Lee Hardcastle may not be a name that everyone is familiar with yet, but it will be. You’ve probably seen his work without even realizing it – maybe even passed it along to some friends because it was funny (The Thing with penguins, anyone?). Either way, you’re likely to be seeing a lot more of this up-and-coming director. His short film, T is for Toilet, is slated to appear later this year alongside films by Ti West (House of the Devil, The Innkeepers), Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace, Kill List), Srdjan Spasojevic (A Serbian Film) and Jason Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun) in Drafthouse Films’ The ABCs of Death.

Unlike many of the other films in the anthology, Hardcastle’s entry is concerned less with straight-on horror and more with insanely fun claymation zombies, chainsaw-wielding maids and crude fart jokes. It’s a world that is hardly predictable, but always entertaining – sort of a bouncy house of ’80s horror nostalgia. So hold your breath and don’t drink the Kool-Aid, we’re going in…

Last year was sort of a breakout year for you, Lee. What were some of the highlights of 2011?

You’re right and with [good] reason. It was the year I gave it my all, whereas before it was more like a hobby. The first victory was getting through the international finals for a second year in the Jameson Empire Awards Done in 60 Seconds contest with The Exorcist. After that, my straight8 entry (A Zombie Claymation) was selected to screen at Cannes. The ABCs of Death film anthology was the big one, though. I’m still in disbelief that I actually won that.

Speaking of The ABCs of Death film competition, can you explain a bit about the film and the concept behind your short?

The ABCs of Death is an ambitious anthology horror film made up of 26 short films, each representing a letter of the alphabet. The competition that the producers (Drafthouse Films) ran was to find the 26th director to make a short for the letter “T.”

I submitted a claymation titled T is for Toilet. The video is about three minutes long and tells the story about a little boy who is forced to give up the potty and begin using the toilet. What should be a straight-forward lesson in toilet training turns into an over-the-top massacre when the toilet transforms into a scary monster.

So what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been afraid of?

The strangest thing that makes me feel like throwing up with fear is the thought of sharks. I love Jaws. It’s a fantastic film, my favorite Speilberg film in fact, and I’m very comfortable watching it, but to go swimming in the ocean? I get that “shark paranoia” and have about three shark nightmares a month where I’m swimming away from sharks, trying to hop on a ledge or something.

I’ve seen sharks in aquariums and that’s fine. It’s the image of a great white – God, it turns my stomach and I’ve never seen one in real life! If anyone has a brilliant explanation why I am so scared of sharks, please get in contact. It’s so strong that I feel I’m destined to be eaten by a shark.

Were you always fascinated by stop motion and special effects, even as a kid?

Pretty much. It was ages before I was even allowed to touch a video camera, but I used to watch a show in the UK called You’ve Been Framed where people submitted their home videos of people falling over or having accidents. Every now and again they would show some hilarious clips where people had achieved some far-out, wacky in-camera effect, which just blew my mind and opened that door of possibilities to me.

There are actually very few stop motion artists that I admire. People like Ray Harryhausen, who so many cinema lovers admire, just haven’t inspired me or anything. If I’m being totally honest – and it pains me to say this because I know how highly respected he is by some of my own heroes – I always thought his animation was crappy. I appreciate it now that I’m 27 and understand the art and history behind it, but when I was child I would see Jason and the Argonauts and laugh at how lame it was.

I’m probably shooting myself in the foot but it’s the truth and I can’t help how I feel. I’m a twat. Sorry. I think the biggest artist that I do admire is David Daniels and his strata-cut work, not to mention Will Vinton and Nick Park, who both entertained me as a child.

You’re obviously a fan of horror films, given the numerous homages to the genre in your work. What are a few specific films that have influenced you?

I can name a few, but they’ve inspired me on so many different levels for different reasons. My parents, being parents, would only let me watch the occasional horror film; one that stuck with me was The Monster Squad. I was also obsessed with the Ghostbusters cartoon when I was a little boy.

Evil Dead II was one of the films that really drove my desire to be a filmmaker. Me and another guy in high school shared a love for this film for the same reasons and all we would ever talk about was Evil Dead II. Then we started making our own films and both of us were imitating the camera shots/movements from the film.

And then there was An American Werewolf in London – that just freaking traumatized me.

