 Welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, and what are we drinking today? Oh, Grady's Irish Stout. And I'm drinking Slaughter Lam's English Bitter. Today, we want to have a little conversation about the state of horror movies and kind of the lack of horror icons in present-day horror. Because everything seems to be old. Mm-hmm. Everything is harking back to, they're trying to satisfy all the older generations. Like us? Yeah, like us. And it's like, it doesn't satisfy us. That's the thing. We want something new and fresh, and something that's gonna continue, right, on into the future. And we just don't seem to ever get it anymore. No, and I find that when you look at trends in horror movies, and when horror movies aren't the most popular, and we consider like golden eras of the genre, it's because you have these iconic characters and figures that transcend the genre into pop culture. Yeah. Which makes the genre then bigger than it usually would be. You go all the way back to like the 30s, Dracula, and Frankenstein in the Universal Monster movies, groundbreaking cinema. Yeah, and when you talk about those movies, you associate the movies with the character itself, not with any of the other characters usually, right? And you still do. When you think of Frankenstein right now, what image comes to your brain? The monster. It's Boris Karloff, you know, the Jack Pierce design of Frankenstein. Yeah. And that's what we're talking about, where it's like an iconic horror icon that can live past the genre, pass the movie into pop culture, then making the genre popular at that given time. They kind of had that going with maybe the Saw series, with Jigsaw in the early 2000s, but that sort of died off. Like they killed off their own man, basically in the third movie, and then had him continue in the fourth. Then after that, it just petered out. But they kept bringing up the movies without him, and I always wanted to see Jigsaw come back. And then now they're trying to bring him back, but it's too late. Yeah. So that might be the last real iconic horror icon with Jigsaw. And there's been one since, but they haven't crossed into pop culture. And when I mean that, I mean you talk to Joel Blow on the fucking street. They know who Michael Myers is, probably. They know who Jason Voorhees is. Definitely they know who Freddy Kruger is. Yeah, and they don't have to have seen all of the movies to know who he is, who each one of them are. They don't need to be a big expert or a big horror movie nerd to know who those icons are. And when you look back to like the 80s and stuff, well there was, you know, the horror genre was bursting. It was fucking exploding. It was great. And why? Because of those icons. Yeah, yeah. And even like, it doesn't even have to be a monster. Right. Like if you take, like if you take Return of the Living Dead, for instance, Burton Ernie. Yeah. Those guys, the movie, those guys are icons in my opinion. But not like... They don't surpass the genre though. I don't care. We talk about those guys all the time. You gotta, you gotta take my word for it. I know it's not what you're getting at, but still it's like, fuck. Ash. Yeah, that's what I had in mind actually. I think a lot of people who aren't in the horror movies probably recognize that character. The best in the movie at what he does. Yeah, exactly. But you also don't get the movies that can hold a character like that anymore either. There aren't, those kinds of movies just don't seem to be made. They're just, everybody seems to be falling back on the past. So it's like, there's more of a lazier way of filmmaking nowadays, where nobody wants to go out on the limb. It's like the studios don't seem to want to support anything that's new and creative nowadays. No. And that's, that's why you nailed it right there falling back on the past. Nostalgia type people. We like all those old movies, but we also like to see something new too. And that's why when the new Halloween movies came out, as much as we love Halloween, we weren't all that enthusiastic because like, we've seen this. It's beating a dead horse. Yeah, you don't, you didn't need any of these new movies at all. Right. So that's why like, can't we be creative and think of something new? Keep this genre alive and to keep it new and exciting. It is a joke nowadays. Yeah. Really. And the way newer movies are done nowadays, they're done with jokes in them that don't belong to. Yeah. Which seems like it sort of mirrors how the genre has gone, which is sad. Some people might say, oh, you know, Art the Clown, well, he's a new horror movie icon. Within the community, yes, but he hasn't transcended into pop culture. No. Because the movies themselves are too shitty and too gory. You can't have a character like this transcending into children's cartoons and stuff in a way that, you know, Toxic Avenger was a fucking cartoon. You need something that's a bit more, that's better. You need something that's better. In quality than Art the Clown, you know, we have to be better. Art the Clown. Yeah, we have to be better. Horror movie makers have to be better if they want to keep the genre alive. You know, I think it's getting better, but it's struggling. Like even, I'm just looking at Michael J. Fox, Teen Wolf. You don't have any movies like that anymore. No. Because at that time, there was a lot of Wolfman movies at the time, but Teen Wolf was a new spin on that, you know? We don't need to see Scream 7. We don't need to see the Halloween TV series. We don't need to see the Camp Crystal Lake TV series. It's just like, give us something new, please. Even Thanksgiving, kind of refreshing in a way, it was a new slasher, but it's like, I can't see that character, that slasher, really going much further than that. Right, and becoming bigger than the movies. Being bigger than the movies. Chucky was bigger than the movies. Jigsaw was, I think, bigger than the movies, you know? Yeah, the character was, yeah. Even the line, I want to play a game. Lift past the movies. Yeah, because there's all those memes and everything. That's just our little thought on the state of horror movies and why it's not as big as it used to be, and that's because it lacks icons. Keep going back to the same well, you know? Like, fuck off. It's dry already, right? It's dry, exorcist believer. It's dry, drier than your grandma's cunt. Ha ha ha ha ha. Kidding it, this is it. So let us know what you think in the comments about the state of horror movies now. If there are any icons that we may have missed, I mean, maybe there is something out there, maybe there's something in the works that we're not aware of, but either way, with the state of things nowadays, it looks pretty sad. Let us know, and until next time, keep drinking.