Horror That Made Me #1

Well, it’s finally here: the final and most significant entry in my countdown of the films that’ve had the most influence on me as a lifelong fan of the horror genre. It’s the big cheese, the main event, the... er, high chaparral. It’s the movie that not only shaped the way I think about horror but how I think about film. It’s...

Jaws (1975)



Show me someone who’s afraid to go in the water and I’ll show you someone who’s scared of Jaws. Whether or not they’ve even seen the film. That’s how powerful it is. Jaws represents every unknown terror swimming in the depths of the human psyche. It’s there whenever you experience that sudden slip from fun to fear; it’s the unexpected touch of something you can’t see; that horrible feeling that you could be next; the unstoppable force of destruction waiting to pull you under forever.

It’s also the best bloody blockbuster ever to come out of Hollywood. Seriously, can you imagine something of Jaws’s quality on any level – be it acting, direction, editing or whatever – being the summer’s main event movie ever again? I think not! Will we ever see an American monster movie built around such compelling characters? Or allowed to build so carefully and deliberately? One that’s so adult? So primal? So terrifying?

My obsession with Spielberg’s seafaring masterpiece goes back almost further than I can remember – to nights spent huddled on the sofa watching the surfacing of a mechanical shark with the kind of awe most four-year-olds reserved for Disney cartoons. I’ve seen the film on TV, video, DVD, at the cinema, and will carry on watching it until I’m in my seventies and viewing it in cyber-surround holographic 3D (fuckin’ A!). Then, when it’s over, I’ll watch the sequels because I love them too... even Jaws: The Revenge. (In fact, I like that sequel best, so screw you!)

Some other childhood memories of Jaws:

– Being too scared to go to sleep in case my bed turned into a boat, floated away and was sunk by Jaws, subsequently leading to my watery, much chewed-upon death.

– Pestering my mum to find a copy of the video (yes, we lived in a video shop when I was aged between 4 and 6 – how lucky was I?). When it turned out we didn’t stock it, I was given Orca: Killer Whale to keep me quiet, and another love affair was born.

– Buying the 25th anniversary edition video back when “special edition” just meant new video box art. Then, when the opening credits started, the words “old friend” just popped into my head.

– My friends and I always trying to spot “the worm” when the shark explodes at the end of Jaws III:



– Buying a blank video tape especially for the purposes of recording Jaws 2 when it came on TV as Saturday night’s big movie. Except the tape was faulty and I couldn’t watch it again the next day. Gutted.

– Reading Peter Benchley’s novel for the first time and being shocked – shocked! – by the phrase “vagina yawning open” (and no, I can’t remember the context).


Anyway, that’s the end of “Horror That Made Me”, although I look forward to plenty more memorable and influential horror movies coming along in future to shape my ever-evolving understanding of the genre. Or is that too much to hope?

The list in full:

1. Jaws
2. Halloween
3. Bug/The Giant Spider Invasion
4. In the Mouth of Madness
5. The Devil Rides Out
6. Fright Night
7. The Spiral Staircase
8. Phenomena
9. The Private Eyes
10. Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense: Child’s Play

Horror That Made Me #2

It might be inevitable that, as I reach the Top 2 in AiP’s countdown of the “Horror That Made Me”, the movies in question get pretty famous indeed. And, in terms of the amount already written about them online, in books or anywhere, perhaps none are more famous than...

Halloween (1978)



Simply put, the influence of John Carpenter’s masterpiece cannot be escaped. Halloween was released the year I was born – 1978 – and, truth be told, I like to think of it lingering there in the background the whole of my life, just out of focus like The Shape itself. In fact, I came to Halloween relatively late in my horror education, around the age of 15, following years of late-night Hammer horror and 50s sci-fi in black-and-white. Until then, I’d thought horror had to revolve around a giant radioactive insect, a vampire or anything flashy and supernatural. I’d shown little interest in Halloween... After all, what could be so scary about some guy in a mask?

