FM Interviews The Drunken Severed Head!

This being Famous Monsters of Filmland, one assumes that you, dear reader, are a classic horror fan. If that is indeed the case, then certainly you’ve heard of The Drunken Severed Head. One of the most entertaining, dedicated and spirited blogs out there (and there’s more than a few!), TDSH – as it’s affectionately known – provides daily thoughts (from random observations to wonderfully insightful analysis), original content and commentary about everything classic horror, and was honored this month with a coveted Rondo Hatton Award for Best Blog of 2009.

Famous Monsters was lucky enough to chat with the creator and writer of The Drunken Severed Head, Max Cheney, to gather some insight into the origins and workings of TDSH, as well as what motivates a fan to contribute to the classic horror community at large.

FM: Obviously, you’re very affected and influenced by your love of horror films, what are some of the ones that really instilled that love?

MC: The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, King Kong (1933), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, (and for a kid, Snow White  IS partly a horror film), The Haunting (1963), Vampire Circus, Jaws,  Alien and The Howling.

All are horror movies I’ve seen multiple times and will see again. (I love the classics, and the Warren/Ackerman run of Famous Monsters of Filmland instilled in me an appreciation and passion for them, as it did for so many kids of my generation.) Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte scared and intrigued me as a small child when it played on late night TV — and I haven’t seen it entirely since then. I’m not sure I want to — as a frightening memory from long ago it still has the power to haunt me; a viewing with adult eyes might take that power away.

As a child, I was thrilled and frightened by the Talos and skeleton battle scenes in Jason and the Argonauts, but it has never lost the power to make me sit on the edge of my seat, lost in awe of the supernatural characters and anxiety for the heroes — and I’ve seen it almost a dozen times.

FM: Blogging is a relatively recent phenomenon, one of many that the internet age has given us — What lead you to dive into the Plasma Pool, so to speak — How did the Drunken Severed Head come about?

MC: I waded into it, rather than diving right in. In 2003 I discovered the message board Universal Monster Army, and re-discovered my passion for all things monster-related. I never lost my interest in horror, but finding people with the same interests in classic horror renewed the enthusiasm I had as a kid for the subject.

I was made a co-moderator at the UMA, which encouraged me to assist my friend and fellow member Robert Taylor in interviewing former Universal child star Gloria Jean, who had known Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr. and other horror greats. I spoke with Sara Karloff too,  and got her to post some messages to the group. Then I shared an interview with Ted Newsom, the man behind the series 100 Years of Horror and Flesh and Blood, the Hammer documentary. Oh, I was having a ball!

So many people were blogging by this time that I thought I could make even more fun for myself and other folks by starting my own blog! Three years later I have a Rondo Award, so I must have done something right.

FM: What does it take to make a blog as successful as yours, not just in terms of scoring hits, but enduring and capturing the reader?
 
MC: Lots of contests with free prizes!

Actually, I’ve had only 2 or 3 contests, so that isn’t relevant to TDSH, though many successful blogs run them regularly.

As for “enduring”, well, from comments and e-mails sent to me about my Rondo award nomination and subsequent win, I’d say that letting the best of your personality come through is one way to get people to come back. Few people want to hear your inner grump or listen to your mopey side, unless your inner grump is funny. Even then, too much rage or ranting works against people coming back for the long term, I think. It’ll push up your hits – I want to make a bra analogy here but I think I better not – and it’ll make your writing voice stand out from other bloggers who aren’t similarly p.o.ed, but ultimately it palls. (Reader – if don’t know the word “pall”  do look it up; it’s a great word and you’ll need it to appreciate Edgar Allan Poe!)

Some bloggers advise, “Just write for yourself.” Foo! That sounds good, BUT. You write strictly for yourself and sooner or later you’ll be the only one reading your stuff! If all you care about is pleasing YOU, just go around talking to yourself. It’s quicker and less work!

