Welcome!

In 1997, I was a junior in college, and in love with this funky, animated GIF-strewn, relatively new thing called the Internet. It was an outlet to express yourself, and since I'd felt like I expressed myself just fine around campus — faking seizures in front of tour groups, serenading women by singing horribly off-key under their windows, wearing elephant slippers everywhere — to go worldwide was the next logical step. In 1997, a couple months after I started hacking away at a laughable website, I hooked up with a fellow movie buff named Kym who asked, "Why don't we do a movie review site together?"

Justin, circa 1997 Justin, circa 2007 (Note: not his kid)

Sure. Easy enough. We did, and... wow, if you've been here since the beginning (has anyone?), you might wince along with me how crudely fashioned the early version of Revenge of the Mutant Movie Reviewers From Hell VIII was, how enamoured we were with MIDI tunes of movie themes, and how one of our cardinal rules was "Never write a review longer than a paragraph." We had some fun, started to share our love of cult films, and then eventually went our separate ways.

But here's the thing — I honestly didn't expect MRFH to survive past college. When you graduate, so many things change. You move, you lose touch with friends who lived 20 feet away from you for four years, you develop hair in places where there was none before, and you put to rest your old hobbies in favor of the new. Yet MRFH never quite went away for me; I think, in a weird way, it helped me through some severe transition years by being a constant source of fun and steamy hot movie lovin'. I began to make friends with our growing staff, and what used to feel like an isolated writing project soon became a block party that kept going... and going... and going.

I don't think that 20-year-old kid named Justin would've ever thought that, ten years later, that he'd still be writing silly reviews for a website that never became enormously popular, but always stayed afloat with the passion of its staff and loyal readers. I didn't expect for people to end up writing for huge lengths of time for literally peanuts (the shipping cost on nuts is extraordinary) — heck, Pooly and Kyle have both been here since '98, and haven't had me assassinated yet. And I didn't think that I'd still be in love with cult flicks as much as I still am.

Okay, it's not about me — it's about Mutant Reviewers. This is our 10th year, and I think we're entitled to a year-long celebration of the fact, don't you? It will be a lot more of the same: great reviews, interesting features, thinly-veiled death threats between staff members. It will also be a bit of the new: a series of articles commemorating our 10th anniversary in a way only the Mutants could pull off.

You might have noticed our upgraded front page. Nothing major, just a few touch-ups and a generally snazzier look. We've also added a Mutant Reviewers Blog (there's a link on the front page as well) so that the staff can provide you with additional mental flotsam and jetsam. And as always, keep the chatter alive on our forums — it's never boring when Shalen pops out to give us a lecture on the lethality of nature!

So I guess I just want to say... thank you. Ten years is a long time for anything, and only because we've had a fiercely passionate readership we've been able to keep on going without losing interest or passion ourselves. See you for our 20th in 2017!

As I sit here in my fortified holiday bunker watching football, awaiting the arrival of friends, and thinking about just how important a role MySpace played in my own 2006, I'm also reminded that 2007 marks the 10th anniversary of Mutant Reviewers from Hell. Which is fantastic! And also mystifying.

See, apparently I've been here longer than Poolman, although I swear both Justin and Poolman e-interviewed me for the gig!?! No idea. The intriguing mystery surrounding these circumstances is only a spice added to the great batch of egg nog that is the Mutant Reviewers site and (dysfunctional) family. Who was here first? Is 'rewatchability' even a real word? Does anyone else working on the site really exist, or is it all me and personalities that only manifest when I'm "out of it" on egg nog?

But you are here, so that's good!

MRFH isn't just a cool place to read reviews and enjoy amusing captions and revel in the bizarre opinions that get slung around like bacon fat at a restaurant that serves bacon. MRFH is a non-stop pop culture mish-mash party that doesn't so much directly refute the idea that after five years or so relevance begins to wane as much as completely demolish such a thought.

I continue to meet new people who are regular MRFH readers, and I am consistently amazed that our "little" endeavor is so well-loved and respected. Sometimes, if it's a beautiful young woman, I'll reveal that I write for the website, and ask her for her true opinions and her number. I have to say that, across the board, I've never met anyone who thought MRFH was irrelevant or uninteresting or boring. We do our best to stay fresh and with "it" and I think we all do an excellent by simply being ourselves. Seeing movies and actually writing reviews every so often is an important element here, yes, but the most important element is just all of us (however many of us truly exist) being cool and true to our school and keeping the Mutant end up.

I hope you're satisfied by what we do, but that you're also excited about what's to come for us all. For me, a 10 year anniversary is simply an excuse to break out some party favors and alcohol and say "great job!" to everybody in the vicinity. It is not a reason to slow down or stop striving for excellence or put on my pants. So here's to many more anniversaries to come! Hooray!