You’ve also got Hamster Hell that you’re working on, which is turning out to be a pretty twisted web series. How did the idea for these shorts come about?

I wanted to do a series, one with cliffhangers at the end and recaps at the start because it’s such an addictive format for an audience. The challenge was to think of a story that was cheap enough to produce that I could spread over eight episodes, and I came up with Hamster Hell.

Last summer I spent a lot of time with a 2-year-old boy – that doesn’t make me sound weird, does it? Anyway, when you hang out with someone that young and innocent, you’re pulled out of your own world and forced to see the world through their eyes. It’s a strange thing to explain, but it was this experience that sparked both T is for Toilet and Hamster Hell.

The character of the kid that I’ve written is fascinating for me because he’s so human and when you tap into that vein – when you feel this character living and breathing – the story writes itself. Also, I was inspired by stuff like Beavis & Butt-Head; their general stupidity and the consequence it has on the world around them is hilarious.

What’s the worst thing you ever did to a pet when you were a kid?

Let me say that Hamster Hell is based on true stuff. The cruel stuff isn’t anything that I did, but everything that happens in that series was taken from hundreds of hamster stories I witnessed and heard during my early years of high school.

Yeah, I had a few goldfish before eventually owning a hamster and I loved it to bits, but my darkest moment was really innocent and is the heart of Hamster Hell. I was about 8 and my mum took me to a marsh where there were hundreds of frogs and I thought they were the best thing ever.

So, when my mum wasn’t looking, I stole a frog and took it home. I played with it for hours in my bedroom before it just died and I suddenly realized how stupid I was and I was so torn with guilt that the next time I went to church I made a confession where I sobbed all the way through telling the priest my story. Every time I see that scene in The Goonies with Chunk confessing, it reminds me of myself.

You can watch a few of Lee’s videos at the links below:

T is for Toilet

Love Automatic Music Video

The Exorcist in 60 Seconds

Photo by Jesse Adair.

Late last year I chatted up actor/stuntman Kane Hodder about the biography he had just completed with co-author Michael Aloisi.  Unmasked: The True Story of the World’s Most Prolific Cinematic Killer covers much of the territory you’d expect — Hodder’s youth, his first jobs as a Hollywood stuntman, his rise to cult fame as the man in the storied hockey mask — but it also offers surprisingly candid accounts of a few of the darkest episodes in the actor’s life, including his childhood run-ins with bullies and the near-fatal burn injury that almost ended his career just as it was getting started. I’ve been waiting for the right time to post the interview; I don’t think there’ll ever be a better occasion than 2012′s first Friday the 13th.

First off, Kane, I want to ask you about a quote from the book: “I am closer mentally to a killer than normal people are.” Tell me about that.

It sounds like I’m making a joke, but often people say, How do you get to such a convincing murderous state in some of your movies? My response, and I mean it sincerely, is that I believe that my personality is closer to that of a psychopathic killer than most people’s personalities. I’m not saying I am that, but I think I’m closer to that in general, so that the trip from my personality to that of the killer is a shorter trip than other people have to take. I can get there very quickly. I know it sounds like a joke, but I honestly feel that.

From an actor’s perspective, what are some noticeable differences between playing a fictional psychopath, like Jason Voorhees or Victor Crowley, and a real one, like Ed Gein or Dennis Rader?

It is definitely different. When you play a fictional character, you’re inventing things to do to people and ways to be violent. When you play a character who actually existed, that’s a pretty bizarre thing to think about, especially if you recreate some of the things that person actually did. It’s easy for me to do that stuff on film, but it’s just fascinating, and I think that term is accurate – I’m fascinated by serial killers. The psychological state that their mind has to be in to be able to do these things, often without any kind of guilt or any feelings at all… it’s just unbelievable for me to think that someone can get into that state. It is very strange to play a character that actually existed. It’s often just hard to think about.

Creatively, what contributions did you make to the Jason Voorhees character?

I think my contribution was a subtle thing, but an important thing. I always watch the Jason movies. I love the character. That’s why, when I was suddenly wearing the hockey mask, I was honored and wanted to do it justice. And to me, whenever I would see the character in past movies and he was standing and staring at someone, he often could look like a mannequin because he wasn’t moving. It looked good but at the same time, it looked like he could have been a statue. So that’s when I decided I had to make him look alive when he’s stalking someone, and that’s when I came up with the breathing thing. Now when he’s staring at you, with the heaving chest, I think it looks much scarier and much more intimidating. He looks like he’s about to do something fucking crazy. I added that and, from what I’ve been told by fans, because I sound like an asshole if I say it myself, it looked more natural. Sometimes, some of the guys before and after look like they’re acting, trying to be scary. I hope, if anything, that I made it look a little more natural and not forced.