What’s perfect about Halloween, then, is that it’s built on the kind of safe and distant horror you love (and I loved) as a child. Just look at the films that play on TV in the background throughout: The Thing from Another World and Forbidden Planet... They couldn’t happen on your street. But then a new horror arrives in the Shape of Michael Myers. And nothing is safe anymore.

My strongest memory of that first viewing of Halloween is its slow but transfixing build-up, haunted by the presence of Myers just out of shot on the street corners of Haddonfield as the young trick-or-treaters gear up for a night of fun. The scene that scared me the most is when our heroine, Laurie, finds herself trapped in a closet as Michael Myers batters at its flimsy door. “She’s dead!” I thought. “There’s no way out of this!” (Of course, there is – and it’s an eye-poking doozy.)

Then, when it was all finally over, I switched off the TV in my bedroom and heard my mum and dad coming upstairs. Turns out, they’d caught the last twenty minutes and couldn’t tear themselves away before coming to bed, despite their general lack of enthusiasm for all things horror. I knew then that Halloween was something special.

Lesson learned: The scariest monster is a man with a knife.

Horror That Made Me #3

Call me a cheat but I’m including two films at number 3 in the countdown of “Horror That Made Me” titles. And it’s not like they’re even properly related – like, say, The Star Wars Trilogy or The Godfather and The Godfather Part II would be. Nope, the only connection between these two is that both were released in 1975, went on to become drive-in classics, and burrowed into my young psyche like the creepy crawly creatures they concern. In fact, the pair became practically indistinguishable to my mind as depictions of true insectoid* terror. The movies?

Bug & The Giant Spider Invasion



[*And, yes, I know spiders aren’t insects... but are they insectoid? I’ll leave you to ponder that one as you read the rest of this post, shall I?]

Bug is the better-made of the two films, coming from famed horror producer William Castle and future Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc (currently enjoying a successful career in TV). Its peculiar genius is that it imagines a world where cockroaches are not just disgusting but also burst into flames at will, thereby toasting you on the spot as well as making you go “eww!”. In Bug, you’ll witness the vicious firebugs crawling down someone’s ear hole (hissssss!), hiding in someone’s wig (kaboom!) and scuttling up a car exhaust pipe (kablammy!). And, if you’re seven years old, I doubt any of this is really very good for you.

In retrospect, The Giant Spider Invasion is just plain silly, famously featuring as it does a giant spider that’s actually a VW Beatle covered in fur and with eight wooden “legs” attached, but that didn’t stop me from watching in awe-struck horror when I caught in on TV twenty-something years ago. Even when I re-watched it a few years ago, I have to admit there was a certain jolt at the first sight of the largest spider as it crawls over the roof of a house. And Stephen King is right when he points out in Danse Macabre that the film contains some classic gross-out moments (one of which acts as a warning to anyone carelessly not checking the contents of their blender for spidery invaders before switching it on to make an otherwise delicious smoothie).

So, Bug and The Giant Spider Invasion, I’m afraid I can’t choose between you as to which scared – and indeed scarred – me the most as a young ’un. But count me out for the protein shakes, thanks very much... There’s just a little too much protein in there, if you know what I mean.

Lesson learned: Spiders are not insects.

Horror That Made Me #4

Methinks it’s time to draw the strands of “Horror That Made Me” back together in order to finish the series off properly...

Now, if you’ve been regularly playing Brain Trainer® on your Nintendo DS – thus keeping your memory sharp and reducing the risk of aneurysm – you may remember I’ve been counting down the ten most influential movie experiences on my horror-loving psyche. If, however, your brain has rotted away due to an unhealthy lack of video games, here’s a little reminder of the films I’ve picked so far (sponsored by Nintendo DS):

10. Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense: Child’s Play
9. The Private Eyes
8. Phenomena
7. The Spiral Staircase
6. Fright Night
5. The Devil Rides Out

That’s right; there’s been Hammer Horror, 1940s melodrama, TV movies, Italian horror and a heavy 80s bias, all of which brings me to the most recent entry in my countdown: John Carpenter’s criminally underrated...

