HORROR HOTEL

I grew up in Rochester, New York, where childhood passions included writing fairy tales, playing croquet, and watching horror movies!

When I was in the fourth grade, Rita Knipper and I spent an entire Saturday at the West End Theatre on Thurston Road, totally mesmerized throughout three viewings of "Tarantula." My father found us around 7 PM. I recall another video adventure at the Dryden Theatre, attached to the George Eastman House - my first viewing of "Phantom of the Opera" with Lon Chaney. That's when I truly knew I was hooked on horror.

While my friends drooled over the Big Bopper, I pined for Bela Lugosi.

Fast forward to the present. Last weekend, a rainy blur after all, Baltimore's own in-jeopardy Senator Theatre hosted a Weekend of Horror Films on the Big Screen. I happily attended a Sunday afternoon showing of "Horror Hotel," circa 1961, in which a young coed uses her winter vacation to research a paper on witchcraft in New England.

It was pure Grade-B Delight: Christopher Lee, endless fog, a trap door, dead birds, dark spooky roads. I loved every second of it, and it only cost a fin, not bad for the ambience of a real movie house.

2009 may present challenges in terms of the economy, recession, global warming, job losses, and other modern frights.

Give me a soothing horror movie any day. Nothing like a black cape and a graveyard to restore my equilibrium.

Me, Shirley, The Goddess