Hodder and author Michael Aloisi. (Photo by Jesse Adair.)

You were a big Boris Karloff fan when you were growing up. What was it like to get to do such a fun take on the Frankenstein monster in Chillerama?

As soon as Adam Green mentioned that he had this idea, I knew that I would like it because I think he’s a genius. I knew he would come up with something fun and interesting. Sure enough, he did. And in just about every movie we do, he comes up with something new for me to do that I’ve never done on film before. In the first Hatchet, I had never cried in a movie, so I was able to do that. In the second Hatchet, I had never had a sex scene, and I did that. With Chillerama, I had never danced on film, and I did that – and probably will never do it again.

A lot of the material in your book is stuff you’ve never talked about publicly. What made you decide to be so candid?

There are stories in that book that I’ve never told another person in my life, particularly a couple of the bullying things. It was just so humiliating that I never wanted anybody to know – not even my parents, when I was younger. So, once I started telling my story to Mike, I started thinking, the one thing I don’t like about reading biographies, and actors’ biographies in particular, is that I never learn anything that I didn’t already know. It’s fun to read about their careers. That’s very interesting, but I would also like to know some of the bad things that happened in their life, and know that they were able to overcome them. I decided that, if I’m going to tell my story, I’m going to make it my entire story, good and bad.

Some things don’t reflect well on me, but it’s what happened and I can’t do anything about it at this point, so I’ll talk about it. I just know from the experience that when you’re going through something traumatic – getting bullied, a burn injury – and you can read about it or talk to someone who’s been there, that is a huge help. If a person hasn’t been in your shoes in their past, they’re not going to be able to help you. So when you’ve been through it yourself, and you can maybe help somebody else get through it just by them reading your story and knowing you were able to overcome it, then it’s all worth it. That’s how I feel with the OCD stuff, the burn injury, the bullying, anything. If it helps someone, then it’s all worth it.

In the book, you mention that you talked to Wes Craven when he was casting the role of Freddy Krueger. Tell me about that.

It was actually before he even started casting. He just had the idea – I don’t even think he had the script ready yet. He just had this idea about this crazy character who was going to have burn scars. Since I had done The Hills Have Eyes 2 with him, he talked to me about it briefly. Obviously, he made a great choice in going with Robert [Englund], because Robert’s a great actor and he made the character what he was, but it just made it interesting when, later on, I heard about this Fred Krueger – that’s what he was called at the beginning: Fred Krueger. It was kind of odd.

I understand that Rob Zombie played a part in helping you get over the disappointment of not being cast as Jason in Freddy vs. Jason…

I was replaced and never given a reason for my replacement – I was devastated, actually. Maybe it sounds corny, but I really was. Jason was a character I truly loved, so I had a lot of trouble dealing with it. Then Rob Zombie says he wants me to coordinate the stunts on The Devil’s Rejects, and I’m a huge Rob Zombie fan and also a fan of House of 1,000 Corpses – what better way to help me get over the pain of losing the Jason character?

You can score a copy of Unmasked on Kane’s website.

France recently carved yet another notch into its genre film festival belt with the first edition of the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival (PIFFF), which took place November 23 – 27 in the heart of the City of Light. The festival boasted a number of special guests, two juried competitions, and an impressive line-up of both feature-length and short films, including a number of French premieres. We managed to catch up with PIFFF artistic director and film programmer Fausto Fasulo during the festival and cajoled him into answering seven questions about the inaugural event.

[Ed. note: The following interview was conducted in French and translated by Anne Louise Lambert. Merci, Anne!]

Besides your work with PIFFF, you’re also the editor-in-chief of Mad Movies, France’s first horror movie magazine. Before we talk about the PIFFF, tell us more about the mag. What is Mad Movies and how did it start?

Mad Movies is the first magazine in Europe dedicated to fantastic films. It comes out every month and will celebrate its 40th anniversary in a few months. We cover genre news and also do a lot of analytical and historical research to point out the link between [classic] fantastic movies and their contemporary legacy. Our mission is to share our passion in a fun, accessible and uncomplicated way.

Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo at the premiere of Sleep Tight.

Mad Movies covers French horror and fantastic events, so you make a lot of partnerships. Why did you choose to support the PIFFF?

We do more than support the PIFFF; we organize it thoroughly via the association Paris Ciné Fantastique that we created with festival president Gerard Cohen, general delegate Cyril Despontin and me. Cyril is in charge of the organisation; the festival was mainly his idea. He has a great deal of experience in this field and brought his skills to us, giving birth to a popular event that fans would look forward to. I thank Cyril for his hard work and Gerard for his enthusiasm and sense of action.

How did the first edition of PIFFF measure up to your expectations?

It’s simple: the results of the first edition have exceeded our expectations. The attendance rate was much higher than expected and we had almost all the guests we wanted. We also had excellent media coverage and very positive feedback from many professionals. It’s quite exciting and it makes us want to work harder on the next edition.

Alright, let’s talk about the program! For the opening, Jaume Balagueró, who is also a member of the jury, was here to present his new thriller Sleep Tight. Will other directors join the fest?

We welcome Julian Gilbey (A Lonely Place To Die), the Ford brothers (The Dead), Andreas Marschall (Masks) and Joseph Kahn (Detention). All are delighted to be at the PIFFF and really play the game with the audience and the press. We are very proud to have them as guests for this first edition and we hope to see them again very soon with quality movies.

Sleep Tight director Jaume Balagueró

As per usual with film festivals, there’s a competition and an award. Who is the jury for this first edition, and what are the stakes for the two winning feature films?

We have two juries: one for the long and short international competition, and the second one for the French short film competition. For features, [the jurors are] Christophe Gans (Silent Hill), Roger Avary (The Rules of Attraction), Jaume Balagueró, and Lucile Hadzihalilovic (Innocence). The French short film jury is composed of people with a great deal of experience: a cinematographer, a director, an editor, an SFX producer and a producer. They all play their part perfectly! Regarding the winners, they benefit from the media exposure and financial support of the TV channel Ciné+ and they win the recognition of picky juries who were able to detect their true skills.

With broadcast rights and video distribution, it must have been difficult to arrange French premieres of some of these films. Which film was the most complicated to obtain?

We could never have gotten Detention if [director and co-writer] Joseph Kahn had no faith in us and had not straightened up the situation with Sony Worldwide. We met him at Sitges and our event quickly won him over. He came to Paris to [promote] his movie and we are extremely grateful to him for his availability and his attention. Joseph, you really did it!

For this first edition of PIFFF you are showing nine very interesting movies, such as Julian Gilbey’s A Lonely Place To Die, The Innkeepers from director Ti West and The Dead by Jonathan and Howard J. Ford. Tell me, if you had to choose only one movie, what would be your favourite and why?

My favourite is The Innkeepers by Ti West. It is a true “resistant” movie because Ti West explores – in a special and elegant, old school way – what goes against the fantasy genre currently produced in Hollywood. His sense of direction, his painstaking artistic supervision and his subtle writing make him one of the most talented contemporary fantastic film directors. We hope we’ll welcome him with his new movie next year at PIFFF.

For more info about the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival, visit http://www.pifff.fr.

Just four days after wrapping a post-production schedule so frantic that it required two editors working simultaneously to finish the film, a friendly and honest Garris offered himself up on the bloodied altar that is the Sinister Seven. (Warning: There are some spoilers in the interview below, specifically in Mick’s answer to my fourth question, so proceed with caution if you aren’t already familiar with the story.)

What keeps you coming back to King’s work again and again?

I love his stuff. I’ve been a fan since the first one I read, which was The Shining. It’s not just genre stuff. It’s drama first, and then there are elements of suspense or horror or whatever you want to call it. It’s human – it’s about people, it’s about shared experiences that we can all identify with. It’s not about teenagers being slaughtered at Crystal Lake. It’s about grown-ups and emotions and things that I think real horror are based on. It’s internal as well as external. It’s not about body count so much as it’s about the people. It’s something that you can identify with and that you take home after you leave, after the credits roll. It’s a world that you’ve lived in.

For awhile, you were considering making Bag of Bones as a theatrical feature. Tell me how and why it ended up with A&E.

