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The only thing that would really make my mother angry would be if I liked horror movies or violence or Ronald Reagan. And very violent films were a way for me to rebel. You have to rebel against your parents.
I was a huge horror fan, especially in my teenage years. Back then, there were a lot of Italian horror movies - some zombie, some just really strange movies that made no sense. I was really into shock and gore.
In my horror movies, I was always trying to deal with real characters and real character drama played by good actors... Laura Linney, Ethan Hawke, Eric Bana, and Tom Wilkinson, people who don't do horror normally.
My wife and I are connoisseurs of films but in opposite directions. She's a connoisseur of really good, classy foreign films. I'm a connoisseur of really bad, cheesy horror movies - so-bad-it's-good horror movies.
Jason Voorhees was a kid who was picked on at summer camp, and Michael Myers was someone vilified by his own family. I think that's why gay people like horror movies, because it's seeking revenge on the privileged.
Some people ask why people would go into a dark room to be scared. I say they are already scared, and they need to have that fear manipulated and massaged. I think of horror movies as the disturbed dreams of a society.
When I was seven or eight, I was bought a fantastic book called 'The Movie Treasury of Horror Movies' by Alan G. Frank; it became my bible. It's packed full of the most amazing photos and is still fantastic to look at.
I wasn't a fanboy of horror. I didn't grow up on horror movies. I grew up loving all movies. I still love all movies, but I particularly love scary movies - as much for the culture around them as the movies themselves.
I like zombie movies, and I like genre movies a lot. To watch. Less so to make, I think. But I grew up on that stuff. I would just grow up watching a lot of horror movies, a lot of slasher movies and then zombie movies.
I think most people, even if they say they hate horror movies, there's that feeling you get inside that you love. I mean, I love it. I love to have the hairs on the back of my neck stand up or get that chill up my spine.
I don't like being pigeonholed at all. It stemmed from after 'Mandy Lane': I was being offered all these horror movies. I love horror movies, but when I dreamed of being a director, it was always doing all sorts of things.
I grew up loving monsters. I'm just a total monster geek. When I was a kid, I had the Aurora monster models, and I would make them. I loved the Universal horror movies and the Hammer movies. I just had an affinity for them.
Horror movies travel pretty well anyway. They're like action movies: People overseas can watch them and enjoy them, and they're not so culturally specific in terms of their references, and they can follow a good scary story.
I'm never scared, so I don't watch horror movies. Back in the day, I was. I was scared of 'It' - you know, the one with the clown. That's the thing I found scariest in my life, but since then, not really - I don't watch them.
When I was a kid, I was really into 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'Friday the 13th.' But as I got older and started working as an actor, I did not really get scared by horror movies as much, so I am not as into them anymore.
People don't call them horror movies, but Hitchcock, for me, is my favorite storyteller. He was really exploring dark themes, and I don't know what category you put his movies in. Thriller? Horror? Some of them go in either one.
I was a very scared child. Not, you know, not so much of life but of the demons that lurked in the dark. And horror movies terrified me. You know, I'd love watching them but then at night, I would just be up in sweats all night.
Signing up for 'It Follows,' I didn't have any idea it was going to turn out the way it did, but seeing it, the music and the feel of it definitely was pretty amazing, getting that kind of throwback feel to classic horror movies.
It's interesting to me; you do four, five or six of these Comic Cons or things like that across the country a year. Obviously, I get busted a lot of 'Weekend at Bernies,' but the fans for horror movies are so wonderful and so loyal.
I don't love horror movies with something surreal happening. That doesn't work for me. What's terrifying is something that could actually happen to me and what I would do. I don't know how to throw a punch, and I've never had to do it.
Of the big horror movies of the '70s, you have 'The Omen,' 'The Sentinel,' 'Rosemary's Baby,' 'The Stepford Wives,' 'Burnt Offerings' - these are all romantic fatalist movies where there's a sort of glimmer of hope... but darkness wins.
They wanted me to do Scream 2, and I hate talking about movies I turned down, because it sounds judgmental. There's nothing wrong with horror movies. I enjoy watching them. The main reason I turn a part down is if I think I won't be good.
Growing up, I was a huge fan of horror movies. There's nothing more fun than going into a movie with a smile because you know you're going to be scared to death. There's something thrilling about sitting there waiting for a scare to happen.
I didn't get a formal introduction to horror until right about the age of 12, when my uncle showed me 'Twilight Zone: The Movie.' When you're 12 years old, and you see that - oh, God. I devoured as many horror movies and novels as possible.
Horror movies started to wane around the onset of World War II, and after World War II, when all the troops came home, people weren't really interested in seeing horror movies, because they had the real horror right on their front doorsteps.
In horror movies, you can write music that if it was performed on the concert stage would have the audience running out of the room with their fingers in their ears. But in a movie, all of a sudden it becomes incredibly accessible and appreciated.
The 'Planet of the Apes' movies made me wanna - probably unconsciously - be an actor. Seriously. And The Mummy - and 'Hammer horror' movies. 'Fantastic.' I loved stuff like that, and that stuff probably did more than anything to make me wanna do it.