You hafta write not just for you, but for an imagined audience of friends. And you gotta keep posting with some frequency, because people come and go — but they come back sooner or later, and in this age of Facebook and Twitter, if you’ve been dormant long everyone will assume your blog’s comatose. And you gotta publicize the best stuff you post — to get previous readers to be mindful that they need to read you again and to get new ones reading — ’cause there’s SO MUCH out there.

FM: What’s your process — what makes you decide what you write about, when you write about it, etc.?

MC: Like I am outside of the blogosphere, it’s often an unfocused and scattered process!

Well, holiday posts and obits of famous people are always an easy choice, as is posting pictures from horror-related events I attend. Movie reviews too, but many blogs over-rely on them; I want to reach a more general audience than movie buffs, although I’m one too. And like all bloggers, if I’m pressed for time I may just post photos and links I like — but you can’t do that too often.

I keep in mind my blog’s themes: horror films, monsters, weird news, cemeteries, Boris Karloff, Halloween and old-fashioned jokes about booze and pretty girls. Happily, many of my blog’s readers seem to be women who aren’t offended by the mild pseudo-sexism, for which I am grateful. I think it’s apparent I hold both sexes in equal esteem. Now if I could just hold women more tightly, but what’s a severed head to do?

FM: The blog is an innately personal format, and yours has a very singular voice. How much of your own personality do you think comes through in your writing?

MC: About half or a little more, I’d say. My enthusiasm for the weird and wacky is there, as is my preference to celebrate, rather than denigrate. My habit of making fun of myself is indulged too, as is my lifelong desire for attention — something I’ll crave ’til the grave! (I’ve thought of getting a headstone with an embedded recorder, so I can tell jokes even after I’m gone!)

FM: The great thing about blogs like yours, and of the online community in general, is that it provides such easy and immediate ways to connect to other fans. Do you have any particularly memorable experiences along these lines, any fan-finds or friendships that have struck a chord with you through your writing?

MC: Do I have any “particularly memorable experiences” in connecting with other online fans? Does marrying one count?

In 2004 I began to correspond and talk on the phone with some members of the Universal Monster Army, such as Jane Considine, who lived in Pittsburgh. (I lived in St. Louis, MO at the time.) One night on the phone I sang Zacherley’s “Gravy” — one of my favorites — to her one night on the phone. (I will sing a Zach song at the drop of a guillotine blade.) She had never heard any songs of that grand old horror host before, and was amused. That cemented the friendship — and now we’re bonded in wed-dead bliss!

If you can believe it, in June 2005, she proposed to me! (How cool is THAT?) That same month we went to my first Monster Bash convention in Pittsburgh (Land of Romero and Savini Zombies), and we announced our engagement to a gathering of Universal Monster Army members who were there– some of our most valued friends. On October 31st, 2005 I married my Halloween queen at dusk in an outdoor ceremony. My friends at the UMA commissioned and sent an oil painting by artist Mike Bennett of the Frankenstein Monster and the Bride, as a wedding gift. It’s proudly displayed in our house– The House of the Severed Head and his Bride!

I’ve made some friends through my blog as well– Pierre Fournier of Frankensteinia comes to mind, among others.

FM: What do you yourself look for in a good horror blog?

MC: Enthusiasm, a sense of perspective and/or a sense of humor. Really obsessive bloggers sometimes blow past lovably eccentric geekdom (my turf!) into not-all-the-marbles-are-accounted-for territory, and that makes my inner social worker worry for them. (Yes, I’ve actually labored in social work.) I also prize generally good spelling and grammar, too. (Here’s where I make many of your readers shake their heads in amused disgust.) Yet I use variant spelling to give a sense of how I talk (“gonna,” “hafta,” etc.) I’m hopelessly old-fashioned in some ways. Love me, love my old codger-ness.

FM: Could you name a few horror blogs that you’ve found particularly entertaining and/or enlightening?