It’s a weird world out there when it comes to making genre movies. It’s been like this since the 1950s, where the first thought of the studios is that genre movies are for teenagers. Bag of Bones, we always felt, would make a terrific movie. But trying to sell a romantic, passionate ghost story at the time we were trying to sell [Bag of Bones] to the studio turned out to be a lot more difficult than we thought.

Bruce Willis had the property originally, and had developed some scripts that I never read, but it ended up never going anywhere. So we tried hard to make it a feature film because we thought that would be the most uncompromising way to do it. But when it became clear that television might be a better way to do it, it was actually somewhat of a relief. There was so much stuff that we had to leave out in the two-hour script, and that could go into what is essentially a three-hour movie, or two 90-minute movies.

It took five years to get Bag of Bones off the ground but once it got going, it was a runaway train downhill. The speed with which we had to prep, shoot and post the film was pretty unprecedented for me. We had two editors working on the show at the same time, and that’s the first time I’ve ever done that in my career.

Horror on television is a big deal right now. Do you think it’s fair to say that you ramped up the horror content of Bag of Bones a bit to capitalize on that trend?

All of the horror elements that are in [the movie] are in the book, but the book is so dense with other material, too, that it doesn’t seem as much. But, yeah, there are definitely more jump scares than you would imagine, or that I’m used to doing. Sony and A&E were very interested in keeping the energy level up with this, and they encouraged that. There are scenes that didn’t make the final cut that are really wonderful, character-building scenes and scenes of mourning that everybody felt wanted to be tighter, and they wanted to be able to exploit it as a Stephen King story and deliver those things that people want when Stephen King’s name is in the title. But it’s also stuff that I think energizes it, too. I’m really happy with how it came out, and I’m hopeful that those things are all very organic to the telling of the story. The dream worlds that are created that kind of overlap dream and reality and flashback are kind of the heart of what those jumps are about. I hope they’re not gratuitous.

There are a couple of scenes that are difficult to watch, even for someone who watches as many horror movies as I do. Was there anything that you weren’t able to get away with – anything that A&E asked you to pull back on?

Much to my shock, the Standards and Practices did not object to anything that you saw in that film. The rape scene is probably what you’re talking about. The rape and murder of Sara Tidwell and her daughter are incredibly difficult to watch, but I’ve got to tell you, they were every bit as difficult to shoot. That day was the first and second day that Anika worked on the film, and it was a grim, quiet, ugly set. Nobody wanted to talk about anything. My nerves were really on end because it was really unpleasant to do, even though the actors were incredibly cooperative and terrific doing it. For me it was probably, if not the most unpleasant day of shooting I’ve had in a relatively long career, certainly up there.

But, that said, I wanted it to be tough to watch. It’s important to play it that way. I didn’t want it to be a titillating rape scene. I didn’t want there to be any question about what it was, and I wanted it to be the foul deed that happened then and still happens now. I’m glad it made you uncomfortable. My hat’s off to A&E for letting that happen. I was sure that shots of thrusting and things like that would just be a no-go. Even in an R-rated movie like Sleepwalkers, I had to cut scenes of bodies moving up and down and all of that, and that got an R-rating. I had to go back several times to the ratings board to get that R. But they passed this the first time through and I was just shocked. There were things we had to remove in the script stage, but it was more like language. I’m really happy with how A&E treated this and respected it.

You’ve done several theatrical features, but you seem to have found your niche in making horror for television. As a filmmaker, how does your job differ between the two media?

What defines the difference is, for one thing, feature films are so much more restricted by marketing than something like a mini-series. We didn’t do any test screenings, and in feature films you test market, and you get cards back from teenagers telling you how they think it should end, and the studio listens because they don’t know about or give a shit about horror. In the case of television, if you’re working on a Stephen King project especially, there’s a much more hands-off attitude for the filmmakers.

But, that said, you do have to deal with censorship issues more than you would in theatrical. And it depends. Independent films have fewer strictures, but they also have much less distribution now. Independent films are really having a tough go of it. It’s much, much more difficult to get funding. Horror on television in theory has become more common, but mini-series and movies for television are almost non-existent. So it’s a mixed bag, but I’ve been lucky enough to work on higher-end projects in television than I have in features, so I’m just happy with what I’m able to do – to be able to get a book like Bag of Bones or The Stand or The Shining to work with. What could be better?