In the Mouth of Madness (1995)



Quite simply, I don’t think there’s ever been a more successful post-modern horror film than this well-kept secret. In the Mouth of Madness is a film about reality giving way to fiction, creating in turn a new reality (or lack of!) – which, if you think about it, is how films themselves work, taking you out of your own reality into something unreal, which then affects your subsequent reality.

It’s the story of John Trent (played by a better-than-usually-cast Sam Neill), an insurance investigator probing the disappearance of famous horror writer Sutter Cane... Is it a publicity stunt for the author’s new novel or something more sinister? I’d put my money on “sinister” if I were you because, before In the Mouth of Madness is over, you’ll have seen all manner of monsters, violent acts, rips in the fabric of reality and, basically, the end of the world as we know it – all culminating in a shocker of an ending that’s easy to dismiss as a jokey punchline but which actually gets more and more disturbing the more you think about it.

The movie’s Lovecraft influence is obvious but it’s ultimately a John Carpenter story through-and-through, rounding out his self-proclaimed “Apocalypse trilogy” (begun with The Thing and Prince of Darkness) in fitting and spectacular fashion. I can’t think of another narrative that falls apart so violently whilst also remaining so satisfying and clever. In fact, to this date, I rarely start to watch a horror film without a small part of me wishing that somehow, somehow it’ll go as far as In the Mouth of Madness does... and wondering what it would do to me if it went further.

Lesson learned: Horror goes mad and takes you with it.

Horror That Made Me #5

One of my favourite things when I was a kid was Staying Up Late. Staying Up Late meant being part of an adult world that existed only when children had gone to bed – a mysterious, exciting time when it seemed all kinds of dangerous and forbidden things might happen, while other kids slumbered away oblivious. One of the illicit delights of Staying Up Late was late-night TV, and that’s where I first saw...

The Devil Rides Out (1968)



My mum, in her wisdom (and no doubt swayed by her enjoyment of the Dennis Wheatley source-novel), had decided that The Devil Rides Out was suitable for my pre-teen sensibilities. Which I’m sure it was, really, as it’s actually pretty tame if you don’t take the black magic theme too seriously. But she nevertheless warned me that it contained one truly terrifying scene: an attack by supernatural forces on a group of people holed up inside a magic pentacle drawn on the floor...

Now, being a secret horror veteran for years by this point, I wasn’t an easy kid to scare (at least, not where movies were concerned) but that scene didn’t disappoint. This was the 1980s and special effects had moved on in the twenty years since the heyday of Hammer Films, but I still thrilled to the giant spiders and skeletal horsemen that besieged our intrepid heroes. My eyes widened in apprehension as their protective candles flickered out one by one, and I’d swear a spectral wind whistled around my living room as it did the spooky chamber onscreen.

Staying up past bedtime to watch The Devil Rides Out is one of my fondest horror memories, and embodies for me that long-since lost feeling of late-night excitement you can only ever really experience as a child. It’s a long time since I’ve seen the film and I’m not sure what I’d make of it today. (Reading the book was a disappointment of sorts, as it couldn’t measure up to the other Dennis Wheatley I read, To the Devil, a Daughter – which itself made an inferior film, conversely.) I hope sometime soon, however, to give it another go. Maybe late at night. And with my mum. Just in case it gets too scary.

Lesson learned: Horror stays up late.

Horror That Made Me #6

Well, I did say we’d be going back to the eighties for the next “Horror That Made Me” entry, counting down the ten films that most influenced my understanding of the genre – and you don’t get much more eighties than 1985. The middle of the decade produced a glut of teen-vampire movies, including The Lost Boys, Vamp, Near Dark and, er, Teen Vamp, but by far the standout film for me was...

