I'm 23 aswell so I missed the whole 'golden age of horror' (70's and 80's IMO) too. I was always fascinated by it though, I remember being a little kid and going into the video shop with my parents who were quite young at the time, they'd be off renting Dirty Dancing or something
and I'd make a straight B-Line for the horror section, I used to just look at the covers and read the blurbs on the backs of the video's over and over again, I must have memorised every tape in that section
I finally got to watch Friday the 13th when I was around 13 and from then on bacame a full blown horror nut. 80's slashers were my first love within the genre as they were what I started out on, Halloween instantly became my favourite when I saw that (obviously
) but also films like Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, Children of the Corn etc. When I was about 15 or 16 I discovered Fulci and Argento and things just pretty much took off from there.