Nobody has posted on this thread for ages here goes....

I'm 39 now, so recall the whole nasties era, but think the Friday night Hammer shorts on telly got me into horror, will never forget one episode with the childrens party and the pipe coming through the ceiling and covering everyone in blood, scared the shit outta me!
The nasties stink really got me into it, telling you you are not allowed to view makes you want to doesn't it? Well, friends at school as well as a superb local video shop (which seemed to have its head in the sand regarding video banning) helped me view a lot, first nasty I watched was Evil dead uncut too. Managed to rent zombie flesh eaters, TCM,Living dead at Manchester morgue and more. Just wish I could go back in time with my current knowledge, they probably had the whole DPP list!!!
I think a lot of the appeal nowadays for me is watching these and taking my mind back to this time when it was more of a thrill to be lucky enough to get your hands on one of these films. Remembering the damp smell of that video shop and countless shelves of big box video covers and hours taken to pick just one film, those were the days.

Beginning of your Horror obsession?
 

Ok so this is my first thread (go gentle on me, i don't think i've seen this topic here before).
All you horror freaks out there...
I first experienced horror movies from watching late night double bills on BBC and i think C4 in the early eighties.(Boris Karloff is still my favourite):)
I remember watching the old universal movies such as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman and soon after got into the Hammer film's through TV too.
I remember reading from first issue a comic called Scream that only lasted i think 15 issues.(probably due to Mary Whitehouse)
I remember 2 sets of horror top trumps cards around this time that i used to love and a colouring book filled with images from films such as House of usher, Plague of zombies and Francis Bacon images(?).
I remember buying a book 'Horror Films' (that i still have) by Alan Frank filled with loads of photo's that i obsessed over and wanted to see all the films.
I remember first being really scared by Halloween, Carrie(the hand scene) and the Omen.
I remember watching The Hammer House of Horror TV series when it was first on and being freaked out by "Two faces of Evil" episode. (repeatedly)
I remember the first video nasties i watched on early video (Evil Dead & The House by the Edge of the park) at the tender age of 10.
Then i started reading Stephen King & James Herbert novels.
With all this exposure at an early age its no wonder i became the horror obsessed crazy nut job i am today.:dance:
All of these factors contributed to my horror obsession that still grips me today.
What started your love of horror?

My dad had loads of videos. Stuff taped off telly or stuff he bought off car boots and charity shops. I used to watch loads of it. A lot of Bond movies, Star wars and older sci-fi like invasion of the body snatchers. The ones that really stood out though were his Hammer horror and the vincent price/corman poe movies. We also used to go to the local libary and the off-license near home both had great selections as well.

I think though the real obsession came first when I picked up Jonathon Ross's incredibly strange film book. Mainly for the section on Russ Meyer as I was 'at that age' and all the photos of huge boobs were very appealing (some things don't change) Surprisingly though I actually READ the book and enjoyed it. I remembered reading the descriptions of Cannibal holocaust/ferox, evil dead ect and thinking that I HAD to see these films. My collecting obsession with comics began to fall by the way side as I actively hunted for banned and outlawed films!


The other thing that kick-started my obsession was the Soavi film STAGEFRIGHT. The bloke at the off license would buy in anything horror related (also any action films, preferably Dolph lundgren, vanne damme ect) so the few italian exploitation pics that were actually still getting releases would hit the shelves alongside the latest Friday 13th/nightmare on elm street. I was blown away by the style and ferocity of the movie, it was unlike any of the western horrors I had been watching and I wanted more!!

Incidentally, with the early stage fright VHS releases there was one with gold lettering and one with plain. The gold lettering version was more uncut.

Great thread...

