn’t apply.
On one fateful afternoon some 30 years ago, Uncle Chuck decided I’d benefit from a double feature (both starring Kiefer Sutherland in a villain role, incidentally, and both RATED R):
We watched Stand by Me first. Loved it. To this day, one of my favorite movies. I’ve seen it so many times it’s hard to even keep track.
Next up for our afternoon matinee, just as the skies were beginning to darken, appropriately: The Lost Boys.
Uncle Chuck popped the video in the VHS player and we watched. This was to be my first true horror film. I’d viewed plenty of intense movies before, but this … wow … this was about to blow my mind.
For an intermission, Chuck went to the kitchen to reheat some chicken wings in the oven. He came back with a couple plates full. We devoured the wings as I watched vampires devour humans, barely able to even focus on my food.
What stuck with me was the overhead POV shots of the vampires flying in the skies. God, if these demonic things could fly through the clouds, swoop down, and rip doors off hinges and roofs off cars, then nobody was safe.
And so with this in mind, I lay awake that night, post-Lost Boys viewing, wide-eyed, listening to Chuck snore two rooms over. There was the fear of what I’d seen on the screen, coupled with the young writer’s imagination I didn’t yet realize I had (that ability to see extremely detailed pictures of things materializing in your head and, sometimes, the blurring of reality and imagination, especially as a youth, that accompanied these mental images).
After wrestling with the idea of whether my seeing these things could physically make them materialize in the dark, something powerful came to me: What was so cool about watching a horror movie was the simultaneous combination of safety and fear. There was a sensation of fright without an actual fear of danger.
Maybe it wasn’t so crystal clear in my brain then, but that general idea came to me as I lie there in bed, thinking about those movie vampires. I was hooked on horror right then and there. In the coming years, I’d sneak many a Stephen King book into my room at night without my folks knowing (sorry, mom!)
So, a shoutout to Uncle Chuck on his birthday today. He touched the lives of so many folks in my family – and beyond. I am grateful to him for many things: a love of writing and, whether he meant to instill it or not (I like to think he did), a love of scary movies and books.