Fright Night (1985)

Fright Night is a film that just gets everything right, from the comic – but not silly – tone to the frequent frights, via the genuine sense of camaraderie amongst the heroes and the still-wowing monster effects. It’s also one of the gayest mainstream horror movies ever made, with the only major competition coming from the same year’s A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 (which is quite possibly THE gayest if you go along with Camp Blood’s brilliant review). 1985: a flagship year for queer fear? Read on!

Fright Night’s gay subtext is there if you want it (and as a gay teen starved of references I could actually relate to, I was desperate for it) but doesn’t distract from the film if you aren’t in the market for it. In addition to the various strange relationships in the story, there’s the cast itself, featuring gay actors Roddy McDowall (yay!) and Amanda Bearse – as well as Stephen Geoffreys (who later made it big in gay porn under the alias “Sam Ritter”) and William Ragsdale, who’s straight but went on to play Ellen DeGeneres’s boyfriend in her nineties sitcom (how queer is that?).

As a teenager, I knew there was something different going on under the surface of Fright Night – something furtive and funny I didn’t fully understand but which I felt a certain affinity with. That’s why the film became one I returned to again and again during my teenage years, one that fascinated me with its subversive, enticing aura – and which retains a powerful punch of nostalgia today.

Lesson learned: Horror keeps dark secrets.

Horror That Made Me #7

Time to turn our backs on the eighties for the time being in my countdown of the ten biggest influences on the way I think of horror. Entry #7 is a film I first saw at the age of twelve but which had been made almost fifty years previously: Robert Siodmak’s more-Hitchcockian-than-Hitchcock thriller...

The Spiral Staircase (1945)



The reason The Spiral Staircase makes the list is because it taught me that “old” movies could still be extremely creepy... Not just creepy, in fact, but downright scary. And not just scary, either, but also absolutely beautiful. Ironically, for a film that deals with the punishment of physical imperfection, Staircase is a glimmming, shimmering model of monochrome perfection – its setting a mansion and its grounds all elegantly evoked on a too-real-to-be-real studio set.

Within the mansion we meet mute servant girl Helen, played by an instantly likeable Dorothy McGuire and stalked throughout by a sinister assailant in the style of the best modern gialli and slasher movies. The horror ranges from skin-crawling subtlety (check out the victim’s twisting hands in one otherwise unseen murder) to scream-out-loud suspense – so it’s no surprise this one’s been remade twice already, although neither version gets anywhere near the original.

Ultimately, The Spiral Staircase is a film with the ability to satisfy serious movie buffs and Saturday afternoon tea-drinkers equally; certainly, my idea of a good thriller wouldn’t be the same without it. For an interesting alternative take, however, read Final Girl’s review. But come back soon for Horror That Made Me #6, when strangely enough it’s back to the eighties again!

Lesson learned: Great beauty can go hand-in-hand with great horror.

Horror That Made Me #8

Most of the entries from my countdown of the ten “Horror Films That Made Me” are movies I experienced at an early age, but not this one. I was at least 24 when I saw for the first time Dario Argento’s...

Phenomena (1985)

I’d seen Argento movies before this: Trauma, unwittingly, in the early nineties, when I’d rent any horror film that came to my local video store; Suspiria a little later, when I discovered it in a big branch of HMV and read Leonard Maltin’s enthusiastic review. Opera and The Stendhal Syndrome were early DVDs I picked up when the availability of American releases in the UK meant that uncut versions of films became possible to get hold of for the first time. Still, the buzz around the director’s work eluded me. I found them confusing, artificial and ultimately unsatisfying.

Phenomena was different. I can even pin down the moment when I suddenly “got” Argento. It occurred as Phenomena’s heroine arrives at her destination thirteen minutes into the film and, from nowhere, a gravelly male voiceover gravely intones: “And so Jennifer arrives in Switzerland from the New World to pass her first memorable night at the Richard Wagner International School for Girls...”

