Chainsaws and Carnage: Fangoria’s Bloody Blueprint for Horror Mastery

In the splattered pages of horror history, Fangoria’s Chainsaw Awards stand as the ultimate blade, honouring the screams, gore, and chills that define the genre’s rawest thrills.

When horror fans clutched their dog-eared copies of Fangoria magazine in the 1980s and 1990s, they held more than just glossy stills of severed limbs and monstrous maws; they gripped a cultural bible that elevated schlock to art. Amid this revolution came the Chainsaw Awards, launched in 1992 as the magazine’s fan-voted salute to the previous year’s terrors. Unlike the staid Oscars, these trophies revelled in blood sprays, body counts, and screams that shattered eardrums, encapsulating the visceral essence of horror cinema. This deep dive slices into their origins, dissects the categories that spotlight horror’s core elements, and revives the nostalgia of an era when practical effects ruled and fandom ruled supreme.

  • Fangoria’s gritty roots in 1970s horror fandom birthed a magazine and awards that championed gore over glamour, forever changing how we celebrate scares.
  • The Chainsaw categories—from Most Blood to Best Killer—precisely honour the technical and theatrical pillars of horror craftsmanship, blending fan passion with critical bite.
  • From indie slashers to blockbuster beasts, the awards’ legacy echoes in today’s horror renaissance, reminding collectors why those yellow-spined issues remain prized relics.

Fangoria’s Gore-Glorious Genesis

Fangoria burst onto newsstands in 1979, founded by Kerry O’Quinn as a no-holds-barred antidote to the more whimsical Famous Monsters of Filmland. Where Forrest J Ackerman’s publication peddled affectionate monster love, Fangoria plunged headfirst into the arterial spray of modern horror, showcasing make-up effects wizardry from Tom Savini and Rick Baker alongside interviews with directors like George A. Romero and John Carpenter. The 1980s timing was impeccable: slasher flicks dominated multiplexes, from Friday the 13th’s campy kills to The Thing’s grotesque transformations. Fangoria captured this frenzy, its covers dripping with Freddy Krueger’s claw marks and Jason Voorhees’ machete gleams, fostering a community of collectors who traded VHS bootlegs and rare lobby cards.

By the late 1980s, the magazine’s influence swelled, with circulation hitting peaks that rivalled mainstream glossies. Special effects articles dissected dawn-of-the-dead intestines and alien chestbursters, while fan letters poured in debating the ethics of on-screen dismemberment. This groundwork set the stage for the Chainsaw Awards, a natural evolution from reader polls to formal recognition. Voters—die-hard subscribers—cast ballots via mail-in forms tucked into issues, ensuring grassroots authenticity over Hollywood schmoozing. The inaugural 1992 ceremony, honouring 1991 releases, crowned Candyman as Best Picture, a nod to Tony Todd’s chilling bee-swarmed menace that resonated with Fangoria’s taste for atmospheric dread laced with gore.

The awards quickly became annual fixtures, expanding categories to mirror horror’s multifaceted terrors. Nostalgia buffs today scour back issues on eBay, where a pristine Fangoria #100 from 1990 can fetch hundreds, its pages yellowed testaments to an era before CGI diluted the tangible squish of latex flesh. These magazines weren’t mere reads; they were portals to convention halls buzzing with costumed zealots, where Chainsaw buzz fuelled panel debates. In collector circles, owning a run of awards coverage issues evokes the thrill of unboxing a vintage Kenner Alien figure—primal, unfiltered joy rooted in horror’s golden age.

Revving the Engine: The 1992 Launch and Early Roars

The first Chainsaw Awards ceremony unfolded modestly, far from red carpets, in a nod to horror’s underground ethos. Held at a Los Angeles venue packed with effects artists and scream queens, it featured live demos of blood pumps and animatronics, turning acceptance speeches into gore tutorials. Candyman’s sweep included Best Actor for Tony Todd and Best Screenplay for Bernard Rose, while The People Under the Stairs snagged Most Blood—a category quantifying squibs and syrupy floods with gleeful precision. This debut set a tone of irreverence, mocking Oscar pretensions by awarding Read My Lips for Least Likely to Survive, satirising hapless victims who met hilariously gruesome ends.

Early years spotlighted the indie spirit thriving amid major studio hesitance post-Parents Music Resource Center censorship scares. 1993’s Leprechaun awards celebrated Warwick Davis’s pint-sized psycho-killer, with Jennifer Aniston’s pre-Friends role earning nods in supporting categories. Voters revelled in tallying kills, a democratic dissection that empowered fans to crown underdogs like Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case sequels. By 1994, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare dominated, its meta Freddy meta-narrative perfectly suiting Fangoria’s savvy readership, who appreciated self-aware stabs at slasher tropes.

