[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

This is an interesting thread. I remember my first experiences with horror - I was one of those cliché kids traumatised at a young age by so-called video nasties. I was less exposed to them than I subjectively recall, but even glimpses of my cousin's collection of horrible shit (at that age) like ZFE etc left an indelible impression. Even the covers had me enthralled - 'The Thing', 'The Deadly Spawn', 'Zombie Creeping Flesh' - all so innocuous now - seemed incredibly potent at the time. By the age of ten I was a regular in a dodgy house where cannibal movies flickered in the corner of a room full of smoke and cider bottles, courtesy of my friend's obviously doting parents. Not that I'm judging - I was into it. Later on in my teens, nineties horror seemed largely vacuous and safe, but the underground scene in the UK was thriving, and like Dem said there were always certain contacts, people in the know who used to procure the goods. I wasn't massively involved, more a leech taking in what I could on the back of other people's bootlegs. It was a certain kind of era with a certain kind of aesthetic - local kids in run down terraces trying to recreate a Butthole Surfers show with surgical footage, porn, f*cked up bits from f*cked up films and LSD, Throbbing Gristle groaning in the background (ie we were pretentious goths). Later I went to uni, then more uni in London, and whilst I kept my oar in a bit my passion simmered down a little. There were some highlights, like seeing Salo at the ICA, but it wasn't till I headed back up North and got a job that I noticed the DVD explosion and thought "wow, I can get everything that used to seem really distant and transgressive and weird in a two disc set with pristine picture quality". So my horror fixation has really taken hold again over the last ten years. I know I've said it before, but it's so odd thinking you could only ever get these scuzzy, horrible movies on some icky tenth generation copy VHS devoid of any identifying marks apart from something illegible scribbled on a half torn label. If you had told me twenty years ago that 'Cannibal Holocaust' would one day be on the high street, I would've been sick on your shoes. It's pretty strange now thinking 'Nekromantik' will be in HMV!

Cough, sounds familiar.
I know. I feel like rushing out in the street with a megaphone when I think about it really.....