Hooked on Horror

by Martin Hannah
(East Kilbride, Scotland)

I became hooked on horror at an early age. With the advent of the home video cassette recorder and all the rental shops that opened up in our area (East Kilbride, Scotland) in 1981/1982 a revelation in horror began for me at the tender age of 9 years old.

Remember radio rentals? If you are of a certain age and live in the UK you will. Radio rentals, at the time of the home video explosion used to produce a catalog of all the videos they stocked, and they had their own classification system with x being mild horror and xx being extreme horror.

Films that made a deep impression on me include 'Ghost Story' and 'Phantasm'. There was however one film that upon seeing the movie trailer on TV, excited me beyond comprehension and that film was 'The Evil Dead' - to this day I can still remember the UK cinema trailer (unreleased on any of the DVD formats) with Shelley singing 'We're gonna get you', the camera rushing through the house and the barn with those scary demon noises.

My parents were kind of liberal and allowed me to watch such films but one film my mother wouldn't let me see was 'Last House on the Left' and at the time I couldn't figure our why! For my tenth birthday my mother hired out 'The Evil Dead' on VHS video and the film was everything I hoped it would be - a total gore and fright fest.

Other films such as 'Halloween', 'Happy Birthday to Me', 'Friday The 13th', 'Cannibal Holocaust', 'The Exorcist' and 'The Hills Have Eyes' helped perpetuate my growing love for the genre.

With the Video nasties bill in 1984 a lot of films disappeared for a long time and from that moment on, in my opinion, the horror genre went into a spiraling decline.

I still love horror but it is hard for me to find modern horror movies that have that early 80's fear factor or horror films that push the boundaries.