MC: Good question, but damn! There are so many! Some blogging friends and I have joked that you can’t be a blogger and have much time left for reading other blogs. But I’ll name the ones I’ve read the longest or most often: Frankensteinia, The Horrors of It All, Obscure Hollow, Frog on the Pumpkin, Final Girl, Vault of Horror, John Rozum, Wouldn’t You Like To See Something Strange, Igloo of the Uncanny, The Roads of Autumn Dusk, The Skull and Pumpkin, and Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire. I also read some other blogs that are more eccentric than “horror.”

FM: Congratulations again on the Rondo win. Not only did you win this year, but you managed to score second place last year as well. Silly and obvious question, but how does that well-deserved attention and adulation feel?

MC: Like seeing the whole world go mad! But as George Bernard Shaw said, “When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.”

Really, it’s like having ten birthday parties at once!

FM: What are some recent genre films and/or filmmakers that you’ve enjoyed, that have helped promote or continue the Monster Kid culture and legacy?

MC: Ed Wood, Gods and Monsters, Sleepy Hollow, The Blair Witch Project, the Harry Potter films, Shaun of the Dead, The Corpse Bride, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Orphanage, Sweeney Todd, Coraline, and The Wolfman.

FM:What do you make of Monster Kid culture, anyway? What is it that compels yourself and others to not only seek these films out, not only to re-watch them, but to write about them as well? What makes this community special among others in fandom?

MC: It’s because we’re getting older, and we forget that we just talked about the same subject the other day!

Kidding! Not all of us are middle-aged and nervous about our coming “senior” status.

Partly, the cohesiveness of Monster Kid culture comes from growing up during nation’s “monster craze” that began back in the late Fifties and continued through much of the Sixties. I’m sure that there are Beatles, Star Wars and Harry Potter communities with as much devotion; we’re all products of the times we’re raised in. Crazes reflect what a society needs in the way of myth and fable at a given time.

FM: What are your memories of Famous Monsters of Filmland?

MC: The first thing that comes to mind is the excitement I felt when a new issue would come out. The magazine was not just a thrill for me as a kid, but an important influence.

My mother passed away when I was six. That was a defining real horror in my life.  She had always indulged my love of monster stuff. But I still longed for another parental figure who approved of scary things, and found one in “Uncle Forry,” who was always encouraging young horror fans in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was acceptable to parents scared of the counter-culture of the times, with the fact that he emphasized films of the past, the fact that he was vocal that he didn’t drink or smoke, and because of his clean-cut appearance.

Although not so traumatic as my mom’s passing, when Boris Karloff died a year later, I grieved again, as I loved seeing him in old movies on TV and reading about him in FM. But I remember my dad providing me some comfort by bringing me a new issue of Famous Monsters after he broke the bad news to me.

Soon after that, Forrest Ackerman seemed to address my sadness in his “Letter to an Angel” piece in Famous Monsters, where a little boy eventually finds consolation after being shaken by the death of Lon Chaney, Sr. I’m sure many readers remember it.

Famous Monsters of Filmland was GOOD for me, like it was for lots of other children who grew up to be “Monster Kids.”

FM: Like your blog, the magazine had a unique voice in Uncle Forry — was his writing in any way influential on your approach?

MC: The punning writing in FM also gave me a love of wordplay, and showed me that language could have multiple meanings simultaneously. This delighted me, and encouraged me to tackle reading books written for adults sooner than I would have otherwise — classics like Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Illustrated Man. Years later I taught high school English for some years. How lucky I was to be teaching the poetry of Poe, the novel Frankenstein, and the short stories and novels of Ray Bradbury!

I keep Forry around in memory, like many other fans. So that’s why I say, as his best friend Joe Moe did at Forry’s memorial tribute last year, “Forrest J Ackerman shall not die!”

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Famous Monsters of Filmland is very grateful to Mr. Cheney for his time and graciousness in granting this interview. Be sure to visit The Drunken Severed Head at the link above!