I always loved Fantasy Cinema since I can remember, I was never into sports, so instead of being a kid kicking a ball I was into dinosaur movies and things like Ulysses 31 and M.A.S.K. The first film I saw at the pictures was E.T and I was lucky enough to have a big brother who would take me to see everything from Return of the Jedi, to Ghostbusters and well, Condorman. I remember long lazy school summers watching rentals at my friend's house, seeing stuff like Friday the 13th Part II and A Nightmare on Elm Street, with never an eyebrow raised about 11 and 12 year olds watching such adult stuff. I began reading Fear magazine but things really shifted up a gear in 1992 with issue 20 of Dark Side magazine which profiled the Video Nasties, and needless to say life was never quite the same again...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-okV7_INcAr...0/darkside.jpg

Looking back, I wonder if my obsession started with the Atmosfear board game series :lol: We had the first four, but I was always more interested in watching the host on the VHS slowly decompose over the course of the game, rather than actually playing it! I had a sketchbook full of drawings of the Baron Samedi zombie character. Around that time I was also obsessed with Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters 2 and Gremlins 2 - those three on a constant loop :lol: . . .

I wrote an article about this three years ago and the answer can basically be summed up in two words: The Exorcist.

Why Horror? | Film 365

I think for me it started when I was about 5 or 6 and saw the full version of Michael Jackson's Thriller video with my sister and her friends (which got her into trouble for allowing me to watch it), after that was when I started drawing page after page of monsters etc. Fast forward 3 years, I was given the Making of Michael Jackson's Thriller on VHS, which featured Rick Baker showing how he created the awesome FX work on the video, and John Landis talking about the original werewolf films from Universal in the 40's. After seeing this, I wanted to see the films they were talking about, but due to the lack of them in any of the rental shops near me, I had to "make do" with whatever films were shown on TV, these just happened to be films by a little known production company from the UK called Hammer ;)
Fast forward again to August 1991, I'm shopping in town with my parents when I spot a magazine in the newsagent where I used to buy Metal Hammer magazine, that magazine was issue number 11 of the Dark Side (which I still have). The cover was a painting of a scene from Bava's Black Sunday and inside were interviews with the stars from TCM like Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal etc. After seeing the pics and reading the interviews, I was desperate to see this film, but it would be a further 9 years before I was able to due to it's banned status, same goes for the Exorcist, (which had it's own DS special issue in October 1991, also in my loft) that I'd read about in a book called the Modern Horror Film, a book I constantly borrowed from the library (I managed to buy a copy cheap from eBay a couple of years ago), it wasn't until it's 1999 cinema re-release that I got to see "the scariest film of all time".
Over the years from about 1990-91, my obsession grew and grew, from reading the novels by Stephen King (first one being Pet Sematary), to watching the late night double bills on the BBC, to collecting Horror books and videos, reading any magazine with a Horror theme, collecting Movie Maniacs figures, right up to the present day where I only collect DVD's and BD's now, reading the Dark Side on occasion.

Incidently, my 9 year old son is forever asking me why I love Horror films so much, my usual response is this:

"I dunno, I just do"

Truth is, I have no real answer for his question, I don't know why I love Horror films so much, I just do :)

Twins Of Evil. I blame it for all my hang ups

:laugh::lol::pound:

(Seriously, also the Friday double bills)

I can't remember a time when I didn't watch horror films really, like a few on here i had parents who were more concerned that I didn't kill myself jumping about the rocks at the beach (which was just across the road when I was a bairn)/ insert own dangerous childhood playtime activity here cough, than what we watched.....happy sensible days!!

Terrific stories here, great hearing about this kind of stuff ! Everybody loves The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist, but we all have different stories about we discovered them. Very cool !

Yeah, I've cut a huge chunk out of my "Horror History", namely the time my English teacher, the bloody gorgeous Miss Lloyd, addressed her concerns to my parents at the fact I brought the Exorcist in to read in English when I was 12, instead of the Famous Five shite my classmates were reading. :pound:

I was allowed to pretty much watch what I wanted, so long as it didn't contain any sexually explicit material (if only they knew I'd borrowed an nth generation pirate copy of I Spit on Your Grave from a mates dad when I was 14, even though it was cut slightly) ;)