To make music you need some things to inspire you sometimes as music alone might not be enough. To some it's drugs, to some it's sex, to some it's travels, and to others it's books, but one of the things that's always inspired me is Horror movies. Fifteen years ago I wouldn't have talked too loud about it, especially in front of people into Hiphop, or other producers, as soundtracks to Horror movies was my main source for samples in the 90's, and not too many producers were into it other than flippin' Tubular Bells, or the theme from such blockbusters as Halloween or The Omen.
Nowadays soundtracks for obscure Italian and Asian Horror, and other movies from the 70's and 80's are well known sources to find dope samples but back in the mid 90's the only producer I can remember who sampled Horror music often was Necro, though Premier, Pete Rock, and more sampled from them every now and then. Nowadays most of the good stuff has been used and used again, and most producers have moved on to other things so it's time to talk about it out loud, and to make this different from the 8 million other stories about Horror online I'm gonna talk about what Horror means to me, and why I like it.
When I was five the fam and I was at a party at a relatives' house, and he happened to have some 8mm movies. One of them was The Mummy's Ghost, and after about an hour of begging, my parents ok'd a viewing of it, and even if it was an edited 15 minute 8mm version of the whole film, the gruelling images of the mummy appearing from a lake chasing a woman, and the shroud especially, was enough to scare the living shit outta me. After that I couldn't see someone with a bandage for years without makin' a quick escape, but at the same time I got more into scary movies, books, etc because of it.
It's funny but like music Horror is a drug, and once you're hooked you need better and more, and as a kid I was a big fan of Horror cartoons such as the cartoon versions of films like Alien, King Kong, and Dracula because the toons were the only way for us kids to get a feel of what seeing the movies might be like as we couldn't even get in to catch a James Bond flick, Star Wars was the only movie I managed to sneak into cause the head of the cinema was also the head of the school, and he knew all the kids and our ages by heart it seemed, and VCR's weren't even around yet, so at age 10-11 something the best we could get was our folks telling stories after they'd seen such movies as The Exorcist, Cat People, and The Shining if they weren't too scared to talk about them, and that made it even more exciting to me...that grown folks would actually get scared to death from seeing a movie, so I knew that had to be something special, and that I had to see them. The more "dangerous", and "illegal", the more fun. That's human nature for ya'.
Come the early 80's, and Video was the new drug. Nowadays most video rental stores are packed with boring mainstream titles, supplied by an industry of poor remakes, and "we've seen it a thousand times already" titles, but back then it was B-movie paradise, and you could choose from anything like Spaghetti Westerns, Blaxploitation, Martial Arts, and Porn, to Horror movies, and it wasn't exactly Dracula and Frankenstein that were sought after, but a new breed of explicit and violent Splatter flicks from Italy and the US.
We were finally able to watch the movies we really wanted to see as we could rent movies certified 18 with no problems even if we were kids. The videostore owners at the time didn't care much, and it was ok to most parents too if they weren't total squares or religious, but that's cause most of them had no idea what we were watching after dark when they were asleep.
An old censorship fanatic from the UK named Mary Whitehouse had been sent a tape of Cannibal Holocaust by its company VTC hoping to get some free promotion once she got to see the film, as she was already a well known anti Porn and Violence activist, but boy did the attempt for free promotion go way out of hand! It started a national panic in the UK among religious fanatics, parents, and anti everything activists, which spread to Germany, Scandinavia, and other European contries via a string of TV shows showing the most violent clips from some of the films, causing more or less panic including some politicians saying the VCR was a bigger threat to mankind than the atomic bomb, and a demand to ban this "filth" followed. The media labeled it "Video Nasties" or "Video Violence", and so a new genre was born, and the crusade for getting these films banned did quite the opposite. Sales of VCR's, and violent movies skyrocketed because of all the free promotion, and especially for children it became the new and exciting thing that we all had to see. In a matter of months police raided the Videoshops and movies were confiscated, making the demand for them even higher, but also made them very hard to get, and nowadays the most rare titles will fetch up to $1000 if it's an original VHS tape.
All of us kids in the early 80's wanted our parents to buy this new phenomenon called the Video machine. Most people couldn't afford to because prices were high back in the early days. A movie would cost something in the range of $200 to buy, and you couldn't rent yet, and a VCR would cost about $2000, so very few households had Video yet, but all of us kids wanted it. In my class at school maybe two or three kids had Video in the early 80's.
That changed for me when my mother happened to win a VCR in a local lottery, a Video 2000 machine from Bang & Olufsen, and yes it is the one pictured above. Needless to say I jumped for joy, and the main reason was the ability to finally catch some of the violent video nasties that were so talked about in the papers and on TV.
We had heard that those films were dangerous, and that you could actually go crazy from seeing them, so we had to see them, if nothing else than to see if we'd really go nuts.
The local video store carried some of them but not all, and not the nastiest ones, so those I got a hold of later, but they had some Horror movies. They would get a suitcase with thirty new movies inside every month, and there would be something for everyone, but mostly Horror, Martial Arts, Western, and Action, and all B-movies as that was the norm in the early days of Video. Off to the store I went to finally be able to rent my first movie to watch at home, aged twelve and all hyped up about Video Violence, I ran to the store and rented what was supposedly the most scary Horror flick they had, a film called The Devils Rain which was about a Satanic cult with a lot of black masses going on, and people melting from acid rain. Fun stuff.
