It’s funny really, medical dramas and real-life atrocities on television will make me squeamish and cover my eyes yet put me in a darkened theatre with a masked axe murderer or a bloodthirsty beast and I’ll sit there with a huge smile on my face, laughing with delight or jumping in terror as the action unfolds. It’s pure escapism at its best, feeling a gamut of emotions but knowing it’s all make-believe. It hasn’t always been that way; when I was around nine or ten our middle school had a monthly film club after class. It started all very innocently with The Incredible Journey, a sweet family film about three pets who go on an adventure, but the following month we were presented with The Car and this tale of a devilish, driverless automobile absolutely terrified me. I’m ashamed to admit that one of the teachers had to take me out of the room at one point as I started crying because I was so afraid! Nonetheless, that film had a profound impact and that feeling of being scared stayed with me. Despite the tears, I wanted to experience that adrenalin rush again.
I was a child of the seventies, growing up in a little village in Northumberland. An only child, I had quite a sheltered upbringing. My conservative parents were into opera and classical music, films were not their thing (except for James Bond - the rare occasions we had family outings to the cinema), and they didn’t even own a video recorder until 1988. Looking back at my childhood, my first exposure to the fantastical world was probably via Doctor Who when I was six years old; I quickly became obsessed with Tom Baker’s adventures and have a vivid memory of stories such as The Brain of Morbius, The Robots of Death and City of Death giving me my first taste of fear, albeit I don’t believe I ever hid behind the sofa. I also recall Tyne Tees (our regional ITV channel) would frequently screen TV spots for the latest cinema releases and those for The Shining and Piranha II: Flying Killers really stuck with me, but for me to actually watch any films like these I had to look elsewhere. As luck would have it, my best friend’s family were early adopters and bought a Video 2000 player at the turn of the eighties, so my mate would tape the ‘Fear on Friday’ double bills that were shown on Tyne Tees and this was my entry level to the likes of Hammer horror, Friday The 13th, Psycho and Jaws – I’ll never forget jumping out of my seat the first time that head appeared through the hole in the boat!
With restricted access to horror films at home I instead turned to books. A voracious reader, I was a member of two local libraries and later become one of the head librarians at my school when I reached sixth form. If I wasn’t choosing my own adventures in the Fighting Fantasy series, then I had my head burrowed in either the latest Stephen King novel or a volume of the Pan Book of Horror Stories. I was sucked in by the lurid artwork of these paperbacks and distinctly remember reading the novelisation of Squirm purely down to its cover. Then there was Alien: The Illustrated Story, the only way for me to experience the film that all the cool kids at school were talking about. A shame in a way, as it meant I knew what was coming when I finally got to watch the film many years later. Non-fiction titles appealed too – the Usborne World of the Unknown series and Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World fascinated me with their tales of the supernatural and (my favourite) spontaneous human combustion. My final year of school was the one and only time I won a prize – it was perhaps telling that at our Speech Day all my fellow classmates had chosen stuffy textbooks whereas I came away with a hardback copy of Prime Evil, a book of short stories by the likes of Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell.
After I turned sixteen, I started to take more of an active interest in films and was now old enough to go the cinema on my own if I wanted; Highlander was an early favourite of mine, but it was a screening of RoboCop on Valentine’s Day 1988 that was a pivotal moment for me. I’d never seen such graphic violence on the big screen before, and I was immediately hooked. Hellraiser was the first horror film I properly obsessed over. Now that our family finally owned a VHS player, I could tape The Incredibly Strange Film Show or rent videos from our local newsagent. Hellraiser came home on numerous occasions, much to my Mum’s disgust, and I would cut out pictures of Pinhead from the free video pamphlets and stick them on my ring binder. Becoming a student and moving to Brighton was when my film education really kicked in; one of my flatmate’s parents owned a video store, so he had a huge collection of ex-rental and bootleg tapes (and a life size standee of Elvira: Mistress of The Dark) and we’d constantly be renting old classics or the latest straight-to-video gems and running off bootlegs for us to keep. Many of my student friends were in a roleplaying club, so I’d often tag along to group outings to the cinema with them – The Blob (the Chuck Russell one), my first viewing of The Exorcist and a quadruple bill of the first four Elm Street films are all screenings from that time which are seared into my memory.
In 1990 I attended my first film festival near Manchester, Black Sunday; ten brand new horror films back-to-back with a like-minded audience, a sprinkling of special guests plus a few stalls where folk were selling boxes of ex-rental and bootleg tapes. I was in my element! Being introduced to the wider horror community, united in our shared love of the macabre, not only was I learning about more obscure titles, but I was becoming an avid collector too. Back in those pre-internet days tracking down films was frequently a challenge, whether it be trying to source a copy of an uncut classic or find an ex-rental tape of a film that had failed to receive a retail release (Miracle Mile, I’m looking at you!). Having taken a degree course in Library & Information Studies I somehow persuaded my tutor that I could use some of my newfound knowledge in my final year dissertation, and duly cobbled together a piece of work entitled A Midsummer Night’s Scream: The Role of the Film Festival in the Consumption of Horror Films in the UK. However tenuous my research, it secured me a pass. As the nineties ended DVD became the new kid on the block and I was first amongst my peers to invest in this new technology, purchasing a Region 1 player and importing discs from the US – beginning with Starship Troopers.
2000 was another life-changing year when FrightFest held its inaugural festival at London’s Prince Charles Cinema. I’m not a naturally confident or extroverted person, but the welcoming nature of the organisers and the inclusive community of the festivalgoers slowly pulled me out of my shell, and I began to talk to more people and make more friends, horror fans and industry professionals alike. An avid blogger at the time, these newfound friendships led to writing opportunities for Eat My Brains, FrightFest, Dread Central and Bizarre magazine, and before long I found myself taking on some glamorous assignments such as a set visit to The Descent: Part 2 and jetting off to Bangkok and Toronto to cover their film festivals. In 2008 my friend Chris (who I’d known since my student days) suggested we start our own website and podcast, which we subsequently hosted for six years. This marked the peak of horror viewing for me as we’d receive so many review discs from film and home entertainment distributors, I’d spend countless hours watching the best (and worst) new releases alongside re-released classics of the genre. We then went on to work for FrightFest TV where I took the role of Production co-ordinator and sometime interviewer, and more recently helped produce Chris’s documentary feature FrightFest: Beneath The Dark Heart of Cinema.
Post-pandemic I find myself less invested in movies than I once was and more focussed on live music which is my day-to-day job. I suppose after watching so many horror films over the last five decades it gets harder to find something truly original or that has the power to shock – however that thrill of finding something that genuinely scares never leaves. I still try and watch as many new releases as I can on the big screen, and I still go to FrightFest every August to catch up with the friends that I’ve made over the last twenty-five years. Whatever the future holds for me, horror will always have a special place in my dark heart – it’s given me some amazing ‘pinch-me’ moments (interviewing Megan Fox on the red carpet at the World Premiere of Jennifer’s Body in Toronto stands out) but most importantly an extended family of friends from all walks of life who have been there to share this journey through horror with me.