The voiceover is never explained, never continued, and it’s the only time it’s heard in the film. Its sheer randomness, however, was the finger that flicked the switch inside my head, and I suddenly knew that I loved Argento and would be returning to all the films of his I’d previously seen to evaluate them in a new light. What I didn’t know at the time was that I’d become an obsessive collector of the man’s work, or that he’d become my favourite director of all time. But I am and he is, and for those reasons Phenomena secures a place on the list of Horror That Made Me... Plus the fact that it’s a fantastic film in its own right – the very definition of a horror fairytale.

Lesson learned: You never know when horror will grab you.

Horror That Made Me #9

The second film in AiP’s countown of the ten “Horror That Made Me” movies isn’t actually a horror movie, although there are plenty of corpses, thunderstorms, cloaked killers, the odd monster, and a healthy dollop of buzzard pus. It’s an Old Dark House spoof starring Tim Conway and Don Knotts as two Scotland Yard detectives investigating a double murder at a country estate, and it’s called...

The Private Eyes (1981)

Even when I was aged five there was nothing in The Private Eyes that scared me - although I can’t say the same for my younger sister, who was a mere three years old at the time. And that’s where the film taught me an important horror-related lesson: what doesn’t scare YOU may well terrify someone else, and vice versa. And indeed Vice Versa, starring Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage, may well terrify you. And if so, well, it’s OK... Fred Savage’s curly bonce just has that effect on some people.

Anyway, my sister loved The Private Eyes as much as I did (or, at least, that’s what I told her as I put it on for the 27th viewing). But there was one scene – one moment so horrifically terrifying to her – that she wouldn’t even stay in the same room while it was playing on the TV. Shocking photographic evidence of said moment of pure fear may be seen above, wherein a ghoul/zombie/puppet (it’s never actually explained) pops out of a coffin in a spooky mausoleum, terrifying the bumbling detectives and, in the process, my little sis. Yes, fear is in the eye of the beholder – and horror films provide us with a “safe” insight into just how much horror we can handle, as well as how much other people can handle, and if we’re really lucky, what really scares us...

Lesson learned: Horror is power.

Horror That Made Me #10

Gotta say I rather love the post Horror That Made Me by Arrow in the Head’s Matt Withers. As he says, “it’s not a list of faves (though some certainly are), and it’s not even a list of movies I recommend (although you could do worse in most cases). It’s just the pics that when I look back I realize that I wouldn’t think about horror the way I do if I hadn’t seen them”. For me, many of the films I review at Anchorwoman In Peril! are the sort of thing I spent my formative years watching – from the TV movies videoed in the dead of night, to the forbidden horrors illicitly viewed over at friends’ houses (movie-wise, obviously). So, over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be counting down the ten horror films that made me, beginning with...

Child’s Play (1986)

No, not the Chucky-doll classic (although that’s surely a regular on many lists) but an episode of the TV anthology series Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense. This was my first experience of being utterly compelled by something other than a cartoon on the screen, and the reason it worked so well is because the set-up is so simple, the scenario so familiar, that there isn’t a suburban seven-year-old in the land that wouldn’t be able to relate to it. How does it all begin? You wake up in the middle of the night and decide to go downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water.

But this isn’t your house, remember – it’s Hammer House... So expect mystery! Expect suspense! Because what you see when you happen to glance out of the window isn’t your back garden. It isn’t anything. Because there’s a strange metal wall blocking your view. And the same wall blocks every window – and, in fact, every other exit. Not only that, but the temperature inside the house is slowly rising...

From here on in, what started as Just Another Night quickly becomes a frantic nightmare, until Child’s Play suddenly pulls back to reveal its true intentions with a kicker of a twist ending. Admittedly, it’s a twist that might have retained more of its kick back in 1986, but you have to admire its sheer surreal audacity. I was certainly never the same again afterwards; never quite as trusting of a seemingly straightforward plot, and always aware that the delicate house of cards that makes up a good story can often be easily shuffled to produce jarring, unexpected terrors.

Lesson learned: Horror pulls the rug out.