A few months later a classmate had managed to get a hold of the infamous Cannibal Holocaust, a movie said to be a Snuff movie, that is a movie where people are killed for real. All bs of course but the director of it, Ruggero Deodato, had to go to court and bring the actors to prove that they were still alive, and that it was only a movie, so we watched it at the friends' house feeling disgusted, and thrilled, and it was very special seeing that movie, and actually believing that what took place on the screen was real.
I was about fourteen years old when I finally managed to borrow more of the Nasties from an older friend, and ran up to one of my friends' house who's dad had a VHS player, and as we needed that and I had Video 2000 it was sleepover time that night. My friends father understood all too well what was going on and confiscated my bag of movies which included The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Death Trap (Eaten Alive), Halloween 1 & 2, The Omen, Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, Shivers, and Zombie Flesh Eaters. There was no way in hell we were gonna watch those films on his VCR! It was ok that I slept over, but my friends' dad took the movies and put them beside his bed, so we waited til about 1am, and while daddy was asleep we managed to sneak the bag of films out of his room and downstairs where the VCR was.
So, finally we would get to experience some of the dangerous Videos, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre was put in first, then Death Trap, then Zombie Flesh Eaters.
We stayed up all night watching with an excitement I've never felt sooner or later from seeing any movie. then all of a sudden it was already 7am, we had stayed up all night, and daddy was awake coming down the stairs pretty furious to say the least, and after we had gotten some sleep he would have to give us a "good talking to".
From then on I started collecting Horror movies, and would use two VCR's to make VHS copies, and would buy rare movies from sellers all over Norway which was always risky because they were bootlegs, and most Horror movies were totally banned here then, and police would actually raid private homes in search of those movies, and sometimes close friends were busted, fined, and their collections were confiscated and destroyed by the police. Kinda funny when you think about it now as most everything is legal nowadays, and available for anyone to watch online, and also fun to think about because I used to make my friends scared, and ill from watching some of the movies in my collection, like Nekromantik must've left some scars over the years. =)
Nowadays we're lucky to have great remastered versions on DVD, and Blu-Ray, and we can own them without police paying an unwanted visit which is of course a hell of a lot more relaxing than it was, and it's not long ago, as the most violent and gory Horrorflix were banned in Norway until the early 2000's, but at the same time removing the illegal aspects of it sort of eliminated some of the fun and excitement also...sorta like Graffiti. A much bigger rush when it was done against the law.
Human nature again for ya'.
It's fun to see how kids are still getting into the Horror classics, and there's plenty of good new ones coming out too if you look past the Hollywood remakes. Seeing new blood get hooked to the genre also brings back memories of how much fun it was to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Cannibal Holocaust for the very first time, and believe me...it's great memories. =)
Having collected Horrormovies for decades now, and also after having worked at videostores for about ten years including owning one, I've seen most of what's worth seeing, and will end this story with lists of some of my Horror favorites, and a list of all the banned movies in the 80's. If you're a fan take some time out to revisit the classics, and if you're new to Horror movies you're best off not starting with the video nasties, or the more obscure Italian stuff as it takes some getting used to.
A good place to start then are the American classics like Halloween, Friday The 13th., Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining, etc, and from there Evil Dead, Re-Animator, Braindead, to the more well known Italian flicks like Dario Argento's Tenebrae, and Opera, and Lucio Fulci's Zombie, and The Beyond. Also most people tend to enjoy some of the new movies out there, and especially there's a lot of great ones coming out of France nowadays like Martyrs, Inside, and Ils which is the original The Strangers. Some Asian flicks like Shutter, Ringu, and Battle Royale are also great.
Keep in mind that Horror-movies needs to be seen the right way for the full effect, and that means alone at night, all lights out, volume up loud, and a few doors, and windows open just a little bit.
Enjoy! =)
Top 10 Horror Classics:
1. The Shining
2. The Exorcist
3. Halloween
4. Jaws
5. Cannibal Holocaust
6. The Beyond
7. The Ninth Gate
8. Evil Dead
9. Deep Red
10. The Omen
Top 10 New School Horror:
1. Let The Right One In
2. Martyrs
3. The Others
4. Shutter
5. Cuento De Navidad
6. Frontieres
7. [REC]
8. Ringu
9. Ils
10. Haute Tension
Top 3 most scary movies to me:
1. The Woman In Black
2. Repulsion
3. Ghostwatch
Top 5 Directors:
1. Dario Argento
2. Stanley Kubrick
3. Roman Polanski
4. Lucio Fulci
5. John Carpenter
The Video Nasties / Banned Movies Of The 80's:
There were plenty more confiscated, and prosecuted, and the titles varied from one country to the next, but these were officially banned:
Absurd
Axe
Bay Of Blood
Blood Feast
Bloody Moon
Cannibal Apocalypse
Cannibal Ferox
Cannibal Holocaust
Cannibal Man
Don't Go in the Woods Alone
Evilspeak
Exposé
Faces of Death
Fight for Your Life
Flesh for Frankenstein
Forest Of Fear
Gestapo's Last Orgy
Island Of Perversion
I Spit On Your Grave
Love Camp 7
Mardi Gras Massacre
Nightmare
Night Of The Bloody Apes
Night of the Demon
Scared To Death
Snuff
SS Experiment Camp
SS Hell Camp
Tenebre
The Burning
The Devil Hunter
The Driller Killer
The Ghastly Ones
The Grim Reaper
The House By The Cemetary
The House On The Edge Of The Park
The Last House on the Left
The Werewolf And The Yeti
Zombie Flesheaters
Most of the movies are easy to get now on DVD. Google is your friend.
