By ROB FREESE
At the turn of the last century, or, maybe, for better dramatic effect, at the dawn of the new millennium, home computers were a staple in most households. The internet was a new, untamed frontier, giving rise to numerous avenues for communicating, sharing and celebrating everything under the sun, particularly horror movies and fiction.
Chat boards were popular for a while, and while many still exist, they do not enjoy the daily interactions they once did. The chat boards and forums offered opportunities for fans to connect on a global scale.
Blogs soon became a way for many people to interact with like-minded folks on any subject they could write about. Now, anyone could review a movie, and unlike publishing your thoughts in a hardcopy zine, you could reach everyone at once with a couple of keystrokes and write daily if you felt compelled.
Mark Sieber was there for all of it, monitoring boards and eventually sharing his thoughts on his long-running website, Horror Drive-in.
Mark Sieber, author.
Sieber is that “every-fan,” who, at a young age, spent his time with his nose buried in science fiction novels to escape the doldrums of everyday life. In the early ’80s, his interests turned to horror. He came of age during that wonderful time when Stephen King and Peter Straub topped the bestseller lists and slasher movies filled drive-in screens every weekend. Then came home video.
For years, Sieber has chronicled his preference for good books or horror flicks over the company of most people. (The sole exception is his beloved wife Clara.) When he purchased his first VCR, it was a game-changer. He had memberships to video shops all over town and frequented them daily, rewatching his favorites (and not so favorites) as well as discovering new films and filmmakers.
He also read… a lot. I’ve never met him in person, but I’ve always sort of imagined him like the Bergess Meredith character Henry Bemis from the “Time Enough at Last” episode of The Twilight Zone. You remember. He’s the bookworm who finally has time to read his life away after a nuclear war eliminates all the hassles of his life – and then, a thing happens.
I don’t imagine Sieber as a bespectacled nebbish unable to carry on a conversation o about anything other than what book he’s currently reading (and what book is next), but I imagine he shares that same passion that Bemis radiates. The way he writes about them, I imagine he opens each new book with an excitement that only someone with a true love for the written word experiences.
Mark has been writing about his life, growing up, growing older, and especially books and movies for a long time. Because he loves the horror genre so dearly, I feel he is open to trying out new writers and filmmakers more than most. He has his favorites, absolutely, but he doesn’t expect every book he reads to hit like a King or Straub. He loves the work of Joe Lansdale but doesn’t go into other writers’ work expecting a Joe Lansdale tale.
I’ll mention that that is how I came to “discover” Mark Sieber. He was the first guy to review a little novella I self-published called The Drive-in that Dripped Blood. I found the review by sheer chance and immediately contacted him to thank him for reading it. It was a positive review, but the thrill was that a random person I didn’t know put down money to purchase it, and then read it, and then reviewed it. We’ve kept in touch since, communicating now and again about books and movies and even stuff going on in our personal lives.
His passion extends to movies, too. He has his favorites, and like many of us, he’s tied to them because he saw them at just the right time in his life. Being a little older than me, he frequented drive-ins in the ‘70s and ‘80s. You’d be hard-pressed to find a slasher movie released between 1978 and 1988 that he didn’t see, usually at the drive-in and on the kind of fantastic double or triple bill that makes fans today romanticize the era.
His writing is precise, well thought out, and, to use a word that is mostly used to describe cat mysteries, cozy. As soon as you start reading, you feel like you’re just hanging out with a friend, shooting the breeze, waiting for it to get dark enough for the drive-in to crank up the first movie.
In 2019, Sieber released his first collection of essays from the Horror Drive-in website, He Who Types Between the Rows: A Decade of Horror Drive-in, collecting his writings from February 2006 to March 2017. If you want to know what was going on in the world of horror during that time, this book walks you through it. The second chapter, Who the Hell is Joe Hill? was written before he learned of his heritage. He was just one more writer he gave a chance.
He shares stories about many writers, including Steve and Melanie Tem, Thomas Tessier, Bill Pronzini, Ed Gorman, J.F. Gonzalez, Paul Theroux, Casey Stevens, Robert McCammon, Richard Matheson, Norman Prentiss, Robert Cormier, John Little, and others. He writes about movies like Intruder, Hitcher in the Dark, Attack of the 60ft. Centerfold, Nightmare in Blood, Lords of Salem, Nudist Colony of the Dead and loads more.
He reminisces about video stores and the days of VHS, drive-ins vs. grindhouses, independent publishers, music and acknowledges the passings of horror greats he enjoyed over the years. (Because the horror genre is so rich in talent, this is an endless task for anyone to keep up with.)
I keep talking about Sieber about the horror genre. If he’s anything, he’s well read. I think he’s read just about everything. As far as movies, he could write a ten-thousand-word essay on 80’s teen comedies as easily as 80’s slashers. He likes a good action flick, too.
He Who Types Between the Rows 2: Horror Drive-in Will Never Die! was released in 2022, and the front cover sports the blurb “Honest as hell!” from none other than drive-in film critic and horror host Joe Bob Briggs. The contents, like the first book, go back to the beginnings of Horror Drive-in and pick up several essays not included in the first book. Chapter 1 sets the tone with his assessment of the ’90s, and then it’s more stories of drive-ins, videos, books and movies. It moves through to October 2020.
With Book 2, I realized Sieber’s zeal for the genre actually reinvigorated my own. If anyone knows you can suffer from horror fatigue, it’s Sieber, but he doesn’t let that get him down. If you hit a spate of books or movies that just don’t work for you, don’t fret, revisit a classic. The way he talks about the joy of discovering that one new author or book or film, you start wanting that, too. You start realizing the only way you’re ever going to discover your next new favorite horror novel or film is by constantly keeping your mind open to new authors and filmmakers. It’s a simple concept, but we all fall into ruts. We don’t want to venture far from where we feel safe.
Sieber’s enthusiasm is infectious. It’s wonderful to read and just get lost, but don’t be fooled. He’s had his hard times, just like all of us. He shares those times as well, and it just reinforces the feeling that we’re talking with a friend. 
The mammoth He Who Types Between the Rows 3: Requiem was released in 2025. It offers 664 pages (technically 666 with the final page, but…) of more reminiscences from a life well spent in books and movies. These essays stretch from January 2021 through February 2023. These are writings of an older fan who still believes. Again, it is amazing how he never becomes cynical or bitter (something many genre fans give in to). And again, it is amazing how his enthusiasm touches you, if you let it. (I started 2026 with the idea of revisiting the Stephen King books I loved when I was younger, and they were starting to hit a little differently now that I’m older. I’d all but given up on it after The Shining, fearing I might not love Christine as much as I once did, but Sieber’s positivity pushed me to keep going, and I’m as enchanted by Christine as a 56-year-old teenager as I was when I first read it as a 14-year-old teenager. Thanks, Mark!)
The final three chapters hit me the hardest. Each remembers someone important in Sieber’s life, but who is now gone. A teacher and two friends. These chapters are beautifully written. His love for these people is evident, and it made me stop and think about some of the people who, for whatever reason, are no longer in my life.
Sieber’s Horror Drive-in blog continues. In fact, it was through his blog that I learned of the passing of author Thomas Tessier. I imagine there will be at least one more He Who Types Between the Rows tome in the near future, but I know Sieber has something different in mind for his next book.
If you want a good idea of how the horror culture evolved over the decades, there is no better reference guide than the He Who Types Between the Rows books. They represent a first-person account from someone who was there in the trenches from the start. Writers trying to create tales about the past would do well to polish up their knowledge through these books.
