March 27, 2014

I’m somewhat at a loss for words right now. And not just because I haven’t had the chance to contribute much lately here on ICONS, but because I find it absolutely hard to accept that we’re about to hit our milestone 10 year anniversary. Mike C and I launched Icons Of Fright as the ultimate fan site back on April 24th of 2004, for no other reason that we loved the horror genre so much and wanted to advocate it. We wanted to passionately and enthusiastically voice our opinion for so many films we grew up loving that perhaps (at the time) weren’t as well known. Horror sites definitely weren’t quite what they are now. Fangoria existed on the web at that time, but I believe as a message board? Or at least in the earliest stages of a traditional website. Bloody-Disgusting had launched not too long before us. Before Dread Central, most of their core writers were on Creature Corner before turning into the Horror Channel.com and finally into the Dread Central that you know and love today! We always had a simple and humble goal – to bridge the gap between fandom and the horror creators. We loved movies; all movies and wanted to know everything and anything about the process behind the making some of our all time favorites. And so we fixated on a few things – extensive interviews ala Bravo’s Inside The Actor’s Studio (but for the horror fan), convention reports (as that was what was bringing horror fans together) and pointing the spotlight on both obscure and forgotten horrors, while at the same time giving attention to new up and coming independent filmmakers.

Along the way, we got to see some amazing horror movies; meet equally amazing filmmakers that had the same view and love of the genre as we did. We got to see careers flourish, both the filmmakers profiled and the many, many people over the years that have been kind enough to stop by and contribute to Icons Of Fright and 10 years later, here we are. Still standing!

I don’t want to drag this out longer than I should, but I have to thank my co-creator Mike Cucinotta for taking this journey with me. I feel like it helped shape who we are as people and I’m thankful for that. And again, all the writers that have helped keep this thing going over the years. Too many to name and I don’t want to forget anyone so just know you’re appreciated! And in fact, you guys that have been with us for the long haul, we’ve invited all our contributors of the past to pop back over here for our 10th anniversary. So you’ll be hearing from them again! We’re going to be celebrating in style for the entire month of April, bringing you fun content and getting back into the spirit of the way things were in the beginning of Icons!

Thank you guys for your support over the years in anything and everything that we’ve ever done with Icons Of Fright. And I need to give a very special thanks to my friend and mentor Tony Timpone over at Fangoria for his unbelievable support of Icons from the very beginning. Long before I ever contributed an article to Fango (something I never even thought would be possible considering I didn’t have a journalism degree), I was at a Fango convention and something that I made a habit of doing every year at every Fango show since I was 15 years old was to find Tony and thank him for putting on such a great event year after year and thanks for editing a magazine I grew up reading and loving. And he said to me, “well in a few short years, kids will be coming up to you saying how much they loved reading Icons Of Fright!” Whether that’s going to be the case is yet to be determined, but 10 years later… here we still are.

Let’s see if we’ve got 10 more in us.

Thanks for reading!

– Rob G.