Ghoulish Delight #8: LoveLockandLoad Present The Horror…The Horror
Our good friend Paul from LoveLockandLoad, has kindly shared some of his favourite horror films with us – all of which scared him uncontrollably as a child. Not really! We wouldn’t be allowed to print that sort of thing. Anyway, here’s Paul to explain…
The horror. The horror.
When I was asked to come up with my list of favourite horror films for this site I was initially apprehensive. Over the years I’ve read countless lists of horror films; the best, the worst, most overlooked, etc, etc, and it all gets a little boring after a while. So having pondered the idea of doing it for a while, I thought I’d come up with something a little different, and hopefully it’ll make for a read that’s more fun. Firstly, I’ve not confined myself by coming up with a certain number of films for the list. Bollocks to that. I’m far too lazy and would rather write about the films from the heart than write in order to fill a designated space. Secondly, I’m not going to come up with a list of films by which all other horror films should be measured, but rather an assortment of movies that left their mark on me instead. Some people may find my selections completely laughable but they’ve made the list because, for better of worse, each of them left a lasting impression the first time I saw them.
So, without further ado, here’s my list. The films aren’t in order of greatness, rather the Nick Hornby-styled “autobiographical configuration:
Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg)
The first time I saw Jaws I was only five years-old; it also happened to be the film’s premiere on terrestrial TV (hey, SKY TV didn’t launch for years after this – we’re talking backing in the days of three fucking channels, okay?). My mum had let me stay up to watch it and I remember being petrified throughout the film. Scared as I was, I was completely drawn in by the film and completely mesmerised by it. Apart from going to a wax museum the year before, I have no other recollection of being scared before seeing Jaws.
So the next day I go to school. I seem to remember having a chat with several other kids that had seen it and we had all agreed that it was the best thing ever. That morning we had assembly. After the usual assortment of hymns and highly moralistic proverbs the head mistress asked that any of us who’d seen Jaws the previous night to stand up. Of the three or four hundred kids sat cross-legged on the floor of the school’s gym, around 30 or 40 of us had arisen. The head then proceed to tell us how irresponsible our parents were for allowing us to see this film that wasn’t suitable for children. I was completely blown away by this and it was right then that I forever made a connection between horror and the taboo.
The Thing (1982, John Carpenter)
To most normal eight-year-olds, the perfect birthday party involves silly hats, jelly and ice-cream and probably a few games of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’. That wasn’t my mate Dean’s idea of a great kiddie shindig. Instead, he subjected us to one of the goriest and downright bleakest mainstream horror movies ever made. Anyone who’s seen the film knows how it starts. After the title cards over the Earth, we see an adorable husky being chased by a helicopter across the snowfields of Antarctica. Getting bitten on the face by my auntie’s dog when I was four aside, I quite like our little canine friends, especially when they’re safely behind a TV screen where they’re incapable of savaging my body. So to my surprise, I was lulled into a false sense of security. It wasn’t long however before the claret had begun to flow and Carpenter cranked up the tension to an unbearable level that I was soon petrified: so much so that I got behind Dean’s sofa and started playing with some He-Man figures I found lying around there.
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1986, Jack Shoulder)
Yes, this is one of the stinkier sequels, probably second only to the execrable Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (hey, they lied, there were two more after that one) as the worst film in the series. That said, it was still something of a landmark in my own horror film history. Back in 1987, I wasn’t quite twelve, but was already aware of the phenomenon that surrounded paedophile killer Freddy Krueger; a character that became the most unlikely pop-culture icon we’ve ever known. Somehow I had convinced my mum to rent the video for Richard, a friend from school, and I one day during the summer holidays. Being the sort of kid that was always seeking out what was new; I skipped over the superior predecessor and went with the lamebrain sequel that had just been released on the antiquated format that we called VHS. We got it home and within ten minutes Richard made for the door, which I blocked with a chair that I promptly sat on, his cries for going to play with my Lego fell on deaf ears. The pair of us sat there watching the film (Richard through his fingers), neither of us realising at the time that we were watching our first slasher film. I subsequently sought out the original and then began working my way through the Halloween and Friday The 13th franchises thereafter.
