Urban Legends

Urban Legend
$9.95
Say what you will about modern horror and the extremities it goes to in making an audience cringe - at least it's doing SOMETHING right. The watered down horror era of the late 90s/early 00s is over. Whew.

All these movies were good for (Valentine, IKWYDLS, etc.) were jump scares and pretty people getting sliced and diced, even if you didn't really see much of it. It was horror for the NSync and Britney crowd. "OMG, LYKE, DON'T GO IN THERE AND STUFF!"

The more time passes, the more I realize I can't even enjoy these films for cheap nostalgia (class of '99 boeeeeey!). My generation got the shaft with the horror genre. I mostly watched stuff from the 70s and 80s back then anyway. Blockbuster Video was just a few blocks away.

Two stars for the stylish college setting. Beautiful building.

Urban Legends: The Complete Season One
$29.95
Beware! This is not the show Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed that was running on The Learning Channel and Discovery a few years ago. I goofed and bought this disc, which dramatizes 3 stories per episode and challenges the audience to guess which one really happened and which ones are only Urban Myths. The trouble is if you're an Urban Legend enthusiast like me, you already are familiar with these stories and this show doesn't fill in the background on the legends like "Mostly True Stories" does. So you end up with some hokey dramatizations which would tip off even someone who has never heard the stories to which ones "actually happened". Hence, I can't recommend this DVD to anyone and now I need to try to sell the damn thing. BTW-I didn't buy it on Amazon. I wish I had since I could have saved some money.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings
$13.95
Jan Harold Brunvand collects some of the most well-known urban legends in the US, traces them to their possible origins, and explores their importance to society as reinforcers of conventional morality. I remember seeing the author interviewed on the David Letterman Show back when the book was first published in the early 80s. It took me a long time to get around to reading it, but the topic is timeless and Brunvand's analysis has not aged at all. Today, we have websites such as Snopes to help us separate fact from legend, but this book was a groundbreaking work that helped popularize the academic study of contemporary folklore. Intended for use in college courses, it may seem a bit dry at times and even a little repetitious, but the inherent fascination of the topic shines through.

Encyclopedia of Urban Legends
$19.95
A wonderful record of fascinating true stories, window-dressed as a collection of fictitious modern folklore. Great entertaining light reading, BUT, more importantly, is THE source for the skinny on what's really going on behind the mainstream headlines.

I have shelved it in my personal library between The New York City Public Library Desk Reference Manual, and Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.

This is currently published only in an oversized softcover format. The author has done a wonderful job of assembling and retelling hundreds of important and entertaining stories . . . and pretending that they are fabrications, even providing "origins". Bravo!