I love horror movies, and the kid is always such a big part. Kids are usually seen as so innocent, like, 'Oh, they can't do anything that creepy - they're kids!' That's what a lot of horror movies draw on, so getting to join that 'club' is really cool.
One of my favorite things about making horror movies is, the first time you screen them in front of an audience, it's very fun to hear people audibly react to the work you put into a movie. You don't wonder at the end of the movie whether it worked or not.
Disney features, especially the early ones, were horror movies with cute critters: Greek tragedies with a hummable chorus. Forcing children to confront the loss of home, parent, friends and fondest pets, these films imposed shock therapy on four-year-olds.
In '82 and '83, that was the rise of the VCR. Every Friday, my brother and I would go to Crazy Eddie's - which was a video store in Manhattan - and rent five horror movies. And that's basically what we did, basically, for three years. Becoming social misfits.
The type of movies that give me the heebie jeebies are thrillers, because anything that's playing with your thoughts and mind, that's scary. But one thing that they never do in horror movies that I always do is I pray. You never see them pray in horror movies.
A lot of the main characters in horror movies are outsiders as well, so that outsider syndrome reverberates within horror fans and geeky collectors. It's kind of a rallying call that brings fans and collectors together who are a little socially retarded, maybe.
I never got in this business, in cinema, to make horror movies. They arrived on my doorstep and I got typecast. Which was fine, I enjoy it, but I got into this business to make westerns. And the kind of westerns I used to see, they died. So that didn't work out.
In high school for prom, I asked my girlfriend - we were both into horror movies - by dressing up as a zombie. I had a bloody t-shirt and I spray-painted a giant question mark on my t-shirt and had people hold bloody sings saying, 'Dying to go to prom with you.'
A lot of people call horror movies 'campy,' and I can certainly see why they think that they are, but being a product of the 80s, I didn't notice that they were campy - I came from a campy generation. I mean, Ronald Reagan is campy. But I don't think they're campy.
I had paralyzing fear as a kid. I couldn't watch horror movies, nothing. The funny thing is I got so sick of being afraid that I started doing it deliberately and instead of being afraid in my bed I would sit up on my bed and say, 'ok, come on, show yourself, do it.'
For horror movies, it's great because I know exactly what I am doing and what should be done. But for a cop drama, I can't calm my face down, and so it's really nice to be able to be in this genre where nothing is too much, and no one yells at me for having big eyes.
I was a strange, dark little dude. I fell in love with horror movies, at a very early age. Somehow, as a first grader, I was able to convince my parents to let me go see stuff like 'An American Werewolf in London' in theaters, so I was headed in that direction anyway.
If you scroll through all the movies I've worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies, and so on. So in other words, I'm no specialist, because I've done everything. I'm a specialist in music.
While I appreciate horror movies, I'd love the opportunity to do something transformative, especially because people see me as contemporary. There's a lot to explore in my career that could take me back to another time. A period piece would be an incredible game of dress-up, too.
I actually like older horror movies more than newer ones because when I'm watching newer ones, like 'Chucky' or 'Saw' or whatever, I'm like, 'Come on, really, this isn't even good, all it is is blood and knives.' I like when it has a story line, you know? When it's actually a movie.
Our company, it's, uh, really un-sexy. And I think most people get into Hollywood to be showy. We first of all make horror movies, which people turn their noses up at. Second of all, we make cheap movies, and Hollywood's a lot about ego and money and, 'My movie cost $200m!,' you know?
'Seanan McGuire' is my real name; if I'm being silly and third-person about it, she's a frequently cranky, foul-mouthed Disney Princess on vacation in the real world, where she studies diseases, cuddles reptiles, watches lots of horror movies, and goes to as many corn fields as possible.
Before I start, I search the internet for hours looking for inspiration - I look at horror movies, special effects, everything. Then, I take a bunch of screenshots, and pile them together in Photoshop to create a story for myself. I plan it out in my head, but I don't ever practice beforehand.
When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies at all. And actually, one of the genesis points for 'Mandy' and 'Black Rainbow' was this memory I have of being in video stores, reading the backs of videos and looking at the art, imagining some kind of non-existent imaginary film based on that.
There's nothing scarier than silence. A lot of horror movies lean on hits and score to try and create tension, which actually does the opposite. The best scares come from a desire to see the character overcome what they're dealing with in the scene. If you care about the character you'll care about the scare.
I think most character people that you talk to, it's like, whatever they offer us, we are thrilled to do. I won't do anything that's immoral or illicit. I did turn down eating a dead body once. I turned down a few really creepy horror movies. For the most part, I can usually find a way into whatever character.
Whenever I would see horror movies I would be traumatized and I'd have to watch them behind my hands or behind the couch sometimes. So I grew up first with authors like John Bellairs and R.L. Stine for kind of the young adult horror. But I found Stephen King in the sixth grade and that was it. I became a rabid fan.
In my formative years, I never missed the 'Creature Double Feature' on Saturday afternoon TV, even if it meant switching back and forth between 'Gamera' and the Red Sox. I did a book report on Stephen King's 'Night Shift' in seventh grade. Unrated Italian horror movies became a weekly rite of passage once I hit seventeen.