You’re probably tired of answering this question, but it’s a relevant one here: How much, if at all, does King himself get involved in these adaptations?

Okay, the fact is, he’s produced two of the things that we’ve done together, but I’ve never once had Steve tell me how he thought I should shoot something, or how I should change something. I know there are a lot of people out in the fan world who think of me as Stephen King’s bitch [laughs], but nothing could be further from the truth. I think we have a great, great friendship and there’s a mutual trust in one another. I love his work and he’s been very supportive of what I’ve done. Again, I’ve never had him tell me how he thinks it should be done. Nothing I can do will hurt the books that sit on his shelf, as he will say repeatedly. There are good Stephen King movies and there are shitty Stephen King movies, but none of them affect the Stephen King books.

I believe Bag of Bones puts you at the half-dozen mark on King adaptations. How has that affected your career?

Being able to direct movies based on Stephen King material – what could be better than that? But it has limited me to an extent. When you work in a specific genre – the horror genre in particular – it is a ghetto, but it’s a ghetto I’m happy and proud to be a part of and kind of a cheerleader for. But would I like to work outside of the horror genre, and specifically the Stephen King horror genre? Absolutely. My interests go way beyond the horror genre. I love drama, I love comedy, I love all kinds of storytelling and I would love to do that, but if you have a certain amount of success in a genre, specifically horror, that’s pretty much it. You do get limited. But I’m comfortable with that. I’m happy with it. I’d rather be known for something with some level of expertise than not. Christopher Lee resents being known for Dracula, but if it weren’t for Dracula, he might have been on stage for the rest of his life. That role made him famous, made him wealthy, made him comfortable and gave him a name. He kind of resented that for years. How unfortunate, to resent something for which you’re revered. Not that reverence is part of my life…

Bag of Bones premieres Sunday night at 9pm EST on A&E. The network has created an elaborate “prequel” in the form of an internet photo essay called Dark Score Stories, which you can check out here.

Those familiar with Britain’s doom metal scene are probably well aware of Cathedral, and the band’s penchant for horror-inspired lyricism devoted to such evocative, atmospheric ’70s fare as Armando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series of films as well as the Vincent Price vehicle Witchfinder General (a.k.a. The Conqueror Worm). What you might not know, however, is that vocalist Lee Dorrian and co. aren’t the only British doom act to cultivate a gruesome horror obsession. Orange Goblin frontman Ben Ward – whose band of hard drinkin’, hard rockin’ reprobates actually spent many years on Dorrian’s own record label, Rise Above – considers himself a horror lifer. In anticipation of Orange Goblin’s seventh full-length, A Eulogy for the Damned (out February 13 from Candlelight Records), Ward was more than willing to endure our famed Sinister Seven inquisition and go deep into the horror movies that have influenced the band and his own insatiable obsession. Read ‘em and weep! \m/G.

When did you first discover a love for horror movies and culture?

I think the initial fascination started when I was very young, about six or seven years old. My parents were fans of horror movies and read a lot of horror-themed books – Stephen King, James Herbert, William Peter Blatty, et cetera. They didn’t really encourage me to watch or read any of it but the fact that I wasn’t allowed to watch just made me even more curious. I remember sneaking out of bed and sitting at the top of the stairs watching films like The Exorcist, The Omen, Halloween and Rosemary’s Baby. It scared the life out of me but I loved the thrill of it. I used to rewind the bit in Jaws where the head pops out of the boat and watch it over and over again. So, I’ve always been a little bit morbid! I also remember being pretty blown away by Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds album and the artwork in the booklet that came with it. My childhood curiosity and interest has grown into an adult obsession now, which stretches to every genre within horror: zombies, Hammer and old vampire movies, giallo, exploitation, gore, pretty much anything really!

What was the first film to truly scare you, and have there been any recently which have brought up similar feelings for you?