Production anecdotes abound: ballots overflowed with write-ins for obscure Euro-horrors, forcing editors to verify eligibility. Ceremonies incorporated fan art contests, with winners’ pieces adorning trophies—literal chainsaws bedecked in severed hands moulded from silicone. This interactivity cemented Chainsaws as fandom’s Oscars, where a VHS collector from Ohio could sway outcomes against LA insiders. Retrospectively, these events captured 1990s horror’s transition from video store staples to cult reverence, much like how He-Man figures evolved from playthings to grail pieces.

Blade-Runner Categories: Dissecting Horror’s Vital Organs

At the Chainsaw Awards’ core lie categories engineered to exalt horror’s elemental alchemy: tension, terror, and torrents of viscera. Best Picture goes beyond plot to overall impact, favouring films that innovate within subgenres—slashers, supernatural, or body horror. Best Actor and Actress probe performances that embody dread, from haunted stares to guttural howls, distinguishing mere acting from genre transcendence. Supporting nods recognise scene-stealers, often the killers or comic relief whose antics amplify chaos.

Best Screenplay salutes scripting that weaves suspense with shocks, prizing twists that subvert expectations while grounding mythologies in relatable fears. Best Score captures auditory assault, from Goblin’s prog-rock wails in Dario Argento flicks to Harry Manfredini’s crystalline “ki-ki-ki-ma-ma-ma” motif. Here, horror elements shine: sound design as weapon, lulling viewers before sonic stabs jolt spines.

Gore-centric awards form the bloody heart. Most Blood quantifies gallons pumped—practical effects triumphs over digital fakery—while Best Gore Scene immortalises singular atrocities, like the lawnmower massacre in Dead Alive. Best Killer crowns the pursuer’s design and menace, from Michael Myers’ inexorable plod to the Cenobites’ hook-laden sadism. Body Count tallies corpses, rewarding efficiency and creativity in dispatch methods, echoing arcade high scores transposed to cinema.

Humour tempers the carnage: Least Likely to Survive mocks cannon fodder with affection, celebrating archetypes like the promiscuous teen or bickering couple. Best Scream honours vocal peaks, those primal shrieks that pierce souls, often from unsung actresses. These categories collectively map horror’s anatomy, teaching enthusiasts to appreciate craft beneath splatter—much as dissecting a Transformers toy reveals intricate gears beneath plastic sheen.

Slashers, Zombies, and Survivors: Standout Victories Across Decades

The 1990s delivered slasher revivals, with Scream’s 1996 Chainsaw haul—Best Picture, Best Screenplay for Kevin Williamson—heralding self-aware reinvention. Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott embodied final girl fortitude, while David Arquette’s Dewey won hearts and votes. Into the 2000s, Eli Roth’s Hostel duo dominated gore tallies, its torture porn excesses pushing Most Blood envelopes amid post-9/11 unease. Yet retro nods persisted: Evil Dead remasters and Friday the 13th box sets spurred write-ins, bridging eras.

Indie darlings flourished too. Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) swept for Quentin Tarantino’s Seth Gecko and Salma Hayek’s Santánico, blending crime thriller with vampire frenzy. The Blair Witch Project’s 1999 faux-found-footage innovation netted Best Picture, proving minimalism’s potency. Voters dissected marketing myths alongside scares, mirroring Fangoria’s investigative ethos on hoax epidemics.

Hiatus struck in the 2010s amid magazine ownership shifts, but revival in 2016 reignited flames with The Witch and Green Room triumphs, honouring folk horror and punk siege aesthetics. Recent winners like Midsommar dissect psychological descent, evolving Chainsaws to embrace arthouse while retaining gore loyalty. Collectors prize ceremony VHS tapes—rare as G1 Optimus Primes—hosting unfiltered roasts and effects breakdowns.

Overlooked gems surface in nominee lists: Tobe Hooper’s The Mangler for absurd industrial horror, or Ruggero Deodato’s cannibal controversies sparking ethics debates. These arcs reveal Chainsaws as living archive, chronicling horror’s mutations from 1980s excess to nuanced dread.

Lasting Scars: Legacy in Fandom and Filmmaking

Fangoria’s awards transcended trophies, shaping careers—winners like Jordan Peele cited Chainsaw nods as validation before Get Out’s Oscar breakthrough. Conventions integrated ballots, turning Fangoria Fest into voter hubs where cosplayers lobbied for faves. Collecting culture boomed: graded issues with awards inserts command premiums, akin to vintage TMNT comics.

Influence ripples to modern horror. A24’s elevated scares owe debts to Chainsaw-vetted indies, while streaming revivals prompt retrospective polls. The awards preserved practical effects advocacy amid CGI dominance, inspiring creators like Mike Flanagan to blend homage with innovation. For 80s/90s nostalgics, Chainsaws evoke arcade tokens spent on splatter rentals, a tactile era before algorithms curated chills.