The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)
It took an age for The Shining to receive it’s UK television premiere: nine years to be exact. By the time it made its debut on British TV (courtesy of Thames Television in the Autumn of 1989) I was fourteen years old and up until then, Full Metal Jacket had been the only film directed by Stanley Kubrick that I’d seen. At fourteen I was becoming aware of directors and was beginning to check out films shown on TV that were directed by those that had made films I had previously enjoyed. Full Metal Jacket came out on video at a point in time when the Vietnam war seemed to be represented everywhere: there was of course Oliver Stone’s Platoon, the television series Tour Of Duty and even synth maestro Paul Hardcastle got in on the act with his single ‘Nineteen’, so my motivation for seeing Kubrick’s film was nothing more than checking out the latest chapter in the media’s ongoing obsession with ‘Nam. Even at the age of 12, I really dug Full Metal Jacket and instantly recognised Kubrick’s flair for visuals and his seemingly effortless mastery of what was cool about films. So when the fanfare surrounding The Shining’s premiere (Thames were previewing the flick a good two months before they actually aired it) began, my interest was instantly piqued and I wasn’t disappointed when I finally saw the film. What’s more, where I’d been scared watching films before, The Shining lingered long after. I’m not talking merely the trip to bed after seeing the film, no, Kubrick’s film continued to play on my mind MONTHS after watching it. Back at the time I had an evening paper round and with it being winter it was pitch black at the time I was doing my deliveries and just like Danny’s terrifying journey through the corridors of the Overlook Hotel, menace, fear and dread seemed to await me at every alley entrance and darkened drive.
Unlike other films, The Shining’s power to chill isn’t diminished when watching it again. As of writing, the film stands as one of my most watched films and whenever I see it, it still manages to unnerve me, some 20 years and 15+ viewings later. I’ve not seen a film since that has affected me in the same way.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
When I was a kid The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was unavailable, having been rejected for cinema release in the 1970s by the British Board of Film Classification. In the early eighties it was issued on VHS–by the now defunct Iver Film Services–but that release would fall foul to the Video Recordings Act of 1984 and remained “banned” until it was finally classified in 1999. During the interim period, the only way to see the film was via a bootleg and those lucky enough to see it became instant playground celebrities. I first heard of the film when I was 12: a friend of mine knew a guy who’d seen it in America and recanted tales of the film’s grim delights including “feet in the fridge” and “so much blood and guts my mate puked”. The film’s “banned” status cemented its reputation as the celluloid equivalent of evil incarnate, so like every other horror-fixated kid I was desperate to see it. And see it I finally did when I was fifteen. Now three years is a lifetime when you’re a tween and those intervening years had sent my expectations through the roof. When I was finally lent a pirate copy by a kid in my class one lunchtime, I was literally salivating through my final lesson of the day and I ran home as fast as my feet would carry me. What awaited me when I popped the tape in the VCR wasn’t what I was expecting. Far from it: this almost bloodless horror film was a complete disappointment. “Why had it been banned?” thought I as the end credits rolled. How during this first screening of the film I remained unmoved by its twisted and disturbing depiction of the macabre, I’ll never understand, because today I rate the film highly and it still has the power to get under my skin each time I revisit it. What’s even more curious is that had my first Texas Chainsaw experience been the ill-advised remake (which, I hasten to add, I don’t think is nearly as bad as many others do), Marcus Nispel’s film would have almost certainly ticked all the required boxes I had projected upon Hooper’s original. What the hell do kids know, anyway? Still, this was my first experience of a film falling a long way short of the expectation I had.
So there you have my horror history. Which films moulded you as a person and informed your taste for the years that followed? Discuss.
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Thanks Paul!
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2 Comments
That episode of Dynasty where one of them gets abducted by aliens put the shitters up me when I were a lad, as did the BBC’s unbelievably audacious scare scam Ghostwatch (watch this space!).
Film-wise, I always found things scarier when described in exagerrated detail in the back of the schoolbus than when you actually got to see them, but I concur with Jaws. I grew up by the sea and I could scarcely look at it without fearing for my life for years afterwards. The end sequence of Carrie was always a real scary fucker, too.
I nominate Alfred Sole’s criminally underrated Alice, Sweet Alice and John Carrpenter’s Halloween as the scariest films ever made!
Nightmare on Elm Street 2 was directed by a man named Jack SHOULDER! Who knew?
I bet you liked that bit where Freddie turns into a nurse with big boobies, Paul.
ALICE SWEET ALICE is great – need to go back to that again and check it out, as it’s been years since I’ve seen that. I saw bits of Ghostwatch when it was screened and remember thinking WTF! but I was old enough to smell a rat by then.
Shoulder also directed the brilliant horror/sci-fi flick THE HIDDEN, which is well worth checking out. Freddy as the nurse was from part 3, mate. Sorry to be pedantic, but there’s a reason why I mention this. In the film, you see the nurse become Freddy and he’s fully clothed. On the back of the soundtrack LP, there was a still of Freddy as the nurse with his/her boobs exposed. This was obviously cut out of the finished film, as it’s not in any version (the UK version has always been the same as the US version and that was cut by the MPAA before release. I know the death of the “wizard” boy was supposed to be gorier too).