I guess I must’ve been about eight years old when I first watched The Shining and An American Werewolf in London and they both scared me a lot and left a lasting impression, but I think the first film that really hit home was Salem’s Lot, particularly the scene with the dead brother floating at the window! Looking back now, those films were cool and though they were pretty tame, to a young boy they seemed like the most frightening things in the world. Growing up, I guess I was lucky to get into it around the time of the Video Nasty boom so my friends and I would try to get copies of things that we knew we shouldn’t be watching. I remember watching grainy VHS copies of Evil Dead, The Exterminator, Driller Killer, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cannibal Holocaust, Anthropophagous and stuff like that. Those movies definitely made an impact, and I don’t think that era and the magic of it will ever be recaptured. It was exciting and challenging [to track down movies] back then but now everything can be found online. I watched a film called The House of the Devil recently and even though it was made in 2009, it looked and felt like it had been made in 1980 – it’s a great film and definitely worth checking out.

How much of an impact has British horror had upon you?

I’ve learned to appreciate British horror a lot more as I’ve grown older. I suppose I was spoiled as a kid because we had Hammer films on TV every week and I used to consider them boring, old-fashioned rubbish with silly effects and bad acting. But I now realize that all those things are what is so great about them. Lots of over-the-top, bright red blood and the slight chance you may see Ingrid Pitt’s boobs…perfect! I’ve also realised that there is a lot more to British horror than just Hammer. People should check out the work that Amicus did in the ’70s, as well as ’60s films like Peeping Tom and directors like Pete Walker and Norman J. Warren. There is some really great stuff once you start digging! The BBC also made some amazing ghost story adaptations that are still as creepy as anything that’s been made in recent years, films like Whistle and I’ll Come to You, The Signalman and The Woman In Black. I think this country should be very proud of its contribution to horror with movies like The Devil Rides Out, Plague of The Zombies, Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw, Horror Hospital, Frightmare, Psychomania, The Wicker Man…I could go on all night! There have been a lot of great British actors in horror through the years but I think Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing rightfully get mentioned alongside Vincent Price as the greatest of all time. It’s tough to choose just one favourite British horror movie but if I was forced I would probably have to choose Theatre of Blood. Vincent Price is amazing in that film.

What are some righteous obscurities you feel fans should check out?

I suppose it’s harder to call them obscurities these days as all of these films are far more readily available thanks to the internet but I am still finding killer new stuff that I never knew existed! I’d recommend that people check out Last House on Dead End Street, which is pretty brutal, and also a movie called Island of Death. There is a rare Peter Cushing film called Shock Waves, which is worth looking out for if you’re into Nazi zombies. Another favourite that is hard to find is Simon, King of the Witches.

Are there any films that have had a direct influence to your work in Orange Goblin?

Well, on the new album, A Eulogy for the Damned, we have a song called “The Fog,” which is directly inspired by the John Carpenter film of the James Herbert book. The last album had a song called “They Come Back,” which was about a zombie uprising too, but I’ve always tried to vary the subject matter of Orange Goblin lyrics. This is probably due to the fact that I’m the only member of the band that is a horror movie freak, and I think I bore them most of the time when I discuss it! I think what Lee does for Cathedral works great for them and Lee is a massive fan of horror too. We have had many great discussions about favourite films and it was Lee that first turned me onto the Armando De Ossorio Blind Dead films.

What are your thoughts on how special effects have progressed over the years?

There is absolutely no denying that the special effects that are employed now look amazing. Just look at some of the zombies in [TV's] The Walking Dead and recent films like The Human Centipede and Saw. But if I’m perfectly honest, I prefer that over-the-top, late ’70s/early ’80s kind of stuff that obviously looked fake but was great nonetheless. I believe that Lucio Fulci was the master of getting the effects right, particularly in films like The Beyond, Zombie Flesh Eaters,The House By The Cemetery, et cetera. People still talk about the eyeball popping out, the woman vomiting her own guts, and the zombie vs. shark, so they were memorable! I do think that CGI is a good tool in the right circumstances but all the best horror for me is about schlocky effects and creepy atmosphere. Dario Argento didn’t have CGI at his disposal but nothing could be more atmospheric than the lighting in Suspiria!

Finally, some absolute favourite films for you?

It’s really tough to narrow it down to a few films but I’d have to say my favourites are probably The Beyond, Suspiria, An American Werewolf in London, Theatre of Blood, Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City, Hammer’s Vampire Circus, Dellamorte Dellamore (a.k.a. Cemetery Man), The Exorcist, Alucarda, Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, Dracula AD 1972, Frightmare, The Wicker Man…man, we could be here forever!

For more of George’s horror musings, check out his regular column on the Cape Cod Examiner website.