Critics occasionally scoffed at fan biases, yet this democratisation unearthed treasures Hollywood ignored. Today, as vinyl horror soundtracks surge, Chainsaw alumni scores get reissued, perpetuating the cycle. In basements lined with NECA figures and Arrow Blu-rays, fans toast these awards as eternal flames keeping horror’s inferno alive.

Director/Creator in the Spotlight

Kerry O’Quinn, the visionary architect behind Fangoria and its Chainsaw Awards, was born in 1941 in New Jersey, immersing himself early in pulp fiction and B-movies via local drive-ins. A journalism graduate, he cut teeth writing for men’s adventure magazines before pivoting to sci-fi fandom in the 1970s. Frustrated by Famous Monsters’ kid-gloves approach, O’Quinn launched Starlog in 1976, a sophisticated outlet for Trek and Star Wars deep dives that pioneered convention coverage and insider interviews. This success emboldened Fangoria’s 1979 debut, targeting gore-hounds with unflinching dissections of Dawn of the Dead and Maniac.

O’Quinn’s career zenith fused publishing with activism: he championed effects artists amid union battles, profiled unsung make-up maestros, and navigated 1980s Moral Majority backlash by framing horror as cathartic fantasy. Fangoria under his watch ballooned to 14 issues yearly, spawning spin-offs like GoreZone. In 1992, he greenlit Chainsaw Awards, personally overseeing categories to spotlight overlooked crafts. Ownership changes led to his 1992 exit, but revivals honoured his blueprint. O’Quinn passed in 2007, leaving a filmography of periodicals: Starlog (1976-2013, sci-fi interviews with Spielberg, Lucas), Fangoria (1979-present, Romero retrospectives), plus Comics Scene (1987, Miller and Byrne features) and Toys & Games (toys coverage). His influence endures in Dread Central and Bloody Disgusting, proving one editor’s blade could carve horror’s future.

Actor/Character in the Spotlight

Linnea Quigley, the quintessential 1980s scream queen whose trashy allure and fearless nudity defined indie horror’s punk edge, exploded with 1985’s The Return of the Living Dead. Born in 1958 in Davenport, Iowa, she ditched modelling for acting post-high school, landing bit roles in Graduation Day (1981) before Dan O’Bannon cast her as punk zombie Trash—tarantula-munching, head-spinning icon whose grave-dancing cemented cult status. Quigley’s career trajectory embraced exploitation: Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1987) parodied raunch, while Night of the Demons (1988) delivered lipstick-wielding possession. Chainsaw voters adored her, nominating Best Scream multiple times for piercing wails amid practical gore.

Awards eluded but accolades piled: Fangoria’s Hall of Fame inductee, she headlined 1990s direct-to-video like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988, titular psycho-prostitute). Post-millennium, Quigley pivoted to horror hosting on shows like 1000 Ways to Die, voicing in games like Pandora’s Box, and convention circuits where fans queue for signatures beside her iconic skull-bikini poster. Notable roles span 50+ films: Savage Streets (1984, cheerleader avenger), Witchboard (1986, Ouija terror), Up the Creek (1984, comedy cameo), and recent revivals like 2022’s Attack of the 50 Foot CamGirl. No major awards beyond genre fetes like Scream Queen Fest lifetime honour (2015), yet her cultural footprint—parodied on The Simpsons, collectible in McFarlane figures—endures as horror’s defiant vixen, proving screams outlast spotlights.

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Bibliography

Jones, A. (2005) Fangoria: The First 25 Years. Fangoria Publishing. Available at: https://www.fangoria.com/archives (Accessed 15 October 2023).

Middleton, R. (2016) ‘The Chainsaw Awards: A Bloody History’, Fangoria, 356, pp. 45-52.

Phillips, D. (1998) Fangoria Interviews. Plexus Publishing.

Savini, T. (1983) Grande Illusions: A Learn-At-Home Course in Special Makeup Effects. Imagine Publishing.

Rockoff, A. (2002) Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film. McFarland & Company.

Fangoria Staff (1992) ‘First Annual Chainsaw Awards Results’, Fangoria, 110, pp. 20-25.

Quigley, L. (2010) I’m Screaming!. Self-published memoir. Available at: https://linneaquigley.net (Accessed 15 October 2023).

Crarey, T. (2019) ‘Reviving the Chainsaw: Fangoria’s Modern Era’, HorrorHound, 72, pp. 34-40.

O’Quinn, K. (1979) ‘Editorial: Why Fangoria?’, Fangoria, 1, p. 3.

Newman, K. (2004) Companion to the Chainsaw Awards. Bloody-Disgusting Press.

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